Munich American Peace Committee (MAPC)
BILL MOYERS
Journalismus und Demokratie
Bill Moyers ist einer der
bekanntesten und respektiertesten
amerikanischen Journalisten. Der Pressesprecher von Lyndon B. Johnson
wurde später Leitender Nachrichtenredakteur bei "CBS Evening News"
und Chefkorrespondent von "CBS Reports". Das neueste Buch des
Bestsellerautors und Gewinners von mehr als 30 Emmy Awards heißt
"Moyers on America".
Am 8. November 2003 hielt Bill Moyers
in Madison, Wisconsin
folgende Rede:
- 1 -
Es schmeichelt mir sehr, vor diesem hochkarätigen Gremium, das
sich eine Reform der Medien vorgenommen hat, sprechen zu dürfen.
Wie viele andere, möchte auch ich nicht mit allem, was sich so
"Medien" nennt, in einen Topf geschmissen werden. Um so nötiger
und dringender ist eine Medienreform. Dabei geht es um nichts weniger
als um die Rettung der Demokratie. Das klingt alarmierend - und
das soll es auch. Demokratie braucht eine informierte
Öffentlichkeit. Nur 13% der wahlberechtigten Jugendlichen gingen
bei der letzten Präsidentenwahl an die Urnen und selbst von diesen
glauben nur 46%, also ein Viertel aller amerikanischen
Wahlberechtigten, dass man durch Wahlen etwas bewirken kann. Nach einer
Umfrage der Carnegie Cooperation beklagen viele 15-24-Jährige den
Mangel an politischer Information. Damit steht nicht nur die Zukunft
des Journalismus auf dem Spiel, sondern die Freiheit der Vereinigten
Staaten von Amerika.
Allen Lippenbekenntnissen zum Trotz, wird unsere Pressefreiheit
ständig unterminiert:
1. von der Abneigung aller - auch frei gewählter - Regierungen,
sich dem grellen Licht der öffentlichen Kritik zu stellen.
2. der Tendenz der Mediengiganten, demokratische Werte kommerziellen
Interessen zu opfern. Wenn die großen Medienfirmen erst einmal
alle unabhängigen Blätter verschlungen haben, wird der
mündige Bürger seiner letzten Informationsquelle beraubt sein.
Der berühmte Federal Communications Act von 1934 sah die
gegenseitige Kontrolle wirtschaftlicher und demokratischer Interessen
vor. Wie aber sieht es mit dieser Kontrolle aus, wenn Regierung und
privatisiertes Big Media Business Hand in Hand arbeiten oder wenn im
Namen der so genannten "nationalen Sicherheit" mit dem "Top Secret"
Stempel der Zugang zu Nachrichten beliebig gesteuert und manipuliert
wird? Nie zuvor hat eine Regierung so viele Informationen vor ihren
Bürgern und vor ihren verfassungsmäßig gewählten
Kongressabgeordneten geheim gehalten.. Damit komme ich zu
3. der halb-offiziellen Presse, die als Sprachrohr einer
autoritären Regierung, weltweit die Interessen der Mächtigen
vertritt. Man braucht gar nicht das Gespenst rechter Konspiration zu
bemühen um festzustellen, wie sehr der Hunger nach Macht den Markt
der politischen Ideen dominiert.
