It is tempting to accept news as fact if it’s coming from a neighbor, a funny blog, a likeable person, or someone else who seems to start from a grain of truth. But there are people who like to take that small truth and use it as a talisman to lend credibility to some spurious idea they may have, however fantastic or untrue. They use false analogies, deliberate misquotes, they change the context entirely, or they omit key facts to distort the meaning of the original fact or statement. Check out Bill O’Reilly and Michael Moore, to see two very popular propagandists who are experts at this art of distortion, It is appalling that both are becoming rich not as satirists and propagandists, but as “truth tellers.” Beware of the way they string together their facts! Two and two do not make ten.
The Swift Boat controversy is another frustration to those of us who care about accuracy and accountability. Cable TV pundits are reporting on this without doing their core job of determining who is telling the truth. Thank heaven some newspaper journalists are tracking down the facts. Some veterans who profoundly dislike John Kerry for his leadership in the anti Vietnam War movement, and resent his testimony (which Kerry acknowledges now was over the top) about soldier atrocities, have decided to say that he did nothing good during the war, didn’t deserve his medals, didn’t get wounded very badly, and thus is lying and doesn’t’ deserve to be commander in chief. Meanwhile, virtually everyone who served most closely with Kerry, on his own swift boat, — including a guy whose life he saved–say that these complaints are nonsense and that he was a courageous, creative and effective leader during his Vietnam service. Even President Bush has acknowledged belatedly that Kerry should be proud of his war record, something Bush cannot say about himself since he didn’t fight in the Vietnam war he supported and it’s not even clear that he served out his full alternative service in the National Guard.
This acrimonious dispute has apparently hurt Kerry in the polls, but it may backfire on President Bush in the end, as more and more favorable character witnesses for Kerry from the Vietnam War pop up out of obscurity, and as GOP operatives turn out to have funded and helped to organize the supposedly independent Swift Boat critics. This whole episode has turned up a surprise for me personally: my former colleague at the Los Angeles Times, Bill Rood, emerged as a Vietnam Swift Boat veteran who broke decades of silence about his own experience to vouch for Kerry’s side of the story. When I worked with Rood, he was a very professional but tightly-wound reporter and editor, who never talked about the Vietnam experience. He was obviously reluctant to open up those painful memories, either then or now.
I trust Rood, who now works for the Chicago Tribune. If he says Kerry did the right thing-and in fact, was an exemplary leader under life-threatening and difficult circumstances-I believe him. In the meantime, please join me in blowing the whistle on those who deliberately lie or distort the truth.
Boston, Summer, 2004–Political conventions are the perfect time for mischief. In the 21st century they don’t have a real job to do because the primaries have selected the presidential nominee. Yet they get the world’s media spotlight for four days, as if they were up to something important. Think about it: a phenomenal 15,000 journalists will be scouring Boston in July, looking for a story. It is the dirty prankster’s dream.
That is why it was so easy for the political nut Lyndon LaRouche to spread a false but damaging story about Michael Dukakis’ mental health at the Democratic Convention in 1988. Surely there will be a repeat attempt to scoop the world with some as yet undiscovered fatal flaw in Kerry during the four-day fest in Boston July 26-29. The Democrats may dig for some new scandal to push at the GOP convention in New York in August. But President Bush is much less vulnerable to such political mudslinging at this point, because the voters already know what he is like as president, and they have seen the real results of this leadership.
So in Boston, in July, Kerry, an unknown quantity in the White House job, is the perfect quarry. Watch for the purported mistresses who will suddenly appear, either in person, pushed before the microphones by Republican operatives, or in whispers from the Internet. There will be dueling Vietnam veterans, those who admired Kerry’s war record and those resentful of his antiwar activism in the 1970s. There will be Boston cops and others who will talk about the rich Kerry-Heinz family seeking special privileges, like moving the fire hydrant to create a parking spot in front of their house in Boston. No story is too small to be blown up by 15,000 journalists without anything real to cover. Few will bother to ask, what are the biases or credentials of this critic? why does this matter? compared to what?
Watch for picket lines by aggrieved parties whether it is religious groups opposed to Kerry’s stands on abortion or the police unions pushing for maximum advantage in their contract negotiations with the Mayor. And watch for the lobbyists, whether they are the fat cats, pressing their advantage even further, or the ideologues, preaching about taxes or the End of Time. They are all licking their chops: 15,000 journalists! What an opportunity to tell my story!
Every crackpot has this city, and the Kerry campaign, over a barrel because these hosts want the convention to be a happy showcase. It is so easy to spoil a party, so hard to put it on right. Somewhere, partisan scoundrels are plotting, at this very moment, how they will drop their poisonous morsels into the media food chain. Will it be Drudge this time? Or Rush Limbaugh, to help him with his recovery? Will it be Fox News? No one will be able to resist the story, whatever it is. The old boundaries of taste and verification are fine for some other time and place. But they don’t exist when you are in a firestorm of 15,000 journalists, swirling around a hot rumor.
Some scholars watch this picture with equanimity, saying that scandal and passion are helpful for motivating people to vote. But many other observers, including this one, will watch with dismay as clowns, assassins and anarchists have a field day with the real issues facing this nation. It is so much easier to destroy something than to build it. Just ask President Bush, and the people of Iraq.
