‘Democracy is under attack’

August 28, 2006

To follow up briefly on yesterday’s discussion about democracy’s ills, it seems Al Gore has chosen to weigh in on the subject.

Former Vice President [tag]Al Gore[/tag] said Sunday ever-tighter political and economic control of the [tag]media[/tag] is a major threat to [tag]democracy[/tag].

Gore said the goal behind his year-old “interactive” television channel Current TV was to encourage the kind of democratic dialogue that thrives online but is increasingly rare on TV.

“Democracy is under attack,” Gore told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. “Democracy as a system for self-governance is facing more serious challenges now than it has faced for a long time.

“Democracy is a conversation, and the most important role of the media is to facilitate that conversation of democracy. Now the conversation is more controlled, it is more centralized.”

It’s not just the U.S. Gore noted that much of the Italian media is owned by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Dissent on Russian television has been stifled by Vladimir Putin. In South Africa, Gore said, dissent “is disappearing, and free expression is under attack.”

But stateside, media control is a legitimate controversy — it can hinder the free flow of ideas on which democracies thrive.

And right now, those ideas are being intentionally set aside. Media Matters’ Jamison Foser compared media coverage of the ruling in the NSA warrantless-search case to that of the JonBenet Ramsey story last week and found wildly misplaced priorities.

Put simply, this is an appalling failure by the nation’s leading news organizations — and it isn’t the fault of reporters like the Times’ Eric Lichtblau and Adam Liptak, who wrote the article about the NSA ruling. It’s the fault of the people who decided to devote only two reporters to covering the ruling, while putting 13 on the Ramsey story. It’s the fault of the people who decided that JonBenet Ramsey deserved more coverage than a federal judge’s ruling that the Bush administration had violated the law and the Constitution. It’s the fault of people who continually make decisions to devote resources, column inches, and airtime to stories like the Ramsey case and the so-called “Runaway Bride” instead of stories that matter.

And that’s the important part. We don’t have any interest in stories like the Runaway Bride, but if news organizations think they can pay some bills by appealing to the public’s inner voyeurs, that’s their business. Literally. But when they leave stories of actual national significance uncovered, or poorly covered, while devoting massive resources to lurid local crime stories, that’s something we should all care about. That’s something we should reject.

After all, it’s no coincidence that half the country falsely believes that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. When NBC devotes only 27 seconds to a federal court ruling that the Bush administration has been trampling the Constitution, but spends almost eight minutes on JonBenet Ramsey; when The New York Times assigns a couple of reporters to the Bush administration’s illegal actions and more than a dozen to Ramsey; and when CNN ignores the Downing Street memo in favor of the Runaway Bride — should we really be surprised that the public lacks even a basic understanding of the most important issues of our time?

Perhaps not. But before this completely undermines the argument I raised yesterday about “the electorate,” I’d simply add that these “news” outlets are, in fact, responding to public demand. Media research tells editors and producers what Americans are willing to pay attention to — if they thought news consumers would be more interested in the NSA story than the Ramsey story, the coverage would have reflected that.

But they know better. People change the channel when TV news offers in-depth information on substantive political issues. People flip to the sports page when the newspaper explores a policy issue in detail. The media no doubt contributes to the electorate’s lack of understanding, but when Americans demand better, news outlets will respond. They are, after all, all about giving people what they want.

The most brilliant strategy employed by the propagandists of the corporate Media, in furthering their right-wing agenda, is the employment, exclusively, of lazy, mediocre journalists.

The Daily Howler has often made the point that one of the biggest problems with the Washington Press Corps has been their most unimpressive quality. Many reporters are just not all that smart, and many pundits are lazy, self-satisfied millionaires.

Competition in the marketplace of ideas is going to require business competition, which puts pressure on news organizations to improve the quality of their news reporting. Media consolidation and the successful Republican coups at CPB and NPR have eliminated that competition.

Gore has the right idea, I suppose, but I fear the wrong scale and scope, to be effective.

  • Actually, it’s much more sinister than that. Where does most of your ‘original’ reporting (on non-local issues) come from? A couple of sources- AP, Reuters. Almost everyone else saddles up with those few original stories.

    Almost all of the news media is controlled, in one form or another, by a handful of very wealthy and powerful people. Okay, so your local TV channel is ‘independently owned’, right? Well, it has to buy its feeds from the big players, and, if it doesn’t play along with the game, it gets cut off.

    What Gore is finding out is that the only way to play by your own rules is to make all of your own material- not the cheapest way to do things, by any means.

