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2003 -
The Year We Almost
Lost Honest News
By Danny Schechter
News
Dissector
MediaChannel.org
12-25-03
- NEW YORK --
Congress declared the year 2003 the year of the blues. My own
MediaChannel blog deems it a year in which we almost lost honest news.
As the networks work up their greatest hits packages, those highly
edited collages of the highs and the lows of another year gone by,
perhaps its time to look at the forces that shaped our media and put it
at risk.
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- The third year of this new millennium was overshadowed
by the war on Iraq, the news story that most networks devoted their
airtime and money to cover. Looking back, we see a period in which the
voices of fear and alarm dominated the broadcast spectrum as
oft-repeated warnings of the dangers of weapons of mass destruction
popped up with as much regularity as Viagra ads.
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- With embedded journalists in the "theater" and retired
generals in the studios, with Pentagon public affairs officers on the
phone and White House perception managers pumping out the "message of
the day," this was the most sanitized and media-controlled war we have
ever seen. Jingoism fused with journalism and news biz and show biz
morphed into what TIME magazine called "militainment."
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- The war you saw depended on where you lived. If you
lived in Europe, there was some semblance of balance. If you were in the
Middle East, the focus was on the casualties. If you lived in the land
they call "one nation under television," the USA, it was boys with toys
as unlimited time was devoted to weapons systems and coverage that
looked and felt like the NFL goes to war.
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- What was new was the emergence of Arab satellite
stations like Al Jazeera and Al Arabia -- not just as a transmission
belt for Osama bin Laden videos, but with gutsy in-your-face reporting
that some in the Arab world compared in style to Fox News, even though
those two channels are worlds apart in distance and ideology.
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- "The Fox Effect" in America pushed much of the
coverage to the right, with CNN dethroned as the King of Cable
News.
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- MSNBC 'ethnically cleansed' the liberals like Peter
Arnett and Phil Donahue while hiring a slew of right-wing shouters. It
was the year of Bill O'Reilly's bullying on Fox, even though payback
came when O'Reilly was taken down a peg or two by comedian Al Franken,
who called him a liar, was sued, and came back with a best-selling book
that outsold O'Reilly's nearly two to one.
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- What went unnoted was the strange synchronicity of
media moguls lobbying the government for deregulation and the right to
become bigger at the very time when a government watchdog was needed
most. Critics suggested this led to a conflict of interest with the
media demanding that rules be waved while the administration pushed the
media for more 'good news' on the war. Was there a quid pro quo, a deal
to advance media concentration in exchange for network flag waving? It
certainly felt that way.
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- 2003 was the year that big media sought to get bigger.
NBC bought Universal. Murdoch sucked up DirecTV. But there was a
backlash when nearly three million Americans wrote letters to the FCC
and their congresspeople protesting a bigger-media-is-better-media
philosophy. Everything was in flux. Time Warner backed away from its
alliance with AOL while members of the Disney board revolted against
their well-paid uber-mouse Michael Eisner.
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- It was the year of media scandals. Jayson Blair was
outed as a dishonest journalist while his newspaper, the mighty New York
Times, imploded with editors being axed and arrogance in the newsroom
challenged. In England, board members of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp
revolted against his decision to hire his son, while publisher Conrad
Black was forced to step aside when his scandalous self-serving
financial dealings came to light.
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- Media battles were fought around the world -- in China
for Internet freedom; in Zimbabwe for press freedom; in Russia, against
growing government control. While in Britain, the BBC wrestled the Blair
government to resist new pressures to constrain its reporting. A record
83 media workers lost their lives around the world for doing their jobs.
In America, a patriotic correctness characterized coverage, and the
Patriot Act and similar laws made it harder to access government
information.
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- At the same time, independent and alternative
journalism thrived. The radio show Democracy Now was heard on more
stations that ever. Indy TV channels like Freespeech.org and World Link
TV built larger viewer bases. Websites like MediaChannel, TomPaine.com,
Mother Jones Online and Alternet saw spikes in traffic and the blog was
everywhere.
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- The Online News Journal noted: "2003 offered up much
more than just an unhealthy fascination with blogs. We also obsessed
over the proliferation of people with camera phones breaking spot news
stories; the rise of Google and Google News; the soap opera at (AOL)
Time Warner; the continued inroads of paid content; RSS feeds, viruses,
worms and spam overwhelming newsrooms; the struggle for independent news
in Zimbabwe, China, Iran and Iraq; and political rhetoric and election
coverage."
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- For us, the key change was this: Media went from being
a casual complaint to becoming a serious issue around which people began
mobilizing. Coverage was debated endlessly and a new media reform
movement was born.
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- This focus is likely to continue in 2004, the year
America decides on its next president. Pressing the press to be more
accountable and responsible covering elections is now on the
agenda.
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- Its time to ring out the old -- and bring in the
new.
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- -- News Dissector Danny Schechter is the executive
editor of MediaChannel.org, and is the author of "Embedded: Weapons of
Mass Deception." (Prometheus)
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- http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/affalert123.shtml
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