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The Gadfly Bytes --
July 19, 2005
The Wayward Media
By Ernest Partridge, Co-Editor
July 19, 2005
Here are three mini-essays tied together with a common theme:
the corporate media.
“Fool me Twice...”
From time to time we encounter in the
mainstream media (MSM), journalistic concerns about the American public’s
declining interest in political and national news. “Shame on you masses!,”
we are admonished, and we are reminded of Jefferson’s warning that a nation
cannot be both ignorant and free.
I have a different take on this: shame
on them!, (the media). True,
newspaper circulation and TV news ratings are down, but might not this be
due to the fact that more and more American are finally coming to realize
that they’ve been suckered by the MSM – and that they must now look
elsewhere for accurate, relevant, “fair and balanced” reporting of the news?
“Suckered”? How so? Consider first these now familiar examples of MSM thumbs
on the scales of domestic politics.
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2000. The MSM took no pains to correct
the GOP lies that Al Gore had claimed to have “invented the internet”
and to have “discovered Love Canal.” The Democrats' attempts to raise
the issue of Bush’s Texas Air National Guard record were unavailing.
Immediate public opinion that Gore had won the presidential debates were
reversed by post-debate network and cable “spin,” and Frank Luntz’ phony
“focus groups.”
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2003 – February 5. Colin Powell
presents Bush’s case for war with Iraq to the United Nations Security
Council. Subsequent events and exhaustive and unrestricted searches in
Iraq have proven the speech to be pack of lies. But at the time, US
Editorial opinion was completely taken in. A sampling: “Powell lays out
convincing evidence of Iraq defiance (USA Today); “[Powell] offered a
powerful new case that Saddam Hussein’s regime is cooperating with a
branch of the al Qaeda organization that is trying to acquire chemical
weapons” (Washington Post); “The Powell evidence will be persuasive to
anyone who is still persuadable” (The Wall Street Journal); “Powell laid
out the need [for war] ... in step-by-step fashion that cannot be
refuted without resorting to fantasy” (Chicago Sun-Times). For much more
of the same from “the librul media,” follow
this link.
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2004. The MSM reports the “Swift Boat”
smear of John Kerry without commentary and rebuttal, thus lending
credence to the slander. Bush’s apparent use of a listening device in
the debates is unreported and unexplored by the MSM. Once again, the
Texas Air National Guard issue fails to “take,” and the CBS 60 Minutes
report backfires, ending the career of Dan Rather. Post-election, the
question of election fraud is totally shut out of MSM reportage and
commentary.
But at long last, the public is beginning
to wake from its dogmatic slumbers.
-
In April, 2004, the Program on
International Policy Attitudes reported that “a majority of Americans
(57%) continue to believe that before the war Iraq was providing
substantial support to al Qaeda, including 20% who believe that Iraq was
directly involved in the September 11 attacks. Forty-five percent
believe that evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda has been found.
Sixty percent believe that just before the war Iraq either had weapons
of mass destruction (38%) or a major program for developing them (22%).”
(PIPA,
2004). But a year later, just last April (2005), the
Gallup poll reported that 50% believe that Bush “deliberately
misled the American public about whether Iraq has weapons of mass
destruction.” In short, Bush lied, the MSM conveyed the lie at first
successfully, but now the public is beginning to see the light.
-
2005. Bush’s public lie that he was
“doing everything in my power to avoid war” is exposed and refuted by
the Downing Street Memos, which go unreported for several weeks until
the progressive internet forces it into the MSM, whereupon it disappears
again. Nonetheless, Bush’s credibility is severely damaged as only 41%
of the public now believes him to be “honest and straightforward” – a
drop of nine points since January. And finally, the
Zogby Poll reports that
“in a sign of continuing polarization, more than two-in-five voters
(42%) say they would favor impeachment proceedings if it is found the
President misled the nation about his reasons for going to war with
Iraq."
So it appears that the
Bush/Cheney/Rove/GOP propaganda machine, and its MSM facilitators, are
losing control. “Fool me once, shame on you; ... fool me – you can’t get
fooled again.”
