Authors: Mickey Huff
The time to speak truth to power—to media power elites, their political allies, and their funders—is now. Media Reform is an important movement, but it should not be seen as the only path to creating a more just and democratic media system. More radical approaches are needed at this point. So just say “no” to reform-driven agendas delivered as so much managed news propaganda, and instead embrace the possibilities of a radical media democracy in action, of, by, and for the people. Show it with actions through citizen journalism and through support of local and independent, non-corporate, community media. Real change only begins with radical action on the local level. That’s the only way a truly free press can be created, preserved, and nurtured to be a tool of the people and not the reformers with their unrequited overtures to the media power elite. The time to act is now. As Robert McChesney said, “Let’s have a real communication revolution.” We may not have time enough for the next reform conference to save us, despite all the best intentions. We are the media revolution of tomorrow. But we must act today.
The topic of a failing free press system, or the shortcomings of the so-called mainstream media, has been the subject of many works, including scholarly works from esteemed, academic, establishment publishing houses over the past few years. Two key works include Alex S. Jones’s
Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy
, and W. Lance Bennett, Regina G. Lawrence, and Steven Livingston’s
When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina
.
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Both works have legitimate critiques but operate within the confines of a traditional media system—that is, a corporate media system.
Jones in particular calls for a return to accountability (and accountability is certainly not a bad thing, though whether or not we are returning to it, as if it existed prior, is another question, and this accountability is referred to as an “iron core,” which has eroded, thus
the unproven “return” concept). Bennett et al. focus on the corporate media failures in covering Abu Ghraib and Hurricane Katrina, specifically on the role of the White House and political spin machines. A notable section is the inclusion of Kristina Borjesson in an interview with Ron Suskind, who tries to explain the role of the Fourth Estate in the lead up to the Iraq War, and ends up saying the press utterly failed, as its real role was to prevent both the American people and Congress “from seeing clearly the true reasons and motivation that ultimately drove us to war.” Even with this damning inclusive observation, the authors here cite how the same establishment press do a stellar job on other political issues like abortion, and are rife with diverse views, but without giving any real evidence. Again, the notion is that the establishment press, the corporate media, are not really all that bad and do a mostly good job, but that they have had a rough first decade on a couple major issues in the twenty-first century. Even using the same examples Bennett et al. use, another conclusion seems highly possible, one leaning more toward not just “when the press fails,” but rather, toward a sentiment of “when does the press not fail so miserably?”
While both are good works on a number of levels in calling out the failures of the establishment press, neither go so far as to critique the overarching structure within which the media they critique actually operate—that of capitalism and the private, for-profit model for journalism in a supposedly free and egalitarian society. Both works are heavily sourced with establishment journalists, politicians, scholars, publications, etc. One will find similar critiques coming out of Harvard, Columbia, and the Annenberg Schools, all leaving out consideration of the latter issue (though not everyone associated with those institutions would agree, there is a pattern leading in the direction described). These major institutions all miss a big piece of the puzzle that has also contributed to the collapse of modern journalism: the reliance on establishment sources and exclusion of vernacular views.
On the other hand, works by media scholars like Robert W. McChesney do such a critique, and include different sources, as have others like Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, all of whom are also at major academic institutions, but these were mostly ignored in the two highly praised academic works cited above. Both the previous works paid lip service to McChesney, Herman, and Chomsky, towering figures in the
field of media criticism to be sure, but only on one or two pages of their overall analysis which, again, called for subtle changes in the current media system regarding journalism. And, to be fair, even the establishment-based changes suggested in Jones and Bennett et al., which are hardly revolutionary, have not been adopted in the corporate media. Perhaps this is why McChesney, Chomsky, and others in similar fashion are framed as “radical” (read “untenable” if one is in the establishment media or academia), even though much of what they put forward is either merely a deconstruction of the current free press problem in America, or a solution that utilizes current existing models of journalism, including government subsidization, which has proven to be quite tepid in its implementation due to the overarching problems of the for-profit, privatized philosophical tyranny that exists in what passes for American discourse.
The above-cited books above are worthy of reading as they offer insightful commentary on recent media failures and the collapse of traditional journalism. However, a thorough reading of
Will the Last Reporter Please Turn Out the Lights: The Collapse of Journalism and What Can Be Done to Fix It
, edited by Robert W. McChesney and Victor Pickard, and
The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again
, by Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols, will leave the reader with a much broader understanding of the problem of the failures of the free press in America and what one can do about it.
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Further, samplings from the Truth Emergency and Project Censored International sections of this work, and
Censored 2011
, may do the same. Reading these works together, the reader may seriously begin to make up his or her mind about the current state of affairs for the supposed free press in the US, and what can be done to change or improve it, which is ultimately the purpose of this
Censored 2012
volume—to generate a more media-literate public.
Indeed, we at Project Censored are suggesting that we need to go even further than that which is proffered by the recent McChesney works, at least in terms of citizen journalism—having people become the media—though the group he helped found, Free Press, has made great strides in the realm of media freedom. That said, we need to utilize our systems of education to produce accurate and quality information in our local communities, news production from the
bottom up, to further diminish reliance on imposed, corporate-managed news platforms, especially those on cable television, but also including the major networks and even national broadcasts from NPR and PBS. These institutions have ritually kept the public in the dark on some of the most crucial issues of our times. McChesney himself noted, in
The Problem of Media in the 21st Century
, that the quality of reporting by major media sources about key matters, like the nation going to war, has sadly not changed much over the past hundred years, and that the tendencies toward so-called yellow journalism are still alive and well:
Journalists who question agreed-upon assumptions by the political elite stigmatize themselves as unprofessional and political. Most major US wars over the past century have been sold to the public on dubious claims if not outright lies, yet professional journalism has generally failed to warn the public. Compare the press coverage leading up to the Spanish-American War, which is a notorious example of yellow journalism—before the advent of professional journalism to the coverage leading up to the 2003 Iraq war and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the quality of reporting has not changed much.
