Why the media failed Americans
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| Thu, 07-15-2004 - 6:36pm |
A universe in which news won't matter
Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, bluntly declared to New Yorker writer Ken Auletta that members of the press "don't represent the public any more than other people do. I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function." Auletta concluded that, in the eyes of the Bush administration, the press corps had become little more than another special-interest lobbying group. Indeed, the territory the traditional media once occupied has increasingly been deluged by administration lobbying, publicity, and advertising - cleverly staged "photo-ops", carefully produced propaganda rallies, pre-planned "events", tidal waves of campaign ads, and the like. Afraid of losing further "influence", access, and the lucrative ad revenues that come from such political image-making, major media have found it in their financial interest to yield quietly.
What does this downgrading of the media's role say about how the US government views its citizens, the putative sovereigns of the country? It suggests that "we the people" are seen not as political constituencies conferring legitimacy on our rulers, but as consumers to be sold policy the way advertisers sell products. In the storm of selling, spin, bullying and "discipline" that has been the Bush signature for years, traditional news outlets found themselves increasingly drowned out, ghettoized and cowed. Attacked as "liberal" and "elitist", disesteemed as "troublemakers" and "bashers" (even when making all too little trouble), they were relegated to the sidelines, increasingly uncertain and timid about their shrinking place in the political process.
Add in a further dynamic (which intellectuals from Marxist-Leninist societies would instantly recognize): Groups denied legitimacy and disdained by the state tend to internalize their exclusion as a form of culpability, and often feel an abject, autonomic urge to seek reinstatement at almost any price. Little wonder, then, that "the traditional press" has had a difficult time mustering anything like a convincing counter-narrative as the administration herded a terrified and all-too-trusting nation to war.
Not only did a mutant form of skepticism-free news succeed - at least for a time - in leaving large segments of the populace uninformed, but it corrupted the ability of high officials to function. All too often they simply found themselves looking into a fun-house mirror of their own making and imagined that they were viewing reality. As even the conservative National Review noted, the Bush administration has "a dismaying capacity to believe its own public relations".
In this world of mutant "news", information loops have become one-way highways; and a national security adviser, cabinet secretary, or attorney general, a well-managed and programmed polemicist charged to "stay on message", the better to justify whatever the government has already done, or is about to do. Because these latter-day campaigns to "dominate the media environment", as the Pentagon likes to say, employ all the sophistication and technology developed by communications experts since Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, first wed an understanding of psychology to the marketing of merchandise, they are far more seductive than older-style news. Indeed, on Fox News, we can see the ultimate marriage of news and public relations in a fountainhead of artful propaganda so well packaged that most people can't tell it from the real thing.
For three-plus years we have been governed by people who don't view news, in the traditional sense, as playing any constructive role in our system of governance. At the moment, they are momentarily in retreat, driven back from the front lines of faith-based truth by their own faith-based blunders. But make no mistake, their frightening experiment will continue if Americans allow it. Complete success would mean not just that the press had surrendered its essential watchdog role, but - a far darker thought - that, even were it to refuse to do so, it might be shunted off to a place where it would not matter.
As the war in Iraq descended into a desert quagmire, the press belatedly appeared to awaken and adopt a more skeptical stance toward an already crumbling set of Bush administration policies. But if a bloody, expensive, catastrophic episode like the war in Iraq is necessary to remind us of the important role that the press plays in US democracy, something is gravely amiss in the way America's political system has come to function.

Merlins_Own
AS ABOVE, SO BELOW!
I'm adding
Some of the hosts are downright hostile, insulting, and I have watched as they use language that essentially incited PHYSICAL violence and murder against some people with opposing views. Do they really represent America? I don't think so! Those americans I have met in all my trips were courteous, pleasant, and seemed to have open minds. Are they a minority? I sure hope not!
Well, though I know some people around here wouldn't agree with me, I too like Fox News (have heard it berated here before...even called Faux News once). Generally I dislike all news, newspapers, magazines and the like because any way you look at it, there's spin. Especially political spin....
But I do on occassion turn on Fox News...usually to see what pot Bill O'Reilly is stirring up that day. For as much as he frustrates me at times, he sure does get a good chuckle out of me at others.
Merlins_Own
AS ABOVE, SO BELOW!
Merlins_Own
AS ABOVE, SO BELOW!
BTW people of color make the news when there famous and accused of something, eg Kobe Bryand and Michael Jackson, when the war in Iraq gets boring although soldiers are dying daily, these stars are a perfect distraction. Can you imagine what would happen if we really got emotionally involved in the war, economy or environment. Then we might care what the government is doing for/to us?
Edited 7/22/2004 4:20 pm ET ET by merlins_own
Merlins_Own
AS ABOVE, SO BELOW!
And you think Kerry is better than Bush? Or is that just a general comment?
Reagan would be the last president who did what you suggested.
I believe Bush does the same...just doesn't sell it as well as Reagan.
Edited 7/23/2004 12:34 pm ET ET by vader716