This has happened many times before, though not often in our history. For
example, during the Cold War, the American Press delighted in reporting the
often laughable inventions of Pravda and Izvestia.
When in 1957 the Red Army put down the Hungarian revolution, the Russian
citizens were told that the Army was invited in by the legitimate government
to help defeat a “fascist coup.” In 1968, same message, different country:
Czechoslovakia . And when the Berlin Wall went up, the Soviet press told the
world that it was designed to keep spies from crossing into East Berlin.
But are these fantasies any less credible than the following, dutifully and
uncritically reported by the MSM: “They attacked us on 9/11 because they
hate our freedoms,” or “Saddam has pilotless aircraft that he can use to
release biological warfare on our homeland,” or “there is no doubt that
Saddam has reconstituted nuclear weapons,” or “Saddam Hussein recently
sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” or “we’ll do anything
we can to avoid war,” or “the insurgents are in their last throes,” or “the
detainees in Guantánamo are in a tropical paradise.”
The Busheviks are discovering, like the Bolsheviks before them, that the
public soon becomes immune to official lies and starts to look elsewhere for
news. When, year after year, Pravda announced
“record harvests in the collective farms,” the shelves in the Leningrad and
Moscow stores remained bare. Official “news” and the experience of ordinary
life just didn’t “fit.” And now, it’s beginning to happen here, as American
citizens with memories recall the now demonstrably discredited lies. Still
worse for the Bush regime, those lies are on the record where they cannot be
unsaid, and where they are immediately available to anyone with access to
the internet.
If this slide in credibility continues, what follows? Is it just possible
that, at long last, the public will begin to doubt the validity of their
elections, past and pending? Will serious and publicized investigations of
election returns begin, to be followed by indictments? Will the GOP, perhaps
for the first time in a decade, have to face the American voters in honest
elections? If so, the jig is up: game,
set, match!
Mark Twain once said that “A lie can travel halfway around the world while
the truth is putting on its shoes.” At long last, truth has put on its
boots, and is about to get to work.
And don’t you believe for a moment that Rove, the GOP and Bush, Inc. aren’t
acutely aware of this!
In the meantime, what is the public to do? Quite simply, ignore the
mainstream media and boycott its sponsors. Support independent and
responsible news sources. Then allow the market, so esteemed by the
regressive-right, to come to the aid of media reform.
“Build it, and they will come.”
Remember the Sinclair Broadcasting fiasco? Shortly before the 2004 election,
this right-wing outfit scheduled an anti-Kerry propaganda piece, “Stolen
Honor.” It was never broadcast. And why? Because the Sinclair management had
a sudden flash of civic responsibility? Don’t be silly! It was because the
stockholders (no doubt predominantly conservative Republicans) were properly
alarmed about the citizen complaints and boycotts, and the resulting plunge
in stock value.
So if the MSM sees a continuing drop in ratings and the sponsors suffer from
boycotts, then the MSM may face a stark choice: reform or die.
Mind you, I’m not guaranteeing that this will happen. Who knows how a
wounded Bushista administration and its corporate “stockholders” might
strike back. It could be very ugly. But the admirable Russian and Soviet
dissidents, under a detestable regime with complete media control,
established their own media,Samizdat,
rendered the official media irrelevant and eventually overthrew the regime.
Can we do as well, given the advantage of our political traditions and our
history?
I think we can. And in view of the alternative prospects before us, how can
we honorably fail to make the effort?
“Access” – To what?
Its no secret: the former watchdogs of the
American media have been transformed into Bush’s lapdogs. Whenever a
potential White House or GOP scandal rears its ugly head, you can count on
the news media to be otherwise engaged. If you’ve paid any attention to the
Tom Delay outrages, Gannon/Guckert, the Downing Street Memos, the civilian
casualties in Iraq, The World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul, or what the rest
of the world thinks of us and our President, you’ve probably learned about
it from somewhere else: perhaps the foreign press or, of course, the
internet. As for the mainstream media (MSM), it's all about Michael Jackson,
the runaway bride, or the love lives of assorted Hollywood celebs. And
election fraud, just possibly the greatest political crime in the history of
the republic? Faggetaboutit. Total
embargo.