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We are in need of a true media revolution, neither controlled by the corporations nor the moneyed foundations, liberal or otherwise. We need the free press promised and protected by America’s founders in pure, radical fashion. And we can’t just ask the powers-that-be to give it to us. We have to not only demand it; we must rid ourselves of corporate media dominion and create a new, democratic system of media of, by, and for the people. Media literacy and democracy must be part of a vibrant, diverse, and inclusive program of public education and civic action. We must work together to be the media revolution of the twenty-first century if our democracy is to survive.
This year, we continue to divide our annual publication into three sections as we broaden, grow, and diversify efforts to illuminate examples
of censorship in the corporate mainstream US press. Further, we continue to promote ways of improving our systems of reporting and communicating to the public at large about the most crucial issues we face as a society.
Former director of Project Censored, Dr. Peter Phillips, kicks off
Censored 2012
in a no-holds-barred introduction that frames this year’s volume. His call for a media revolution to dismantle empire is clear, and his noting of how we can get there, through our collective cultures of resistance, is advice we should heed.
The first section of this year’s book—the News that Didn’t Make the News and Why—houses the traditional top censored news stories from the past year, which are, for the first time, analyzed in what we call Censored News Clusters. Within these Clusters, Project Censored’s team of media experts and their student interns analyze and connect the dots among stories based on similar themes or topics, flushing out why some topics are prone to such underreporting, and what we might do about this problem, rather than simply list the top stories as ranked in importance by Project Censored judges. This year, our
chapter 1
writing team includes Peter Phillips, Elliot D. Cohen, Dean Walker, Andy Lee Roth, Elaine Wellin, Kristen Seraphin, Joel Evans-Fudem, Amy Ortiz, Kenn Burrows, and Tom Atlee, with additional research and editing by Trish Boreta, Bill Gibbons, Craig Cekala, Melody J. Haislip, Nolan Higdon, and Casey Goonan. Of course, it also involves hundreds of students and professors from colleges across the United States.
In
chapter 2
, Censored Déjà Vu, we check for any new or increased coverage of previously underreported top stories. Most receive little if any coverage in the corporate mainstream press, but if they do, we monitor and remark upon it here, ever in hopes that the corporate media may be improved, but not waiting for such a change to take place as we advocate for the coming media revolution.
In
chapter 3
, Adam Bessie joins the Project Censored director, Abby Martin of Media Roots, and student interns Nolan Higdon and Clifton Roy Damiens to analyze the ubiquity of Junk Food News and the growing problem of News Abuse, including framing and propaganda in the US media. This year we include a case study of how pubic workers—teachers especially—have been negatively portrayed in the corporate press as a major example of News Abuse.
Chapter 4
, by San Francisco State University professor of holistic studies Kenn Burrows, brings out the best in underreported news as we look at the positive, the signs of health and community building as published in the independent press, which the corporate media tend to deride, downplay, or outright ignore. The problems we face do not only include the sordid stories the corporate media fail to report; they also include the many positive things going on often right in front of us. When the corporate media do not acknowledge these stories, they contribute to a sense of disconnection among many in society.
Chapter 5
brings back our media activism showcase, of examples of media democracy in action, highlighting what other activists, scholars, and organizations are doing to achieve the media revolution and support the First Amendment, in maintenance of self governance and democracy. This year we include Abby Martin of Media Roots, Tracy Rosenberg of Media Alliance, Jeff Cohen of the Park Center for Independent Media (Cohen was also the founder of Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, which just celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary), Lisa Graves of PR Watch, Josh Wolf, Khalil Bendib of the
Voices of the Middle East and North Africa
radio program, and the pro-transparency group supporting Bradley Manning and Wikileaks, Courage to Resist.
Section 2 focuses on what we call the Truth Emergency.
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This Truth Emergency we face is a result of the lack of factual reporting by the so-called mainstream media over the past decade. Americans are subjected to mass amounts of propaganda, from misinformation to disinformation, on a daily basis, about some of the most significant issues of the day. Whether this involves the post-9/11 wars in the Middle East, the health care debate, election fraud, or economic collapse, most Americans are unaware of all the facts of how we got where we now are as a society. It is the duty of the constitutionally protected free press to report factually to the public on these matters. However, as shown by Project Censored’s work dating back to 1976, that is not happening.
One way of combating this Truth Emergency is by understanding the nature of propaganda. This year, our Truth Emergency section is a primer on Propaganda Studies, which includes a brief history, theory, application, and case studies all presented to enhance media literacy among the general public. We are pleased to bring some of the best
and brightest in the field to offer insight on this ever-important area of study. Randal Marlin gives a brief history of propaganda; Jacob Van Vleet looks at one of the key theorists of propaganda, Jacques Ellul. Robert Abele offer a philosophical and structural analysis of propaganda for readers, while Elliot D. Cohen and Anthony DiMaggio look at specific areas, the importance of net neutrality and Astroturf activism in the so-called Tea Party respectively, where understanding communication politics and media literacy really matter if a society is to be truly democratically functional, able to operate outside the propaganda matrix of the corporate media and establishment public relations machine.