News Chains -Literal and Euphemistic

About 30 years ago, after the nation emerged from the nasty pit that was the McCarthy era, the news media was the nation's most effective guardian angel/watchdog, making sure those other so-called guardian angels/watchdogs -- the government, military and police -- did not slide too far into corruption. The bad guys, like cockroaches, quivered at the idea of having 'the news' put a spotlight on them. Nixon, with all his multi-tentacled power, was no match for Woodward and Bernstein. The 'Masters of War' seeking to keep the Vietnam war going were no match for Bruce Morton, Walter Cronkite, or the photojournalists at Life Magazine (who made sure the nation saw the faces of the boys killed month to month, in a silently eloquent photo spread).

Alas, the spotlight is no longer a motivating threat to the bad guys, because the bad guys now control the spotlight. How did this sorry situation come about? As I see it, there are about five key factors responsible for setting the stage was set for this catastrophe:

* The 'corporatization' process: Through the 1980s, newspapers became corporate operations. Under the corporate model, as we all know, corporate 'yes men'are more likely to get jobs -including news desk jobs- than independent, tough-minded folk.

* Censorship from above. Many good stores are still written every day, then promptly killed at the daily or weekly editorial meetings.


* No new blood of worth: Upcoming, potentially great journalists are pushed from the field as soon as they show up because in a news corporation, as in any corporateion, the penalty for asking too many questions is career death.

*Laziness: This is the most insidious factor, because it knocks out a huge block of established journalists who, through sheer force of numbers could turn the field around if they showed any chutzpah.

* Downsizing schemes: Instead of cutting out fat at the top where it is most expendable, news corporations routinely downsize the newsroom. Worse yet, downsizing is now routinely used as an excuse to weed out the best journalists (those pesky folks who ask too many questions).

Back before the era of computer-disseminated news, newspapers, radio stations and television networks relied on their own reporters and editors for the news. Almost all stories were written "from scratch" by the staff, with a few syndicated features such as the 'funnies' thrown in. Every media outlet had its own personality and its own distinctive voice. Most communities with more than one main intersection had more than one newspaper, most of them independently owned and operated. The competition kept editors and writers on their toes. Whoever dug deepest and most diligently got the best story -- and sold the most papers. Diligent reporters who asked tough questions were generally prized. Advertisers were a consideration, but not the controlling factor.. Some fast-breaking major national stories and international stories came in through the 'wire' from New York or maybe even abroad and were used as a story framework, which could be developed further in a feverish burst of activity by editors and writers, who would hit the phones and or the road in search of a hot new angle or breakthrough on the same story.

Today, there are almost no independent community newspapers left, no television station of significant size not owned by a corporate conglomerate, and extremely few radio stations that maintain a news staff at all. A newspaper in a small town in Ohio might be owned by the same corporation that owns a paper in Chicago. Instead of teams of go-getter reporters and editors, news media regurgitate 'canned' stories from the same sources: Associated Press (AP), Reuters, or UPI (now owned, incredibly enough, by the Rev. Moon, an avid Bush supporter). Wire service stories are treated like a roll of paper towels with so many sheets discarded, so many sheets pulled off, so many sheets trimmed down to fit the need of the moment.. News savvy or even real editing skill are no longer required.

When I worked as a temporary copy-editor at a daily paper in southern Maine one spring, I discovered that copy-editors, many of whom are English majors or even business majors with no journalism background at all, routinely determine the content of the news. They are given a story off the 'wire' or from a staff reporter, and told how many inches the final version should be. I've been given 50-inch stories loaded with vital information and told to crop it to 10 or 20 -as if we were selling material by the pound, instead of disseminating meaningful content! The results can be outrageous. I remember the time a copy-editor was given a long story about ten candidates running for city offices and told to trim it by so many inches. Taking the typical approach used by many copy-editors, he simply took all the extra inches off the end. The next day, the phones were ringing off the hook because three of the candidates had been trimmed right out of the story!

Most newsrooms used to have a regular meeting of the editorial staff, where the crew would hash over the possible stories for that day or week. Most decisions were based on story quality, story importance, balancing coverage (insuring a good mix of national, international, and human interest coverage), and space constraints. Once in a while, a really hot story would come along that required review by newspaper's on-retainer legal eagles (no one wants to be sued for liable if it can be avoided!). But by and large, the editors made the decision based on the news and nothing (well, almost) but the news.

Everything began to change in the 1980s. Advertising space began to eat up more and more space in the paper. A conscious decision was made across the industry to make stories shorter. In fact, most papers shifted to a much larger typeface, shrinking word count even more. Across the back of the Bangor Daily News room during this time was a banner that proclaimed WRITE TIGHT! It was the dawn of the era of the shrinking sound -and word- byte.

