Where Are the Media?

Commenter Denis Neville Dissents:

Marie Burns (yesterday) is “cautiously optimistic -- if not entirely confident -- that the media, in one form or another, would be the catalyst that once again put an end to the darker forces that threaten us.”

Where are today’s media watchdogs that have the stature and credibility of Murrow or Cronkite? Today’s media is not what it used to be, nor is its audience. Content and quality of major television news networks reduced and their audiences much smaller; newspapers with quality journalists shrinking and disappearing; libraries and book stores closing; and only a tiny area of the Internet with quality hard news (including RealityChex).  Despite our communications revolution, or because of it, there is an ever shrinking audience as fewer and fewer citizens consume less and less news, and an absence of hard news about the complex issues of today that citizens need in order to hold government and business accountable. Instead there is only crime, celebrities, scandal, and soft news. How many people have access to quality media sources?  During these hard times, how many can afford them? How many in our attention deficit society are paying attention to our attention deficit media? Or even care as they struggle just to survive?

The New York Times? The politically subordinate Times reported on the Guantanamo Bay documents from WikiLeaks, but refused to call torture by its name and would not use the word in reference to waterboarding.

The Washington Post? a.k.a. Fox on 15th Street, trying again to win yet another Pulitzer for bad reporting, as Dean Baker likes to say.

MSNBC?; Establishment liberalism is allowed. But being too hostile to the political and financial powers is a definite no-no. No corporate employee will survive if he or she fails to adhere to the prevailing ethos and the interests of the corporation. Recall how GE and MSNBC executives forced Keith Olbermann to stop criticizing Fox News personalities as part of a deal that GE and Murdoch’s News Corp agreed to in order to safeguard their non-media interests. Look what happened to Cenk Uygur. MSNBC, which very much considers itself "part of the establishment," demands that its on-air personalities reflect that status. How many journalists practice self-censorship? How many purposefully avoid reporting anything that might be perceived as being adversarial to the political and financial establishment?  How many are themselves a part of that elite establishment?

Bill Moyers in a recent interview with Rachel Maddow explained that

the corporate climate that prevails at large media companies significantly restricts and constrains what can be said. A form of self-censorship arises based on knowledge of what the corporate culture will and will not tolerate. I served time at CBS News seven years in all. I was here at MSNBC for the launch of it 15 years ago. I worked at NBC. But I saw in every one of those environments the growth of the shadow of self censorship... I happen to know that when I was here, Newt Gingrich and Henry Kissinger did their best to mute my influence on The Nightly News because of the freedom and independence Andy Lack, who was then the president of NBC News, had given me. It's up there all the time, like gathering storm clouds…I must say out of the Murdoch scandal has come a reminder of the importance of a free and independent press.  The journalists who have been dogging this story for the last six years worked for The Guardian, which is one of the great newspapers in the western world. The Guardian is run by a trust -- a public trust, set up by the founding family to make sure that The Guardian would always be commercially and editorially independent. We have been reminded that in the end, democracy depends upon maybe even just a few independent voices, free of any party or commercial allegiance.

Where has our media been in uncovering Murdoch and Fox news in our nation?  Not at MSNBC.

Naomi Wolf has warned about the erosion of democracy and fascism creeping into America. She feared that Americans could not see the warning signs:

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree -- domestically -- as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government -- the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors -- we scarcely recognize the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of ‘homeland’ security -- remember who else was keen on the word ‘homeland’ -- didn't raise the alarm bells it might have. It is right beneath our very noses.

The warning bells are ringing…the Obama administration is trumping the Bush administration in spades closing our open society; repressive laws and militarism; the influx of corporate money into politics, swamping it with special interests that buy influence for policies and politicians; runaway inequality and class warfare; aggressive union busting tactics by business and government to break labor unions and prevent workers from organizing; an economic collapse and an erosion of stability with millions of home foreclosures and shredding of social services, turning a financial crisis into a social crisis; a right-wing populist movement that puts economic terrorism and its own agenda before the interests of the nation, that wants to crush its opponents, that is managed and manipulated by shadowy political operatives and financed by a few billionaires (Koch brothers) who support their warped version of radical populism; armed militias to deal with the exaggerated fears of immigrants; deep polarization with hateful rhetoric; contempt for human rights because of the fear of enemies and the need for security; the approval of torture, summary executions, assassinations, and indefinite imprisonment of prisoners without due process; so-called enemies (Muslims) turned into scapegoats in a patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe; the squelching of any debate; a nation controlled by lobbyists and private interests, Wall Street, the military-industrial complex etc., etc.

Senator Huey Long of Louisiana once said, “Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism.”

This process is already far along in the USA.

It does not require a lurid march on Washington to take root. “The best propaganda is that which works invisibly, penetrates the whole of life without the public having any knowledge of the propagandistic initiative,” wrote Joseph Goebbels. Most Germans never noticed the early Nazi transformation of German society.

The really dangerous American fascist ... is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection. - Henry A. Wallace, New York Times, April 9, 1944

So, Ms. Burns, how has the media catalyst been doing so far in dealing with these darker forces that now threaten us?