Authors: Mickey Huff
Tyner, Favre, and Weiner were turned into “Junk Men” by the corporate media, who couldn’t get enough of their junk as news. Tyner’s real gripe with the TSA became a punch line not only on comedy shows, but in real news coverage: Favre and Weiner’s “sext scandals” turned the front page into the gossip page, turning headlines into punch lines themselves. “News outlets apparently could not resist relying on double entendres to describe the episode and some of the coverage had an inevitably giggling quality to it,” Pew reported, showing readers that the news had become entertainment—literally. And in this way, valuable national airtime was degraded into the traditional meaning of junk: “something of little worth, meaning, or significance.”
Weiner—the most overexposed “Junk Man” of the bunch—not only titillated the public, but in doing so, distracted them from serious news. Journalist Anne Landman highlighted the problem at the heart of the coverage, explaining that it “diverted attention from a huge number of truly important domestic and global issues, for example that the US is spending two billion dollars a week in Afghanistan while cutting desperately-needed programs and services here at home.”
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As the irrelevant tale played out, Americans were treated to less or no coverage of stories such as the Global Commission on Drug Policy declaring the war on drugs a failure,
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90 percent of Petraeus’s captured “Taliban” turning out to be civilians,
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outgoing CIA director Leon Panetta’s claim that US troops will be asked to stay in Iraq after the 2011 deadline,
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ThinkProgress’s report on the $2.5 trillion that the Bush era tax cuts have cost the country,
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or that one in four US hackers work for the FBI.
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In short, “Weinergate”—and the rest of the Junk Men stories—have been a distraction offering nothing useful to people’s lives while undermining the democratic process.
Forbes
blogger Susannah Breslin claimed that the popularity of junk—in every sense of the word—is the fault of the American people. She argued that it is our sublimated urge to cheat on our own spouses that is to blame for the intense media coverage of sex scandals. “Americans are fascinated by political sex scandals because the politician is doing what Americans are doing but won’t admit, or what they wish they were doing but won’t say, and Americans, rather than confess their natural tendencies or sexual fantasies, would rather criticize those political figures who there, but for the grace of God, are doing what Americans wish they were doing.”
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Breslin might be right. In the age of Networked News, Americans are certainly complicit in sharing these stories on social media, helping to hype and promote gossip. At the same time, it is the establishment media’s responsibility not to confuse gossip with news, or entertainment with information. But as we’ve said before at Project Censored, that’s infotainment.
The print media is dying—is anemic. Television no longer makes any serious attempt to report news in the sense that a traditional journalist would understand it. We are diverted by trivia, gossip, celebrity scandal, whether that is revolved around a lunatic fringe figure that wants to burn Korans, or Tiger Woods’s sexual escapades, or John Edwards’s meltdown. There are these constant narratives that dominate the news cycles and make it impossible for those of us who care about actually reporting news and investigating serious issues to even find a place any more
.
—Journalist Chris Hedges, in an interview with
OpEd News’s
Rob Kall
News Abuse is a category created by former Project Censored director, Dr. Peter Phillips. Phillips noticed that there wasn’t only Junk as news, but that serious news stories often took a turn into a trivial, even titillating direction that took away from the significance of a particular story. News Abuse, like most propaganda, often has some truth to it, and the information contained within may even be true. However, the story may not be as significant as the corporate media hypes it to be. In the process, the news media can lose sight of what a given story is
really about, and can miss important facts along the way that may alter the entire meaning of the story. Lost in the moment, these News Abusers seldom go back to contextualize or add to previously reported stories which then linger in the public mind, albeit in a confused, distorted, or even outright erroneous way.
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Here are a few examples of some of the more important and lingering News Abuse stories of this past year, followed by an in-depth analysis and case study of News Abuse as propaganda concerning the public debate and framed news coverage of education reform.
On July 19, 2010, Tea Party activist and conservative pundit and blogger, Andrew Breitbart, posted on his
BigGovernment.com
website an excerpt of a speech given to the NAACP by Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture, Shirley Sherrod.
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The heavily edited video clip of the speech, in which comments made by Sherrod could be construed as racist, was picked up by
FoxNews.com
and spread across the blogosphere before airing on
The O’Reilly Factor
that same evening where host Bill O’Reilly called for her resignation. The story was picked up by all the major media outlets provoking condemnation from government officials, media pundits from the left and right, and even the president of the NAACP. Sherrod, who resigned that same day, was later exonerated when the video of the entire speech was vetted, resulting in apologies from many people involved, including President Obama. The mishandling of the story was so egregious that, in a rare mea culpa, even Bill O’Reilly of Fox News offered an apology to Ms. Sherrod for “not doing my homework.”
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In his apology, O’Reilly admitted that he depended upon Breitbart for “facts” without bothering to confirm them. This was an astounding confession given that Breitbart had been exposed as a dubious source.
In 2009, Breitbart demonstrated that he was a conservative political strategist operating in the blogosphere. That year he published propaganda videos against Democrat-supported ACORN.
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A year
later the attorney general’s office in both California and Massachusetts discovered the videos to be “heavily” falsified and edited.
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However, as in Sherrod’s case, the lies behind the ACORN videos were uncovered after the damage had been done. O’Reilly and other complicit media figures clearly ignored Breitbart’s standing as a right wing propagandist when they used his work in the Sherrod scandal.
