Press
File: c:/ddc/Angel/BestIntentions/Press.html
Date: Sat Sep 15 08:23:52 2007
Thu May 29 12:16:46 2008
Mon Jan 11 20:04:48 2010
(C) OntoOO/ Dennis de Champeaux
The "press" is an old word that refers to the device that was used to replicate their articles. A better word to characterize our topic is "journalism", but we stick to "press" because ... well because.
We want to deal with only a fragment of the contents dealt with by the press. Sports, science, entertainment, celebrity trivia, travel, art, etc. will be ignored. Instead we want to focus on just politics. At the same time we do not restrict ourselves to the traditional printed media but include what is being delivered over the radio, on TV and now over the Web.
Lippmann understood that journalism's role at the time was to
act as a mediator or translator between the public and
policymaking elites. The journalist became the middleman. When
elites spoke, journalists listened and recorded the information,
distilled it, and passed it on to the public for their
consumption. His reasoning behind this was that the public was
not in a position to deconstruct a growing and complex flurry of
information present in modern society, and so an intermediary
was needed to filter news for the masses. Lippman put it this
way: The public is not smart enough to understand complicated,
political issues. Furthermore, the public was too consumed with
their daily lives to care about complex public policy. Therefore
the public needed someone to interpret the decisions or concerns
of the elite to make the information plain and simple. That was
the role of journalists. Lippmann believed that the public would
affect the decision making of the elite with their vote. In the
meantime, the elite (i.e. politicians, policy makers,
bureaucrats, scientists, etc.) would keep the business of power
running. In Lippman's world, the journalist's role was to inform
the public of what the elites were doing. It was also to act as
a watchdog over the elites as the public had the final say with
their votes. Effectively that kept the public at the bottom of
the power chain, catching the flow of information that is handed
down from experts/elites.
This description does refer to voting and hence it assumes a
democratic setting. Most of this quotation - ignoring the voting -
is, however, compatible with the press functioning in a dictatorship.
Dewey, on the other hand, believed the public was not only
capable of understanding the issues created or responded to by
the elite, it was in the public forum that decisions should be
made after discussion and debate. When issues were thoroughly
vetted, then the best ideas would bubble to the surface. Dewey
believed journalists not only had to inform the public, but
should report on issues differently than simply passing on
information. In Dewey's world, a journalist's role
changed. Dewey believed that journalists should take in the
information, then weigh the consequences of the policies being
enacted by the elites on the public. Over time, his idea has
been implemented in various degrees, and is more commonly known
as "community journalism."
This concept of Community Journalism is at the center of new
developments in journalism. In this new paradigm, journalists
are able to engage citizens and the experts/elites in the
proposition and generation of content. It's important to note
that while there is an assumption of equality, Dewey still
celebrates expertise. Dewey believes the shared knowledge of
many is far superior to a single individual's knowledge. Experts
and scholars are welcome in Dewey's framework, but there is not
the hierarchical structure present in Lippman's understanding of
journalism and society. According to Dewey, conversation,
debate, and dialogue lie at the heart of a democracy.
Dewey's description definitely relies on the press operating in a
democracy. Journalists light the fire and the public adds fuel to
public debates. Better ideas are supposed to emerge in these debates
that leads ultimately to better decision-making.
Lippmann's version is more attractive from the perspective of government and has the advantage that it facilitates quicker decision-making. The price is that the population can easier become dissatisfied with what comes down to them.
Dewey's version makes strong assumptions about the capability of the population to participate in, for example, tricky debates where unpleasant trade-offs are necessary.
When we ask the question how the press is doing in terms of these two descriptions, we better narrow down the topic to the national level because debates and participation at lower levels are potentially easier and less relevant for what we are after.
Asking this question appears way easier than providing a convincing, solid answer. There is plenty of material available to be analyzed - the daily stream that is being generated - but its impact is obscure. In addition, democratic nations have different versions of democracy, have different sizes, different cultural histories, and thus one can expect that the mediating role of the press on the discourses between a government and the population varies. Plus there is the temporal dimension with fluctuating international developments, which can cause a government having to act quickly versus being able to engage in extensive public debates.
Consequently, what follows cannot be more than a random selection of "data-points" that come to mind from the preceding decades that we will use to draw some tentative conclusions.
