Press Action ::: How the ‘Mainstream’ Media Enables the Bush Administration ...

Friday, April 16, 2004

How the ‘Mainstream’ Media Enables the Bush Administration ...

and Why They’d Be Happy to Do the Same for Kerry and Friends

By Micah Holmquist

Bush’s recent press conference is a prime example of how the “mainstream” press assists in government distortions and manipulations.

Reporters asked Bush about parallels between the current occupation of Iraq and “Vietnam,” but the president’s assertion that what the United States faces in Iraq is “not a popular uprising” went unchallenged. Bush faced a question about the missing weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but nothing on the problem in his logic when he argued Saddam Hussein was a threat against the United States “because he hated us.” One journalist asked Bush if he had “failed in any way to really make the case [about the importance of what the U.S. is doing in Iraq] to the American public?” but the possibility that Bush doesn’t have a case to make publicly never came up.

The message from these reporters — all of whom are representatives of news organizations “mainstream” enough so as to be allowed to ask questions of the president — was clear. They will ask “tough” questions about matters that have already been discussed on cable news and talk radio by people who are nearly exclusively interested in promoting the Democrats or Republicans, but nothing will be done to undermine the foundations of U.S. policy with regard to the “war on terror.”

There’s a reason for this. It isn’t that these reporters are all merely incompetent or uncritical, although many indeed are. Assistant Professor of Communication at the University of Pittsburgh Jonathan Sterne argues in an essay published by Bad Subjects last year that the problem resides in the process of newsgathering. Needing sources and facing tight deadlines, Sterne argues, reporters rely on government sources because they are accessible, accommodating and often the only conduit for information. This last quality in particular sets up the dynamic that was in play at Bush’s press conference. When comments are requested from other sources, many, if not most, of which are either cheerleaders or mindless critics of one side or another, the issue is still likely to be framed as the government sources want it to be.

When applied on a large scale, the result is that “how something is being done” may become part of the popular discourse while “whether or not the stated reason for doing it is worth achieving” gets left out. Whether or not the U.S. invasion of Iraq is/was “a distraction from the war on terror” can be debated, for example, but little is heard about the consequences of fighting a literal, as opposed to merely metaphorical, “war” against an enemy like “the terrorists” that does not exist as such. The possibility that maybe, just maybe, the U.S. shouldn’t attempt to control the actions of others is of course off the table.

Furthermore, by accepting government officials as the most valued of sources, journalism implicitly promotes the idea that these officials have something valuable to say.

There’s a scene in a 2002 episode of The Simpsons entitled “The Great Louse Detective” where, after discovering that Homer Simpson has in the course of the series annoyed quite a few people to the point that they want to physically harm him, Sideshow Bob remarks, “None of this seems odd to you?” The members of the Simpson family don’t see anything odd about this, because there is nothing odd about it within the context of the show.

This clever joke is an example of what does not happen in media coverage of the Bush Administration, just as it did not happen to the administrations that held power before January 20, 2001. Those who produce The Simpsons can publicly poke fun at the absurd nature of the context in which the story of the show resides. Journalists, on the other hand, if they want to keep the game going, don’t have this option. If they were to make the obvious fact that Bush’s comments were a mix of simplistic rhetoric and non-answers into one of the dominant discourses of the press conference, the press would effectively be saying the whole event was a sham. There goes their importance, prestige and (perhaps most importantly) ratings and sales. They can’t say what actually goes on, so the charade continues.

Sterne proposes a number of good, if vague, goals to remedy this situation, a matter this piece will not cover, and his analysis is wonderful, but does not go into how the appearance of supposedly “tough” questions actually legitimizes this state of affairs by making it less apparent that the press has accepted most of the government’s premises.

Since questions about “how” something is being done are all that is allowed in the popular discourse, pointed questions on these matters will no doubt be seen by most who accept this limitation on debate as being “tough.” To talk about the specific situation, those in and around outlets like Little Green Footballs and The National Review can view Bush as having stood up to unfair criticism. Liberal critics had their questions asked and are thus able to fume about how Bush didn’t answer them, which in turn largely leads to siding with the media. Those in the always moving “center” can either ignore what happened, not pay any attention or just assume that there are not real questions being left out of the discussion.

And the discourse remains static ... until those in power need to change it.

Micah Holmquist, editor of Irregular Thoughts and Links, is a Cadillac, Mich.-based writer.

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