In 2011, Breitbart demonstrated that he was not just a propagandist, but also addicted to airtime. On June 6, 2011, Anthony Weiner provided a teary-eyed apology for the sexual indiscretions Breitbart helped expose. Breitbart appeared at the event providing multiple interviews and speeches for reporters “before, after and during” Weiner’s admission. He claimed he had been at a hotel nearby and showed up “to watch myself be vindicated.”
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Breitbart’s comments insinuate that he was the one experiencing character assassination under unfair scrutiny from the Sherrod charade. However, he was anything but scrutinized as he smiled and glowed while the press treated him like a journalist instead of the political operative and propagandist that he is, based on the Sherrod and ACORN incidents, among others, discussed later in this chapter.
In May 2010, the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” set off a firestorm around the nation. The would-be controversy was started by conservative bloggers Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. Both Geller and Spencer, founders of Stop Islamization of America, were given a platform on Andrew Breitbart’s website.
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Geller and Spencer spoke out against proposed plans for the building of an Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan. The center was to be built in an abandoned Burlington Coat Factory building, blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center towers.
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Despite the building site being neither a mosque nor located at Ground Zero, Geller and Spencer dubbed the project the “Ground Zero Mosque.”
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The corporate media ran with this title unquestioningly and introduced the issue as a controversial one, claiming that real debate needed to take place about what amounted to the right of a group or individual to buy or lease private property. Corporate media figures continued to claim that the so-called mosque was going up “at Ground Zero” despite its actually being two blocks away.
The Boston Globe
claimed “an Islamic center so close to Ground Zero is, not surprisingly, controversial”
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while the
New York Post
reported, “A mosque rises over Ground Zero”
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and Fox News reported on the rallies against the “proposed mosque
near
ground zero.”
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Defenders of the project fed into the negative discourse by constantly repeating the phrase “Ground Zero Mosque.”
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This memetic fodder worked in favor of politicians looking to criticize President Obama, who had erroneously been characterized as a Muslim previously by many in the corporate press. In an egalitarian society like America, one that purports to have freedom of religion and respect for all people, whether or not one is a Muslim should have no bearing on public debate on private property development. Yet, the issue ignited controversy that was exploited for potential political gain. Leading up to the midterm elections, conservatives and Tea Party activists heavily promoted the “Ground Zero Mosque” meme, provoking several protests against plans for similar projects across the nation. Fox News demonstrated its keen bias in reporting when it reported on Obama’s support for the mosque.
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Obama did support the construction of the center, but FOX vilified him while censoring a key piece of information about its own parent company: that the second largest shareholder in News Corporation was Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, who was helping to fund the Islamic Center.
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His interest in the project would have been bad for the network’s ratings so the focus remained on Obama, Democrats, and the effects of the “mosque” on the upcoming election.
This story demonstrates the danger that the current corporate media structure not only allows, but increasingly relies upon. The term “Ground Zero Mosque” was created by bloggers with a racist and xenophobic political agenda. The facts were falsified in their assessment since the “Ground Zero Mosque” lacked a mosque and was not at Ground Zero. The major media outlets, rather than do investigative
work to uncover these distortions and report the facts, picked up the story and terms and reported them out of context, and as fact. Thus, Fox and other networks were able to use the story as a public opinion weapon against political rivals. They only told part of the story, one that benefited their interests and ignored the rest. The reporting was aimed to deceive, not inform the populace; it was propaganda. Unless people demand more from their media and shut off those who engage in manipulation, this News Abuse will likely continue.
On April 5, 2010, WikiLeaks released a classified US military video of Iraqi civilians and two Reuters news staff being gunned down by a US Apache helicopter in the suburb of New Baghdad.
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This led to an outburst among US journalists and political figures, not necessarily about the content of the story, but about the leak itself. The corporate media talking heads focused on the legality of the release rather than question the legality of what the video and other WikiLeaks releases revealed about US policy and actions around the globe. It became a classic case of shoot the messenger.
Almost immediately, the media was calling for the death and/or trial of WikiLeaks head Julian Assange (he was even accused of treason by some even though he is not a citizen of the US).
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A debate continues over whether the documents are innocuous or a national security threat. In March 2010, Pentagon officials claimed the cables were a threat, but in December 2010, they claimed they did not rise to the level of national security breaches.
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Government officials are also divided over whether Assange’s involvement was in fact illegal. Texas Congressman Ron Paul argued that Assange has the same protections as the media,
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while Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden called Assange a “high tech terrorist.”
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The corporate media did not oft investigate the WikiLeaks releases as a topic for debate. Instead, WikiLeaks itself and Assange were the focus, and were portrayed as criminals or worse. The content of the cables went mostly undiscussed during the assault on Assange. In December 2010, the corporate media reported on the sexual misconduct
charges against Assange and neglected to mention inaccuracies of the report. However, Stockholm police reported that the whole scandal was nonsense; both women involved in the case stated that the sex was consensual, and the charges amounted to having sex without a condom. It should also be noted that Assange’s chief accuser has ties to possible CIA funded anti-Castro front groups so it wasn’t just some random person with whom he had been involved (and the accuser’s background should raise other questions the corporate media did not ask).
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Without mentioning these important details, the media continued to focus on Assange and the dubious charges against him while ignoring the content of WikiLeaks cables.