- 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.
-
- 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.
-
- 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."
-
- 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.
-
- 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.
-
- "The Fox Effect" in America pushed much of
the coverage to the right, with CNN dethroned as the King of Cable News.
-
- 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.
-
- 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.
-
- 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.
-
- 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.
-
- 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.
-
- 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.
-
- 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."
-
- 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.
-
- 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.
-
- Its time to ring out the old -- and bring in the new.
-
- -- News Dissector Danny Schechter is the executive editor
of MediaChannel.org, and is the author of "Embedded: Weapons of Mass
Deception." (Prometheus)
-
- http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/affalert123.shtml
|
