Book review--Tragedy and Farce
The subtitle to this one reads: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy. And that's precisely what this extended essay sets out to do, although the authors try to point out some solutions to this corrosive issue as well. Nichols and McChesney have not set out to describe in detail the faults of the so-called liberal news media, nor do they necessarily try to prove how conservative they really are. Nichols and McChesney work instead from the assumption that those things have already been proven, and analyze how the men and women of the news media's failure to be either true journalists or even objective observers affects the citizenry.
By focusing on the two most important and salient roles the press is supposed to play, according to the Founding Fathers (the title of the book is from a quote from Madison regarding what happens to a democracy when its press stops telling the truth)--being a watchdog over the government during times of war or electioneering--the authors show how our country is rapidly becoming more akin to the Soviet Union (for example) as our populace endures being lied to without correction. Ignorance is not bliss, the authors argue, but rather leads to destruction for a democracy. Our country was founded in the belief, and indeed with the demand, that we remain knowledgeable and involved citizens. In turn this requires an active and independent (not necessarily objective) press, which is why the 1st Amendment to the Constitution calls for freedom of the press from governmental interference. The problem with our current news media is that it is no longer independent; our reporters simply act as stenographers for "official sources" from "both sides" in an effort not to seek the truth, but in order to report what famous and important people say about events.
The populace has allowed this erosion of journalism precisely because of our heritage of actual reportage, since newspapers were at one time pretty reliable sources of information. The slide from journalism to stenography went unnoticed (and is still hidden from the vast majority of the people in the US, although not from the eyes of the world) amidst the barrage of mindless and insubstantiated conservative criticism that our media was biased against conservatives. Truly liberal minded reporters became so sensitive to these charges that they stopped looking behind the public statements of government officials or politicians seeking office, leaving the field open to master manipulators such as Reagan, Rove, Smirky and Dick, who understood immediately that the media was theirs for the taking. That the media companies themselves were the objects of corporate deregulation, with all the attendant consolidation under increasingly right-wing wealthy ownership inherent in that movement, amplified the constraints felt by the lowly reporters on the political beats. (Or, even worse, the reporters themselves became members of the upper class and sold their heritage out in favor of maintaining their privileged status as insiders. Access is "power" for stenographers; those without access soon find themselves unemployed.)
Nichols and McChesney outline the rise and fall of both Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich as candidates for President in 2004 as evidence of the total journalistic bankruptcy of our media. Both men (especially Dean) became media darlings by being underdogs willing to speak about issues and policies, but once either "crossed the line" by being either publicly outspoken against media manipulation/condescension (as Kucinich did when he took on Ted Koppel during the first debate) or by proving fallible in the primaries (Dean), they were portrayed as unbalanced and unworthy of serious attention. After all, since neither man was obviously going to win, why should the news media corporations waste time and precious capital covering their campaigns? The authors point out that by avoiding the substance of either man's rhetoric, to say nothing of the truly outsider campaigns of Sharpton and Mosley Braun, both of whom were clearly willing to speak truth to power, the press actually determined the outcome of the primaries as a whole. [As a side note, I missed seeing the first Democratic debate, so I read a transcript of it. You know what? Sharpton was far and away the most impressive person on the stage that night; his takes on the issues and the problems facing this country were thoughtful and pointed, and his anger at both his fellow candidates and the media for ignoring them was refreshing and relevant.] That alone should make us all scared for our future; I won't even talk about the media's role in covering for Smirky's a$$ in the runup to the Iraqi occupation, although the authors do.
Nichols and McChesney do a great job in showing us the next step in assessing the downfall of our media. They are no longer objective or independent, that is proven (by writers that I've reviewed here, in fact--see Alterman's What Liberal Media for the best and most complete evidence, and Auletta's Three Blind Mice for the earliest reporting of the commercialization of the news amidst the corporate takeover movement in the 1980s)--but the effects of their abdication of their Constitutionally sanctioned role are now becoming obvious as well. Unfortunately for us, those effects happen to include the destruction of our nation's democratic values. Nichols and McChesney do point out some potential methods for overcoming the media's governmentally guided onslaught on our country's political system (achieved mostly through grassroots political activism seeking governmental re-regulation), but it's a bit depressing that we have to fight this "trust busting" battle all over again. The Progressives already did that in the early 20th century; are we simply going to have to repeat their struggle in the early 21st? What a disconcerting thought . . .