Alle - angefangen vom Wall Street Journal, dem Rupert Murdoch
Empire und den geschwätzigen kommerziellen Mini-Stationen bis hin
zu den Legionen bezahlter rechts gerichteter Think Tanks - bieten den
sektiererischen, Gewinn orientierten Kräften genau die Plattform,
die sie zur Demontage unserer Ideale von Gleichheit und Demokratie
benötigen. Angesichts einer schwachen politischen Opposition
kann nur der Journalismus die hegemonialen Ambitionen der Regierung in
Schach halten und eine weitere Medienkonzentration verhindern. Es
bedeutet den Tod der Demokratie, wenn freie, unabhängige
Journalisten daran gehindert werden, die Wahrheit zu sagen. Kritische
Medien aufzukaufen, ist der einfachste Weg, um sie zum Schweigen zu
bringen. Jane Kramers Artikel über Sivlio Berlusconi im New Yorker
läßt es uns eiskalt über den Rücken laufen. Der
italienische Premier ist der reichste Mann des Landes; zusammen mit
Familie und Freunden kontrolliert er direkt oder indirekt das
staatliche Fernsehen, Radiosender, drei von vier
Privatfernsehstationen, zwei große Verlage, zwei
überregionale Zeitungen, 50 Zeitschriften und die
größte italienische Filmproduktions- und
vertriebs-Gesellschaft. Und weil ihm das alles noch nicht genügt,
versucht er im Parlament ein Gesetz durchzupauken, das ihm noch mehr
Medienaufkäufe gestatten würde. Bereits jetzt arbeiten 50%
aller italienischen Journalisten für Berlusconi. So ist es kein
Wunder, dass er beliebig schalten und walten kann und trotz
Gesetzesübertretungen, Interessenkonflikten, Korruptions- und
Geldwäsche-Vorwürfen kontrolliert, was in Italien gelesen,
gesehen, gekauft und vor allem - gedacht wird.
Darum geht es heute um mehr als nur um eine "Medienreform". Es geht um
unseren gemeinsamen Kampf für das Überleben der Demokratie
und für eine Regierung durch das Volk und für das Volk.
Lassen Sie uns gemeinsam überlegen, was wir als Journalisten gegen
die Medienmonopole unternehmen können, wie wir Internet,
Kabelfernsehen, Bürgerradiostationen, öffentliche
Rundfunkanstalten und alternative Zeitungen nützen können.
Aber vor allem müssen wir mit Leib und Seele, mit unserem
ganzen Herzen dabei sein, um die Freiheiten zu bewahren, auf die sich
unsere Verfassung gründet.
- 2 -
Zivilcourage ist immer dann gefragt, sobald eine Regierung, in Zeiten
echten oder angeblichen Notstandes Zensur ausüben will. 1971,
während des Vietnam-Krieges, versuchte die Nixon-Regierung, die
Veröffentlichung der "Pentagon Papers" durch die New York Times
und die Washington Post zu unterbinden. Anwälte warnten die beiden
Herausgeber vor einem möglichen Spionageprozess, drei große
Fernsehstationen hatten bereits die Veröffentlichung des Materials
abgelehnt, doch als die wichtigsten Redakteure von Post und Times im
Falle eines Nachgebens mit ihrem Rücktritt drohten, bekamen sie
grünes Licht - das war ein großer Sieg für die
Demokratie!
1979 gelang es auch der demokratischen Carter Regierung nicht, den
Artikel "Wie man eine Wasserstoffbombe baut" der kleinen linken
Zeitung Progressive mit dem Hinweis auf "nationale Sicherheit" zu
verhindern. Können Sie sich eine solche Standfestigkeit auch nur
eines einzigen Repräsentanten unserer heutigen
Medien-Imperien vorstellen? Wie also können wir diejenigen
schützen, die sich für freie und ehrliche Medien einsetzen?
