Free Press?

How America Lost its Free Press

Posted: 19 Apr 2009 07:14 PM PDT BY SULTAN
It's hard to miss just how much the media environment around us has changed in a fairly short time. Bias is nothing new as far as the media is concerned. Most of the major media outlets are run and staffed by people whose own views run left of center.

That simple fact alone does not ensure bias, anymore than a bus counter staffed entirely by one race automatically means that other races will be discriminated against. As human beings we all have prejudices of one kind or another, acting on them in a workplace environment however is a matter of choice. And the current media environment is the product of a choice by editors, producers, anchors, reporters to not only bring that bias into the workplace, but to enshrine it as a heroic virtue that embodies all that is best about the profession.

The barriers to bias in journalism depended on old school codes, such as sticking to the facts and not inserting your own viewpoint into the story. Those codes are virtually gone today in major media outlets, as even news stories on the front pages of major newspapers such as the New York Times can be indistinguishable from its editorials. The facts have ceased to matter, instead an upscale suit and tie version of tabloid sensationalism heavily colored by liberal bias and projected through the prism of first person egotism has become the typical mode of reporting.

When the cinematic versions of Woodward and Bernstein became the image of the reporter, the beginning of the end was already here. The ideal now became the young college educated progressive reporter bringing down the reactionary power structure. It still is the ideal today.

But where for the past few decades the media was simply biased, that is stories distorted or colored certain key issues and personalities, we have gone well beyond bias into outright propaganda.

The difference between bias and propaganda is the same as the difference between a Dan Rather anchored newscast and one broadcast out of Saddam's Iraq, or Putin's Russia or Kim Jong Il's North Korea.

Bias colors the reporting of an existing story, propaganda is concerned solely with talking up the talking points of the regime. Propaganda newscasts do not "report" anything, they exist only to indoctrinate. They come in two flavors, fluff pieces on the government and the people, and harsh criticisms of the enemies of the people. Accordingly propaganda newscasts and newspapers make for very boring viewing and reading. You can only read so many times that everything is fine, that the government is doing great and that the Beloved Leader loves small children and puppies before you go out and look for something more interesting. Even if you do support the government and the Beloved Leader.

No wonder FOX News is beating CNN, MSNBC and co in the ratings. Agree or disagree, FOX News gives you an interesting story. The only story CNN and MSNBC have to offer you involves pictures of the Obama's new dog. Propaganda media only works when government authority silences any independent papers and stations. Without that iron glove of the nanny state in action, people quickly turn the channel.

It's the same reason conservative talk radio is seeing booming ratings, while the producer of Air America is looking for ways to stay out of jail over embezzling money from the Boys and Girls Club to keep his ratings deprived operation going. The White House may have declared war on Rush Limbaugh, but the only way Obama can beat him in the ratings is by preempting prime time programming on every channel.

Everywhere you look major chain newspapers are folding, their readerships evaporating, not because the public has turned into illiterate digital savages (as many overwrought columnists would like you to believe) but because major newspapers long ago stopped investigating and reporting the news, instead they kept churning out the same human interest stories spiked with lifestyle coverage creep. Newspapers could not compete with radio or cable news in reporting breaking stories, but in turn they gave up on serious investigative reporting and became generic.

The constant omnipresent coverage of every single one of Obama's "historic" sneezes, with optional photo calendar, postcard and commemorative coin sets for only 9.95, has done nothing to save newspapers. No more than every magazine sticking the Obamas on the cover has done anything to arrest their inevitable fate. Propaganda doesn't sell, at least not widely enough to matter. There are only so many people who will buy their 20th magazine with Obama on the cover months after the election. Most people will just glance over the same stories on the internet and move on.

But it is not just the media conglomerates who are suffering a terrible loss, but it is Americans in general who have been betrayed, shortchanged and deprived of a Constitutional right, a free press.

The media syndicates turned newspapers, radio stations and TV stations into sausage. They ground each one out the same, standardized the viewpoints, with the occasional flavoring of a dissenting viewpoint. And then in 2008 they slipped the bounds of bias, and got in line to kiss the posterior of Barack. And with that the American free press ended and what had been bias became shameless sycophanty for the regime and frenzied attacks on the political opposition. With the political opposition seemingly demolished and the crown resting on King Hussein's unlined and hollow brow, the propaganda became tedious.

Thousands of professionally trained journalists feverishly pretending that Obama's international trip is a great success, or that his wife knows a dress from a curtain, or that his economic policies aren't a shambles-- is a sad and pathetic sight. A sight quite familiar to any former citizen of Russia, Germany, Venezuela or Persia who has seen their country transition to a tyranny.

By abandoning any pretense at journalistic objectivity and defending their liberal bias as good journalism, the media itself destroyed not only their own credibility, but the very notion of a free press. The internet is simply completing the job of transforming the media environment into a partisan mud throwing competition dominated by eyeballs, rather than by corporate ownership. And while most will not mourn what we have lost, a free press is an essential element in a free republic. The middle ground of truth has fallen away and with that fall, the intellectual environment, the ability to maintain a dialogue on common terms and any objective truths have fallen away with it as well.
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
ewish World Review April 14, 2009 / 20 Nisan 5769

Free World is Barring Free Speech

By Jonathan Turley

It's the ultimate irony


http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | For years, the Western world has listened aghast to stories out of Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern nations of citizens being imprisoned or executed for questioning or offending Islam. Even the most seemingly minor infractions elicit draconian punishments. Late last year, two Afghan journalists were sentenced to prison for blasphemy because they translated the Koran into a Farsi dialect that Afghans can read. In Jordan, a poet was arrested for incorporating Koranic verses into his work. And last week, an Egyptian court banned a magazine for running a similar poem.








