No, I'm not talking about next month. I'm talking about 1970-'72. Under the deceit of "preserving" newspapers, the press lords were seeking anti-trust exemptions that enabled them to establish city-by-city monopolies. Competition was stifled, communities lost valuable voices, democracy suffered. Media companies booked record profits.
For years, there were suspicions of a deal between the newspaper chains and Richard Nixon. Circumstantial evidence attested to the 1970s scheme. Cox, for example, would benefit greatly from the anti-trust exemptions, and it had ordered its editors to endorse Tricky. The two Cox editors who demurred -- at the Palm Beach Post and the now-defunct Miami News -- were ousted.
Later, in the 1980s, the betrayal of the public by the chains became more apparent. Knight-Ridder Newspapers (which owns The Charlotte Observer, The Miami Herald, and The Philadelphia Inquirer, among others) had an anti-trust exemption pending before then Attorney General Edwin Meese. The chain killed cartoons and toned down editorials critical of Meese.
Eventually, a smoking gun was found by national media critic Ben Bagdikian in the form of a letter promising the 1972 endorsements of the major chains to Nixon in return for anti-trust exemptions. That deal had awarded Nixon an unprecedented level of newspaper endorsements, helping him trounce the anti-war Sen. George McGovern.
The prestigious Columbia Journalism Review opined in 1991: "Knight-Ridder's coddling of Meese and (the) arm-twisting of Nixon both deserve a shadowy niche in the gallery of the First Amendment. Both episodes show how a law like the (anti-trust exemptions) can prevent the press from performing its constitutional function as a check on government."
Those aren't stories you'll find in newspaper archives. Press execs will hold their collective breath and turn purple before discussing the subject. Like much other news about news, the media draw an opaque cloak around their self-serving machinations.
"It's more than just embarrassing to reveal that news organizations cover the news with venal financial interests in mind," says Reese Erlich, a California journalist and author of the just-published book Target Iraq. "To expose that would undermine any reason the public has to pay attention to and believe the media."
Usually the media's behavior is merely reprehensible. But with hundreds of thousands of people -- babies, schoolkids, moms, elders, as well as soldiers -- soon destined to be dismembered, incinerated, disintegrated, perforated, punctured, eviscerated, maimed, crippled, blinded and atomized -- well, America's media will have blood on their cash-grabbing hands.
Why is the American media so lame in trying to ferret out the truth about the Bush war machine? Here's a bit of history. After World War II, the United States was keenly aware that government dominance of the press had enabled the Axis dictators to press unchallenged toward war. With writers such as George Orwell providing a forward roll on totalitarianism -- Big Brother was merely a media mogul on steroids -- American leaders wisely put limits on communications ownership. No newspaper could own broadcast properties in the same city. (About two dozen cities were granted exemptions to this "cross-ownership" ban.) The number of TV and radio stations a single company could own was limited.
During the 1990s, the Federal Communications Commission began dropping the limits on the number of stations companies could own. The resulting mega-companies are dung heaps upon which nationally syndicated vermin such as the incredibly dishonest Rush Limbaugh and ultra-racist Michael Savage thrive.
"Liberal" media? Forget it. In daily newspapers' op-ed pages and on radio and TV, the right is so dominant that it is virtually doing a soliloquy. The handful of moderate and left commentators doesn't begin to match the right's shrill, extremist carpet-bombing of public debate.
Behind the rightward march is media consolidation. Liberal bashing, racism and bellicose jingoism make good theater, and the conglomerates can spread the swill across the whole nation. It's stupefying, yes, but then a media-drugged public is good fodder for advertisers.
As the FCC deregulated TV and radio outfits, the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership prohibitions remained. But that has been changing. The FCC -- where, ominously, Colin Powell's son Michael is Bush's capo -- is considering dropping the final restraints on media consolidation. This has become the holy grail of Big Media, whose lobbying and influence-buying rival that of any industry in sleaze. All of the big chains -- including Knight-Ridder, Media General, and Cox -- are frantic to end the restrictions on ownership. They're equally frantic to keep you in the dark.
Bill Kovach, who edited the Atlanta dailies (before he offended Cox bosses by suggesting they should be doing great journalism), now heads the Committee of Concerned Journalists. He warned last month: "The federal government is moving toward the most sweeping change ever in the rules that govern ownership of the American news media. This shift could reduce the independence of the news media and the ability of Americans to take part in public debate."