When members of the Washington press corps are asked why they are giving
Bush, Inc. a free pass, we are told that if a reporter criticizes the Bush
Administration, that individual faces the loss of access to White House news
sources.
Somehow this didn’t keep the media hounds from harassing Bill Clinton
throughout his entire two terms.
But what, exactly, is lost if a reporter is denied “access” to the White
House or Pentagon press rooms? Is it the privilege of being lied to and
stonewalled to one’s face?
Have you ever tuned into a CSPAN broadcast of a White House or Pentagon news
briefing? If you have, I defy you to identify even a scrap of news to issue
forth from these travesties – well, significant news, that is. You will be
told of Shrub’s schedule and then given a heavy dose of propagandistic
pablum. You can read that at www.whitehouse.gov ,
and for that matter, you can see the briefings on CSPAN. But really, why
bother?
For five years, we’ve had a dreary run of lies, spin and evasions from the
White House press room. At the beginning, Helen Thomas, bless
her!, livened things up until
she was banished to the back row. And a week ago, at long last, a few
reporters held poor Scott McClellan to account. But other than that, your
time would be far better spent reading The
Guardian, The Times of London, or The
Toronto Globe and Mail to
find out what is happening in your own country.
Which leads us to wonder: What if Scott McClellan or Rummy held a news
briefing and nobody came? Now that would
convey an eloquent message to these liars and phonies.
Let’s be blunt about it. Authentic and significant news is rarely dug up and
reported by journalists with “access.” Izzy Stone did not have “access,” nor
did Woodward and Bernstein. The Pentagon Papers were not handed out in the
White House press room. “News” is what Scotty and Rummy don’t want you to
hear, and what you have to dig out on your own.
Regrettably, Bob Woodward has since gone over to The Dark Side to write Bush
hagiographies. (It’s nasty work but someone’s gotta do it). Now that is
"access" – but to what end? It comes down to a simple bargain: swapping
integrity for "access." But "what shall it profit a man if he shall gain
the whole world and lose his own soul?” (Mark 8:36)
So when you hear that the press corps has to go easy on Dubya in order to
“maintain access,” give that excuse the credence it deserves.
Nada!
The Judith Miller Muddle
Why is Judith Miller in jail? What does
she know that the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, is so determined to hear?
Speculation is all over the map, and rumors abound, because, of course,
Fitzgerald (unlike Ken Starr) is doing his job and keeping mum.
And so, until some solid information emerges, I should be reluctant to join
the chorus of “what-ifs” and “is it possibles.” However, for whatever they
might be worth, here are a few speculations from off the wall.
Amidst the plethora of media commentaries, there is one point of
near-general agreement in the MSM: Judith Miller is a heroine – a
journalistic Joan of Arc. Leading the choir of admirers is Miller’s
employer, The New York Times – the newspaper of historical record which told
us all about the treachery of Dr. Wen Ho Lee (false), the guilt of the
Clintons in the Whitewater deal (false), the “fact” that had the count gone
forward, Bush would still have won Florida in 2000 (false), and, thanks to
the very same Judith Miller, the existence of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of
mass destruction (false) and Saddam’s acquisition of aluminum tubes for his
nuclear program (false).
A heroine? Pardon my dissent.
The alleged heroism of Miller rests upon the assumption that her “source” is
indistinguishable in kind from the usual “whistle blower” – e.g., “Deep
Throat,” Daniel Ellsberg, Sibel Edmunds, Colleen Rowley, and numerous others
who, because they remain “anonymous sources,” can not be named.
Hogwash! The Miller-Cooper
“source” (Karl Rove?) is the moral opposite of the aforementioned
whistleblowers.
A whistle-blower reports a crime to the journalist. In the Plame/CIA case,
the report is the crime. ProsecutorPatrick
Fitzgerald, who has said very
little to the press, makes the point very succinctly: “This case is not
about a whistle-blower. Its about a potential retaliation against a
whistle-blower.” (Joseph Wilson, of course).
The contrast becomes apparent when we ask, along with the journalistic
mainstream, “what happens if a reporter can no longer guarantee anonymity of
the sources?” The obvious answer, of course, is that the journalist will
lose the sources. But that’s not the relevant question. Instead, ask, “what
if a reporter can be expected to report a crime, as it is being committed?”
