The Failure of Media and Journalism by Robert Jensen

Professor Robert Jensen from the University of Texas in Austin was in the San Francisco Bay Area recently. His web page is linked to the title of this blog. He gave an interesting talk about the failure of media and journalism in the past few years and notably during the war in Iraq and the elections. Here is a summary of his talk. Also here is an article entitled The Failure of US Journalism from his website.

Professor Jensen has put together a Citizen's Oath of Office.

I do solemnly pledge that I will faithfully execute the office of citizen of the United States, and that I will, to the best of my ability, resist corporate control of the world, resist militarism, resist the roll-back of civil rights, and resist illegitimate authority in all its forms.

Citizenship in the United States involves more than "just voting". Part of making good on citizenship is being informed and among the ways to get informed is through the media. The role of media in the US can be enumerated as follows:

1. Provide an independent source of factual information. The two other main sources of information in the US are the government and the corporate world. Media plays a very important role in corroborating the information produced by the other two sources.
2. Provide a framework or a context for the information, whether historical, social, political, or economic relevance.
3. Provide as wide a range of opinion as possible, both from official sources (government and corporate) and unofficial (the public).
   

Especially during crises, the role of media becomes heightened and critical. A country that prides itself on adherence to a constitution and institutions of process to decide its actions should value the truth at all times and search for it fervently during times of crises. We see some samples of the failure of media recently.

1. In terms of providing factual information, the failure that we observed in the run-up to the Iraq war was evident and seen by many in the world and proven more recently.
2. In terms of providing a context for the information and facts, we see a blatant failure in the Middle East and the situation between Israel and the Arabs.
3. The range of opinion we get from the current media runs the gamut from A to .... B. Most of the information available from the media regarding Iraq has been from the military establishment and the retired military establishment. Other sources and points of view were marginalized and discounted without bringing out the information to the public.
   

Failure of the media to fulfill its role stems mostly from systemic problems (and therefore cannot be termed failure in reality).

1. The structure of mainstream media in the US is corporate, for profit entities. Therefore it is difficult to isolate from the corporate information centers and not able to challenge them.
2. The set of professional practices that the media follow are not objective enough. They deal in objectivity, yet they favor officials that frame the news, does not allow oneself to ignore personal prejudices and truly feret out made up data
3. The whole media sector is necessarily beholden to the idealogy of the Benevolent Empire when it comes to international news and to the understanding of capitalism as a system (not as a theory among theories as in Europe) [More on this at the end of this post]
   

How is it possible to solve or resolve this? It is actually a failure of democray not the failure of journalism. Whatever the first issue is, media is the second. This is what is needed:

1. A healthy media system is diversified and not overwhelmingly corporate. Public and alternative media exist.
   
2. The public broadcast has to be greatly expanded (professional journalism)
   
3. Grassroots media operations (non-professional and citizen media)
   

These items can be accomplished as follows:

1. Working journalist need to be empowered to have control over their work. This may be done through the unionizing of journalists to a certain extent.
   
2. Citizens need to demand accountability for the right of use of the airwave. The broadcasting companies purchase the license from the public trust and make a lot of money from it. They have to be accountable to the public.
3. The public and citizens have to continue and expand support for alternative media.

The Naturalizing of Capitalism

Professor Robert Jensen discussed the view of capitalism from within the US. While he did not condemn captialism, per se, he was critical of how it is viewed as a fait accompli in the US, just the way it is practised, with no room for modifications. Capitalism is modified in Europe to a certain extent and it vies for a segment of the mind in addition to other forms of financial compensation or as the key driver of societies.

The Benevolent Empire

Professor Robert Jensen argues that the US has always been an empire and more so after World War II. And it is only recently that this is being admitted in the media. The US empire controls in a different way than the colonizing empires of old, usurping culture and supporting dictators. Nevertheless, it still is an empire.

One difference is that the public believes, or evidence is presented for the public to believe, that even if the US is an empire, it is benevolant. That we only want what is best for the other nations and not take from them for our benefit. Of course, the public may have this feeling, but the reality on the ground for the nations of the world is different. The US has a strong history of supporting dictators that are against their own people and that, somehow, benefit the US, only to be toppled when they change their tune. Saddam Hussein is the most recent example of this. But there were many before him.

Conclusion

Very simply, the conclusion is that concentrations of power are dangerous wherever they occur. In today's climate we need to react to how far to the right US politics are and encourage use of our freedoms. In a depoliticized country freedoms are not used.

Some more articles by Professor Robert Jensen

• It's not just the emperor who is naked, it's the whole empire
• The US has lost the Iraq war, and that is a good thing
• US still adrift in the Middle East
• Your Rich Men are Full of Violence
  

Back to posting again

Somewhere and sometime in the frenzy of the campaign and the inundation of information, messages and confused not-entirely-true statements of both sides, it quickly became impractical for me to comment on all that I wanted to comment about.

Anyway, now that the election is over and things are settled down, it is really time to evaluate the political situation that we Americans find ourselves in viz-a-viz:

• Our internal bi-coastal/heartland division
• Our relationship with the rest of the world
• Definition of values (seems that is what everyone is looking for, but what values?)

I will try to keep my thoughts short (so I can blog them) and I invite your comments to any of my blogs. For those very interesting comments, I will edit my blog and include them to make the reading more interesting.

Also I will be adding the RSS feed to the blog today. Use it if you find this blog interesting.