Scuttling the cross-ownership ban will see the end of what is left of competition at a local level. One media warlord will dictate each city's content in the daily newspaper, the major TV stations, the billboards, the major website -- and quite possibly, your alternative weekly. Meanwhile, on the national (and world) scene, fewer and fewer companies will control content, programming and distribution of both entertainment and "news" (Flash! Read, view, click on to the latest about Michael Jackson!).
The only loser will be: you.
One of the best examples of how the media twist the news occurred a couple of weeks ago when papers nationwide reported that a new poll showed that "Majority supports Iraq war." That wasn't exactly the case. For a start, the pollster, Zogby America, has a nasty reputation for producing surveys that "reveal" what the client is pushing -- context not provided to the newspaper's readers.
That context explains how convoluted one has to be to get the results stated in the papers' headlines. Under almost any likely condition -- people getting killed, for example, something not unheard of with war -- the majority doesn't support the war.
Every day, news pages in the dailies are loaded with uncritical war boosterism -- from never ever giving an honest critique to the Bush, Cheney, Powell & Co.'s endless progression of deceptions, distortions and scare tactics (did you buy your duct tape yet?) to barely blinking at the transformation of this democracy into an empire.
That's an important thought. Empires are not built by democracies. A free, aggressive and competitive press is anathema to authoritarian (we're almost there) and totalitarian (the next stop is in sight) governments. Ergo, if you want to go empire, you've got to control the press.
To wit:
Will you see space devoted to debunking the "Osama loves Saddam" tape (hint: It says the opposite of what the Bushies claim)?
Although 10 million to 12 million anti-war protesters a few weekends ago in America and Europe forced the media to acknowledge the stunning swell of public opinion, did you read in your daily paper's news articles any coherent explanation of the reason so many oppose the imminent slaughter?
Did the intellectual leaders of the anti-war movement garner 1 percent of the media space compared to the newspapers' and networks' open-door policy toward the War Party?
Did you read any analysis of the dissonance between the nations that supposedly "support" US policy and the fact that 70 percent to more than 90 percent of those countries' populations oppose war (hint to the daily press: The Bush junta bribed, threatened and blackmailed governments).
And will the Bush destruction of our relationship with European allies, and the advent of America as the world's great rogue state, get a tough look?
Sorry. There are occasional blips of honest reporting, but it's rare.
The big challenge for the mainstream press is to run a sufficient number of military puff pieces to ensure that its reporters are "embedded" with our troops -- which means you will get only the news the government wants you to get. (Please, oh please, give us one more syrupy story, hot from the Pentagon flacks, about how happy our soldiers are as they prepare for battle. And never suggest that the way to really support our boys and girls in uniform is to bring them home.)
Meanwhile, ex-editor Kovach notes, you're not going to read much on the Bush administration's turbo charging the media monopolies via the FCC deregulation. For communications heavyweights, there's a pile of cash at stake. If you figure out what's happening, it could cost the press magnates some major money. If it takes a little pandering to Bush's war machine to get FCC deregulation, then that's what the newspapers will do to bloat their bottom lines.
I'll confess. My argument is deduction. But Big Media has a record. 1972 and Nixon. The 1980s and Meese. And, prominent New York press critic Danny Schechter notes that during the months before the first Gulf War, the TV networks were negotiating with the FCC to ease restrictions on owning syndicated programs, dubbed "fin-syn." "CBS even had an executive in the White House negotiating the deal while the bombs were dropping," Schechter says. Thus, aggressive footage by CNN -- especially gutsy accounts of horrific "collateral damage" by reporters such as Peter Arnett -- captured the world's attention while the entertainment networks tooted Pentagon themes.
And now we have another war, and the American media is painfully unable to muster critical thinking about the Bush administration. Nor will you see coverage of the shenanigans at the FCC.
"Because of meager press coverage and steps taken by the Federal Communications Commission in its policy-making process, most people probably have no idea that it is taking place," Kovach says. Only one public hearing is slated, and that was a drag-the-feet concession to 120 consumer and media advocacy groups.
So, here's the answer to why the American media won't take on Bush's agenda: It's just a little quid pro quo. "The whole media industry has urgent matters before George Bush's FCC," media critic Schechter says. "Of course they're neutralizing the news about the war. It's business."
Disclaimer: Cox owns 25 percent of the parent company of Creative Loafing. John Sugg is Senior Editor of Creative Loafing in Atlanta. Reach him at john.sugg@creativeloafing.com.
