Day of Shame media meltdown and the power of "WHY"

[lwcon]

From dayofshame.org:



Never underestimate the power of asking why.

It nearly saved the moon, and in "The Prisoner" (spoiler alert!) merely typing it destroyed a pernicious computer.

The "why?" behind attacking Iraq is perhaps most accurately answered: "no damn good reason." Should that not suffice, there's always:

• Texas tea
• Oedipus
• Moses and Jesus
• and Leo Strauss
  

That's all well and good (not really, but c'est la guerre de caprice).

But why, we ought to wonder, did the entire media establishment declare a sociopathic fool's errand to be an iron-clad necessity? Why did the likes of the New York Times and the Washington Post and every leading news magazine and television network — supposed bastions (News Corp. notwithstanding) of rigorous and even left-leaning reportage — become as trustworthy as a Nigerian investment e-mail?

Even taking conspiracy theories off the table, there are many plausible reasons, perhaps all of which are largely true (and many of which are discussed in Eric Boehlert's Lapdogs, excerpted here):

• Corporate consolidation: despite the ever-popular "liberal media" meme, major media outlets belong to large corporations — the GOP's most generously favored constituency
• Jealousy of the ascendant Fox News and Rightwing radio, and avarice for the profits potentially by that then-growing market segment
  
• Abandoning the "Fairness Doctrine" had come home to roost: deregulation squelched the tradition of seeking out responsible conflicting opinions
• Conservatives had a better machine for developing and promoting noisy, colorful pundits (e.g., by subsidized bulk-buying of books, establishing rightwing bloviators as best-selling authors). Throughout the Bush II era, conservatives have, for example, wildly outnumbered progressives on news panels.
  
• News culture has been debased into "infotainment": even where supposed "debate" occurs, it's little more than a diversionary spectacle
  
• War sells: it's always a great programming idea (dramatic, visually exciting, and a nifty opportunity to use cool logos and portentous theme music)
  
• Peace doesn't play in Peoria (at least not in 2003): for a wounded nation, punishing random A-rabs was in; wonky ethical debates were out. As Boehlert notes, MSNBC fired progressive Phil Donahue because he "presented 'a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.'"
• As De Tocqueville said: "It is easier for the world to accept a simple lie than a complex truth." For short attention-span media, "Strong President fight war" = good story; "Disempowered progressives question war" = bad story.
• A war story has "legs" and prestige: give me peace and I report for a day; give me war and I get to be Stone Phillips
• Fear of undermining national security: with the open-ended "War on Terror" still in its early days, media members felt honor-bound to assist in the administration's military agendas
  
• Fear of “liberal bias” accusations: the Right worked the refs so hard, the media became active partners in their Overton Window framing, and became embarrassingly solicitous of winger approval
  
• Fear of personal reprisals: the creeping, nay leaping, McCarthyism of Bush's America made it far safer to be with him than agin' him
• Fear of loss of access: the more the Bush White House played hard-to-get, the more the media played easy-to-get. Better to be an insider and stay in game than a muckraker who can't get into a press conference. This would reach its zenith (or nadir) in the "embedded" war reporting, as journalists breathlessly described the exploits of "their units."
  
• Beltway culture: Washington journalists and pundits venerate power. With the president "all in" for this new war, it would have been a huge breach of decorum to confront him on his (and Powell's) broad set of claims. Even relatively skeptical reporters in the most heated of press conferences aren't in the habit of calling the president a liar to his face.
  
• Supporting the President's agenda is the most defensible position. If the war proved justified and successful, everything would be fine. If not, the press could just play the old tapes and say they were lied to. Very different from crossing swords with a President whose plan has not (yet) been proven faulty.
• The media had made Bush into a hero for (not preventing) 9/11. Now that he was embarking on a bold, new adventure, it would be unseemly and controversial to switch to a more cynical narrative.
• The power of the Big Lie: like many citizens, media members found it unthinkable that an American President could lie or be incompetent at such a magnitude as conning us into an unnecessary and ill-planned war
  
• Jingoism: the Chris Matthewses enjoy a little Top Gun kickass, just like Joe Sixpack does
• Incompetence: decades of focus on style over substance, noise over signal, and heat over light had thinned the ranks of capable journalists
• Laziness: it's easier to "rip and read" what the White House gives you than to do your own reporting
  
• Saddam Hussein was a cartoon villain: an actual bad guy, and one of them A-rabs. Why make waves and be accused of being un-American to save this guy (plus some other brown-skinned people we either don't care about or must sacrifice everything to liberate, depending on which way the wind was blowing that day)?

If only half of these theories are right, and supposing that there are no more other significant factors, it's a daunting list.

It's well beyond my capacity to imagine how we'll ever get back to a trustworthy media, but on this day in particular, I'm reminded of how badly we need it.


Still more to come before this year's edition of America's Day of Shame wraps up tomorrow: a look at what the war has cost us, and a speculative "Where Are They Now" about Colin Powell.