Was können wir als Lehrer, Beamte, Juristen oder Aktivisten
für den Erhalt der schwindenden Meinungsvielfalt beitragen? In der
Anfängen unserer Demokratie, gab es viele, auch kleine durchaus
parteiische Zeitungen, die - wie Alexis de Tocqueville feststellte -
selbst die ländliche Bevölkerung erstaunlich gut informierten
und zu unabhängigen Entscheidungen befähigten. Vor dem
amerikanischen Bürgerkrieg stand die Meinungsvielfalt in hoher
Blüte: Reformer genau so wie Indianerhasser, Ausländerfeinde,
Hurrapatrioten, Frömmler und Landräuber kamen
gleichermaßen zu Wort. Die New York Tribune war berühmt
für ihr stets offenes Ohr für die Anliegen der
Benachteiligten, I.F.Stones kleine "Izzy" spezialisierte sich auf
das Enthüllen von Regierungslügen und amtlichen
Falschmeldungen. Es ist diese Begeisterung für den Kampf für
das Gute, die wir wieder in die Redaktionsstuben zurückbringen
müssen. Der Einzug der teuren Rotationsmaschinen bedeutete nicht
automatisch das Ende des humanistischen Journalismus. Noch 1883
forderte der aus Deutschland eingewanderte Reporter Joseph Pulitzer,
der es als Besitzer der New York World zum Millionär bringen
sollte, Steuerehrlichkeit und geißelte Bestechlichkeit und
Stimmenkauf. Welcher Medienmogul würde heute solche Anliegen
vertreten? Auch noch in den Zeiten des Wachstums, als Städte und
Zeitungen immer größer und reicher wurden, blieb der Reform
orientierte, investigative Journalismus weiter bestehen. Am Anfang des
letzten Jahrhundert sorgten Sozialdarwinismus und der uns auch heute
wohl bekannte grenzenlose Kapitalismus sogar für eine neue
Konjunktur des demokratischen Journalismus. Man prangerte die
Mißstände in Großstädten, Konzernen und Politik
an und informierte über verdorbene Lebensmittel und giftige
Medikamente. Heute geht es im Enthüllungsjournalismus nur um Sex
und Stars, statt um Betrug und Vertrauensmißbrauch. Als der
Communications Act 1934 vorbereitet wurde, forderten - ähnlich wie
heute - Lehrer, Gewerkschaften, Kirchen und andere öffentliche
Institutionen schon lokale Bürgerradios. Doch spätestens
unter Ronald Reagan setzte die große Privatisierungswelle ein,
Redaktionen wurden verkleinert und investigative Reporter entlassen,
während sich der Telecommunications Act von 1996 für die
großen Medien- und Unterhaltungskonzerne als warmer Geldregen
entpuppte, als er ihnen den Zuggriff auf den online-Markt verschaffte.
Um ihren politischen Einfluß noch weiter zu verstärken,
kämpfen die großen Zeitungsmonopole erbittert um Rundfunk-
und Fernsehlizenzen. In dem Buch "Leaving Readers Behind" kritisieren
namhafte Journalisten den Verfall und die Verwahrlosung des
Nachrichtenwesens. In der Hauptstadt Washington berichtet kaum jemand
noch über die Aktivitäten der Regierung und ihrer wichtigsten
Ministerien, Lokalradios bringen keine lokalen Nachrichten, denn es
geht nicht mehr um Information, sondern nur um immer mehr Macht in den
Händen von immer weniger, aber um so einflußreicheren
Konzernen.
- 3 -
Was können wir dagegen tun?
Zuerst müssen wir uns den einzelnen Bürgern zuwenden, also
denen, die heute nicht hier sind. Wir müssen ihnen klar machen,
dass hinter all dem, was sie zu hören, zu sehen und zu lesen
bekommen, politische und wirtschaftliche Machtinteressen stecken. Wir
müssen das Internet für Bürgerradios und
Bürgerfernsehen zugänglich machen, damit sie erfolgreich mit
den kommerziellen Sendern konkurrieren können - damit es in
Amerika keine Berlusconis geben kann.
Ermutigen wir die mainstream Journalisten zu mehr Kritik und
Qualität, denn Nachrichten sind nun einmal keine
Unterhaltungsendung, sie dienen der Information der Bürger und
nicht der Bereicherung der Aktionäre. Journalistenschulen
müssen ihre Studenten auf diese Herausforderungen besser
vorbereiten. Wir brauchen in unseren Redaktionen kritischen Verstand
und Solidarität. Der einzelne Journalist ist gegenüber seinem
Herausgeber machtlos, aber als Berufsverband sind wir stark. Gemeinsam
können wir die Veröffentlichung anonymer Nachrichten und vom
Verteidigungsministerium vorfabrizierter Berichte ablehnen. Das
erfordert viel Mut, aber weniger als den, der tapferen Journalisten,
die für die Wahrheit ins Gefängnis gehen, zum Tode verurteilt
oder heimtückisch ermordet werden.
