This the column that appeared in the Albuquerque Tribune Thursday, October 27, 2005:
No Questions Asked
Media’s coverage shows its ‘view form the top’ stance and lack of challenging authority
By Arthur Alpert
I’ve never forgotten a sports feature I read about a year ago. A local teen was overcoming - performing well as a jock and student - despite tough circumstances at home. Heartwarming. Until this from his coach: "He never questions authority."
Coach meant it as praise.
Authority is power, power exercised by the folks above us on the ladder. The ladder is how we organize institutions - government, courts, schools, churches, the army, business. This hierarchy inhabits our psyches, too.
We call folks with a view from the top the Establishment. As is only human, the Establishment uses its power to stay there, while people below – the middle class - scramble to join them or, at least, keep a distance from the scruffy fellas clinging to the lowest rungs.
Inevitably, the self-interest of those on top distorts the institution’s mission.
But you know this. I restate it only to set up my thesis - the news business is neither liberal nor conservative but an Establishment institution.
Consider "class." When’s the last time (before Katrina) that you read or watched serious coverage of the underclass? Or respectful words about a blue-collar union? Or serous analysis of the globalism – espoused by both parties – that’s exporting middle class jobs?
If you have, you subscribe to the Atlantic, National Review or American Prospect. There’s little in the mainstream press.
News institutions cannot avoid seeing the world through their class prejudices. I recognize the leanings in the New York Times, owned, written and edited by the governing class. (By contrast, the big-city daily I joined in 1960 employed several working class reporters).
Establishment bias explains the dearth of stories about the issue of our time – how corporate power threatens democracy. Did anybody even ask John Roberts, before appointing him chief justice of the United States, what he thinks of judicial decisions empowering corporations?
The Establishment is bipartisan. Democrats led us into Vietnam, Republicans kept us in. Establishment sons - not just President Bush’s but also Democratic Senator Lloyd Bentsen’s – elected the Texas Air National Guard. We drafted working class kids to brave the rice paddies.
Iraq divides the Establishment but both Republicans and Democrats marketed our misadventure.
And the press acquiesced.
The Establishment is tolerant of mild dissent, but not passionate about free thought; ergo, its news mediums explore the gamut of ideas from A to B. Yet there’s a good deal of fine journalism in great national dailies like the Times and Wall Street Journal, newsmagazines and our local newspapers. Broadcasting, too – think PBS’s "Frontline" and "Nova" and NPR.
Step back from the canvas for perspective, though, and you see that excellence drowning in a tsunami - bits and pieces of data, gobs of celebrity junk, ignorant talk and black holes of omission, sound and fury signifying nothing. No, not nothing – signifying camouflage for Establishment malfeasance.
I wish I knew how to fix this. New information technology may help; already the blogosphere is inspiring print journalists to rethink.
Liberals and conservatives recently united to stall a Federal Communications Commission effort to centralize broadcasting further. Americans should next re-regulate, break up the behemoths, encourage more voices. To do so, we’ll have to buy back our democracy by financing elections ourselves.
Perhaps George Clooney’s new movie, wherein Edward R. Murrow questions power in a time of fear, will remind everybody the First Amendment wasn’t written to maximize profit. It’s for questioning authority.
Sorry, coach.
Alpert is a semi-retired newsman in Albuquerque. Email him at ArthurAlpert@swcp.com. His column appears in Insight & Opinion the fourth Thursday of the month.
Posted by Arthur Alpert at October 29, 2005 10:53 AM