Below are some excerpts from the Feb. 6, 2009, Bill Moyers interview <http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/02062009/transcript1.html> of Jay Rosen <http://journalism.nyu.edu/pubzone/weblogs/pressthink/2009/02/06/took_moyers.html> and Glenn Greenwald <http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/>, followed by my comments <http://constitutionalism.blogspot.com>:
*GLENN GREENWALD:* ... the press overlooked that, and didn't think [Daschle's withdrawal] was much of a story was because it's so customary in Washington for members of both political parties. That's how the system works. And the members of the media, being integral parts of that system, want to do everything other than offer critiques of it.* * *JAY ROSEN:* Well, I think the culture of Washington is one of probability. The probabilities seemed to be that Daschle would get nominated. And the press looks at everything in terms of what's likely to happen.* * *BILL MOYERS:* I think you wrote that "The media stars in Washington almost never understand that there's anything wrong with the establishment of which they're a part." *GLENN GREENWALD:* Most people consider that to be corruption. Yet, to members of the media, who have spent their lives in Washington, who are friends and colleagues of the people who are engorging themselves on this corrupt system that is just the way of life. It's like breathing air or drinking water. It's not anything that's noteworthy, let alone controversial. *JAY ROSEN:* What doesn't get considered... is that there could be anything radically wrong with Washington. That the entire institution could be broken. That there are new rules necessary. That idea, that the institutions of Washington have failed and need to be changed, doesn't really occur to the press, because as Glenn said, they're one of those institutions. And they're one of the ones that failed. *JAY ROSEN:* I think [Obama's] words have a power that perhaps he didn't understand. And one of the reasons why Daschle concluded that he had to go was that his own actions kind of undermine the spirit of Obama's own message. And that was certainly something he didn't expect. But in a way, it's good that we're holding him to his own words. That itself would be a radical change. Because what the establishment expects is that people kind of say what they need to say to get elected. And then, once they're in power, kind of the old rules of Washington reassert themselves. *GLENN GREENWALD:* [The media] were praising [Obama] for leaving in place all sorts of Bush officials. What the media wants to see is continuity, that he's not threatening to their way of life and to their establishment ... *JAY ROSEN:* If you're a career Washington reporter, how do you know that your knowledge is always going to be relevant throughout your career? Well, if politics is just an inside game, then you're always on top of it. If all of a sudden, a new dynamic enters it, you may not have the knowledge you need to be the expert, to be the authority. And I think there's a tendency for Washington journalists to see everything converging towards the political game that they are themselves masters of. *BILL MOYERS:* I think you wrote on your blog that Dave Brody from the Christian Broadcasting Network, Pat Robertson's outfit, will one Sunday show up on "Meet the Press." But an Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now" will never show up on "Meet the Press." What's behind that phenomenon? *JAY ROSEN:* I think part of the reason is that if Amy Goodman came on "Meet the Press," she would say all sorts of things that not only challenge the people on the program, but challenge what they have been saying over the years. Would go back, in a sense, discredit the narrative that's been building up for a long time. And even though it's maybe not wholly conscious, the idea that there's a kind of building narrative that is more or less accurate, that we kind of tell you what's going on in Washington, is a common assumption in the press. And people who would completely shatter that, don't. *GLENN GREENWALD:* To include somebody like that would not only threaten the vested interests of everybody who's participating in these conversations, it would disrupt the entire narrative, as Jay said it would. Almost sound foreign, as though these views are un-serious views, don't belong in mainstream, serious shows. Because these views are never heard. They're stigmatized, they're demonized as being things that don't really deserve a platform. And so, you can't include advocates of these views in these shows. *JAY ROSEN:* And this idea that the people in power were kind of outside the sphere of normal government, never made its way into the establishment press at all. The idea that Wilkerson could have been right, that the real radicals were running the federal government, never really penetrated their narrative at all. *JAY ROSEN:* I think that the ideology of the press is not so much liberal or conservative. They think themselves the keepers of realism, of savviness. I think the real religion of the American press is savviness. And in their view, it isn't savvy to say you're going to mobilize the anger and frustration of the American people and bring that power to Washington to change it. That's not how politics works. The way politics works is you say things like that to get elected, and then, once you're in, you make your accommodations, you show that you want to hew to the center. You demonstrate that you're bipartisan. You pick people who are familiar. And it's those eternal laws of politics that journalists feel they know better than us. And they expect politics to kind of run down these rails that they've laid down, because then we have to turn to them for the inside story. And this is what they want to continue. *GLENN GREENWALD:* It isn't so much that the media is liberal or conservative in terms of how those terms are defined conventionally in our political spectrum. What ends up happening is that ideas that are threatening to the media and to the political elite end up being [rejected]. *GLENN GREENWALD:* ... the prevailing consensus among our political elite is corrupted and needs to be radically changed. And so, what I think they are most afraid of is having the anger of the American people start to affect what happens within their system. What they want more than anything else, is to exclude those external influences. *JAY ROSEN:* The press is full of behaviorists. They don't know they're behaviorists, but they are. A behaviorist is somebody who thinks that we can figure out what's going on by looking at probabilities and large numbers of people, and what tends to happen with those people. And politics runs on laws like that to a large extent. However, there's another aspect of politics, which is leadership, action, bringing something new into the world, starting something that didn't exist before. Having an idea nobody had before. Pushing it through. Journalists, deep down, don't believe that action really works. But the real excitement of democratic politics is that something new can come into the world, because we decided it. Because there was an election. Because there's a new crowd in town. *JAY ROSEN:* After a while, [journalists] have to report a different reality. But at first, their assumption is going to be same old game, same old people, and same old laws of behavior. *JAY ROSEN:* The narrative