    People, as a rule, do exactly what they are told. The media- and the people behind the media- have decided to tell people that the most interesting thing in the world is blonde-haired girls being murdered. Second place is reserved for Football, etc…. Truly an excellent form of crowd control, keeping the public’s attention off far more mundane matters like WMDs, war, and whatnot…

  • Simply saying that the News Media do market research and give the American public “what they want” is a cop-out.

    Like the electorate, the news audience is fairly even divided in political prejudice, but only the Right is catered to. The ratings at CNN and MSNBC are so abysmal most of the time, that it should be quite clear that, while Fox News, indeed, found an audience, the other corporate cable news channel would rather fail financially than zig to Fox’s zag.

    While still symbols of the defunct “liberal media”, newspapers like the New York Times and Washington Post use determined mediocrity to undermine the Democrats with stories about the Clinton’s marriage, and tortured arguments for Congressional corruption’s bipartisan character. The President cheats in a Presidential debate, and the story is 86ed; sources are noisily protected, where the President might be embarassed, and scandals as massive as the top 3 officials of the CIA being fired barely make it through a single news cycle.

    The nominally non-advertiser supported Public News Media accepts funding from right-wing corporations and supervision from Republican hacks.

  • “I’d simply add that these “news” outlets are, in fact, responding to public demand” – CB

    My gut reaction is that teachers in schools do not poll the class and decide to stop teaching math because most of the students check out during that subject. If the class is board the teacher is compelled to change his/her approach to teaching math to capture the attention of the student. I am not suggesting that we all need to learn at the alter of the MSM like a 10 year old and her teacher. However the media is our source of information about the actions of our “elected” goverment. This Jon Benet approach is lazy and is a result of media corporatization and consolidation.

    I watched “Why We Fight” last night. I would recommend it. It lays out the relationships involved int eh miliraty-industrial complex and the warnings America has received about a standing army etc.etc. Well the media is part of this equation and in its own way there seems to exist a media-industrial complex with similar dynamics to the more popular military-industrial complex.

  • It should be remembered, in today’s “bottom-line” economy, that what the voter of America wants is ludicrously outweighed by what the media, the advertisers, and the corporate infrastructures of America want—because when you combine those three powers, you effectively have a “mega-lobby” of quantum proportions. Correcting the voter-problem should, by necessity, include correcting the other issues—because if you tell someone “they need such-and-such” enough times, they’ll subconsciously develop that need. After all—if it works for politicians, then why not everything else?

  • When it first burst on the public scene Television offered high hopes. The three networks managed to provide full evenings of genuine entertainment (comedies, mysteries, police stories, westerns, romances, soaps), all well-written and acted, little or no sex, crude language or violence (there’s a time and place for that, in an open society, but not primetime on the “majors”). The Sunday gasbag shows were numerous, serious (as opposed to side-show shouting matches) and informative. The interaction between audience and television providers was two-way: Providers were anxious to please and terrified of offending. Television used to entertain its audience, but it also “informed” and “formed” its audience.

    Since then TeeVee has become little more than a drug. A brain-numbing, easily obtained drug. Nothing we, or anyone else, says can get the public off that drug. Like the soma pills in “Brave New World”, most of the public would go crazy if it were taken away, even for a little while. They can’t grasp why some few people (mostly movers and shakers, incidentally) find it so offensive as well as being a monumental waste of time.

    When my eye caught the “But they know better” I thought you might be referring to people with standards, with taste. Read in context, however, it’s the exact opposite, a cynical assessment of who has the power. Having taken polls — a substitute for brains these days — TeeVee programmers, like scavenger fish, go directly to the bottom. If you haven’t seen last night’s TeeVee (however vapid and banal) you have nothing to contribute at the water cooler today. Our national slogan — in TeeVee and every other aspect of our “culture” (politics, religion, education, the fine arts) — should be changed from “E pluribus unum” (out of many, one) to “How low can you go?”

  • My instinct also supports your conclusions, CB. It’s revenue determined by ratings dictated by viewing habits dictated by popular curiosities, prurient interests, entertainment hunger and downright laziness that determine the content decisions of MSM controllers. From a business point of view one can’t really blame them for responding to perceived client preferences — to the extent that any real choices are offered.

    Where they cross the line, however, is not so much in the balance of emphasis as in their gross dereliction of social duty. One gets the impression that, by and large, the MSM entertains not the slightest sense of social responsibility. When you get a wayward, irresponsible, corrupting presence in the community you call the police. Or at least you find some way to protect yourself and curtail the damaging influence. And there are laws to support you. Why is the same awareness and attitude not operating in response to a much large anti-social influence affecting the whole nation?