The core mission of independent watchdog journalism is to hold the powerful accountable on behalf of the “little people.” This seems a hopeless dream in our era of corporate media conglomeration, but in fact there are pockets of success. Courageous journalists are struggling to work even in the most dangerous corners of the earth. “Media Missionaries,” my updated report on American international journalism training, shares stories from the front lines of this global battle to tell the truth.
“Talk Show Culture,” my second new report available on this website, shows the opposite side of today’s media culture: the degradation of journalism into theatrical shouting matches, with collateral damage to civic life. Citizens are numbed by a constant barrage of assertions and attacks, presented by disingenuous “commentators” and “hosts” who are making money without any moral scruples about the lies they promote. Ann Coulter, for example, attacks as “treasonous” anyone who doesn’t agree with her extreme views. For sport, fame and money, she and her clones are knowingly poisoning Americans’ urgently-needed discourse about the very real and frightening challenges we now face.
That is not to say that the left’s favorite media analyst, Noam Chomsky, is a trustworthy guide either. He may be more intellectually honest than Coulter (it’s hard not to be) but like President Bush, he is driven by faith rather than knowledge. Watch out for neat theories! They bear no resemblance to messy reality. The corporate ownership of media companies is a big problem, and is undermining good journalism in many situations. But it is not by any means the whole story; true and important information is being verified and broadcast or printed every day by journalists working in this media marketplace. Those who dismiss the whole thing as hopelessly corrupt are simply too lazy to search out the real ground on which the truth stands.
It takes work to find what is real. But is is vital to do so. Particularly as the American presidential election nears, this is no time for sanctimonious ego-trips or leaps of patriotic faith.
Ralph Nader suffers from the first malady (of thinking if he’s not running for president, no one will represent the True Way), and as a result, he will likely cause real damage to the very values he claims to espouse. The world situation requires all of us to make real choices. The differences between Bush and Kerry are clear to the observer who is willing to look for verified facts rather than Hollywood atmospherics; whoever wins will affect generations to come on such issues as: American security and global stability, the direction of the Supreme Court, abortion rights, human rights, civil rights, women’s rights, scientific research, Social Security, health care, education, and of course, the environment.
Some voters act as if they’re picking a husband, or a beer buddy. Television makes it seem personal because the candidate is in your home, larger than life. You are voting for the leader of the free world. Choose a person who will have the knowledge, values and judgment to make the right choices that will affect everyone. Is their sex life, or their personal charm, really what matters here?
A group of student journalists at UMass Boston and Harvard are willing to throw themselves into these culture wars, despite the cynicism spewed out by the conservative Coulters and the leftist Chomskyites. These students have not given up on this sorry world nor on trying to do honest work. When the Democratic Convention comes to our doorstep in Boston this July, they will be putting out a small convention newspaper, on media issues, for the conventioneers. Keep an eye out on the web for “Media Nation,” coming your way in mid-July.
“Dangerous Intersection: News Media and Politics” is the theme of a conference we will be hosting April 7 at the University of Massachusetts Boston’s new campus center, to celebrate our new Center on Media and Society. We will be focusing on two themes: The News Media and Political Power (which I am teaching this semester) and Ethnic and Community Media. We begin with a breakfast with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, then host a roundtable of local ethnic and community journalists to consider what Sandy Close and her New California Media collaborative have done out west (ethnic Pulitzer Prizes, story exchanges, etc.), and then on to lunch with Harvard Prof. Thomas Patterson explaining the relationship between news consumption and voting patterns, UMass’s Lou DiNatale will release a new Massachusetts poll including findings about local voters’ news preferences and political views. In the afternoon, a panel from Facing History and Ourselves will discuss an exciting curriculum we are developing together to teach about how media, history and identity can be used to help students make moral choices today. If you are interested in attending the conference it is free but the tickets are going fast. Contact me atellen@ellenhume.com if you wish to attend.
The Buzz: We have a rare opportunity to teach about how journalism and politicians interact as the Democrats bring their national convention to our city (July 26-29) and prepare to nominate a native son (John Kerry) as their standard bearer. To enable students to experience high-stakes national politics close up, the Center will publish a special student newspaper, THE BOSTON BUZZ, about media issues and other political news, for the conventioneers. This project is a joint venture between UMass Boston and Harvard University’s Nieman Journalism program, including student journalists from UMass, the Harvard Crimson newspaper, and the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics.
Other news: A new edition of my Media Missionaries report is about to emerge from the Knight Foundation’s presses, and also will be posted on this site. It has been updated from the original 2002 report.
Training: I led a workshop on investigative reporting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia last October, and visited a reporter who had been beaten by police and left for dead. It reminds us how hard it is to do real journalism in most countries. The young journalists I met were dedicated and optimistic, despite all the challenges they face daily in trying to report what their government is doing.
Journalists around the world continue to give up their lives in trying to do their jobs. This is true not only in active conflicts, like the Iraq war, but in countries where murder is used by governments or shadowy powers to intimidate and silence witnesses. Angela Morgenstern of KQED has created a remarkable website, to go with a PBS series, describing the patterns of murder in recent years across the globe. Click on the section called “In the Line of Fire.” Here is the link: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld
