Corporate media are in a state of severe business shock, it
seems—layoffs at newspapers large and small, due to advertising revenue
drying up and readers ceasing to pay for a printed copy of a newspaper
that they can usually read for free online. The state of the press has
generated an enormous amount of attention in the press itself, with
journalists and pundits offering any number of plans to "save" dying
newspapers. Congressional hearings on the state of the media suggest
that lawmakers are worried about what might happen next.
One thing to keep in mind while worrying about the future of journalism is that its past hasn’t been all that great either.
There are several noteworthy developments since I wrote on Tuesday
about the refusal of NPR's Ombdusman, Alica Shepard, to be interviewed
by me about NPR's ban on using the word "torture" to describe the Bush
administration's interrogation tactics. Given the utter vapidity of her rationale ("there
are two sides to the issue.
Jay Rosen calls it "the Froomkin kissoff." Others call it, less colorfully, "l'affaire Froomkin." Many call it politically motivated. Some call it "dumb, short-sighted, and self-destructive." Some just call it stupid.
The New York Times used three square inches of newsprint on Tuesday to dispatch two U.S. Army soldiers under the headline "Names of the Dead." Their names -- Peter K. Cross and Steven T. Drees -- were listed along with hometowns, ranks and ages. Cross was 20 years old. Drees was 19.
They were, the newspaper reported, the latest of 706 Americans "who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations." There wasn't enough room for any numbers, names or ages of Afghans who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations.
The ability of the corporate state to
pacify the country by extending credit and providing cheap manufactured
goods to the masses is gone. The pernicious idea that democracy lies in
the choice between competing brands and the freedom to accumulate vast
sums of personal wealth at the expense of others has collapsed. The
conflation of freedom with the free market has been exposed as a sham.
The travails of the poor are rapidly becoming the travails of the
middle class, especially as unemployment insurance runs out and people
get a taste of Bill Clinton's draconian welfare reform.
ABC's Diane Sawyer claimed (CNN, 6/22/09) the network's June 24 forum on President Barack Obama's healthcare plan would feature "questions from every single vantage point."
(updated below - Update II)
Former CNN correspondent-turned-PR consultant Gene Randall's video "report"
for oil giant Chevron might be unprecedented for how it blurred the
line between public relations and journalism. But the Randall-Chevron
production raises not only ethical questions, but also the question of
whether a surge of newly pink-slipped reporters might go, as one media
critic put it, "over to the dark side" and how that might further muddy
the line between news and corporate advocacy.
The battle against baseless, worthless grants of anonymity by
journalists is, at this point, probably futile, since even many of the
nation's best and most valuable reporters -- such as The New Yorker's Jane Mayer -- seem helplessly addicted to it.
