{"id":10581,"date":"2013-06-29T09:58:48","date_gmt":"2013-06-29T16:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/?p=10581"},"modified":"2013-06-29T09:58:51","modified_gmt":"2013-06-29T16:58:51","slug":"is-u-s-mass-media-state-controlled","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/is-u-s-mass-media-state-controlled\/","title":{"rendered":"Is U.S. Mass Media State Controlled?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Snowden Coverage: If U.S. Mass Media Were State-Controlled, Would It Look Any Different?<\/h2>\n
\"\"

Journalist Glenn Greenwald<\/p><\/div>\n

by Jeff Cohen<\/a>, June 26, 2013<\/p>\n

The Edward Snowden leaks have revealed a U.S. corporate media system at war with independent journalism. Many of the same outlets\u2014especially TV news\u2014that missed the Wall Street meltdown and cheer-led the Iraq invasion have come to resemble state-controlled media outlets in their near-total identification with the government as it pursues the now 30-year-old whistle blower.<\/p>\n

While an independent journalism system would be dissecting the impacts of NSA surveillance on privacy rights, and separating fact from fiction, U.S. news networks have obsessed on questions like: How much damage has Snowden caused<\/em>? How can he be brought to justice<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Unfazed by polls showing that half of the American rabble\u2014I mean, public\u2014believe Snowden did a good thing by leaking documentation of NSA spying, TV news panels have usually excluded anyone who speaks for these millions of Americans. Although TV hosts and most panelists are not government officials, some have a penchant for speaking of the government with the pronoun \u201cWe.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Snowden made it out of Hong Kong to Russia, New York Times<\/em> journalist and CNBC talking head Andrew Ross Sorkin expressed his frustration<\/a>: \u201cWe\u2019ve screwed this up, to even let him get to Russia.\u201d  By \u201cwe,\u201d he meant the U.S. government.<\/p>\n

Last time I checked, Sorkin was working for the Times<\/em> and CNBC, not the CIA or FBI.<\/p>\n

When a huge swath of the country is on the side of the guy-on-the-run and not the government, it\u2019s much easier to see that there\u2019s nothing \u201cobjective\u201d or \u201cneutral\u201d about journalists who so closely identify with the spy agencies or Justice Department or White House.<\/p>\n

The standard exclusion of dissenting views \u2013 panels often span from hawk (\u201che\u2019s a traitor who needs to be jailed\u201d) to dove (\u201che may have been well-intentioned but he needs to be jailed\u201d) \u2013 offers yet another reason why young people, more libertarian in their views, have turned away from these outlets. Virtually no one speaks for them. While a TIME<\/em> poll<\/a> found 53 percent of respondents saying Snowden did \u201ca good thing,\u201d that was the sentiment of 70 percent of those age 18 to 34.<\/p>\n

I teach college journalism classes about independent media. New developments like WikiLeaks and independent bloggers like Glenn Greenwald may scare the wits out of establishment media, but they sure don\u2019t scare young people or journalism students.<\/p>\n

As media employees at elite outlets have grown cozier with their government and corporate sources (Sorkin is famously close with Wall Street CEOs<\/a>), they exhibit an almost instinctual antipathy toward those adversarial journalists who challenge powerful elites day after day.<\/p>\n

Look at the reactions of some top mainstream journalists to Greenwald, who built up a big readership as a solo blogger before moving his blog to Salon<\/em> and then the Guardian<\/em>, where he broke the Snowden\/NSA stories. I know several journalism professors who view Greenwald as one of the world\u2019s best journalists. He\u2019s known as accurate, thorough, well-documented and ethical.<\/p>\n

It was Sorkin, the New York Times<\/em> guy, who declared on CNBC<\/a> that maybe Greenwald should be arrested: \u201cI told you this in the green room\u2014I would arrest him [Snowden] and now I\u2019d almost arrest Glenn Greenwald, who\u2019s the journalist who seems to be out there, almost, he wants to help him get to Ecuador.\u201d<\/p>\n

If it\u2019s strange for a journalist to suggest another journalist\u2019s arrest, it was almost as strange when Sorkin wrote in a Times<\/em> column that he went down to check out the Occupy Wall Street encampment \u201cafter getting a call<\/a> from the chief executive of a major bank.\u201d Sorkin concluded: \u201cAs I wandered around the park, it was clear to me that most bankers probably don’t have to worry about being in imminent personal danger. This didn’t seem like a brutal group\u2014at least not yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another mainstream media star is NBC\u2019s David Gregory (seen literally dancing with White House source Karl Rove<\/a> in 2007). Since he interviewed Greenwald on Sunday\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press,\u201d there\u2019s been scrutiny of Gregory\u2019s factually-misleading question: \u201cTo the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn\u2019t you be charged with a crime?\u201d And of Greenwald\u2019s response: \u201cI think it\u2019s pretty extraordinary that anybody who would call themselves a journalist would publicly muse about whether or not other journalists should be charged with felonies.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I\u2019m  just as bothered by Gregory\u2019s retort\u2014\u201cWell, the question of who\u2019s a journalist may be up to a debate with regards to what you\u2019re doing”\u2014and the ensuing discussion in mainstream outlets questioning Greenwald\u2019s bona fides as a journalist.<\/p>\n

A Washington Post<\/em> article<\/a> (\u201cOn NSA disclosures, has Glenn Greenwald become something other than a reporter?\u201d) questioned the blogger\u2019s credentials as a journalist because he\u2019s also an advocate: \u201cGreenwald has appeared frequently on TV to plead Snowden’s case as a whistleblower\u2014an advocacy role many mainstream journalists would be uncomfortable with.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Post<\/em> article spoke of \u201cthe line between journalism\u2014traditionally, the dispassionate reporting of facts\u2014and outright involvement in the news seems blurrier than ever.\u201d Libertarian journalist Matt Welch critiqued<\/a> the article as \u201chistorically illiterate.\u201d<\/p>\n

The truth is that many of the greatest journalists in our country\u2019s history\u2014from Ida B. Wells to I.F. Stone<\/a> \u2014were accurate reporters of fact, but hardly dispassionate. And mainstream outlets have always had hybrid reporter\/columnists offering both fact and advocacy; one of the most famous, David Broder, graced the pages of the Washington Post<\/em> for years, including its front page.<\/p>\n

Broder was a reporter, columnist and TV talking head\u2014yet no one questioned whether Broder was a genuine journalist. That\u2019s because, unlike Greenwald, the reporting and opinions of a David Broder were militantly pro-establishment, pro-bipartisan consensus.<\/p>\n

And Broder\u2019s not alone as a hybrid reporter\/columnist in the mainstream. Let\u2019s not forget the delightful pundit who wanted to \u201calmost arrest\u201d Greenwald. His official Times<\/em> bio states: \u201cAndrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist, chief mergers and acquisitions reporter, and editor of Dealbook for The New York Times<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reason Glenn Greenwald\u2019s credentials as a journalist are being questioned by some mainstreamers is not that he blurs the line between journalist and advocate. It\u2019s because of the anti-establishment content of his journalism and advocacy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Jeff Cohen<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Snowden Coverage: If U.S. Mass Media Were State-Controlled, Would It Look Any Different? by Jeff Cohen, June 26, 2013 The Edward Snowden leaks have revealed a U.S. corporate media system at war with independent journalism. Many of the same outlets\u2014especially TV news\u2014that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10581"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10583,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10581\/revisions\/10583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/amicuscuria.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}