The cost to us all When the News Media Fails

The latest episode of Media Matters with Bob McChesney is an interview with Lance Bennett. Bennett is a Professor of Communication at the University of Washington. He is also founder and director of the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement. The interview covers some very important ground to consider, the role of Journalists, the failures of Journalism to present the truth, and the desire we all have for truth and justice to be the norm rather than the official lies and deceit we are getting today.

In the interview they discussed a wide range of issues related to Bennett's latest book, When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina. Increasingly the Press is dominated by inside-the-beltway discussions, and is largely about inside-the-beltway people talking to each other through articles published in the news media. Increasingly the Press is disconnected from the rest of the country, and not in a dialog with us, etc. This leads to failures of Journalism to do the job it claims to be doing.

The role claimed by Journalism is about seeking out truth and act as a watchdog over the government. Remember that in the U.S.A. the Government is (supposedly) working for We The People. Yet increasingly we are asked to kowtow to whatever the Government says, and the Press is increasingly only speaking the government line.

Part of the issue is the reliance by Journalists on Official Sources. In order to get information to report, Journalists are increasingly addicted to getting information spoonfed to them by Official Sources and only reporting what the Official Sources are saying. The only time, increasingly, a Journalist practices the freedom to question the truth of what the Official Source says is when another Official Source themselves question the statements of other Official Sources. The Journalists then engage in reporting the debate between Official Sources.

The question I had was very aptly put by the last caller who expressed a lot of angst at a broken Media who is mouthing to us the lies of the Administration. What are we to do? Where are we to get the truth?

The blogosphere, for example, is an opportunity for anybody to build their own soapbox, as I'm doing here. But the blogosphere isn't quite focused on Journalistic endeavors. Each of us bloggers are following our own passion about what to write etc. Often bloggers who are acting as government oversight are not producing original Journalism pieces and it is easy to brush us off, as Lance Bennett does, as simply rehashing the stories printed in the news media. While that is often true it's also true that the large picture only comes clear when you connect the dots between dozens of disparate news articles. It seems the news media splits the big picture into small chunks, and unless you proactively connect up the pieces between those articles you'll miss the real story.

Journalists have an advantage over a blogger like me. They have access, they can more easily go into war zones, they know how to find 'Fixers' who can guide them safely through dangerous territories, etc. I on the other hand have to hold a day job and sneak time out of the rest of my life to write on my blogs.

In any case the interview is excellent and offers a lot of great insight and thought about the role of media and whatever is the truth. The cost to us for allowing the journalistic nightmare to continue is that we are being lied into war after war after war. The sort of journalist failures which allowed the Bush Administration to create the Iraq war are being perpetrated upon us right now with the Iran war that's due to begin any day now.

The Media Matters site does not have individual pages for each show, but the MP3 is available at this URL: http://www.will.uiuc.edu/media/mediamatters071125.mp3

Links: 

Media Matters with Bob McChesney

Links: 

http://depts.washington.edu/bennett/

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Welcome to the Center for Communication & Civic Engagement

AASIN: 

When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (Studies in Communication, Media, and Public Opinion)

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's war on Journalism

Outfoxed is Robert Greenwald's latest political documentary. He is the director of two previous documentaries, Uncovered: the Whole Truth about the Iraq War, and Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election. As a documentary maker he has a clear agenda, but that doesn't stop his work from being fairly presented.

Outfoxed covers the Fox News network (http://www.foxnews.com/), and their clear agenda that marches in step with the Republican "conservative" agenda.

Like Uncovered there is an "A" and "B" story-line. The "A" storyline in Outfoxed is various media watchdogs like Peter Hart (FAIR), David Brock (Republican Noise Machine), and Eric Alterman (http://www.alternet.org/). These watchdogs are talking about Fox News, presenting their view of what Fox News is doing. The "B" storyline is to present clips from Fox News broadcasts. The two storylines are played off against each other, with clips selected to elaborate the points made by the watchdogs being interviewed.

The thrust of the story is that Fox News is anything but "Fair and Balanced" as they so loudly proclaim. Quite the opposite, and in fact that Fox News is extremely unbalanced, unfair, politically slanted in their news coverage towards the Republican sourced agenda, and often their commentators are lying.

I do not know about this myself, because I do not watch television (except for brief snippets that can't be avoided due to the ubiquitous presence of television). The clips shown in Outfoxed are truly outrageous, however.

For example the most common image shown is Bill O'Reilly (bill.oreilly@foxnews.com) shouting "SHUT UP" at guest after guest. In one segment they show O'Reilly being interviewed and saying "I've only used that 'Shut Up' line once" immediately after which is shown clip after clip after clip with Bill O'Reilly shouting SHUT UP or CUT OFF HIS MICROPHONE. Later in the documentary Al Franken characterizes Bill O'Reilly as a habitual liar. In the process of demeaning and abusing his guests it is clear, again just from watching these clips, that his style is to have a pre-determined selection of "truth" and to be on a witch-hunt determined to stomp out anything that is against that "truth". And they have the audacity to call themselves "Fair and Balanced"?

All in all this is a very well done documentary. The news media in the United States has been conglomeratized to the point where only 5 corporations own the vast majority of the media outlets. The problem is not just with Fox News, but the entire news and information system. There is a well known concentration of the power and ability to inform the populace into an ever shrinking circle of ownership.

