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The Media Watchdog Myth |
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This evening, I sat in on a question and answer session with author and journalist Eric Lichtblau, who just published the book Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice. Lichtblau also authored the original investigative report exposing the NSA's domestic, warrantless wiretapping program in 2005 and kicking off the debate around the country over FISA, Bush, and the law.
It was enlightening to hear citizens in the crowd question this respected journalist. Clearly, Lichtblau felt that he was right in publishing his original expose, yet the story was held by the New York Times for over a year before being released. While Lichtblau didn't defend his editor's choice in holding back the story, he did defend the principle; he felt an editor should withhold a story - and indeed as a journalist he would withhold a story - if the story endangered national security.
This, of course, was the ridiculous argument made by government officials to embargo the NSA story, an argument that is demonstrably false. Indeed, as Lichtbau pointed out, it was common knowledge before the NSA story that the government was tapping the foreign communications of Al-Qaeda and the like. It is inconceivable that the disclosure of a program intercepting communications between foreigners and American citizens would have disclosed something Al-Qaeda didn't already know.
While I don't necessarily find fault with the idea of embargoing stories for national security reasons - indeed, there are examples where this has actually happened. (An example that came up in the discussion of The Chicago Tribune revealing the U.S. had broken the codes of Japan during World War II ended years of successful surveillance.) What I found more troubling was who the editors at the New York Times believed.
The people telling the editors that the NSA story endangered national security were exactly the people who had a personal and political stake in continued secrecy. White House officials tried to bottle up this story in 2004 - an election year - and stood to be prosecuted if these actions were deemed illegal. Why would any reasonable person believe the claims from these people, especially after Bush officials had been so wrong so many times in the past?
While Lichtblau's supposition was that the country was still recovering from 9/11, he later came around to what I consider the basic truth: The mainstream media is called the mainstream media for a reason. By nature, it shies away from the controversial or the extreme, even if that position represents the truth. While the old media still drives the national conversation, it mirrors it at the same time - it's a "lagging indicator."
This, of course, goes against most people's common conception of the old media as a watchdog, taking on government and corporate power. While investigative and intrepid reporting still does occur, in the age of news and big business it is impossible to truly believe these broad news outlets will ever go out on a limb. The idea of the media as a check on government or corporate power is a fiction - one that proves itself true at some moments, but hopelessly false at other.
Once the media watchdog myth is exposed, the path forward is clear. We must rely on other avenues to get the truth. A variety of sources - foreign media, blogs, user-generated content, online videos, twitter - all should feed into the informed media consumer's knowledge. The truth is out there, you just have to find it.
Of course, the idea that being mainstream necessarily means staying behind the curve might not be as airtight on further examination. The rise of a mainstream media that refuses to speak truth to power is directly correlated with a steep decline in mainstream media readership. This can't be a coincidence. People like you or I can smell the bullshit a mile away, and we just stop paying attention.
The decline in readership belies the moniker. There is little "mainstream" about a media that coddles the powerful and makes theoretically journalistic decisions on the basis of how they will affect the market value of the parent company. This is the corporate media, the establishment media, the legacy media–they do not cater to nor represent mainstream interests.
Did you get the sense that Lichtblau perceived the tension between the tainted interests of his editors and his own commitment to uncover the truth?
No, I don't. I suspect that even though Lichtblau is an award winning journalists, he's still a couple levels removed from the top editors who would be subject to those pressures. It's hard to say for sure, though.