In an
opinion piece written for the
Stern College for Women undergraduate newspaper,
The Observer, Perel Skier asked, “What is the true purpose of a student newspaper?” This question pertains to more than just a campus publication; it applies to the media world at large. What is the function of mainstream media and the press? Like most important questions, this one can be answered in a number of ways.
The first mass media model is the
objective fact model; a model of the media many people believe does not, and never did, exist. Media outlets that follow this model believe that they are supposed to act as conduits of information for the public, presenting mirror images of world events. Reporters are supposed to give their audience the facts and the facts only, devoid of any opinions, commentary or biases. Objectivity, defined by communications scholar
John Soloski as recording facts “from all ‘legitimate’ sides of an issue, and then…reporting the facts in an impartial and balanced way,” is considered an important journalistic value, whose idea was embodied in the
Fairness Doctrine, established by the
Federal Communications Commission in 1949 and abolished under former President Ronald Regan in 1983, which said that when discussing controversial issues of importance a variety of view points must be provided.
A mass media that operates this way is not in the best interest of the public. While the facts are important to have, journalists have insight and background information on occurrences that everyday people don’t have. By reporting a story exclusively as “XYZ happened and Person 1 said this but person 2 said that,” the public loses out on integral parts of the story. Another problem with this type of reporting is that it actually creates bias. First, not everything is always 50/50 and by presenting it that way the media is inadvertently favoring the more guilty party. Secondly, reporting this way makes journalists reliant on official sources and their stories will consequently favor the government and elites.
A second media model is the
public advocacy model. Media sources that serve as public advocates are not neutral, nor to they claim to be. Reporters not only report the news, they make the news by evaluating the opinions of the public and developing stories that are complementary to their views. Public advocates infuse stories with their own values, which they believe are equivalent to the values of the public, and use their reports as a way to engage the public, spark debate and monitor elitist power.
This model of media is also not ideal in a democratic society. Although they claim to be working for the public interest, public advocacy journalists are determining who that public is and defining what their interests are. There is no single public and no one concern. Therefore, it is inevitable that certain people and groups will be underrepresented in the media and left out of public discourse, making the system somewhat antidemocratic.
A third media model, which according to
Jan E. Leighley is the mold our current mainstream media fits into, is called the
profit-seeker model. In this model, the media is operated as a private enterprise and is not considered a public service. The media is privately owned and the interests of those producing news are put before the interests of those absorbing it. The only responsibility editors, reporters and broadcasters have is to make money for their owners. The audience is viewed as a group of consumers; a group who needs to be attracted to and entertained by the news rather than informed by it.
This model is definitely not ideal. Because economic considerations are put first, what is considered news is determined by what will sell. If stories on crime and celebrities attract larger audiences, they will be shown regardless of their inherent news value or importance. Political and hard news gets sidelined because it does not translate into ratings and dollars. As a result, citizens will become ignorant and uneducated on issues that are imperative to them fulfilling their civic duties and on topics that will enable them to govern themselves.
Another media model is the
propagandist model. Those who operate according to this model are motivated by both economic and political incentives and are not concerned with the public's welfare. Through selected news stories laden with symbols, myths and rhetoric, the three characteristics Nicholas Jackson O'Shaughnessy believes are present in all instances of propaganda, those who report in accordance with this model are working to maintain the economic and political status quo and only present stories that promote the interests of those they represent. Usually when fed with this type of journalism, the public is ignorant and thinks they are getting legitimate unbiased accounts of world events.
Though
Noam Chomsky, promotes this type of media, calling the information it dispenses “cleansed” since those elites in positions of power think it is important and fit to print, this type of media is not ideal in a democratic society since it promotes the interests of those in power with no regard for the public. It creates a monotonous public that blindly agrees with those in power, a vision that directly opposes how a democratic nation should behave. Additionally, if they were to become aware of the fact that they were victims of propaganda they would lose all trust in the media and the government and be skeptical of everything they were told, never knowing what to believe. Instead of producing an informed public, the media would cause a paranoid and suspicious society to emerge.
A fifth model was devised by a
Alexis de Tocqueville in a
chapter he wrote. He argues that the role of a newspaper, the form of communication he was familiar with, is to present the people with useful information in an accessible way with the end goal of enabling them to govern themselves. The media’s purpose is to unite the citizens of a given country, since it provides them with a means of communication without physically being together. “Newspapers,” he writes, “make associations and associations make newspapers.”
