Reading between the lines
Hello blog-o-sphere, greetings and salutations. The American mainstream media has really gone down the tubes over the past couple decades - the decrease in diversity of voices and democratic debate due to corporate consolidation/conglomeration of the mainstream media has been well documented by critics such as Ben Bagdikian, Robert McChesney, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman and so many more. As a Jedi Master of journalism (since recently earning my Master’s degree in journalism from Kent State), I will endeavor to help visitors of this blog to connect the dots that the mainstream media can’t or won’t, and to read between the lines of mainstream media coverage of national and global issues.
Legendary muckraking journalist George Seldes laid out the current problem at least as early as 1942, when he wrote,
“What is the most powerful force in America today? Answer: Public opinion. What makes public opinion? Answer: The main force is the press. Can you trust the press? Answer: The baseball scores are always correct (except for a typographical error now and then). The stock market tables are correct (within the same limitation). But when it comes to news which will affect you, your daily life, your job, your relation to other peoples, your thinking on economic and social problems, and, more important today, your going to war and risking your life for a great ideal, then you cannot trust about 98 percent (or perhaps 99 1/2 percent) of the big newspaper and big magazine press of America.
But why can’t you trust the press? Answer: Because it has become big business. The big city press and the big magazines have become commercialized, or big business organizations, run with no other motive than profit for owner or stockholder (although hypocritically still maintaining the old American tradition of guiding and enlightening the people). The big press cannot exist a day without advertising. Advertising means money from big business…
…I still believe that the press is the greatest force in the world and can be used for good or evil. And I believe that the American press by its control of public opinion can either fool all the people into restoring a world in which one-third of the nation will again live in economic slavery without sufficient food, clothing and shelter, or it can, if it wants to, bring out of this united effort against native as well as foreign Fascism a world approaching the Jeffersonian ideal…
But Jefferson did not foresee that the American press which creates opinion and which rules indirectly would become almost exclusively a millionaire’s press, or a corporation influenced press, or the medium of big business via its advertising, and therefore the corrupt press which serves private interests rather than the public interest. If America is to be bossed by the public opinion created by its press, if it is to fight and win this war, if it is to make a great peace, then it should know the power of the most powerful force which is abroad in this land…
There is only one viewpoint which the entire press of the nation expresses, respects, represents and works for: the viewpoint of business, money, wealth and power represented by what is generally known as the God of Things As They Are, or the Status Quo. The press has been united almost to a paper in defending existing conditions and opposing not only some radical plan for change but even all those mild reforms which friends of big money and the status quo, the latest of whom is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, have initiated for the double purpose of helping the Have-Nots and saving and preserving the system of the Haves.
The change that has come over America is this: that beneath the uproar the press made in our early history, the motivation was not money, it was not commercial. Today the press is motivated almost entirely by the motive of profit for itself and its backers. This profit motive not only affects the handling of all the news about labor, “defense” strikes, wage increases, the whole problem of taxation, a large part of the legislation of state and nation, but it also affects the news of world events.
It is my claim that the press, which could be the most powerful force in making this country over into an industrial democracy in which poverty would be unknown, wealth equitably distributed, every man certain of the minimum requirements of decent living (as well as the four freedoms), has, on the contrary, become the most powerful force against the general welfare of the majority of the people.
I know that’s a mouthful, but it’s spot on if you believe that journalists, also known as the 4th Estate, are supposed to be the watchdogs for democracy. But from 1942 and World War II to the so-called War on Terror of today, we increasingly see the mainstream media as stenographers to power. It’s no surprise when you consider the economic issues concerning the status quo that Seldes identified. So I’m here to be your 21st century watchdog and help point out some of the shortcomings of the modern media. And there’s no shortage of such material to point at.
One of the first things that people need to realize is that objectivity is all but dead, if it ever existed at all. As the late, great Hunter S. Thompson wrote in his brilliant Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72:
“So much for Objective Journalism. Don’t bother to look for it here – not under any byline of mine; or anyone else I can think of. With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results and stock market tabulations, there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”
This is what media consumers need to keep in mind at all times, whether it’s reading the New York Times and Washington Post, or watching CNN or almost any broadcast news - whose agenda might be controlling or framing coverage in a certain way? Which gatekeepers might be holding out on certain coverage/analysis? What dots are not being connected?
I could go on and on about this, and so that’s the purpose of this blog as I see it. Each day, I will endeavor to take a look at a major news story or two, and point out some of what’s going on behind the scenes, or what the mainstream media (MSM) might not really want the public to know much about.
For today’s example I’ll cite the ongoing rift between Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and American President George W. Bush. There’s a huge void between what’s really going on and what the MSM reports about Chavez. How many times have we seen the MSM report that the Chavez is “anti-American?” This is patently untrue. Chavez is anti-Bush, as are many Americans. But if he was really anti-American, why would he continue to sell us low cost heating oil? I wrote an analysis of the situation back in May for Kent State’s Seeds of Change magazine. See:
The rift grew when Chavez went to the United Nations in September and denounced Bush as noneother than the devil himself. Regardless of your feelings about Bush’s potential relationship to ol’ Beezlebub, it should be noted that the MSM’s coverage of this incident was filled with shamelessly superficial hyperbole and little actual analysis of why Chavez might make such a bold statement.
The MSM isn’t totally compromised yet. They’ll still print an occasional op-ed that goes beyond the surface, such as this one in the Miami Herald, “Here’s why Chavez is so mad.” But I would suggest that the writers and editors of America’s newspapers should be reporting on such analysis themselves.
The most offensive aspect of the coverage to my view were the comments by Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.)
“An attack on Bush is an attack on all Americans,” Rangel said in a news conference. “You do not come into my country, my congressional district, and you do not condemn my president. If there is any criticism of President Bush, it should be restricted to Americans, whether they voted for him or not.”
Nowhere in the MSM did I see any analysis of whether Rangel’s comments are justifiable. They were simply trumped up to drum up outrage against Chavez. It seems the American MSM would like the public to believe that America is its own planet. Well we’re not. Despite being the sole “superpower,” we are still just one country here on Planet Earth. I would suggest to Mr. Rangel that the American president is not beyond criticism from abroad, since we all have to live together on this planet. Actions by the United States can and do affect the rest of the world, so why are leaders from other countries forbidden from criticizing Uncle Sam?
I would suggest that the MSM framing of these comments is far from objective, but rather serves an anti-democratic political agenda that seeks to assert that America’s might makes right. More on this the next time Chavez makes the headlines…
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