America's Parochial Press:
Examining English-Language Media
at Home and Abroad
by Anthony DiMaggio
www.zmag.org, July 13,2007
Is it really possible for the average
citizen to learn that much about international affairs after just
a day or two of following the news? The answer to this question
clearly depends on what sources you choose to follow. Americans
understandably complain that the quality of their national news
is of a noticeably low order. The Pew Research Center's succession
of polls conducted from 1997 through 2005 shows that between 45-63%
of Americans (depending on the year) feel the stories in the news
are "often inaccurate." The same poll shows that, by
a 3-to-1 ratio, Americans feel that the news media is "often
influenced by powerful people and organizations," rather
than serving as an independent medium for evaluating government
policy. According to the 2004 "State of the News Media"
report from the Project for Excellence in Journalism, the public
is "increasingly distrustful of giant [media] corporations"
- "Americans think journalists are sloppier, less professional,
less moral, less caring, more biased, less honest about their
mistakes, and generally more harmful to democracy" than they
were in the past.
Such skepticism of corporate media has
not necessarily been followed by a decline in its power, however.
Nearly half of Americans polled state that they feel the power
and influence of the mass media has increased in recent years;
importantly, more than 6 in 10 still report following network
news programs either "every day" or "several times
per week."
While daily national newspapers have seen
their circulations fall off somewhat in recent years, elite newspapers
and wire services still serve as part of the "agenda setting"
press, as their reporting is picked up and circulated across the
U.S. by regional television and print news outlets that cannot
afford to pursue extensive international reporting on their own.
Newspapers are still considered spectacularly profitable as well,
despite the complaints of media owners about minor declines in
audience size and advertising dollars.
A review of public distrust of media power
is important, if for no other reason, than to show that there
is considerable desire amongst Americans for alternative sources
of information. While there is plenty of information out there
that challenges the propagandistic coverage in the mainstream
press, most people have failed to take advantage. That's a shame,
considering the extraordinary range of opinions that is expressed
throughout English-speaking media outlets throughout the world
(which are easily accessible by any American with a computer and
Internet access).
A review of only two days worth of English-language
stories throughout the globe shows the extent to which critical
views of U.S. foreign policy are available in national mainstream
news outlets, should one choose to look. Concerning the British
press, one can turn to a recent story by the Independent (July
12, 2007), titled "A Dead Iraqi is Just Another Dead IraqiYou
Know, so What?" The story featured interviews with American
war veterans (originally published in the Nation magazine) who
revealed "for the first time the pattern of brutality in
Iraq." A short excerpt from the story stands in stark contrast
to the ways in which the American press has sanitized coverage
of Iraqi civilian deaths:
"Through a combination of gung-ho
recklessness and criminal behavior born of panic, a narrative
emerges of an army that frequently commits acts of cold-blooded
violence. A number of interviewees revealed that the military
will attempt to frame innocent bystanders as insurgents, often
after panicked American troops have fired into groups of unarmed
Iraqis. The veterans said the troops involved would round up any
survivors and accuse them of being in the resistance while planting
Kalashnikov AK47 rifles beside corpses to make it appear that
they had died in combat."
Another story by Rupert Cornwell in the
Independent sets the context of the atrocities in light of the
Bush administration's historically low approval ratings: "Bush
Finds No Way Out of Iraq as Approval Ratings Plunge." In
a third story, "The Impossible Task Set for an Embattled
Government," Patrick Cockburn (July 11) reports that "the
benchmarks the Iraqi government is meant to achieve in exchange
for US support were never realisticThe weak and embattled Iraqi
government is supposed to make changes which the US at the height
of its power in Iraq failed to make stick. At stake are policies
deeply divisive among Iraqis that are to be introduced at the
behest of a foreign power, the US, in a way that makes the Iraqi
government look as if it is a client of America."
In the Guardian of London, readers can
follow commentary condemning the "disgusting story"
of the Bush administration effort to "write off disabled
children," as seen in the testimony of former US Surgeon
General Richard Carmona ("A New Low," by Michael Tomasky,
July 12). Carmona was prohibited from attending a Special Olympics
medal pinning ceremony due to concerns that doing so would aid
the Kennedy family (which has longstanding ties with the charity).
One could also look to an editorial in
the Guardian by Tony Greenstein ("A War on Rationality,"
July 11), denigrating those who highlight the "new anti-Semitism"
- anti-Semitism in this case being defined erroneously as "opposition
to the Israeli state." Greenstein takes aim at those who
condemn legitimate criticisms of Israeli racism (against Palestinians
in specific, and Arabs in general), arguing that "If you
oppose a state where, in an opinion poll, 75% of Jews don't want
to live next to an Arab, why is that anti-Semitic?" Criticisms
of Israeli aggression are widely available in other English news
outlets, as the Daily Star (Lebanon) provides a viewpoint on the
2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon unseen in the American press.
In an editorial titled "Remembering the War, and the Decades
of Israeli Aggression that Preceded it," the paper's editors
deride Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for having "ordered
a disproportionate military response that constituted an irreversible
escalation into a war" in which "many Israeli lives
- and far more Lebanese ones - were lost as a result" (July
12). Even the Israeli press is more open than the American press
when it comes to criticizing Israel's suppression of the Palestinian
people. The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, for example, reports on
the warnings from the World Bank that the "Gaza Strip May
Face 'Irreversible' Economic Collapse" (July 12). Such a
possibility (considered little more than an inconvenient for American
leaders) is omitted from the headlines of major papers like the
New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.