All dies mag in Ihren Ohren wie Fantasterei klingen, oder auch nicht,
denn es geht dabei um unser aller Überleben. Ich hege keine
romantischen Ideen von Demokratie und Journalismus, aber ich bin
felsenfest davon überzeugt, dass Demokratie und Journalismus
gerade in unserer zynischen und korrupten Zeit zusammengehören,
wenn es um die Linderung menschlichen Leids, um die politische
Erneuerung und um die Rückbesinnung auf freiheitliche Ideale geht.
Der polnische Philosoph Leslie Kolakowski sagte kürzlich, dass es
eine Freiheit ist, auf der alle anderen Freiheiten basieren: die Rede-
und die Pressefreiheit, ohne sie kann keine andere Freiheit
weiterbestehen.
Diese Flamme der Wahrheit gilt es weiterzutragen. Ich bin älter
als die meisten von Ihnen und ich werde nicht mehr lange dabei sein,
aber die Erinnerung an die tapferen Helden und Heldinnen, die
berühmten, wie die vergessenen Journalisten machen mir Mut.
Genauso wie Sie mir Mut machen. Es ist Ihr Kampf. Schauen Sie sich um.
Sie sind nicht allein!
BILL MOYERS
Journalism & Democracy
Madison, Wisconsin 8 November 2003
Bill Moyers is one of America’s best
known and respected journalists. He was Lyndon Johnson’s press
secretary. He was senior news analyst for “CBS Evening News” and chief
correspondent for “CBS Reports.” He is the winner of the more than 30
Emmy Awards, and the author of several bestsellers. His latest book is
Moyers on America. A longtime fixture on PBS, he’s stepping down in
late 2004 as anchor and managing editor of “Now with Bill Moyers.”
I’m flattered to be speaking to a gathering as high-powered as this one
that’s come together with an objective as compelling as “media reform.”
I must confess, however, to a certain discomfort, shared with other
journalists, about the very term “media.” Ted Gup, who teaches
journalism at Case Western Reserve, articulated my concerns better than
I could when he wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education (November
23, 2001) that, “The very concept of media is insulting to some of us
within the press who find ourselves lumped in with so many disparate
elements, as if everyone with a pen, a microphone, a camera, or just a
loud voice were all one and the same. …David Broder is not Matt Drudge.
‘Meet the Press’ is not ‘Temptation Island.’ And I am not Jerry
Springer. I do not speak for him. He does not speak for me. Yet ‘the
media’ speaks for us all.” That’s how I felt when I saw Oliver North
reporting on Fox from Iraq, pressing our embattled troops to respond to
his repetitive and belittling question, “Does Fox Rock? Does Fox Rock?”
Oliver North and I may be in the same “media” but we are not part of
the same message. Nonetheless, I accept that I work and all of us live
in “medialand,” and God knows we need some “media reform.” I’m sure you
know those two words are really an incomplete description of the job
ahead. Taken alone, they suggest that you’ve assembled a convention of
efficiency experts, tightening the bolts and boosting the output of the
machinery of public enlightenment, or else a conclave of highminded
do-gooders applauding each other’s sermons. But we need to be – and we
will be – much more than that. Because what we’re talking about is
nothing less than rescuing a democracy that is so polarized it is in
danger of being paralyzed and pulverized.
Alarming words, I know. But the realities we face should trigger
alarms. Free and responsible government by popular consent just can’t
exist without an informed public. That’s a cliché, I know, but I
agree with Adlai Stevenson who once said that truisms are true and
clichés mean what they say (an observation that no doubt helped
to lose him the election.) It’s a reality: Democracy can’t exist
without an informed public.