A whole new set of ground rules was laid down. Today, 'editorial meetings' at most newspapers are dominated not by editors and writers but by the presence (actual or in "memo" form) of people from advertising, from the corporate offices, or from marketing. The big questions asked in such meetings are no longer "Is this story good?" "Is this story important?" they are (directly or indirectly): "Does this story offend an advertiser?" "Does it help protect the political interests of the corporate owner?" "Will it achieve the desired effect (determined by advertisers or political interests) on the public's perceptions?" Many news veterans point to the day that the Los Angeles Times knocked down -literally- the wall separating the newsroom from the advertising department as the beginning of the end.

But the "advertising department as co-newsroom" is the rule, now, not the exception. The bottom line, the one that supercedes even political interests is PROFIT -the sort that enable corporate execs to be paid staggeringly huge salaries and benefits packages. The media's shameless currying of favor with the Bush administration is based solely on Bush's proven dedication to lavishing largesse on the corporazi. Anyone in office who promised to make the world a safer place for robber barons would be getting the same fawning treatment by today's media, whether they were G.W. Bush or a card-carrying member of the Cheese Whiz Party from the planet Zircon.

This new model -the news media as "product"- has driven many truly dedicated newsfolk out of the field in the past few years. Jay Harris, the publisher of the once highly-respected San Jose Mercury News was a journalist's journalist who took the paper to new heights of quality, earning it praise from the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's best newspapers. Under Harris, circulation was climbing and profits were up. But for the greedy corporate owners of the paper from the massive conglomerate known as Knight-Ridder, more was not enough. They continually pressured Harris to focus on increasing profits even more at the expense of the paper's quality. In the spring of 2001, Harris was urged to increase revenues by making layoffs in the newsroom. In short, to save the outrageous salaries and perks of a privileged few Knight-Ridder execs and 'big money for nothing' payoffs for a few topstockholders, Harris was expected to fire reporters whose annual salaries probably don't total the interest earned in one exec's 'extra' Swiss bank account. In response, Harris quit. In his farewell href="http://www.newsinsider.org/madsta.html" target=links class=NIlink>speech at a luncheon thrown by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, he denounced the inflated salaries raked in by most top newspaper execs as "golden handcuffs." Worse yet, Harris said, "those golden handcuffs have morphed into blindfolds and gags as well." Harris recalls the conflict he experienced as publisher -the highest non-corporate exec position in a newspaper- when urged by those above to sacrifice journalistic principles for the almighty buck. "I confronted the fact that continuing negotiation and compromise was little more than slow and silent surrender. Like many others, I had become an unacknowledged co-conspirator in something I knew not to be a good thing, but I didn't know how to stop."

Although Harris's case received national attention, he is certainly not alone. Every day, editors are pressured to sacrifice journalist integrity and the public's right to know to underwrite and thus reinforce the "golden handcuffs." Scores who resist have either been fired or forced, through conscience or corporate pressure, to resign. The beloved Bangor Daily News associate editor Kent Ward opted for early retirement rather than have to pass on another pink slip for yet another good newsperson. They are, one by one, being replaced by corporate yes-men with minimal to no real journalistic background and/or staff who have no knowledge or connection to the region represented by the paper. In 2002, for example, the Baltimore Sun hired a new editorial page editor, Diane Donovan, who didn't even come from Maryland, let alone Baltimore. Donovan, from Chicago, is supposed to represent and assess the views of a city as unlike Chicago as blue crabs are from spare ribs! Sinclar Broadcasting in Hunt Valley Maryland provides news and weather for 'local' TV stations across the nation. Thus one's 'local' weatherman in, say, Idaho is actually reading his script from a studio on the East Coast.

But even in cases where the staff is still local, today's 'new style' editor is increasingly likely to have a background in public relations (read corporate and political ass-kissing) and business management (read increasing profits at the expense of all else).

As the relationship between corporate America and Washington becomes more incestuous, the range of what sort of news material makes the final cut into print (paper or tape) is growing narrower and narrower. At some point in the not so distant past, a line was crossed and the non-editorial divisions of the corporate media seized nearly full control of news content. Through phone calls, memos and other "hidden face" proddings, these "men behind the curtain" now actively determine what will and will not be permitted to see the light of day and in what tweaked and slanted form it will appear in should it make it to the public's field of view. Anyone who knows the sorry state of affairs in the mainstream media was not surprised to hear how CNN sent a directive (in late 2001) to its news teams to not report the Afghan side of the conflict. Nor did they raise an eyebrow when told that TV news teams across the country were being forced to deliver scripted "my country right or wrong" lines during every newscast after 9/11 -with some even required to wear little American flags in prominent view. It's all part of corporate packaging: after 9/11, patriotism was what was selling. The White House has the same "sell the product" attitude, which is why it meshes so well with the new media. Bush did not hire a veteran journalist or political expert to help him shape public perspective on the war: he hired an advertising agency whiz named Charlotte Beers whose foremost claim to fame was a successful ad campaign for Uncle Ben's instant rice.

Television news has sunk so far into a corner of the corporate pocket that it is indistinquishable from the lint there. Everything you see is cooked up in a corporate board room, packaged by the marketing folks, then sent down to the newsroom for a talking head to spout. Flip from channel to channel and you will hear the same news, different talking heads. The vast majority of these news heads are not journalists, by the way -they are performers (actors and even former models who are referred to in the biz simply as 'talent' -product-selling talent to be precise). At best these people, as Walter Cronkite once sadly observed, appeared to have majored in Wardrobe I and II.

Radio, of course, is dominated by the Clear Channel corporation and its overstuffed stable of right-wing talk show hosts. The right-wing radio talk show, by the way, is not a new critter. It was invented during the 1935 presidential election by the Republican party as a high-profile means to push their candidate, Alf Landon. These 'radio spots,' as they were called then, supplied the public with a steady stream of anti-FDR and anti-labor propaganda. Today, instead of being allotted a 'spot,' squawking turkeys like Rush Limbaugh are given three- and four-hour blocks of time each day to spew forth their venom. But the objective is the same: flood the airways with propaganda. National Public Broadcasting (NPR, PBS), which once lived up to its name, is now Archer-Daniels Midland/Mobile Corporation Radio/TV. NPR and PBS are now more likely to air prepackaged 'educational' events provided by the Heritage Foundation or Cato Institute (rightwing corporate front groups) than they are to present challenging, for-real material to public has a right to expect.

AP and UPI, the source of most news stories for all types of media, including the Internet news outlets, consist of centralized stables of writers who crank out the stories which are disseminated each day to every subscribing outlet across the nation like 'ready-to-cook' frozen burgers and fries to McDonald's franchises. AP now feeds stories to at least 1,500 newspapers and 5,000 broadcast outlets in the U.S. Worldwide, AP serves 15,000 news organizations. All the same news... all the time... everywhere. All of it tailored to the corporate interests it ultimately serves.

What is worst in all of this is that there is no real oversight of the news . For example, on election night, there was some question as to what role the news media played in making early election outcome calls. Louis Boccardi, CEO of AP, was called to testify before Congress. Of course, he testified that AP behaved in a manner above reproach. And who is going to challenge this? Some reporter from AP? You see the sick joke in this, no doubt. Even Pulitzer prizes are now part of news "product packaging." In April 2001, just weeks after Jay Harris's farewell speech, Columbia University President George Rupp named Louis Boccardi the new head of the Pulitzer committee! (Columbia U dispenses the Pulitzers).Yep, Boccardi's job is to guide the selection of stories and photos from a pool dominated by AP material. Before coming to Columbia U in 1993, George Rupp was president of Rice University, thanks to the efforts of his buddy James Baker III. Before that, back in the mid-1980s, Rupp, a friend of the Bush clan, was on the board of directors of the Houston-based Texas Commerce Bank which was, during his term, slapped with the biggest fine in history (at that point) for sneaky transactions that amounted to money laundering. But folks like Rupp and Boccardi (who also heads the 'Freedom Forum,' which allegedly is dedicated to upholding a free press) are now "overseeing" the quality of our media! [note- Rupp stepped down from Columbia in 2002, reportedly from increasing student pressure. He has since landed a benign-sounding porky position as head of the International Relief Committee. He will now be free to wheel and deal in Afghanistan for his oil, gas and banking pals back in Texas -all under the auspices of a "humanitarian mission."]

Meanwhile, the nets are growing ever tighter around news content. Because the media has become so consolidated -nearly centralized, in fact- it is now quite easy to control the content of stories even BEFORE a word is put to paper. In May, 2001, I talked to one young AP writer based in New York and asked him why AP had failed to cover the protests held during Bush's inauguration and those which occurred afterward around the nation.. He told me that he and other writers were told by higher ups not to cover protests and other activist events. I could not believe my ears. Why not? His reply? "Um, well... they say that would be encouraging that sort of thing."

"That sort of thing"? Networks can show Osama Bin Laden 'secret videos' night after night and run stories clearly aimed at instigating a war that will claim the lives of God knows how many, while the daily media fare consists of lurid accounts of murders, rapes, pedophila and the latest terrorist scheme. But showing 5,000 Americans turned out to protest an illegal election is encouraging something undesirable? Well, yes -I guess that sort of coverage would be undesirable...undesirable for the Bush administration and the corporate interests it serves so well.