Over at Al Jazeera English, we can find
a more nuanced portrayal of the situation on the ground in Iraq
than seen in the elite American press. Reports from Al Jazeera
and the Daily Star conclude that "progress" in Iraq
under the occupation is highly uncertain, rather than a certainty
(Al Jazeera, "US admits 'Iraq progress mixed,'" July
12, and Daily Star, "Bush Assessment of Iraq a Mixed Review,"
July 12).[1]
Such framing is significantly different
from that of American mainstream papers and Internet outlets,
which suggest a far more optimistic scenario. CNN.com boasts
that the "Mixed Iraq report" was "a 'Cause for
Optimism,' Bush says" (July 12), while FoxNews.com reports
that "Officials say 8 of 18 Benchmarks Met" (July 12).
The New York Times July 12 headlines read
quite favorably to the Bush administration: "Report on Iraq
Sees Progress; Bush Rejects Troop Pullout" (Christine Hauser),
and "Bush to Declare Gains in Iraq on Some Fronts" (David
Cloud and John Burns). The Los Angeles Times lead story declares
that "Bush Sees 'Measurable Progress' in Iraq Report"
(Johanna Neuman, July 12), while the paper continues its deferential
reports of the Bush administration's long debunked claims that
Iraq had ties to Al Qaeda before the U.S. invasion ("Bush
Again Links Iraq War to Al Qaeda," Times Staff Writer, July
11).
While the Washington Post's July 12 edition
did report the Iraq "progress" as a bit more uncertain
("White House Gives Iraq Mixed Marks in Report"), that
initial questioning is largely contradicted and overshadowed by
optimistic stories. The following story, "Progress is Seen
on Half of Iraq Goals" (Karen DeYoung, July 12) suggests
modest success in Iraq, whereas another story, "U.S. Military
Calls Al-Qaeda in Iraq 'Principled Threat'" (Sudarsan Raghavan,
July 12) implies that to pull out of Iraq would be tantamount
to conceding defeat against a primary terrorist threat.
The Post's editorials and op-eds hardly
fair better, as they reinforce a long trend of uncritical administration
support. In "A Consensus Waiting to Happen" (July 12),
David Ignatius argues cautiously for gradual withdrawal, claiming
that "getting out of Iraq is now partly in the hands of the
Democrats who control both houses of Congress. History will be
equally unforgiving if their agitation for withdrawal results
in a pell-mell retreat that causes lasting damage." In "Go
Deep or Get Out" (July 11), Stephen Biddle argues that, while
"Many would like to reduce the U.S. commitment to something
like half of today's troop presence thereit is much harder to
find a mission for the remaining 60,000 to 80,000 soldiers that
makes any sense militarily." The Post's editors themselves
chastise those who support ending the Iraq war for trying to "minimize
the chances of disaster following a U.S. withdrawal: of full-blown
civil war; conflicts spreading beyond Iraq's borders, or genocide"
(Wishful Thinking on Iraq, July 12).
For a more critical analysis of U.S. involvement
in the Middle East, we can again turn abroad. In the Guardian,
political "progress" in Iraq was anything but. The
paper's lead story on July 12 cites that the White House's attempted
Iraq reforms have "stalled" (Mark Tran, Iraq Civilian
Deaths Down but Political Reforms Stalled, says White House").[2]
Subsequent stories of the day focus on the tens of thousands
of civilians and soldiers killed during the U.S. occupation ("Iraqi
Death Toll," July 12), and portray the threat from Al Qaeda
as originating primarily from the Afghan-Pakistan border, not
from within Iraq, as the Washington Post had suggested above (Guardian,
"Al Qaeda Gaining Strength, Report Says," Haroon Siddique,
July 12).
Although Americans are growing increasingly
tired of the poor state of the American news media, we have yet
to see the emergence of powerful countervailing alternative news
sources able to compete on the level of corporate newspapers and
networks in terms of finances and audience sizes. This may be
blamed in part on the vicious cycle that the corporate media holds
over the public. Americans do not read alternative sources they
are not aware of, and as a result, such sources fail to grow due
to lack of public knowledge of them. This explanation seems at
least a bit superficial, however, in that we cannot expect corporate
news organizations to sow the seeds of their own destruction.
It has always been the responsibility of the general citizenry,
not America's political and economic elite, to challenge government
and corporate propaganda by seeking new sources of information.
The facts are in: Americans have plenty of alternative news sources
to turn to outside of the corporate press.[3] But we have major
challenge ahead of us if we are to effectively break the monopoly
corporate media exacts over the American public.
Anthony DiMaggio has taught Middle East
Politics and American Government at Illinois State University.
He is the author of the forthcoming work: Mass Media, Mass Propaganda:
Understanding the News in the "War on Terror" (December
2007). He can be reached at adimag2@uic.edu
Notes
[1] As an English newspaper, the Daily
Star operates in joint partnership with the International Herald
Tribune (which itself owned by the New York Times). The Daily
Star story referenced above was based on an Associated Press story.
The frame of the story, portraying "progress" in Iraq
as uncertain, while based upon an American reporting service (the
AP), stands in marked contrast with the New York Times' propagandistic
coverage on Iraq progress, referenced within this article.
[2] Such a description of the situation
in Iraq from the Guardian was even more interesting considering
that American news sources chose to suggest the opposite of "stalled"
progress, instead preferring guarded optimism.
[3] In addition to the many international
sources cited above, one can look to excellent political analysis
domestically from sources like Z Magazine, Counter Punch, the
Nation, the Progressive, Truthout, and Common Dreams, amongst
others.
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Media
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