Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Democracy in Peril
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate to choose the latter.”
-Thomas Jefferson
An oft-quoted line from one of America’s founding fathers, yet it still retains much currency today. Jefferson, as well as others, understood the important role newspapers play in the functioning of democratic institutions. Our system of government is predicated on the active involvement and participation of all citizens. In the absence of a watchful eye, government tends to slide into sloth and corruption. At its best, Media can “grease the wheels” by keeping citizens informed and giving them a voice to participate.
Yet recent studies have convincingly demonstrated that today’s Americans are woefully ignorant in basic political knowledge, strangers to the voting booth, and pessimistic about the future. In no small way, the kings of the media industry have contributed to this abysmal state by explicitly manipulating the content of the news to suit their interests. Relaxation of media ownership regulations by the 1980’s has enabled large conglomerates to build vast media empires rivaling the great oil companies of the Gilded Age. In order to maintain and augment their power, these media magnates exert pressure on their editorial staff to cover the news in a way that reflects their pro-business, pro-trade, rightist views. The result is either bland, one-sided news coverage, or no coverage at all. Democracy is in serious peril when ordinary citizens are effectively left out of the political debate.
This summer, a proposed Free Trade Agreement with Peru was signed by President Bush, to be ratified by the House and Senate. The FTA would open Peru's market far more to U.S. goods, which face a weighted average tariff of 9% and much higher on some products. The scant coverage the proposed agreement has received in mainstream media has been, without exception, emphatically supportive. Eric Farnsforth of the Chicago Sun-Times writes that “Unless a program is put in place to bridge the gap between the expiration and implementation of free trade agreements, real damage could be done to U.S. interests.” A Dec. 8th, 2005 article in the Washington Post quotes four free-trade supporters and no opponents. For the Miami Herald, Pablo Bachelet warned that rejection of the FTA with Peru “would not only be a victory for Chávez but a blow to other allies in the hemisphere that aspire to closer ties with Washington.” “Peru’s Path to Prosperity” was the title of an Oct. 11th editorial in the LA Times.
At Congressional committee hearings, the Agreement is hotly contested over it's possible negative impact on organized labor both in Peru and the United States. That debate, however, is noticibly absent from the daily headlines. The opinion of organized labor, once respected as an authoritative voice of working-class America, has been either trivialized or ignored in the Media. Why the change? Because the corporations that own the papers stand to profit greatly from trade liberalization and hence shield the story from the public. The Pew Research Center survey of three hundred journalists released in 2000 found that nearly half of them acknowledged sometimes consciously engaging in self-censorship to serve the commercial interests of their employer or advertisers, and only one-quarter of them stated that this never happened to their knowledge. In the interests of greed, the media has weakened democracy rather than fortifying it.
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate to choose the latter.”
-Thomas Jefferson
An oft-quoted line from one of America’s founding fathers, yet it still retains much currency today. Jefferson, as well as others, understood the important role newspapers play in the functioning of democratic institutions. Our system of government is predicated on the active involvement and participation of all citizens. In the absence of a watchful eye, government tends to slide into sloth and corruption. At its best, Media can “grease the wheels” by keeping citizens informed and giving them a voice to participate.
Yet recent studies have convincingly demonstrated that today’s Americans are woefully ignorant in basic political knowledge, strangers to the voting booth, and pessimistic about the future. In no small way, the kings of the media industry have contributed to this abysmal state by explicitly manipulating the content of the news to suit their interests. Relaxation of media ownership regulations by the 1980’s has enabled large conglomerates to build vast media empires rivaling the great oil companies of the Gilded Age. In order to maintain and augment their power, these media magnates exert pressure on their editorial staff to cover the news in a way that reflects their pro-business, pro-trade, rightist views. The result is either bland, one-sided news coverage, or no coverage at all. Democracy is in serious peril when ordinary citizens are effectively left out of the political debate.
This summer, a proposed Free Trade Agreement with Peru was signed by President Bush, to be ratified by the House and Senate. The FTA would open Peru's market far more to U.S. goods, which face a weighted average tariff of 9% and much higher on some products. The scant coverage the proposed agreement has received in mainstream media has been, without exception, emphatically supportive. Eric Farnsforth of the Chicago Sun-Times writes that “Unless a program is put in place to bridge the gap between the expiration and implementation of free trade agreements, real damage could be done to U.S. interests.” A Dec. 8th, 2005 article in the Washington Post quotes four free-trade supporters and no opponents. For the Miami Herald, Pablo Bachelet warned that rejection of the FTA with Peru “would not only be a victory for Chávez but a blow to other allies in the hemisphere that aspire to closer ties with Washington.” “Peru’s Path to Prosperity” was the title of an Oct. 11th editorial in the LA Times.
At Congressional committee hearings, the Agreement is hotly contested over it's possible negative impact on organized labor both in Peru and the United States. That debate, however, is noticibly absent from the daily headlines. The opinion of organized labor, once respected as an authoritative voice of working-class America, has been either trivialized or ignored in the Media. Why the change? Because the corporations that own the papers stand to profit greatly from trade liberalization and hence shield the story from the public. The Pew Research Center survey of three hundred journalists released in 2000 found that nearly half of them acknowledged sometimes consciously engaging in self-censorship to serve the commercial interests of their employer or advertisers, and only one-quarter of them stated that this never happened to their knowledge. In the interests of greed, the media has weakened democracy rather than fortifying it.
# posted by Jonathan Noble @ 12:19 AM 