Printer Friendly Version

Email this article

But now an equally troubling trend is developing in the West. Ever since 2006, when Muslims worldwide rioted over newspaper cartoons picturing the prophet Muhammad, Western countries, too, have been prosecuting more individuals for criticizing religion. The "Free World," it appears, may be losing faith in free speech.


Among the new blasphemers is legendary French actress Brigitte Bardot, who was convicted last June of "inciting religious hatred" for a letter she wrote in 2006 to then-Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, saying that Muslims were ruining France. It was her fourth criminal citation for expressing intolerant views of Muslims and homosexuals. Other Western countries, including Canada and Britain, are also cracking down on religious critics.


Emblematic of the assault is the effort to pass an international ban on religious defamation supported by United Nations General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann. Brockmann is a suspended Roman Catholic priest who served as Nicaragua's foreign minister in the 1980s under the Sandinista regime, the socialist government that had a penchant for crushing civil liberties before it was tossed out of power in 1990. Since then, Brockmann has literally embraced such free-speech-loving figures as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom he wrapped in a bear hug at the U.N. last year.


The U.N. resolution, which has been introduced for the past couple of years, is backed by countries such as Saudi Arabia, one of the most repressive nations when it comes to the free exercise of religion. Blasphemers there are frequently executed. Most recently, the government arrested author Hamoud Bin Saleh simply for writing about his conversion to Christianity.


While it hasn't gone so far as to support the U.N. resolution, the West is prosecuting "religious hatred" cases under anti-discrimination and hate-crime laws. British citizens can be arrested and prosecuted under the 2006 Racial and Religious Hatred Act, which makes it a crime to "abuse" religion. In 2008, a 15-year-old boy was arrested for holding up a sign reading "Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult" outside the organization's London headquarters. Earlier this year, the British police issued a public warning that insulting Scientology would now be treated as a crime.


No question, the subjects of such prosecutions are often anti-religious — especially anti-Muslim — and intolerant. Consider far-right Austrian legislator Susanne Winter. She recently denounced Mohammad as a pedophile for his marriage to 6-year-old Aisha, which was consummated when she was 9. Winter also suggested that Muslim men should commit bestiality rather than have sex with children. Under an Austrian law criminalizing "degradation of religious doctrines," the 51-year-old politician was sentenced in January to a fine of 24,000 euros ($31,000) and a three-month suspended prison term.


Yet there is a stream of cases similar to Winter's coming out of various countries:


* In May 2008, Dutch prosecutors arrested cartoonist Gregorius Nekschot for insulting Christians and Muslims with a cartoon that caricatured a Christian fundamentalist and a Muslim fundamentalist as zombies who meet at an anti-gay rally and want to marry.
* Last September, Italian prosecutors launched an investigation of comedian Sabina Guzzanti for joking about Pope Benedict VXI. "In 20 years, [he] will be dead and will end up in hell, tormented by queer demons, and very active ones," she said at a rally.
* In February, Rowan Laxton, an aide to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, was arrested for "inciting religious hatred" when, watching news reports of Israel's bombardment of Gaza while exercising at his gym, he allegedly shouted obscenities about Israelis and Jews at the television.
* Also in February, Britain barred controversial Dutch politician Geert Wilders from entry because of his film "Fitna," which describes the Koran as a "fascist" book and Islam as a violent religion. Wilders was declared a "threat to public policy, public security or public health."
* And in India, authorities arrested the editor and publisher of the newspaper the Statesman for running an article by British journalist Johann Hari in which he wrote, "I don't respect the idea that we should follow a 'Prophet' who at the age of 53 had sex with a 9-year-old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him." In India, it is a crime to "outrage religious feelings."


History has shown that once governments begin to police speech, they find ever more of it to combat. Countries such as Canada, England and France have prosecuted speakers and journalists for criticizing homosexuals and other groups. It's the ultimate irony: free speech curtailed for the sake of a pluralistic society.


Even countries that the United States has helped liberate have joined the assault on free speech, rejecting the core values of our First Amendment. Afghan journalist Sayed Perwiz Kambakhsh was sentenced to death under Sharia law last year just for downloading Internet material on the role of women in Islamic societies that authorities judged to be blasphemous. The provincial deputy attorney general, Hafizullah Khaliqyar, has been quoted as saying: "Journalists are supporting Kambakhsh. I will arrest any journalist trying to support him after this."


Not only does this trend threaten free speech, freedom of association and a free press, it even undermines free exercise of religion. Challenging the beliefs of other faiths can be part of that exercise. Countries such as Saudi Arabia don't prosecute blasphemers to protect the exercise of all religions but to protect one religion.


After years of international scorn, the United States can claim the high ground by supporting the right of all to speak openly about religion. Otherwise, free speech in the West could die with hope of little more than a requiem Mass.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes inspiring reading material that will uplift you. Sign up today for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


Comment on this column by clicking here.

JWR contributor Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington University.