US media become Bushs mouthpiece
Two of the most influential papers, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, published basically a similar story on the same day, Oct 17. The Times' piece was written by Marvin Kalb; the Journal's by Bob Zelnick. Both are former correspondents for US TV networks and now holding academic appointments with universities in the Boston area.
Their articles may be heartening to those who have been unhappy with the coverage by the mainstream US media after the Sept 11 attacks, and especially since the bombings on Afghanistan started just short of two weeks ago, for pretty much toeing the Bush administration line. They may feel better after reading the two articles because the mainstream US media are still trying their best to do what they should do as a free press independent of the government.
However, both articles are predictable and flawed. Predictable because of the ready assumption of an adversarial press, with the government never able to trust the media to have its view presented unchallenged. Flawed because it is an uncritical, knee-jerk assumption, one that flies in the face of reality about the performance of mainstream US media thus far.
Where were Kalb and Zelnick when Dan Rather of CBS news told David Letterman that, to paraphrase him, he would do whatever President Bush asks him to do in the government's response to the attacks on Sept 11? Rather's unequivocal stand was picked up and published or broadcast by the mainstream US media without a single comment offering the slightest of professional unease or objection.
And so, here was a well-experienced news hound and current CBS news anchorperson, partly known for his confrontation with Richard Nixon when he was a reporter, not mincing words in basically telling the Bush administration that it would not have to worry about him and CBS in carrying out what the administration would like the country's media to do in retaliating against the terrorist attacks. That not one mainstream media commentary raised any slightest objection or discomfort with it indicates that Rather was not alone.
Far from it. Alternative US media have been coming up with several incidents that show mainstream US media censoring alternative views to the Bush administration. Radio stations have yanked programmes and fired their hosts that tried to present a different view. TV networks, notably FOX news network, have had hosts of talkshow programmes addressing or shutting up their guests who proffered alternatives to the Bush administration line. The latest involves a well-known international law professor, Francis Boyle. His view that the real motive of the Bush administration bombing Afghanistan is to secure control of the supply of oil in central Asia is basically ignored by the mainstream media. Until now, Boyle was much respected by the mainstream media for helping to resolve the dispute among the governments of the US, UK and Libya in handing over the Libyan hijackers in the Lockerbie case.
Was all that an indication of the US government having to go out of its way to tame the mainstream media to do its bidding? Keep in mind that Rather's remark was made before the US-UK bombings of Afghanistan began.
And when the bombing and food-drop campaigns began with the mainstream US media being fed only Pentagon pictures and stories of their successful campaigns except for one or two 'mistakes', the Bush administration was incensed by Al-Jazeera (dubbed the Arab CNN) for having a different idea for covering the conflict or war (as the Bush administration would have it). It has been presenting images and messages of the Taliban and Osama as well as ground zero footage of the impacts of the US-UK bombings.
The US government first bullied its way to try to stop Al-Jazeera from what it was doing. But much to its embarrassment, the network told them to take a hike in a professional way, essentially saying there must be at least two sides in a conflict and both sides deserved to be heard and seen.
It was a response that any secondary school kid would be able to understand, but not the mainstream US media, which largely ignored that story, or if they covered it, did not offer to rally around this very principle that is supposedly a foundation to the western libertarian concept of news objectivity through a free and independent press.
Having failed miserably in getting Al-Jazeera to do its bidding, the Bush administration next turned to its own mainstream media, by telling them that they should exercise editorial judgment by not indiscriminately recycling Al-Jazeera's images and messages of the Taliban, Osama and ground zero impacts of the US-UK bombings. The Bush administration's reason was that the messages from the Taliban or Osama might be coded to get Osama's supporters to launch further US attacks.
The mainstream US media dutifully responded although they tried to disguise it using the language of professional gobbledygook. CNN, for example, came forward publicly that they would from now use editorial judgment on messages and images from Al-Jazeera first before broadcasting those that were deemed important or credible.
But how else to interpret such a response if not as yet another attempt on the part of mainstream US media to help the Bush administration to discredit Al-Jazeera, further showing up their hypocrisy as a defender of a free and independent press? By its public pronouncement, CNN made the imbecilic implication that CNN has never known to exercise any editorial judgment in whatever they put on the air.
And what about the reason invoked by the Bush administration for the mainstream media to exercise judgment when recycling Al-Jazeera broadcasts, namely not to allow followers of Osama to pick up his coded messages to carry out further attacks on the US? That, too, was imbecilic, because, as some of the media in other countries, notably Britain, have stated, even if Osama were indeed providing coded messages and CNN did not carry them, they could still be picked up through Al Jazeera, which is broadcast in many Middle-Eastern countries.
Underlying all this is the intriguing question: Is the Bush administration, together with the mainstream US media, so insecure about its own propaganda about doing the right thing for the world by getting rid of the evil of terrorism that it has to resort to bullying and censoring Al Jazeera? The mainstream US media, including Marvin Kalb and Bob Zelnick, did not raise it at all.
In any case, far from the Kalb-Zelnick argument that the Bush administration, like all the past US administrations, should learn that the US media are not its enemy, that it has to labour to win them over, the reality is that the Bush administration has been getting an almost free rein with the mainstream media. The latter have proved willing and ready to serve as its mouthpiece in promoting its military retaliation.
Now, the mainstream US media might view them as having good reasons to toe the Bush administration line. Indeed, they were quick to invoke the rationale for their co-operation with the Bush administration by saying that the staggering magnitude of the terrorist attacks on Sept 11 was one that the world had never witnessed before and so they had to treat the attacks as a new level of threat on the security of the country. At least, this is being forthright and honest that the rest of the world could at least understand.
Instead, what Kalb and Zelnick have done in their articles carried in the prestigious New York Times and Wall Street Journal is to present a defence of the free and independent US media that is not based on reality. Ultimately, instead of promoting the importance of a free and independent media, they have actually undermined it and showed the mainstream US media to be a hypocrite.
