Thomas Jefferson periodically expressed support for a free press as essential to an \u201cenlightened citizenry,\u201d but when the reality of political life settled on him during his presidency and beyond, Jefferson had harsh words for it. The newspapers, he complained in 1803, \u201cpresent only the caricatures of disaffected minds.\u201d In his \u201cretirement\u201d a decade later, Jefferson deplored the \u201cputrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them.\u201d The press\u2019 capacity for mischief was ravenous, Jefferson complained. The media of the day, he said, were \u201clike the clergy, [who] live by the zeal they can kindle and the schisms they can create.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jefferson never met 21st century radio and television, with their volatile contributions to the media mix. Today, the media largely offers us the irresponsible, shoddy, pernicious zeal and schisms he so deplored and feared. Recently, Maureen Dowd channeled Jefferson\u2019s criticisms with her searing characterization of her colleagues as \u201cspreading fear and disinformation that is amplified by the poisonous echo chamber that is the modern media environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
The mainstream media marches on, duly disseminating all the managed news fit to print or speak. Witness the reporting on the forthcoming November elections. \u201cForthcoming elections\u201d have equal urgency, whether we are talking 2010 or 2012, and the electoral process provides fertile feeding grounds for the media. \u201cPolitics all the time,\u201d MSNBC trumpets in promotional spots, while arch-rival Fox merely politicizes everything. The marathon that was the 2008 election might have left us politics-exhausted, but did not.<\/p>\n
Since 2008, the media have relentlessly pursued political happenings (and non-happenings), with reporters duly repeating partisan handouts as if they offered \u201cnews,\u201d reading tea leaves or ratcheting up the noise and placards of tea parties. We are bombarded with tales of unrest, anger and disaffection among the natives, anxious to march to polls to toss out the \u201crascal,\u201d that is, incumbents.<\/p>\n
All this, we are to believe, is grass-roots democracy, with folks spontaneously gathering to air their grievances. It offers all the spontaneity of a pointillist painting.<\/p>\n
A year after Barack Obama\u2019s election, a year of apparent grace for the president, media pundits turned attention to the 47 percent who did not support him. His victory left many angry and disaffected, and their hostility soon turned to a visceral hatred, quite often blatantly predicated on race. What else could be the meaning of all the signs and speeches proclaiming a determination \u201cto save the Republic\u201d and \u201cto get our country back?\u201d And along came \u201ctea parties,\u201d a symbolic heralding of \u201crevolution,\u201d not out of nowhere, but well-funded and choreographed by familiar political operatives and ideologues in search of a new vehicle.<\/p>\n
Pros, not amateurs, lead this movement. They well know that hostility, disaffection and anger are red meat for the media, anxious to pursue \u201cnew\u201d story lines, and an easy avenue to disseminate their anti-Obama line. Glenn Beck, of course, provides a divine afflatus. He would have us believe that he decided to hold a \u201cpolitical rally,\u201d but \u201cGod dropped a giant sandbag on my head\u201d and told him he had to awaken America.<\/p>\n
Relatively predictable, our recent minor primary elections largely resulted in victories by familiar or very wealthy faces, and largely devoid of the doomsday scenarios as promised. The opponent of Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, profited from internal Republican feuds and from well-financed marginal groups, particularly the anti-abortion crowd, who made their clout count within the confines of a primary. Silly Sarah\u2019s endorsement of Murkowski\u2019s opponent seemed inconsequential during the campaign; now, of course, her role has been puffed out of proportion.<\/p>\n
The elections largely reflect local contexts; nevertheless they fuel shrill, raucous and often wrongheaded media rants that dominate the national conversation. Meanwhile, more weighty matters go unreported or escape any critical analysis. The media obscures and ignores important stories, with little reporting or understanding of facts, their meaning and their significance. We have no facts, only shrill opinions.<\/p>\n
How are we so easily fooled, so easily deluded? Media obsessions provide the media with an ability to ignore more momentous events. The media fostered a raging obsession over a New York real estate problem, elevating it to national importance and tying it to the electoral fortunes of congressmen, governors and even state representatives.<\/p>\n
And at what cost to an \u201cenlightened citizenry\u201d? Consider the pattern of reporting on the recent withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq and the linkage to the Forever War in Afghanistan. MSNBC, our \u201cliberal\u201d channel, carried live broadcasts of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to compete with their Fox News Nemesis, and dutifully reported that the \u201clast\u201d American combat troops had left Iraq and crossed into Kuwait. The television moment provided a triumphal exit.<\/p>\n
Those troops will not return to the United States as conquering heroes in \u201cvictory parades.\u201d Will they remain in Kuwait? Perhaps; after all, we never know when our Kuwaiti \u201cally\u201d and its sea of oil might be threatened again. More likely, the combat troops will be distributed to Afghanistan or sent to reinforce some of the 800 or so American bases abroad. And what of the more than 50,000 American troops still in Iraq, left behind ostensibly to \u201ctrain\u201d Iraq police and militia, and\u2014surprise\u2014protect the new American bases in Iraq? We are to believe that these \u201cnoncombatants\u201d are out of harm\u2019s way and free from casualties by roadside bombs, suicide bombers or open hostilities.<\/p>\n
The promises for our \u201cnoncombat\u201d role are as thin and vacuous as the now long-forgotten promises of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle\u2014remember them?\u2014that American troops would be welcomed with garlands of flowers as liberators by the Iraqi people, much as they were in Germany and Japan in 1945.<\/p>\n
Almost simultaneously, the military leadership has launched a new PR offensive for the war in Afghanistan. Like his friend, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Gen. David Petraeus likes to talk to the media, although he is far more polished, skilled, and circumspect. But in fact, Petraeus uses the media\u2014certainly a willing enabler\u2014to preach a similar opposition to his civilian leaders, if in less colorful terms.<\/p>\n
In a one-day media blitz he made clear the direction of our efforts in Afghanistan: Make no mistake, they will expand and accelerate. In a lengthy New York Times interview and an appearance on NBC\u2019s \u201cMeet the Press\u201d Petraeus clearly opposed any immediate, rapid pullout in Afghanistan. He forcefully emphasized that we would \u201csucceed,\u201d and he did not intend to lead a \u201cgraceful exit.\u201d He consistently undermined Obama\u2019s earlier promise that our drawdown would begin next July. In the same breath, he argued he would more vigorously pursue the war in Afghanistan. Now, he said, \u201cfor the first time we will have what we have been working to put in place for the last year and a half.\u201d Petraeus emphasized<\/a> that the president wanted his \u201cbest professional military advice,\u201d and for the general that emphatically included advice to delay the president\u2019s promised July 2011 drawdown.<\/p>\n After Petraeus\u2019 day in the media sun, we have had little awareness, little discussion and little understanding of what he said and meant, however essential to the future course of our Afghanistan policy. Instead, by the next day, the media anxiously resumed reflecting the national screams over an Islamic site, some blocks away from the sacred grounds of the former World Trade Center.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the empire rumbles on with little prospect for retrenchment. An enabling media uncritically cheers or silently acquiesces while ignoring very real, profound problems raised by our imperial overreach, as well as the myriad of our domestic ills. Our 21st century media is a skewed monument to all of Jefferson\u2019s concerns and criticisms.<\/p>\n ________________________<\/p>\n