By focusing on the two most important and salient roles the press is supposed to play, according to the Founding Fathers (the title of the book is from a quote from Madison regarding what happens to a democracy when its press stops telling the truth)--being a watchdog over the government during times of war or electioneering--the authors show how our country is rapidly becoming more akin to the Soviet Union (for example) as our populace endures being lied to without correction. Ignorance is not bliss, the authors argue, but rather leads to destruction for a democracy. Our country was founded in the belief, and indeed with the demand, that we remain knowledgeable and involved citizens. In turn this requires an active and independent (not necessarily objective) press, which is why the 1st Amendment to the Constitution calls for freedom of the press from governmental interference. The problem with our current news media is that it is no longer independent; our reporters simply act as stenographers for "official sources" from "both sides" in an effort not to seek the truth, but in order to report what famous and important people say about events.
The populace has allowed this erosion of journalism precisely because of our heritage of actual reportage, since newspapers were at one time pretty reliable sources of information. The slide from journalism to stenography went unnoticed (and is still hidden from the vast majority of the people in the US, although not from the eyes of the world) amidst the barrage of mindless and insubstantiated conservative criticism that our media was biased against conservatives. Truly liberal minded reporters became so sensitive to these charges that they stopped looking behind the public statements of government officials or politicians seeking office, leaving the field open to master manipulators such as Reagan, Rove, Smirky and Dick, who understood immediately that the media was theirs for the taking. That the media companies themselves were the objects of corporate deregulation, with all the attendant consolidation under increasingly right-wing wealthy ownership inherent in that movement, amplified the constraints felt by the lowly reporters on the political beats. (Or, even worse, the reporters themselves became members of the upper class and sold their heritage out in favor of maintaining their privileged status as insiders. Access is "power" for stenographers; those without access soon find themselves unemployed.)
Nichols and McChesney outline the rise and fall of both Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich as candidates for President in 2004 as evidence of the total journalistic bankruptcy of our media. Both men (especially Dean) became media darlings by being underdogs willing to speak about issues and policies, but once either "crossed the line" by being either publicly outspoken against media manipulation/condescension (as Kucinich did when he took on Ted Koppel during the first debate) or by proving fallible in the primaries (Dean), they were portrayed as unbalanced and unworthy of serious attention. After all, since neither man was obviously going to win, why should the news media corporations waste time and precious capital covering their campaigns? The authors point out that by avoiding the substance of either man's rhetoric, to say nothing of the truly outsider campaigns of Sharpton and Mosley Braun, both of whom were clearly willing to speak truth to power, the press actually determined the outcome of the primaries as a whole. [As a side note, I missed seeing the first Democratic debate, so I read a transcript of it. You know what? Sharpton was far and away the most impressive person on the stage that night; his takes on the issues and the problems facing this country were thoughtful and pointed, and his anger at both his fellow candidates and the media for ignoring them was refreshing and relevant.] That alone should make us all scared for our future; I won't even talk about the media's role in covering for Smirky's a$$ in the runup to the Iraqi occupation, although the authors do.
Nichols and McChesney do a great job in showing us the next step in assessing the downfall of our media. They are no longer objective or independent, that is proven (by writers that I've reviewed here, in fact--see Alterman's What Liberal Media for the best and most complete evidence, and Auletta's Three Blind Mice for the earliest reporting of the commercialization of the news amidst the corporate takeover movement in the 1980s)--but the effects of their abdication of their Constitutionally sanctioned role are now becoming obvious as well. Unfortunately for us, those effects happen to include the destruction of our nation's democratic values. Nichols and McChesney do point out some potential methods for overcoming the media's governmentally guided onslaught on our country's political system (achieved mostly through grassroots political activism seeking governmental re-regulation), but it's a bit depressing that we have to fight this "trust busting" battle all over again. The Progressives already did that in the early 20th century; are we simply going to have to repeat their struggle in the early 21st? What a disconcerting thought . . .
posted by bryduck at 7:54 AM
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