This media design is not ideal either. Although newspapers can get a number of people to think about a common issue by devoting time to it, who decides what topics get discussed? While a newspaper can “drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment” (de Tocqueville), a small group of people who do not represent the public may end up choosing what that thought is. Similarly, not everyone cares about the same things so this type of media has the ability to isolate people from the public discourse.
The last type media model is the
neutral adversary model of the media. This type of media has a goal/agenda; those journalists who categorize themselves within this model of the media are dedicated to searching for the truth amid the large marketplace of ideas present in a democracy. By seeking out the real story, they act as a check on the government, making sure that the people in power are being honest and acting with the interests of the public in mind. It is the press’s job to make sure that government officials are acting ethically and on behalf of the public and that citizens are getting the truth.
In a democratic society, the media should follow this type of model. A democratic government is supposed to represent the people and work on their behalf. Neutral adversary journalism helps guarantee this by serving as a watchdog over those in power. If something shady is going on, citizens have a right to know about it and in this type of media the press will be responsible for conveying that information. Secondly, to have a functioning democracy, citizens must be aware of what is happening in their government offices and in the world at large. Although the powerful want to stay in power and will do anything, including lie, to keep the status quo, the people need to know the truth to make the correct decisions. Having an independent party, a neutral adversary media, uncovering what is fact and fiction and then dispensing the information to the citizenry is decisive in a democratic government. To maintain a functioning government the people must have the knowledge necessary to make the correct choices and a neutral adversary media will give them that information.
Yet, despite the ideal nature of a neutral adversary media, the current mainstream media in the United States does not conform to a watchdog/truth-seeking format.
The mainstream media does not act as a proper check on the government. Although journalists and media outlets have the ability to challenge government officials and get to the bottom of issues, they haven’t. Instead of investigating the powerful elite, the media seems to be working with, and maybe even for, the government instead of for the people. There is a symbiotic relationship between the press and the government that adversely affects how much the press can challenge the president and others in positions of power. Reporters want easy information that comes cheap, and government officials give it to them in the form of press conferences and daily briefings such as the one below.
As seen above, and in a
previous post of mine, each day the press secretary has a message he wants to send to the masses and will do so regardless of what he is asked by the White House Press Core. The press will then report what was said, regardless of the concerns expressed.
The most glaring example of the press failing as a watchdog and not getting to the truth of a matter has been in its coverage right after 9/11 in the time leading up to and immediately after the invasion of Iraq. The press did not do their job in challenging the government at this time, and consequently may have even caused the eventual invasion of Iraq. Although in the aforementioned video clip, Helen Thomas challenged the press secretary by saying there was
no link between 9/11 and The War in Iraq, this realization on behalf of the press, or rather, the publication of this information from the press, came later than it should have. At the time, the press bowed out and let the government bully it into saying there was some sort of connection between the two and into getting public opinion behind the war. This is the argument made by Eric Boehlert in his book
Lapdogs. Just like Helen Thomas did in a
lecture at the Society for Ethical Culture a few months ago, Boehlert makes an argument about the docile nature of the White House Press Core and the press in general after 9/11.
"Big footed journalists conceded to do their jobs before the war. ABC's
Ted Koppel admitted, 'If anything, what we've been criticized for, and probably more justifiably, is that we were too timid before the war.
Dan Rather agreed: We did not do our job of pressing and asking questions often enough.'" (Lapdogs)
And while
Stephen Colbert joked about the situation,
the current passivity of journalists and the control the government holds over the media is anything but funny.
Though journalists tried to justify their actions in a variety of ways, ranging from "we weren't smart to do it,"(
Jim Lehrer) to "no one wanted to get in an argument with the president at this very serious time," (
Elisabeth Bumiller) to "we had no independent testing authority" (
Brian Williams), one thing was clear. The press was working with the government, promoting their fallacies and propaganda. According to a
study conducted by the
Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland on weapons of mass destruction coverage,"The American Media did not play the role of checking and balancing the exercise of power that the standard theory of democracy requires."
The media also "failed at playing the role of checking and balancing the exercise of power" required of a neutral adversary media form. And they did no better of a job at getting to and publicizing the truth.