Here’s an example: Only 13% of eligible young people cast ballots in
the last presidential election. A recent National Youth Survey revealed
that only half of the fifteen hundred young people polled believe that
voting is important, and only 46% think they can make a difference in
solving community problems. We’re talking here about one quarter of the
electorate. The Carnegie Corporation conducted a youth challenge quiz
of l5-24 year-olds and asked them, “Why don’t more young people vote or
get involved?” Of the nearly two thousand respondents, the main answer
was that they did not have enough information about issues and
candidates. Let me rewind and say it again: Democracy can’t exist
without an informed public. So I say without qualification that it’s
not simply the cause of journalism that’s at stake today, but the cause
of American liberty itself. As Tom Paine put it, “The sun never shined
on a cause of greater worth.” He was talking about the cause of a
revolutionary America in 1776. But that revolution ran in good part on
the energies of a rambunctious, though tiny press. Freedom and freedom
of communications were birth-twins in the future United States. They
grew up together, and neither has fared very well in the other’s
absence. Boom times for the one have been boom times for the other.
Yet today, despite plenty of lip service on every ritual occasion to
freedom of the press, radio and TV, three powerful forces are
undermining that very freedom, damming the streams of significant
public interest news that irrigate and nourish the flowering of
self-determination. The first of these is the centuries-old reluctance
of governments – even elected governments – to operate in the sunshine
of disclosure and criticism. The second is subtler and more recent.
It’s the tendency of media giants, operating on big-business
principles, to exalt commercial values at the expense of democratic
value. That is, to run what Edward R. Murrow forty-five years ago
called broadcasting’s “money-making machine” at full throttle.
In so doing they are squeezing out the journalism that tries to get as
close as possible to the verifiable truth; they are isolating serious
coverage of public affairs into ever-dwindling “news holes” or far from
prime- time; and they are gobbling up small and independent
publications competing for the attention of the American people.
It’s hardly a new or surprising story. But there are fresh and
disturbing chapters. In earlier times our governing bodies tried to
squelch journalistic freedom with the blunt instruments of the law –
padlocks for the presses and jail cells for outspoken editors and
writers. Over time, with spectacular wartime exceptions, the courts and
the Constitution struck those weapons out of their hands. But they’ve
found new ones now, in the name of “national security.” The
classifier’s Top Secret stamp, used indiscriminately, is as potent a
silencer as a writ of arrest.
And beyond what is officially labeled “secret” there hovers a culture
of sealed official lips, opened only to favored media insiders like Bob
Novak. We have a of government by leak and innuendo and spin, of
misnamed “public information” offices that churn out blizzards of
releases filled with self-justifying exaggerations and, occasionally,
just plain damned lies. Censorship without officially appointed censors.
Add to that the censorship-by-omission of consolidated media empires
digesting the bones of swallowed independents, and you’ve got a major
shrinkage of the crucial information that thinking citizens can act
upon. People saw that coming as long as a century ago when the rise of
chain newspaper ownerships, and then of concentration in the young
radio industry, became apparent. And so in the zesty progressivism of
early New Deal days, the Federal Communications Act of 1934 was passed
(more on this later.) The aim of that cornerstone of broadcast policy,
mentioned over 100 times in its pages, was to promote the “public
interest, convenience and necessity.” The clear intent was to prevent a
monopoly of commercial values from overwhelming democratic values – to
assure that the official view of reality – corporate or government –
was not the only view of reality that reached the people. Regulators
and regulated, media and government were to keep a wary eye on each
other, preserving those checks and balances that is the bulwark of our
Constitutional order. What would happen, however, if the contending
giants of big government and big publishing and broadcasting ever
joined hands? Ever saw eye to eye in putting the public’s need for news
second to free-market economics? That’s exactly what’s happening now
under the ideological banner of “deregulation.” Giant megamedia
conglomerates that our founders could not possibly have envisioned are
finding common cause with an imperial state in a betrothal certain to
produce not the sons and daughters of liberty but the very kind of
bastards that issued from the old arranged marriage of church and state.
