| http://www.tompaine.com/news/2001/09/28/index.html
TomPaine.commentary THE FCC, THE MEDIA, AND WAR Anybody Remember the Pentagon Papers? Sam Husseini is with the Institute for Public Accuracy, a nation-wide consortium of public policy researchers seeking to broaden public discourse. It's widely acknowledged that media mergers, consolidations of ownership and pressure from advertisers all have a detrimental affect on how well the media report the facts. But there's something else that may limit how well the media could stand up to government power -- particularly as our government moves to waging war. Ultimately, it's the Federal Communications Commission -- appointed by the president -- that controls who gets a broadcast license. The FCC not only sanctions networks' ability to broadcast, it also approves mergers that fatten the bottom line of media conglomerates. This is a volatile mix. And there's a history here -- of the FCC, the media and war coverage -- that's relevant today. The Pentagon Papers were produced by order of the Secretary of Defense -- an internal government study to see how the Vietnam War developed. It ended up showing largely how deceitful the government had been in waging the Vietnam War. Daniel Ellsberg, who worked on the Pentagon Papers, risked everything by leaking the Papers to various media outlets. The TV networks wouldn't go near them. Why? Sanford Unger notes in his book, The Papers and the Papers, "The networks' reluctance to touch the Papers was perhaps the clearest evidence of the extent to which they felt intimidated by the Nixon administration's attitude toward the press. They knew how easy it was to spark a costly and threatening investigation by the FCC, which controls their broadcast licenses." The New York Times of course published much of the Pentagon Papers, but the Nixon administration got the courts to issue a restraining order. The Times stopped publication, so Ellsberg leaked parts of the Papers to The Washington Post. But the Post -- unlike the Times -- had substantial broadcast holdings, and so was more vulnerable to the FCC. The Post's lawyers were particularly worried if The Washington Post company were ruled by courts to have violated the law by publishing classified documents, that would make the Post of "bad character" and thus endanger its broadcast licenses. For that reason, as well as others, the Post only published articles about the Papers, not extended excerpts as the Times had done. Publisher Katharine Graham "was really risking the television stations, all of them," by the Post's reporting, editor Ben Bradlee said years later. It's worth remembering that in the internal battle over whether the Post was going to publish the Papers, reporters had threatened a newsroom rebellion --and they were strongly backed by Ben Bagdikian, a Post editor who would later write the book The Media Monopoly. A couple of years later, when the The Washington Post pursued its investigation of Watergate, John Mitchell, Nixon's Attorney General, threatened that, "Katie Graham's gonna get her titties caught in a big fat wringer." What did he mean by that? In January 1973, when FCC licenses of two of the Post's Florida television stations came up for renewal, challenges were mounted from several sources with ties to the Nixon administration. During the weeks and months that followed, the Post's stock plummeted. This not-so-distant chapter raises big questions today as the nation heads toward a new war. The current FCC head is Michael Powell -- the son of Colin Powell -- Chair of the Joint Chiefs during the Gulf War, when there were unprecedented restrictions on press coverage from the field, and the news played battlefield videos recorded by the Pentagon. Think about it -- the person with the most say in determining who holds a broadcast license in the United States is the son of the Secretary of State. Hopefully, the media managers won't put their business plans and pleasing the FCC before seriously covering -- and questioning -- the Administration's war. This is Sam Husseini for TomPaine.com |