How the press reported prior to the Iraqi invasion is a perfect of example of them failing to get at the truth. President Bush framed the issue by saying that Saddam Hussein was connected to Al-Qaeda and 9/11 and that Iraq was harboring weapons of mass destruction. The press did not even attempt to dismantle that claim.
"The media also have an opportunity to shape public opinion through tone, content manipulation, and issue frames. Since much of the media coverage of any political event prominently features quotes from political leaders and excerpts of official speeches, such media coverage gives public officials a second venue, beyond their direct pronouncement, from which to propagate their message, and one in which the generally uninformed public is likely
to hear, believe, and respond. How should the public respond to presidential rhetoric? We know that members of a president’s party are more likely than the members of the out party to support the president’s policy in any area. We also know that if opposition and debate occur among elites, this is reflected in media coverage; however, when this conflict is muted or nonexistent, a one-sided information flow emerges, even if citizens or foreign critics hold other viewpoints. This seemed to ring true even more so after September 11, when the press acted deferentially to government officials’ frames."
(Shaping Public Opinion: The 9/11-Iraq Connection in the Bush Administration’s Rhetoric)
As a result, instead of learning the truth, what should happen as a result of a neutral adversary media, the public, based on how much news they consumed,
believed the lies they were fed.
This is just one example, albeit a big and important one, of the media not getting to the truth of an issue and reporting falsities to the public.
Not only is mainstream media failing at getting/publicizing the real stories correctly, they are even getting the soft news stories, which they air more than hard news since the heads of media corporations believe they bring in more viewers and profits,
like the John Carr/Jon Benet Ramsey fiasco, wrong.
In a statement to
People magazine Jennifer Aniston said:
"I'm not engaged and I don't have a ring and I haven't been proposed to. Normally we don't even acknowledge these things because they're endless, at this point. The thing that got me was that… My dad calls and he says, 'Honey, it's on the CNN crawl,' and I'm going, 'Wait a second!' When it starts to travel over into the Today show and CNN and supposedly reliable and accurate news programs, then you just go, 'This is insane.'
People are getting fed a lot of bull."
As I
discussed on my
blog at the time, if the news cannot get these stories correctly how can we expect them to grasp more important and complicated things? How can we trust what the media is telling us? And if the media isn't reporting the truth, they surely aren't following the neutral adversary model of the media.
New Media, which includes myriad of sources, is doing a somewhat better job of following the neutral adversary model of media. While I have definitely been
critical of
blogging, one of the unique avenues opened up by the Internet and the development of new media, blogs and other forms of journalism made possible by the progression of technology definitely fulfill the criteria necessary to be considered a neutral adversary model of the media better than mainstream media.
Although she is primarily insulting the blogosphere in her
article,
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, makes an astute observation:
"Investigative journalists - sadly a disappeared species in the mainstream media - have been replaced by well connected, literate, expert bloggers who expose corruption and the depravities of the powerful. One is a good mate. Much of what he does is in the public interest, some unashamedly is not. As traditional journalism is getting both brazen and more cautious, important stories disappear in the cracks between the two, to be sniffed out and dug up by bloggers."
One of the reasons new media is able to do this so well is because, like the neutral adversary model of the media expects, the “reporters” who use new media to get their word out can be a check on the government since they do not rely on Washington or other official sources for information. The Internet has opened up the media to the public. Anyone can make news, which has created a new genre of journalism called "citizen journalism." While many, including
Benjamin I. Page in an article entitled "
The Mass Media as Political Actors," believe that mainstream media is failing as "independent political actors" since they often rely on official sources, it is a hard to make this argument about new media since a lot of the people disseminating the information have no access to the higher echelons of society.
OhmyNews is a good example. Again, while there are definitely
downsides to an all citizen Internet publication, the website, and the type of journalism practiced on it, has had tremendous implications for the people of South Korea. According to Jeong Woon Hyeon, chief editor of the publication, the citizen reporters working for OhmyNews can delve into issues that the mainstream media won't cover. It goes beyond the narrow view of mainstream media and forces the mainstream media to cover topics they would have otherwise ignored. They capture the sentiment of the public, a group who are not represented by the government influenced media. By being independent, citizen journalists are not as scared to challenge and investigate officials, making them the perfect neutral adversary journalists because they can act as a check on the government.