The American style of Democracy relies on a well informed populace who can make the decisions of Democracy. Yet, one of the striking statistics shown during the documentary contrasted viewers of Fox News versus NPR or PBS viewers. Several questions were asked such as whether there are proven links between al Qaeda and the Iraq regime (before the U.S. invasion and toppling of that regime). Now, clearly there is no such connection, however Fox News viewers overwhelmingly said there is a connection, while NPR/PBS viewers overwhelmingly said there is no such connection.

Clearly having such a misinformed populace is a threat to America's Democratic system.

Over and over in the documentary, it is claimed that the tone and content of the "news" presented on Fox News is selected by management on a daily basis in memo's sent to the staff. That the tone and content is purposely selected to favor the Republicans and to slander the Democrats. That any Fox News journalist who dares stray from that party line runs the risk of being fired and their career ruined. That the tone and content just so happens to mirror the daily chosen talking points put forward by the Republican party itself, and that the Republican party daily message is parroted word-for-word by the Fox News staff.

No wonder the American populace is so malinformed. At least those who watch Fox, that is. As a listener to NPR (for over 20 years) I am glad to be among the informed populace.

To be fair here, Rupert Murdoch, the mogul leading the news empire that contains Fox News, is really an Australian. In other countries, such as Australia, the news media is expected to be slanted. At the same time there are multiple news organizations, each with their own slant. So the informed public in those countries are free to ingest their news from multiple sources, and the public can then make up their own mind. Perhaps Murdoch just doesn't understand the American preference for unbiased journalism?

Outfoxed isn't just a documentary, it is also a call to action. One of the actions we are called to is to, ourselves, find multiple sources of news and information. Why should we rely on those 5 mega-corporations to feed us schlock? There are plenty of news organizations with other points of view.

Part of the Outfoxed staff has kept up their watchdog role closely tracking Fox News's behavior. You can keep up with them here:

News Hounds: We watch Fox so you don't have to (http://www.newshounds.us/)

In addition they have two web sites full of recommendations of actions and activism we citizens can take. For example, if you see something egregious on a news program, to write a letter to the station you saw it on. Or to contact an FCC commissioner.

Outfoxed: next steps. You've seen the film. You know the story. Now it's time to fight back. (http://freepress.net/outfoxed/)

Free Press is a non-profit organization working to involve the public in media policymaking and to craft policies for a more democratic media system. (http://mediareform.net/)

This country is lost only if Americans continue being complacent in regard to defending this country.

I remember hearing that one or more of the Founding Fathers of America felt that there ought to be a revolution every 20 years or so, because otherwise the powerful will become too entrenched. In our day the powerful have become very entrenched (for example, George W Bush is the third generation of his family to hold high political office, Al Gore's family has a similar history, as does John Kerry's family). Entrenched power often doesn't understand the real needs and desires of the people. That disconnect is, I believe, at the heart of the problems facing the United States of America today.

NY Times mea culpa for publishing misleading falsehoods about Iraq's WMD

[May 24, 2004] The NY Times has issued a mea culpa saying that some of their reporting leading to the Iraq War was dubious. Uh, duh, they were repeating the lies of the Administration.

However there is a Salon.COM article [salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/27/times/index.html] claiming that the principle NY Times reporter on this beat, Judith Miller, was apparently actively cooperating with the White House to get their lies published. She was working closely with the same liar, Ahmed Chalabi and his cronies, as was the Administration, so when Chalabi or one of his cronies might have told her some lie, he will have already told that lie to sources at the White House or DoD whom she could then call to get the confirmation required to publish.

For example, the issue of the Aluminum Tubes supposedly to be used to build centrifuges.

If the double-agent spy business had a trophy to hold up and show neophyte spooks what happens when their craft is perfectly executed, it would be a story by Judith Miller and Michael Gordon that appeared on the front page of the New York Times on a Sunday morning in September 2002. The front-page frightener was titled "Threats and Responses: The Iraqis; US Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts." Miller and Gordon wrote that an intercepted shipment of aluminum tubes, to be used as centrifuges, was evidence Hussein was building a uranium gas separator to develop nuclear material. The story quoted national security advisor Condoleezza Rice invoking the image of "mushroom clouds over America."...The story had an enormous impact, one amplified when Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice President Dick Cheney all did appearances on the Sunday morning talk shows, citing the first-rate journalism of the liberal New York Times. No single story did more to advance the political cause of the neoconservatives driving the Bush administration to invade Iraq....But Miller's story was wrong. ...It turned out that the aluminum tubes were covered with an anodized coating, which would have been machined off to make them usable in a centrifuge. But that change in the thickness of the tube wall would have rendered the tubes useless for a centrifuge, according to a number of nuclear scientists who spoke publicly after Miller's story. Aluminum, which has not been used in uranium gas separators since the 1950s, has been replaced by steel. The tubes, in fact, were almost certainly intended for use as rocket bodies. Hussein's multiple-launch rocket systems had rusted on their pads and he had ordered the tubes from Italy. "Medusa 81," the Italian rocket model name, was stamped on the sides of the tubes, and in a factory north of Baghdad, American intelligence officers later discovered boxes of rocket fins and motors awaiting the arrival of the tubes of terror.