|
9/11:Will Media Learn? by Jennifer Chamberlain There has been much talk both before and after the 9/11 anniversary regarding media coverage of the events, interviews, re-enactments and commemorations. The talk, however, has focused on what aspects of the tragedy the media are exploiting or commercializing (or rather, covering) instead of focusing on one of the biggest issues in the media industry of late. Why it is that all the major networks, newspapers, magazines and websites decided to cover the same exact thing? Could it be that nothing else of import happened that day anywhere around the globe? And moreover, does anyone care if it did? On September 11th, there were 841 million people starving to death around the world. About 177 million of these were children. This is not a problem that belongs exclusively to the coverage on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks. It does, however, provide an interesting example of the current state of the media. According to Noam Chomsky in Manufacturing Consent, "The mass media serve as a system for communicating messages and symbols to the general populace. It is their function to amuse, entertain, and inform, and to inculcate individuals with the values, beliefs, and codes of behavior that will integrate them into the institutional structures of the larger society. In a world of concentrated wealth and major conflicts of class interest, to fulfill this role requires systematic propaganda." For far too long, people have looked to the mainstream media to fulfill a certain role, and not the one described by Chomsky. Rather it has been a role of providing up-to-the-minute, "news you can use" snippets of information. These chunks of information labeled as important by higher authorities are thrust into the eyes of info-seeking Americans through televisions, newspapers, magazines and web sites, each neatly packaged for quick and rapid consumption. On September 11th, 2,300 children were reported missing in the United States. The next day, 2,300 more joined them. The situation described above is the way the way the media are usually represented. The issue is whether this is the desired function of the media, or even the correct one. And, if not, who will change it? What was once considered only a "grassroots" or "hippie" or "leftist" or "anarchist" view of the media has begun to creep its way towards the collective consciousness. No longer seen as the only options, the mainstream media are increasingly being portrayed as businesses and/or propaganda mechanisms instead of the last word on what's what. This idea that the media are not responsible for what airs or gets printed is what Reuven Frank calls "the dope pusher's argument. News is something people don't know they are interested in until they hear about it. The job of a journalist is to take what's important and make it interesting." More and more members of a frustrated populace are turning to alternative sources to obtain information about what's really going on in the world. Sure, these sources will be just as subjective as the mainstream, but at least they won't all be airing or printing or webcasting the same thing. Eventually, enough voices (and dollars directed elsewhere) will turn the heads of even the most jaded businessmen and then perhaps coverage will begin to change. Right? On September 11th, 4 women died as a result of domestic violence. Chomsky writes that "it is much more difficult to see a propaganda system at work where the media are private and formal censorship is absent." This is even more true when the media, as they do in this country, "actively compete, periodically attack and expose corporate and governmental malfeasance, and aggressively portray themselves as spokesmen for free speech and the general community interest," Chomsky writes. In the past several months, the major broadcasting networks, along with the New York Times, broke stories about the failures of United States intelligence agencies, hinting about prior knowledge possessed by the government regarding the possibility of terrorist attacks. But where were these voices on September 11th? Or even a few days later? The number of women who have been murdered by their intimate partners is higher than the number of soldiers killed in Vietnam. Don Hazen wrote in his article "Changes wrought by 9/11 not what you expected" on AlterNet that Dan Rather recently admitted that many members of the U.S. media were "reluctant to ask tough questions about the war on terrorism for fear of being labeled unpatriotic." Rather continued, saying "What we are talking about here-- whether one wants to recognize it or not, or call it by its proper name or not -- is a form of self-censorship. I worry that patriotism run amok will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend." In 2000, 24 journalists were killed, 16 of whom were murdered in retaliation for their reporting. What is not evident, nor discussed in the media, is that these attacks and critiques are limited in their number in terms of their representation in the mainstream media. They are, for the most part, confined to a specific section of the media labeled as "alternative" and are then banished from the mainstream as leftist propaganda. It almost seems as though the mainstream media, those bastions of goodness, truth, and "news you can use," are afraid of printing or airing anything that might possibly contradict the signed, stamped and government-approved news. This is likely, given that the media are, at the core, businesses that need to make money and deliver large audiences in order to survive. Making money means being popular, and no one ever got popular by bucking the tide.
Also not mentioned or discussed in the mainstream is the massive inequality
of resources and its effect on the access to a private, corporately
controlled media system and on what this does to its behavior and its
performance. The popularity of writers such as Noam Chomsky and Michael
Moore "as dissenting authors has extended beyond the liberal fringe
and represents the fruits of a grassroots movement that corporate America
and potentially the government can no longer ignore," writes Eric
Demby in the VillageVoice. On September 11th, 10,600 babies were born. Upon whose shoulders will the task of widening closed minds fall? Some would argue it is the job of the public to demand change, to seek out alternative sources of information if the ubiquitous ones readily provided are distasteful or found wanting. The public is only part of the solution, however. The media revolution must take place both outside and inside the glass and steel frames of the network buildings, the corporate jungle. The minds of those in power must wrap around the alien idea that presenting a different view does not always mean a loss in revenue before they will make room for voices from the left, the right, and the barely audible.
Jen Chamberlain is a senior journalism major. Email her at opheliajc@aol.com. |