Answer: the expectation of that disclosure might prevent the crime. And in
fact, as I understand the journalistic code of ethics, a journalist is not
required to be silent if aware that a crime is in progress, nor to be silent
if the source is reporting a falsehood. And so, if Rove (or whoever the
“source” might be) approached a reporter with the tidbit that “Joe Wilson’s
wife is a CIA operative in a clandestine activity,” with the expectation
that by saying so he soon might be facing an indictment, well then, in that
case, Valerie Plame might, to this day, be serving us all by tracking down
the existence and distribution of weapons of mass destruction aimed at our
“homeland.”
In fact, the act of disclosing that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA
“operative” was a crime. As such, the moment Cooper or Miller
(hypothetically) were told that Plame was a CIA operative, at that moment
(a) they were obligated not to disclose this fact, and (b) they were
obligated to report the “source” (who had thus committed a crime) to the
Justice Department. Every journalist who was witness to this crime wisely
followed course (a) and kept silent – all, that is, except Robert Novak, who
amazingly, is at large, and not in the slammer alongside Judith Miller. The
failure of the contacted reporters to report the crime to Attorneys General
Ashcroft and Gonzales is quite excusable. Why bother?
The prevailing opinion is that Novak is free because he has cooperated with
the prosecutor. Let us hope!
So why is Judith Miller in jail today? If the “source” was willing to waive
confidentiality to Matt Cooper, why not to Miller as well? Perhaps because
the reason Miller is in jail has little if anything to do with her refusal
to name “sources.” If so, then Miller’s media colleagues may want to
reconsider their letters of nomination to the Pulitzer Prize Committee in
behalf of Judith Miller.
The presumed “martyrdom” of Judith Miller rests on the assumption that
Miller is a reporter who has been victimized by an out-of-control
prosecutor. But might she be miscast in this role? Is it not possible that
Judith Miller is not really a “reporter” at all, but instead is a
“facilitator”– a conveyer of official lies from Rove’s and Cheney’s mouths
to our ears, via the New York Times? As such, she might be in possession of
information that could break this case wide open were she sufficiently
“encouraged,” at long last, to tell the truth – information that no
journalist, indeed no citizen, is entitled to withhold from a criminal
investigation.
Judith Miller, let us not forget, took the lead in promulgating the myths of
the nuclear bomb-making aluminum tubes and the vast storehouses of Saddam
Hussein’s WMDs, and did all this on the pages of the (once-)respected and
(once-)reliable “flagship of American journalism,” the New York Times.
And Miller published this myth after Hussein Kamal, Saddam’s defecting
son-in-law, revealed that he, Kamal, had personally dismantled Saddam’s WMDs.
She did so at a time when Hans Blix of the UN Inspections team and Mohammed
al Baradai of the International Atomic Energy Agency had failed to find
evidence of WMDs or an ongoing atomic weapons program, and at a time when UN
inspectors were in Iraq, searching in vain for WMDs.
Even so, Miller steadfastly held to the party line and to her role as a
stenographer to a convicted embezzler, Ahmed Chalabi, and to the NeoCons.
The evidence of no WMDs was “out there” to be had by a competent reporter.
She appeared not to be interested. Miller is therefore either a
spectacularly incompetent reporter or a willing co-conspirator in an
official lie. No third, benign, explanation is in evidence.
Are the Cooper and Miller cases different in kind, and does the prosecutor,
Patrick Fitzgerald want something more from Miller than simply the name of
her “source”? Some
are suggesting that Miller,
through her close associations with the NeoCons, was in fact the source of
the “goods” on Valerie Plame Wilson. Who knows? I don’t, but maybe the Grand
Jury does, and now wants Miller’s testimony to tie down the case.
This is one of many “what-ifs,” and the rest is guesswork. So we wait, and
hope that Patrick Fitzgerald and his Grand Jury have the extraordinary
courage to follow this caper to wherever it leads.
The very future of our democracy may well depend on it.
Copyright 2005 by Ernest Partridge
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