Corporate Media Coverage of Terror Strikes Ignore...
Interview by Between The Lines' Scott Harris. | 15.09.2001 11:32
Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Robert Jensen, associate professor of journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, who evaluates the credibility and bias found in mainstream corporate media reporting of the devastating New York-Washington terror attacks.
Corporate Media Coverage of Terror Strikes Ignore Root Cause of Hostility Toward U.S.
Interview by Between The Lines' Scott Harris.
Not long after the first video images of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were broadcast, TV newsrooms presented their reports, adorned by designer logos and dramatic theme songs. Typical was CNN's title logo "America Under Attack" projected over an ominous soundtrack. This was the context in which initial reports covering the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing wrongfully blamed Arab terrorists. Of course, TV viewers later learned that U.S. based right-wing extremists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were responsible.
With the subordination of journalism to the demands of ratings and profit margins, many broadcast news divisions have transformed their reports on breaking news stories to something more akin to a game show. The world of infotainment, as it has been dubbed in broadcast and cable TV, often focuses more attention on style than substance. Today's corporate television executives have found it far less expensive and more profitable to invite several guests into a studio to shout at each other rather than devote resources needed to hire skilled investigative journalists to uncover the truth. This has led many critics to charge the media with gross negligence of their professional ethics that in the end deprives the public of vital information.
Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Robert Jensen, associate professor of journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, who evaluates the credibility and bias found in mainstream corporate media reporting of the devastating New York-Washington terror attacks(A RealAudio Version of this interview may be found At
http://www.btlonline.org).
Contact the group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting or FAIR to read more about media omission and bias by calling (212) 633-6700 or visit their Web site at www.fair.org
To receive Between The Lines Weekly Summary and/or Q&A, email
btlsummary-subscribe@topica.com and/or btlqa-subscribe@topica.com
Interview by Between The Lines' Scott Harris.
Not long after the first video images of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were broadcast, TV newsrooms presented their reports, adorned by designer logos and dramatic theme songs. Typical was CNN's title logo "America Under Attack" projected over an ominous soundtrack. This was the context in which initial reports covering the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing wrongfully blamed Arab terrorists. Of course, TV viewers later learned that U.S. based right-wing extremists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were responsible.
With the subordination of journalism to the demands of ratings and profit margins, many broadcast news divisions have transformed their reports on breaking news stories to something more akin to a game show. The world of infotainment, as it has been dubbed in broadcast and cable TV, often focuses more attention on style than substance. Today's corporate television executives have found it far less expensive and more profitable to invite several guests into a studio to shout at each other rather than devote resources needed to hire skilled investigative journalists to uncover the truth. This has led many critics to charge the media with gross negligence of their professional ethics that in the end deprives the public of vital information.
Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Robert Jensen, associate professor of journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, who evaluates the credibility and bias found in mainstream corporate media reporting of the devastating New York-Washington terror attacks(A RealAudio Version of this interview may be found At
http://www.btlonline.org). Contact the group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting or FAIR to read more about media omission and bias by calling (212) 633-6700 or visit their Web site at www.fair.org
To receive Between The Lines Weekly Summary and/or Q&A, email
btlsummary-subscribe@topica.com and/or btlqa-subscribe@topica.com
Interview by Between The Lines' Scott Harris.
e-mail:
betweenthelines@snet.net
Homepage:
http://www.wpkn.org/wpkn/news/btl092101.html
Comments
Hide the following comment
More info on media manipulation
15.09.2001 14:28
TERRORISM, TELEVISION AND THE RAGE FOR VENGEANCE
By Norman Solomon / Creators Syndicate
We stare at TV screens and try to comprehend the suffering in the
aftermath of terrorism. Much of what we see is ghastly and all too real;
terrible anguish and sorrow.
At the same time, we're witnessing an onslaught of media
deception. "The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not
by doing something, but by refraining from doing," Aldous Huxley observed
long ago. "Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of
view, is silence about truth."
Silence, rigorously selective, pervades the media coverage of
recent days. For policy-makers in Washington, the practical utility of that
silence is enormous. In response to the mass murder committed by hijackers,
the righteousness of U.S. military action is clear -- as long as double standards go unmentioned.
While rescue crews braved intense smoke and grisly rubble, ABC
News analyst Vincent Cannistraro helped to put it all in perspective for
millions of TV viewers. Cannistraro is a former high-ranking official of
the Central Intelligence Agency who was in charge of the CIA's work with
the contras in Nicaragua during the early 1980s. After moving to the
National Security Council in 1984, he became a supervisor of covert aid to
Afghan guerrillas.
In other words, Cannistraro has a long history of assisting
terrorists -- first, contra soldiers who routinely killed Nicaraguan
civilians; then, mujahedeen rebels in Afghanistan ... like Osama bin Laden.
How can a longtime associate of terrorists now be credibly
denouncing "terrorism"? It's easy. All that's required is for media
coverage to remain in a kind of history-free zone that has no use for any
facets of reality that are not presently convenient to acknowledge.
In his book "1984," George Orwell described the mental dynamics:
"The process has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with
sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring
with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies
while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become
inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back
from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of
objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which
one denies -- all this is indispensably necessary."
Secretary of State Colin Powell denounced "people who feel that
with the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people, they can
somehow achieve a political purpose." He was describing the terrorists who
had struck his country hours earlier. But Powell was also aptly describing
a long line of top officials in Washington.
It would be very unusual to hear a comment about that sort of
hypocrisy on any major TV network in the United States. Yet surely U.S.
policy-makers have believed that they could "achieve a political purpose"
-- with "the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people" -- when
launching missiles at Baghdad or Belgrade.
Nor are key national media outlets now doing much to shed light on
American assaults that were touted as anti-terrorist "retaliation" -- such
as the firing of 13 cruise missiles, one day in August 1998, at the Al
Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan. That attack, depriving an
impoverished country of desperately needed medical drugs, was an atrocity
committed (in the words of political analyst Noam Chomsky) "with n credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and probably
killing tens of thousands of people."
No one knows the exact number of lives lost due to the severe
disruption of Sudan's meager drug supply, Chomsky adds, "because the U.S.
blocked an inquiry at the United Nations and no one cares to pursue it."
Media scrutiny of atrocities committed by the U.S. government is
rare. Only some cruelties merit the spotlight. Only some victims deserve
empathy. Only certain crimes against humanity are worth our tears.
"This will be a monumental struggle of good versus evil,"
President Bush proclaimed on Wednesday. The media reactions to such
rhetoric have been overwhelmingly favorable.
But the heart-wrenching voices now on the USA's airwaves are no
less or more important than voices that we have never heard. Today, the
victims of terrorism in America deserve our deep compassion. So do the
faraway victims of America -- human beings whose humanity has gone
unrecognized by U.S. media.
Underlying that lack of recognition is a nationalistic arrogance
shared by press and state. Few eyebrows went up when Time magazine declared
in its Sept. 10 edition: "The U.S. is at one of those fortunate -- and rare
-- moments in history when it can shape the world." That attitude can only
bring us a succession of disasters.
Noah