Ousting Nixon is often portrayed as a success of the American democracy. In a sense it is, because there was no revolution and neither was there a military coup or the like. It was a "smooth" transition in comparison with the upheavals in other nations. Still we like to raise the awkward question why Nixon was (re) elected? Is it conceivable to have a US democracy that would have prevented him to be elected? Could the press have done a better job to avoid these convulsions in the country? We can sharpen up the question about the performance of the press regarding elections. We witness that the election results are converging more and more towards 50-50 results. Is the country really that divided? Or is the electorate very confused about the differences between the parties. If so, is this caused by intrinsic characteristics of the US democracy? Or is the press failing to probe deeper? Or what is going here? The Democracy chapter will revisit these questions.
Vietnam
The US involvement in Vietnam (1955-1973 and beyond)
remains a deep scar, see [Vietnam]. It was not an isolated event but
was part of grand-scale geo-political maneuvers in the cold war
against communist regimes, which, ironically, collapsed internally
since 1990. The press played a major role in deviating from the party
line: it fueled an increasing opposition against the American
operations. The press was at that time certainly not in the role as
described by Lippman: explaining the public what the elite was up to.
Hence the government was embroiled in two conflicts: battling
communism in Vietnam and battling the American public, who was
increasingly disenchanted by the discrepancies of what the government
had promised and what was reported by the press (among which the My
Lai Massacre in which US forces went on a rampage). To this day there
are opinions that America had a chance for a better end game if the
press would not have "poisoned" the public.
This episode must have caused caution (if not resentment) in all subsequent administrations. A result has been that the press has been severely curtailed in later military operations.
2nd Iraq conflict
While many (including the press) after four years
still talk about the "Iraq war", we believe that the war lasted only a
few days and that the US forces since then were "only" a kind of
police force operating in a severely dysfunctional society. There is
a disturbing parallel with the situation in Vietnam. The US
government misrepresented (or lied) about the motivation to invade
Iraq (likely in order to establish a democracy as an example to the
region, and plausibly to control the oil reserves), messed up the
status quo and misjudged the pathologies (from the perspective of the
West) in the Iraq society. The press exploited the bungling of the
government, which faced yet again a critical, if not hostile,
population.
In short: there is again no healthy discourse mediated by the press between the government and the population in which "the best ideas would bubble to the surface".
The press has less access to "raw" news sources. Everyone produces nicely polished press reports. Interviews are controlled. Unpleasant questions are ignored, deflected, or reformulated to emphasize a pre-cooked position. Nixon still tried to find the culprits of leaks. The administrations after him (and the governments of other nations as well) have simply clammed up. Corporations also have public relations departments, which are equipped with a spokesperson that shields the corporation from direct access by the press.
Political reporting beyond regurgitating voting results, who said what, the occasional scandal, etc. is difficult, expensive and has a limited audience. The printed press, traditionally under pressure from radio and television, is now under assault by free info on the web and by free newspapers. Consumer advertisement revenues are shrinking due to websites like CraigsList.org on which one can advertise for free $10 bikes, $1M homes and everything in between. Reporting and commenting on international developments is the first to be cut back. National political topics are the next endangered item.
Political reporting on television is also getting more problematic. The attention span of the viewers is shrinking while their cognitive skills are diminishing as well - as described in the chapter on Public Education. Fixed speed media like radio and television are actually inadequate for difficult topics including politics. A presentation is too slow, thus boring, or too fast, thus incomprehensible. Reading allows to speed up when content is easy or familiar, or to slow down and mull things over when it is complex, dense, or idiotic.
The collapse of the NYC Twin Towers led to an access restriction of policy documents by the Bush administration. William Safire said in 2005 September: "The fundamental right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under attack as never before."
We miss those articles these days, which appears to be caused by self-censorship. Overpopulation, declining IQ-scores, 5% of US GDP devoted to medical administrative overhead, unmonitored public education performance (5% of GDP), over dependency of the world on oil as energy source, legal tobacco use that kills millions versus illegal marijuana that kills no one, the medical establishment silent for decades about overpopulation and tobacco use while having high lethal error rates (for which they are not even sorry), etc., etc., are topics that are avoided.
Food prices have been rising for quite awhile now (2008), which produces riots in poor nations. A radio program focusing on Afghanistan interviews a father and adds price increase statistics to illustrate the plight of this person. It is not mentioned that the average woman in Afghanistan has 6.58 children and that the 0-14 years cohort is 44.6% of the population. The press reported, of course, about the food riots in Haiti, but somehow omitted again the female fertility rate of 4.79 and the 0-14 years cohort of 41.8%. These omissions make sense because we do provide help to poor nations without conditions about family planning. Or it is the other way around, because these factoids have always been omitted, we do not attach conditions to help out starving nations, thereby increasing the problem.
Politicians have often maneuvered themselves in parochial, left-right motivated deadlock positions. The press is supposed to transcend those paralysis situations and castigate the whole bunch. Instead they have equipped themselves also with left-right blinders.
Consider Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" [Gore]. The reader is softly introduced with pleasant pictures and the human-interest material of his family to the brutally grim topic of global climate change, which is itself connected with exponential population growth, species extinction, resource exhaustion and many other calamities. A cartoon fragment illustrates the impact by depicting a drowning polar bear. Somehow the message of thousands of scientists has now been reduced on multiple websites that talk about how to save the polar bears.
Marketing texts provide another access path to who we are. Even prestigious Wall Street financial companies have send out offers for their services with an enticement of a "free gift".
What can we say more?
Many publications restrict themselves to the first category, which they buy from agencies and they may even give away their product by virtue of advertising revenue. Reporting that an oil rig exploded in the Gulf on 2010 April 10, that 11 people were killed, that they were drilling in a sea floor 1 mile deep, etc. is an example news item in this category. We can only whish them good luck with this business model.
Items in the second category are extended with evaluations/ judgments that are often in alignment with a particular political/ philosophical stance. A politically neutral article with the title "Onshore Oil Spill Response is Described as Chaotic" belongs certainly in this category by virtue of the valuation "chaotic". Although it is politically neutral, the phrasing of this title is evasive. Who used "chaotic" first? Why not simply "Onshore Oil Spill Response is Chaotic"?
Political stance of a news source can "massage" the plain facts. The 2008-2010 Great Depression has been put more and more into the lap of the Wall street villains by simply ignoring all the other parties who overbuild the housing market, who (millions) bought houses while unqualified and whose unsound mortgages were accepted by Fanny & Freddie, semi-public companies, while Congress failed to intervene.
The public (some of the public perhaps) is currently under served with quality opinion pieces in which the author goes beyond parochial stances. Unpaid authors articulate sometimes positions that go far beyond what the paid editors can deliver. Here a letter to the Editor example about the above mentioned BP oil spill:
... Like so much commentary on the disaster, this focuses blame
wholly on the oil company.
Undoubtedly BP is responsible, but so are all of us who drive cars,
travel by plane or consume goods produced and shipped with oil.
If we didn't use it, BP wouldn't drill for it. Until we recognize
that demand for oil is as much the problem as supply, and start to
change the way we live to reduce it, environmental destruction is
inevitable.
We are all BP. (Martin Brown, NY 2010 June 12)
The point of this example is not whether or not we agree with it.
Instead, it illustrates the ability to transcend beyond the
nitty-gritty of day-to-day hang ups and even suggests a long term way
out, about which one certainly can quibble.
A news source that routinely produces thoughtful perspectives that put events in large time frames could be something that is worth paying for.
[Journalism] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism
[Vietnam] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
Mr. Sarkozy, in Lisbon for a two-day meeting of European Union
leaders, was not in the mood to talk about his personal life on
Friday. Asked by a reporter from Le Monde about his state of mind,
he launched into a tirade.
"My state of mind is very simple: I was elected by the French
people to solve their problems, not comment on my private life,
and I would have thought a major newspaper like Le Monde would
have a greater interest in Europe than in my private life," he
said.
"Perhaps I should be flattered. If you think that the French
people elected me for anything other than to work, work and work
more -- for the rest, the French ask for no comment from me. It
interests them much less than you, and they are right. And perhaps
they have a greater sense of propriety and more discretion,
sir."
A first reaction could be that the Le Monde journalist is nicely put
in his place. The second reaction could be why did the New York Times
publish this? The third reaction is why the condescending "he
launched into a tirade"? The next reaction could be: you folks
please get lost ...