The other day a fine New Mexico journalist I know indicated a certain disdain for bloggers. No doubt - many deserve to be sniffed at; my name may belong on that list. But the blogging phenomenon arises not only from the new technology that makes it easy to do, but also the failures of the mainstream news business.
Today - as we learn that the Secretary of Defense is staying at the Pentagon, despite his abject failure – is a good time to look again, for example, at how the mainstream news mediums performed on Iraq.
It would take a book to do the entire job, but we can begin. Consider the phrase, "war on terror" - central to the Bush Administration’s policies and its re-election.
I've said before that the phrase is a political tool, like the "war on poverty" and the "war on drugs. But beyond its political use, the phrase, "war on terror," enabled the Bush Administration to accrue extraordinary powers in a way that would have been impossible if we had no slogan so brilliantly amalgamating 9/11 and Iraq
Thus, the White House and Justice Department and Pentagon were emboldened to commit Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and the arrests and detentions of immigrants and several individual prosecutions (most of which have gone nowhere).
Of course, those blows to Constitutional government have been reported. Given this Administration’s penchant for secrecy, we must assume there are others we do not know about.
Returning to the political side, American public’s belief that our attack on Iraq was part of a "war on terror" was essential to President Bush’s reelection.
Which brings us back to the Fourth Estate. How come news organizations bought the phrase, thereby buying into the story? How come they still routinely use it without quotes?
Fact is, our press is traditionally kind to government, rarely speaking truth to power when that power is strong. As it is in times of war of fear of war. We tend to pipe up – if we pipe up - when fissures appear in the monolith. (See WWI, WWII, McCarthyism, Watergate, Iran-Contra, et al.)
[Aside: the New York Times is taking heat these days for failing to challenge the White House’s WMD claims. As if being chummy with power is something new on 43rd Street. The Times, remember, suppressed the Bay of Pigs story as a favor to Jack Kennedy. Plus ça change, plus c’est la meme chose.]
Secondly, while some big newspapers are prospering, the print press overall is losing readership and - not knowing why – often falls victim to the idea that survival lies in news lite, bite-sized paragraphs about celebrities, mostly.
Thirdly, newspapers increasingly are written and edited by people who – having grown up in a visual culture – don’t read enough. No wonder, then, that they are insensitive to how words and phrases affect thinking.
As for TV news, so-called, its fundamental problems remain, one, that it is a sideline of the entertainment business and two, that pictures are a lousy way to convey facts and complex ideas.
It’s also true that the networks are vulnerable to White House pressure via the FCC, which licenses their local stations and makes other decisions affecting the competitive balance with other technologies. Meanwhile, the networks continue to lose audience to cable, satellite, even the Internet; no wonder the Wall Street guys who run TV these days do not seek difficulties with Washington.
(Thus, CBS deep-sixed a 60 Minutes piece on the run-up to war immediately after Dan Rather’s stupid mistake on the Bush Texas Air National Guard story. And why Sumner Redstone, boss at Viacom, owner of CBS, announced he favored Bush during the recent campaign.)
The news biz isn’t the only institution to fold, of course. The Democratic Party did, too, nominating for President a man who wouldn’t question that potent formulation, "the war on terrorism;" who switched positions on the Iraq adventure several times during his campaign; and who wound up campaigning on the bold promise that he would fight a "smarter" war.
But that is another discussion.
My intent today was to raise questions about the mainstream news mediums.