    The reason, of course, is vested interests. In a democracy government is elected to protect the people from exploitation by corrupt powerful vested interests. But since these very powers are directly influencing the behavior of the democracy that could control them, we have a Catch 22.

    Our saving grace may be that, despite the persistent lies and distortions propagated by and through the mass media, a majority of the voting public seems to feel a sufficient level of gut disquiet to offer the possibility of redressing this terrible imbalance. In view of this bleak chink in the behemoth’s armor, responsible lawmakers should have measures well prepared to elicit through statutory means the fulfilment of social and democratic obligations that the MSM are manifestly failing to meet in their own cognizance. Such preparations do not need to be proclaimed in advance, but they should be ready (IMO).

    Of course, there are issues in respect of the First Amendment, but there are other areas of law and the Constitution compromised by the media’s irresponsiblity that merit addressing.

    [Nice that Mr Gore was speaking from the city of my Alma Mater.]

  • It’s a little simplistic to say that stories like JonBenet, Laci Peterson, the Runaway Bride and others are what the public wants to see. If you look at how these TV outlets sell these stories, you can see how much time they spend fanning the flames. When cable channels and the big three networks run spots promoting their coverage of these stories in heavy rotation, they are telling the public these are the stories they should pay attention to.

    If the networks ran spots and teasers promoting stories about the “Runaway White House” as much as they did the Runaway Bride, I think the public would clamor for more. It’s not the content, it’s the sales pitch.

  • You know, I hate to say this, but none of this is “new.” American media has always been about the second-rate. Read the criticisms of the “penny press” from 180 years ago! Look at the real careers of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. Pulitzer created “the Pulitzer Prize” to renovate his reputation as the sleazoid he was. Those two guys managed to manufacture a war between them – remember that???

    Look at the pernicious influence of the Chicago Tribune from its first issue to its latest.

    All the “good stuff” we lament not existing never existed other than as the minority it is today. “The fairness doctrine” was an anomaly that was out of character with the entire history of American media.

    Go back, for instance and review the press coverage of the Lindbergh Kidnapping and the Scopes “Monkey Trial.” There’s a reason why Mencken wrote his famous line “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people” in 1924, with reference to the coverage of the Scopes trial.

    And as far as Tim Rutten, writing in the Chicago Tribune’s west coast farm team, the newspaper formerly known as the LA Times, is concerned, the next time I want to read something about integrity in journalism, I’ll read a journalist with integrity. Not an apologist for the Likud who is so blatant in his biases that he lauds Charles Johnson of Little Green Snotballs and Roger L.Simon of Pantsload Media for their “committment” to truth in journalism for finding “electronic manipulation” in pictures from the AP, while also saying in the same column that coverage of the deaths of Lebanese civilians is “manipulated by the Arabs” and that were it not for “the terrorists” there would be no Lebanese deaths while claiming every dead Israeli as a “victim of aggression.” Mr. Rutten is as full of shit as those he criticizes and he needs to be told to stop worrying about the mote in the eyes of others while ignoring the beam in his own.

  • One of the problems with the comparison between the JonBenet story and the NSA court decision is that they can both be told in about 27 seconds.

    “A Federal judge says the NSA wireless wiretappiong program is illegal and unconstitutional.”

    “A suspect in the JonBenet killing has been apprehended in Thailand and is going to be returned to Colorado to face charges.”

    Nothing much more there in either story. What is idiotic is watching them try to stretch the JonBenet story out. If you don’t have something better to do with your time, that is hardly their fault.

    And in the end, do -I- really need a Federal Judge to tell me that General Michael V. Hayden’s (Air Force, Retired, current Director CIA) NSA warrantless wiretapping program is both ineffectual and unconstitutional?

    Nope. 😉

  • When I saw the hearder of this post I thought it was going to be a post all about the U.S. under Bush/Cheney…….

  • Sure there is an aspect of the media giving the people what they want, but that’s not the entire story. The media also shapes what people want in a somewhat analogous manner to how marketing creates demand.

    Consider the various Clinton scandals. Why did they get hyped? If we completely accept that the media is only giving people what they want then we have to accept that the people wanted to know about a bunch of bureaucratic dust-ups (Whitewater, travelgate, etc), If we accept that, then we have to ask why aren’t people demanding they same sort of media coverage of the Bush administration. And the answer is not 9/11 – compare the media coverage of Reagan and Bush 41 to Clinton.

    I don’t have they answers, but I suspect that questioning how the differing media narratives of the Clinton and Bush (43) administrations were developed is where to start.

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