Not only does new media provide an outlet for stories that are missed by mainstream media, but it also corrects those stories reported with false details or inaccurate information. As blogger
Ken Layne said in 2001, "We can
fact check your ass."
Although these two students (who without the technological advances of video and Internet would not have been able to get their video out in the first place)
failed to get the truth out using the Internet (perhaps because there is no real answer to their question), bloggers and others have used the Internet to challenge mainstream media, politicians and other lies the public were being fed.
Dan Gillmor, calls these individuals the "truth squad."
One example of the good job bloggers and new media sources have done at uncovering the truth is with regards to Dan Rather and his
report about President Bush's National Guard service on "
60 Minutes II." (
see here) Rather publicized false documents regarding the President's service, claiming that President Bush did not undergo a physical examination. They also said that because the president failed to complete the physical and because he failed to "perform to USAF/TexANG standards," he was barred from flying. Lastly, the documents made reference to the fact that the president got preferential treatment, noting a telephone conversation in which he asked to be excused from a drill and that Col. Killian was pressured into giving the president better marks than he deserved.
Within hours, the site
Free Republic, followed by the blog
Little Green Footballs, questioned the authenticity of the documents used by Rather in his story. A blogger claimed that he forged the documents and that CBS somehow obtained them and portrayed them to be authentic. The story spread on the Internet and eventually reached mainstream media. Rather admitted his mistake soon after and eventually stopped working at CBS.
This comment by
Roger L. Simon sums up the whole episode well:
"It’s fascinating how quickly the blogs and the Internet were able to catch this... Once again: advantage blogosphere!"
This is not to say that the blogophere and new media is perfect. Because it is basically open to everybody, anyone can post whatever he wants, regardless if it is true, on the Internet. In addition, information is transmitted so quickly that rumors and lies can spread faster and to more people than ever before. Yet, in terms of getting the truth out, new media is doing a much better job than mainstream media and it can be argued that the increase of truth made available on the Internet is worth the risk of false data.
The reason that new media works as a neutral adversary is because people can say what they have to say unfettered, without worrying about censorship from more powerful individuals. Technically, anyone can say anything to anyone, making it easy to challenge the government and the messages they espouse.
Time Magazine has awarded it's "
Person of the Year Award" to you, because "You control the Information Age." Unfortunately though, this control is slowly slipping away and being usurped by big businesses and larger corporate powers.
One of the problems with mainstream media is its closed nature. The media is owned by a small group of people, which is
only getting smaller.
And while the Internet is currently, for the most part, free of such conglomerations, it is fast becoming more and more restricted. As described in the video below, big businesses are trying to take control of the media by charging people for speedy access, a practice that will take away the most democratic thing about the Internet.
If big companies take ownership of the Internet, they will control the discourse just as they do with mainstream media. They will make it harder to get to obscure web pages that do not agree with what they are saying, and it will be harder for everyday citizens to get their word out. As
Jeff Chester explains in his
article "The End of the Internet?" "Information seen as undesirable, such as peer-to-peer communications, would be relegated to a slow lane or simply shut out."
While this reality is catastrophic in general for the future of the Internet as a medium that maintains democracy, since it negates the entire positive purpose of having an open forum to exchange, obtain and share information on everything and anything, it is especially devastating for the neutral adversary model of the media. The premise of this form of media is that it can challenge bigger powers in order to get the truth out. And as noted above, it is new media, as opposed to mainstream media sources that have succeeded in doing this. That being said, with a regulated Internet, the truth will be harder than ever to uncover. The lay people serving as checks on the government and acting as truth seekers will be blocked from getting their message to the public. If the big powers in control do not want something to get out, they will succeed in keeping that story hidden by preventing access to or slowing down entrance to sites that would leak the forbidden information. The efforts of citizen journalists to offer another perspective than that of mainstream media and government will be quelled. The big media companies, which are linked to the government, will be able to make sure things that contradict them will stay quiet and unseen. Once again, one voice, regardless of what it is saying, will prevail, and the ability of citizens and alternative news sources to get the truth and their messages out will disappear.
Though many people, including Leighley, think that the advantages of the Internet and new media are exaggerated, in terms of following a neutral adversary model of the media, which is the ideal media form in a democratic society, new media is a definite improvement over mainstream media. However, if big business gets its way, new media will become regulated and monitored, a move toward eliminating net neutrality that will be catastrophic for new media as a neutral adversary media form.
