The Media's Labor Day RevolutionRuss BakerSeptember 06, 2005Investigative reporter and essayist Russ Baker is a longtime contributor to TomPaine.com. He is the founder of the Real News Project, a new organization dedicated to producing groundbreaking investigative journalism. He can be reached at russ@russbaker.com. The magnitude of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and the media’s astonished—and astonishingly vigorous— response puts in perspective how hard it has generally become, in this country, to deliver the unadorned, unapologetic truth. Indeed, for at least as long as George Bush has been in office, the great unspoken challenge for mainstream journalists has been to do one’s job while keeping one’s job. As the Bush organization has flipped one lever after another of a vast and well-fueled propaganda machine, it is has become ever more difficult for reporters to render useful, accurate information to the public without neutering it in the cop-out “on the one hand, on the other” format. Constant pressure from the White House is one challenge. Another is from corporate bosses who must produce untenable profit growth while maintaining friendly relations with the federal government. One of the most tricky work environments surely must be the Fox News Network, Rupert Murdoch’s vehicle for dispensing highly opinionated, fact-light ‘news’ in the guise of helping provide Americans with “Fair and Balanced” journalism. And so it was with a sense of wonder that I viewed a clip of an exchange between two of Fox’s stars, Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera, and hard-core propagandist talk show host Sean Hannity, who had morphed into the role of anchorman for a “Fox News Alert”. If you have broadband Internet access, you owe it to yourself to watch this exchange , which aired Friday night. Smith, Fox’s principal news anchor, and Rivera, its high-priced celebrity gunslinger, reported in from the scene of devastation in New Orleans. Smith and Rivera, both usually loyal to Fox’s rigidly pro-administration line, yell, cry (Geraldo) and generally register disgust as Hannity seeks to gild the Bush administration’s glacial response to the crisis. Here are a few choice excerpts:
Soon, Hannity switches to Geraldo, where he finds no relief:
For once, Hannity was nearly speechless. His mandate—and preferences—were clear: Keep Fox’s viewers, Bush’s vaunted base, steady, until the administration spin machine could be shoved on top of the volatile events that threatened to expose the horrible truth about the priorities and competencies of this White House after an unprecedented, years-long free ride. When Fox reporters are the most emphatically critical of the Bush administration, you know something is going on. Had Roger Ailes decided that it was simply impossible to ride out this storm with Bush? What of the defections of The New York Times’ conservative columnist David Brooks and others in recent days? Perhaps they figure that this is simply too enormous a screw-up to defend, and hope that by joining the ranks of the indignant they may escape a sinking ship. Or, maybe, maybe, even they have finally had enough. Another remarkable breakthrough came Sunday, on Meet the Press , Tim Russert freshened his typical beltway bonhomie mix with a “real” person, Jefferson Parish President (i.e., county manager) Aaron Broussard. His guest, who, by the way, is white, delivered a startlingly blunt indictment of the federal response to the death and destruction facing the largely poor, black population that had been unable to get out.
And there we were, back in the bad old days. Russert had no tasteful way to note that Barbour had been GOP chairman in the mid-90s, a key strategist and fundraiser for the transformation of American government into a one-party state for the interests of the rich, and the dismantlement of the safety net, that, among other things, is supposed to protect all Americans from the most extreme ravages of natural disaster and daily life alike. Or to ask hard questions about Barbour’s avid support for Bush’s Iraqi war, and its unusual overseas deployment of National Guard units that properly should have been in place in the Gulf region to provide relief and order in case of emergency. It’s hard to point this out when you work for NBC, a unit of General Electric, a huge defense contractor that has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of Bush administration priorities and policy. Fixing journalism’s deep structural deficiencies will take more than the Labor Day Revolt. Getting it right means more than expressing momentary indignation, however heartfelt, or reporting on the current crisis as if the important thing was how the disaster is affecting the administration’s “approval” rating. Because it’s not the administration’s spin with which we need to concern ourselves. It is the media’s long, long sleep in the face of mounting evidence that Bush and his team are not only ideologues seriously out of touch with the American public but grievously incompetent managers of the nation’s commitments, resources and people. As we take stock of the true costs of the failures surrounding Katrina, journalists should note their own role as collaborators. We, too, have been complicit in this. |