The Death of News
by MARK CRISPIN MILLER
[from the July 3, 2006 issue of The Nation]
Ten years ago, when we first focused national attention on the
dangers of the US media cartel, the situation was already grim,
although in retrospect it may seem better than it really was. In the
spring of 1996 Fox News was only a conspiracy (which broke a few
months later). CNN belonged to Turner Broadcasting, which hadn't yet
been gobbled by Time Warner (although it would be just a few months
later); Viacom had not yet bought CBS News (although it would in
1999, before they later parted ways); and, as the Telecommunications
Act had been passed only months earlier, local radio had not yet
largely disappeared from the United States (although it was obviously
vanishing). One could still somewhat plausibly assert, as many did,
that warnings of a major civic crisis were unfounded, overblown or
premature, as there was little evidence of widespread corporate
censorship, and so we were a long way from the sort of journalistic
meltdown that The Nation had predicted.
Thus was the growing threat of media concentration treated much like
global warming, which, back then, was also slighted as a
"controversial" issue ("the experts" being allegedly at odds about
it), and one whose consequences, at their worst, were surely
centuries away--a catastrophic blunder, as the past decade has made
entirely clear to every sane American. Now, as the oceans rise and
simmer and the polar bears go under, only theocratic nuts keep
quibbling with the inconvenient truth of global warming. And now,
likewise, few journalists are quite so willing to defend the Fourth
Estate, which under Bush & Co. has fallen to new depths. Although its
history is far from glorious, the US press has never been as bad as
it is now; and so we rarely hear, from any serious reporters, those
blithe claims that all is well (or no worse than it ever was).
Contrary to the counterclaims in 1996, there was, as The Nation noted
then, copious hard evidence of corporate meddling with the news, and
also, even more important, lots of subtler evidence of reportorial
self-censorship throughout the media cartel. And yet what stood out
as egregious back then seems pretty tame today, now that the press
consistently tunes out or plays down the biggest news, while hyping
trivialities, or, if it covers a disaster, does so only fleetingly
and without "pointing fingers." (New Orleans is now forgotten.) The
press that went hoarse over Monica Lewinsky's dress is largely silent
on the Bush regime's subversion of the Constitution; its open
violation of the laws here and abroad; its global use of torture; its
vast surveillance program(s); its covert propaganda foreign and
domestic; its flagrant cronyism; its suicidal military, economic and
environmental policies; and its careful placement of the federal
establishment into the hands of Christianist extremists. Whether it's
such tawdry fare as Jeffrey Gannon's many overnights at Bush's house,
or graver matters like the Patriot Act, or the persistent questions
about 9/11, or the President's imperial "signing statements" or--most
staggering of all--the ever-growing evidence of coast-to-coast
election fraud by Bush & Co., the press has failed in its
constitutional obligation to keep us well informed about the doings
of our government.
In short, our very lives and liberty are at unprecedented risk
because our press has long since disappeared into "the media"--a
mammoth antidemocratic oligopoly that is far more responsive to its
owners, big shareholders and good buddies in the government than it
is to the rest of us, the people of this country.
Surely other factors too have helped wipe out the news: an
institutional overreliance on official sources; the reportorial star
system, with its corruptive salaries and honoraria, and all those
opportunities to hobnob with important criminals; the propaganda
drive against "the liberal media"; the stupefying influence of TV,
which has dragged much of the print world into its too-speedy orbit;
etc. The fundamental reason for the disappearance of the news,
however, is the media cartel itself. Fixated on the bottom line, it
cuts the costs of real reporting while overplaying cheap crapola; and
in its endless drive for more, it is an ally of the very junta whose
high crimes and misdemeanors it should be exposing to the rest of us.
It is past time, therefore, to go beyond the charting and analysis of
media ownership, to boycotts, strikes and protests of the media
cartel itself.
This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060703/crispinmiller
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