It is a common misconception that America has a free press. Our talking heads love to point out that Hugo Chávez recently closed Venezuela’s last independent television station or Vladimir Putin has slowly expropriated the last of Russia’s non-state media. Media people-news anchors, journalists, pundits, etc-then hold themselves up as the better opposite, and we usually accept this. This ignores, however, two realities: the dependence of our private media on the government for information and the direct manipulation of these outlets by the government.

Open any major national newspaper, and the majority of articles deal with government politics. Being in the middle of a war, every day is dominated by casualty figures, reports about bombings, military deployments, and the like. These casualty numbers are provided by the Department of Defense. Information about a bombing-its size, location, who was behind it-is provided by the same people. Ditto for military deployments. The point is that when we read about Afghanistan and Iraq (or troops in Korea or Germany), this does not consist of original facts and analysis on the part of these newspapers. These “stories” are Department of Defense talking points fit into article format. This regurgitory nature of news is reflected in articles’ structures, which usually consist of an introductory paragraph followed by quotes from random “esteemed” individuals. Articles rarely break this template, making the transcriber’s (a.k.a. the journalist) task nothing more than attending the right briefings and calling the right people to have neat numbers and brief quotes to plug in.

This parroting is true for more than just military news. When there is a major crime, like the D.C. sniper attacks of 2002, the news consists of government spokespeople, usually law enforcement officers, relaying information to the gathered media people. This then gets uncritically broadcast on Fox News or run in the New York Times.

But the spokesperson holds a very powerful position as the gatekeeper of information (who is also controlled by other individuals), and it is only what that person says which is reported. There is hardly ever effort to look past the press conference for more information; the reporters have the quotes to fill the blanks in their templates. For example, the recent assassination attempt on Benazir Bhutto should raise numerous suspicions, but all that was printed and broadcast was information from the Pakistani government, a source even more dubious than our own. It does not take a mental giant to doubt the government of Pakistan’s reports that the attackers were two suicide bombers, “Islamic fundamentalists,” but the only news given was from spokesmen for the Pakistani government. There was no critical analysis, at least not from any major American news outlets.

In 2005, it was revealed that the Department of Education had paid Armstrong Williams $240,000 to speak favorably about President Bush’s education policies. It was later revealed that several columnists were also on the dole for two years. This was nothing more than buying news, which is hardly different than propaganda. It is more dangerous, however, because of the pretense of independence. While these media people have since been fired, it is difficult to believe that this practice has stopped; if anything, it is probably just more covert.

This is not to say that our media outlets are exactly parallel to media directly run by a state. Periodically, newspapers and broadcasts do reveal independent news which alters the political landscape; the Pentagon Papers, classified government documents detailing the government’s duplicity throughout the Vietnam War which were leaked to the New York Times, are one such example. The coverage of Hurricane Katrina, which demonstrated how cronyism and classism directly influenced our government’s incompetence, is another example; the subsequently quick national response to the California fires this summer shows how the media can positively influence government action.

Nonetheless, examples like those above are the unfortunate exception, a grand irony because it is these events from which media people construct their myths of independence and critical analysis. When our media relies on the government for its stories and the attached data, it becomes a mockery and a greater menace than true state-run media outlets. At least in Venezuela it is known that the news is state-dictated. In America, we maintain the illusion of separation between government and media outlets.

Our myths make us ignorant of the distortions we are being fed.

Zachary is a senior in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at zsteinert@gmail.com.

 Print This Post

This entry was posted on Friday, November 30th, 2007 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Forum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.