alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

April 17, 2006

The Fourth Estate

by AltHippo @ 2:54 pm. Filed under Uncategorized

There’s one school of thought that says we need to needle and cajole the rank and file journalist into acting as if the 4th estate still describes the infotainment form known as “newspaper.” That’s what Glenn Greenwald is getting at here:

There are no critical faculties exercised, no investigation, no skepticism of any kind. In short, there is nothing adversarial between the government and the media — which was supposed to characterize how this watchdog relationship was supposed to work. The founders didn’t guarantee a free press in order to ensure that it could publish government claims without interference. The idea was that the press would be adversarial to the Government, serve as a Fourth Estate when other checks on government power failed. The press has, of course, become the opposite — it now exists only to amplify and lend credence to even the most suspect and manipulative government claims.

There is another school of thought (mine) which says that a corporate-owned media by it’s nature can’t be an effective watchdog of a corporate-owned administration. It might be possible under a 2006 version of Media Fairness, where Congress mandates an independent press. Unfortunately, in our version of 2006, a corporate-owned congress is more interested in mandating that boys be boys and companies be companies. (See net neutrality for more details.)

That school of thought leads us to look for the voice of accountability in alternative media. Which brings me to an excerpt on “Challenging Empire” that I’ve been meaning to plug (pp. 54-55)

While some slighted the alternative press for “preaching to the converted,” the stark reality was that the converted desperately needed the serious analysis necessary to back up their instinctive or spontaneous or emotional or spiritual or habitual position against the war, especially in their efforts to win new converts to an anti-war position. What is the real history of teh relationship between the Taliban and US oil companies? What are teh real US interests in Iraqi oil? How do we talk about Saddam Hussein’s massive human rights violations? The depth of analysis was available almost exclusively within the independent media.

But the alternative media reached a limited- though growing- percentage of the American people. So it was particularly important when mainstream outlets opened up to voices against which they had long been closed. From early spring until late summer, then, the US press appeared to be quite a different phenomenon, coming close to (if never quite matching) the kind of “free press” people in many democratic countries take for granted, but which has rarely been a feature of US media. Instead of having access mostly to the alternative press, I was suddenly discussing Iraq policy with White House advisors on National Public Radio, being quoted in the Washington Post, and debating the neo-conservatives’ own “Dark Prince,” Richard Perle, on the prestigious Lehrer News Hour television show.

But that opening was not to last. By late summer, much of the elite debate was muffled. Administration critics were silenced, congressional opponents were suddenly subdued. A decision had been made. The press mostly retreated to its usual Washington talking heads, with critical voices largely locked out.

Bookmark on del.icio.us

Leave a Reply

*
To prove you're a person (not a spam script), type the security word shown in the picture.
Anti-Spam Image

« WaPo’s Finkel, Online and Overpaid
Anne Applebaum: Tilting to the Right. Occasionally, Falling Over. »

[powered by WordPress.]

hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

contact

TBA 2008

The Alternative Hypothesis

the elephants of anwr

issues and insight

capitolists

alt media

sounds

critical resources

flora and fauna

law & order

events

cinema

literati

propaganda

use with extreme caution

internal links:

categories:

search blog:

archives:

April 2006
M T W T F S S
« Mar   May »
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930

other:

95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

comments

Recent Comments

HippoWire

  • Recent Trackbacks:

    • 27 queries. 0.542 seconds