that we aren't getting is that the political class cannot solve the problems it created. And that some outside force is needed. People from outside, ideas from outside, as well as the anger and sort of mobilized - feeling of Americans themselves. *BILL MOYERS:* By your own paradigm, these ideas, as you said earlier in the broadcast, don't get into the Washington mix, because then they're seen as heretical by the establishment. *JAY ROSEN:* They have to be forced in. *BILL MOYERS:* It is not enough just to elect a president? *JAY ROSEN:* It's not enough to elect the right people. They have to be forced in from the outside. And we have more means of doing that. *GLENN GREENWALD:* There are alternative voices now. The internet enables people to construct their own platforms and to attract like-minded people. So that now there are gathering places of hundreds of thousands, if not more citizens, who are just as angry, just as dissatisfied and just as intent on circumventing these institutions, shaming them into changing as well, in order to force the change that they themselves so vigorously resist. And I think there's a cause for optimism in that regard. *JAY ROSEN:* What we haven't seen yet is national politics adjusting to bring these mobilized outsiders in more. *GLENN GREENWALD:* I think the idea of street demonstrations is probably the most stigmatized idea in our political process. There were huge marches, for instance, prior to the Iraq war, against the war. There were hundreds of thousands of people, millions of people throughout Europe marching in the streets against the war. And yet, the media virtually excluded those demonstrations from the narrative, because they're threatening, and because they're considered to be the act of unserious radicals and people who are on the fringe, and I think that in some sense, that's reflective of the fact that that level of agitation is probably the most threatening to the people who have a vested in having the system continue unchanged. *BILL MOYERS:* Is it your sense that the situation in the country, with half a million people losing their jobs in a month, is it your sense that the reality in the country is far more calamitous than Washington seems to be perceiving it? *GLENN GREENWALD:* I think yes and no. I think that clearly, the opinion-making elites and the political elites are generally insulated from the level of anxiety and economic threat that millions and millions of Americans are facing in the most extreme fashion since the Great Depression, as the cliché goes. At the same time, I think the problem is, is that the citizenry has really been trained to believe that they're impotent when it comes to demanding action from the political class. It's already extraordinary that nine out of ten Americans, prior to the election - nine out of ten - believe that the country was radically off course. They lost complete faith in our political institutions, our media institutions. Virtually everything is held in such low esteem, and that's the reason why there was such hope vested in Barack Obama, that he would be something different and new that the country is hungering for. But I think what needs to happen is there needs to be a sense, as you said, whether it's street demonstrations or other forms of true social disruption that can threaten the people who have an interest in preserving how things are, that until that happens, and whatever form that takes. It's hard to predict. It can be spontaneous. It can grow out of real dissatisfaction and anger. That more or less, lip service will be paid to the idea that these are significant problems that our political leaders care about, that change is coming. But no real change will occur. Their interests will continue to be to ignore all of that, to treat it as condescendingly as possible and just to placate it when they can. *JAY ROSEN:* During the age of mass media, the idea of one way, one to many communication, sunk very deeply into the political elites' sense of self. Broadcast the message. Send the message. What's the message? The great thing about the internet it that it runs two ways. It's just as good at enabling us to send messages to them as it is for them to tell us. And I think what people have to do is remember the internet runs two ways, and to use it to tell Washington what to do. *Jon Roland's comments:* Humans are herd animals. They try to figure out where their herd is going and then position themselves somewhere in the middle for safety. Leaders seem charismatic only as long as they don't look too much like us, so, unable to agree on a leader from among the herd, people adopt the herd itself as its leader. However, there is no wisdom in numbers. Whenever too many people agree too easily they are probably wrong. The so-called "wisdom of crowds" only appears for specialized questions in selected situations. The challenge for everyone is to learn how to perceive what herds we have become a part of and to overcome the bounds of herd mentality. "Thinking outside the box" needs to be come not just a slogan but a habit -- and not just another orthodoxy. Jay Rosen and Glenn Greenwald have become involved in their own orthodoxies in focusing on Washington, DC, and the mainstream media. Herd thinking is not just a problem in those areas, but in every level and branch of government, every profession and organization, every religion or school of thought. We have seen it within financial institutions and how it yielded the meltdown. It is especially dangerous in legal practice and the legal profession, where demands for strict constitutional compliance are dismissed out of hand as unrealistic or unworthy of acknowledgment. It doesn't work to demand of those who are captured by the herd to break out of it and make needed change. We have to open it to disruptive outsiders. The Internet has enabled outsiders to become publishers, journalists, and lobbyists, but we still need to enable outsider intervention <http://constitutionalism.blogspot.com/> in administrative and judicial processes, public and private. The established institutions for that are the trial jury and the grand jury, but we have allowed judicial practice to disable their effectiveness. We will not reform those processes until we enable trial juries <http://www.constitution.org/jury/pj/pj-us.htm> to review the legal decisions of the bench by hearing all arguments of law, and enable grand juries <http://www.constitution.org/jury/gj/gj-us.htm> to hear complaints from any citizen, investigate any public or private institution or practice, and report on its findings, perhaps with an indictment authorizing a private citizen to prosecute. Citizens must not be denied standing <http://www.constitution.org/duepr/standing/standing.htm> to privately prosecute public rights, or to issue writs of /quo warranto/ <http://www.constitution.org/writ/quo_warranto.htm> to challenge the authority of officials, public or private, to do what they propose to do. The presumption of nonauthority <http://www.constitution.org/9ll/schol/pnur.htm> needs to be established as the bedrock of our institutions. -- Jon ------------------------------------------------------------------- Constitution Society 2900 W Anderson Ln C-200-322, Austin, TX 78757 512/299-5001 www.constitution.org [email protected] ------------------------------------------------------------------- [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
