{"id":167283,"date":"2020-08-31T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2020-08-31T11:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=167283"},"modified":"2020-08-24T10:50:01","modified_gmt":"2020-08-24T09:50:01","slug":"independence-of-journalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2020\/08\/independence-of-journalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Independence of Journalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mark Twain famously said that \u201cit is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his unpublished introduction to Animal Farm, devoted to \u201cliterary censorship\u201d in free England, George Orwell added a reason for this prudence: there is, he wrote, a \u201cgeneral tacit agreement that \u2018it wouldn\u2019t do\u2019 to mention that particular fact.\u201d The tacit agreement imposes a \u201cveiled censorship\u201d based on \u201can orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question,\u201d and \u201canyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness\u201d even without \u201cany official ban.\u201d<\/p>\n

We witness the exercise of this prudence constantly in free societies. Take the US-UK invasion of Iraq, a textbook case of aggression without credible pretext, the \u201csupreme international crime\u201d defined in the Nuremberg judgment. It is legitimate to say that it was a \u201cdumb war,\u201d a \u201cstrategic blunder,\u201d even \u201cthe greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy\u201d in President Obama\u2019s words, highly praised by liberal opinion. But \u201cit wouldn\u2019t do\u201d to say what it was, the crime of the century, though there would be no such hesitancy if some official enemy had carried out even a much lesser crime.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The prevailing orthodoxy does not easily accommodate such a figure as General\/President Ulysses S. Grant, who thought there never was \u201ca more wicked war than that waged by the United States on Mexico,\u201d taking over what is now the US Southwest and California, and who expressed his shame for lacking \u201cthe moral courage to resign\u201d instead of taking part in the crime.<\/p>\n

Subordination to the prevailing orthodoxy has consequences. The not-so-tacit message is that we should only fight smart wars that are not blunders, wars that succeed in their objectives \u2013 by definition just and right according to prevailing orthodoxy even if they are in reality \u201cwicked wars,\u201d major crimes. Illustrations are too numerous to mention. In some cases, like the crime of the century, the practice is virtually without exception in respectable circles.<\/p>\n

Another familiar aspect of subordination to prevailing orthodoxy is the casual appropriation of orthodox demonization of official enemies. To take an almost random example, from the issue of the New York Times that happens to be in front of me right now, a highly competent economic journalist warns of the populism of the official demon Hugo Chavez, who, once elected in the late \u201890s, \u201cproceeded to battle any democratic institution that stood in his way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Turning to the real world, it was the US government, with the enthusiastic support of the New York Times, that (at the very least) fully supported the military coup that overthrew the Chavez government \u2013 briefly, before it was reversed by a popular uprising. As for Chavez, whatever one thinks of him, he won repeated elections certified as free and fair by international observers, including the Carter Foundation, whose founder, ex-President Jimmy Carter, said that \u201cof the 92 elections that we\u2019ve monitored, I would say the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.\u201d And Venezuela under Chavez regularly ranked very high in international polls on public support for the government, and for democracy (Chile-based Latinobar\u00f3metro).<\/p>\n

There were doubtless democratic deficits during the Chavez years, such as the repression of the RCTV channel, which elicited enormous condemnation. I joined, also agreeing that it couldn\u2019t happen in our free society. If a prominent TV channel in the US had supported a military coup as RCTV did, then it wouldn\u2019t be repressed a few years later, because it would not exist: the executives would be in jail, if they were still alive.<\/p>\n

But orthodoxy easily overcomes mere fact.<\/p>\n

Failure to provide pertinent information also has consequences. Perhaps Americans should know that polls run by the leading US polling agency found that a decade after the crime of the century, world opinion regarded the United States as the greatest threat to world peace, no competitor even close; surely not Iran, which wins that prize in US commentary. Perhaps instead of concealing the fact, the press might have performed its duty of bringing it to public attention, along with some consideration of what it means, what lessons it yields for policy. Again, dereliction of duty has consequences.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Examples such as these, which abound, are serious enough, but there are others that are far more momentous. Take the electoral campaign of 2016 in the most powerful country in world history. Coverage was massive, and instructive. Issues were almost entirely avoided by the candidates, and virtually ignored in commentary, in accord with the journalistic principle that \u201cobjectivity\u201d means reporting accurately what the powerful do and say, not what they ignore. The principle holds even if the fate of the species is at stake \u2013 as it is: both the rising danger of nuclear war and the dire threat of environmental catastrophe.<\/p>\n

The neglect reached a dramatic peak on November 8, a truly historic day. On that day Donald Trump won two victories. The less important one received extraordinary media coverage: his electoral victory, with almost 3 million fewer votes than his opponent, thanks to regressive features of the US electoral system. The far important victory passed in virtual silence: Trump\u2019s victory in Marrakech, Morocco, where some 200 nations were meeting to put some serious content into the Paris agreement on climate change a year earlier. On November 8, the proceedings halted. The remainder of the conference was largely devoted to trying to salvage some hope with the US not only withdrawing from the enterprise but dedicated to sabotaging it by sharply increasing the use of fossil fuels, dismantling regulations, and rejecting the pledge to assist developing countries shift to renewables.<\/p>\n

All that was at stake in Trump\u2019s most important victory was the prospects for organized human life in any form that we know. Accordingly, coverage was virtually zero, keeping to the same concept of \u201cobjectivity\u201d as determined by the practices and doctrines of power.<\/p>\n

A truly independent press rejects the role of subordination to power and authority. It casts the orthodoxy to the winds, questions what \u201cright-thinking people will accept without question,\u201d tears aside the veil of tacit censorship, makes available to the general public the information and range of opinions and ideas that are a prerequisite for meaningful participation in social and political life, and beyond that, offers a platform for people to enter into debate and discussion about the issues that concern them. By doing so it serves its function as a foundation for a truly free and democratic society.<\/p>\n

____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as “the father of modern linguistics,” Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He has spent more than half a century at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is Institute Professor Emeritus, and is the author of over 100 books on topics such as linguistics, war, politics, mass media,<\/em> US foreign policy, social issues, Latin American and European history, and more.<\/em> noamchomsky@\u200bemail.arizona.edu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 chomsky.info<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A truly independent press rejects the role of subordination to power and authority. It casts the orthodoxy to the winds, questions what \u201cright-thinking people will accept without question,\u201d tears aside the veil of tacit censorship, makes available to the general public the information and range of opinions and ideas that are a prerequisite for meaningful participation in social and political life, and beyond that, offers a platform for people to enter into debate and discussion about the issues that concern them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":141372,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62],"tags":[378,234],"class_list":["post-167283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-media","tag-journalism","tag-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}