Consider where we are today. Never has there been an administration so
disciplined in secrecy, so precisely in lockstep in keeping information
from the people at large and – in defiance of the Constitution – from
their representatives in Congress. Never has the so powerful a media
oligopoly – the word is media mogul Barry Diller’s, not mine – been so
unabashed in reaching like Caesar for still more wealth and power.
Never have hand and glove fitted together so comfortably to manipulate
free political debate, sow contempt for the idea of government itself,
and trivialize the people’s need to know. When the journalist-historian
Richard Reeves was once asked by a college student to define “real
news”, he answered: “The news you and I need to keep our freedoms.”
When journalism throws in with power that’s the first news marched by
censors to the guillotine. The greatest moments in the history of the
press came not when journalists made common cause with the state but
when they stood fearlessly independent of it.
Which brings me to the third powerful force – beyond governmental
secrecy and megamedia conglomerates – that is shaping what Americans
see, read, and hear. I am talking now about that quasi-official
partisan press ideologically linked to an authoritarian administration
that in turn is the ally and agent of the most powerful interests in
the world. This convergence dominates the marketplace of political
ideas today in a phenomenon unique in our history. You need not harbor
the notion of a vast, right wing conspiracy to think this collusion
more than pure coincidence. Conspiracy is unnecessary when ideology
hungers for power and its many adherents swarm of their own accord to
the same pot of honey. Stretching from the editorial pages of the Wall
Street Journal to the faux news of Rupert Murdoch’s empire to the
nattering nabobs of no-nothing radio to a legion of think tanks paid
for and bought by conglomerates – the religious, partisan and corporate
right have raised a mighty megaphone for sectarian, economic, and
political forces that aim to transform the egalitarian and democratic
ideals embodied in our founding documents.
Authoritarianism. With no strong opposition party to challenge such
triumphalist hegemony, it is left to journalism to be democracy’s best
friend. That is why so many journalists joined with you in questioning
FCC chair Michael Powell’s bid – blessed by the White House – to permit
further concentration of media ownership. If free and independent
journalism committed to telling the truth without fear or favor is
suffocated, the oxygen goes out of democracy. And there is a surer way
to intimidate and then silence mainstream journalism than to be the
boss.
If you doubt me, read Jane Kramer’s chilling account in the current New
Yorker of Silvio Berlusconi. The Prime Minister of Italy is its richest
citizen. He is also its first media mogul. The list of media that he or
his relatives or his proxies own, or directly or indirectly control,
includes the state television networks and radio stations, three of
Italy’s four commercial television networks, two big publishing houses,
two national newspapers, fifty magazines, the country’s largest movie
production-and-distribution company, and a chunk of its Internet
services. Even now he is pressing upon parliament a law that would
enable him to purchase more media properties, including the most
influential paper in the country. Kramer quotes one critic who says
that half the reporters in Italy work for Berlusconi, and the other
half think they might have to.
Small wonder he has managed to put the Italian State to work to
guarantee his fortune – or that his name is commonly attached to such
unpleasant things as contempt for the law, conflict of interest,
bribery, and money laundering. Nonetheless, “his power over what other
Italians see, read, buy, and, above all, think, is overwhelming.” The
editor of The Economist, Bill Emmott, was asked recently why a British
magazine was devoting so much space to an Italian Prime Minister. He
replied that Berlusconi had betrayed the two things the magazine stood
for: capitalism and democracy. Can it happen here? You’re damn right.
It can happen here. By the way, Berlusconi’s close friend is Rupert
Murdoch. On July 3lst this year, writes Jane Kramer, programming on
nearly all the satellite hookups in Italy was switched automatically to
Murdoch’s Sky Italia.
So the issues bringing us here are bigger and far more critical than
simply “media reform.” That’s why, before I go on, I want to ask you to
look around you. I’m serious: Look to your left and now to your right.
You are looking at your allies in one of the great ongoing struggles of
the American experience – the struggle for the soul of democracy, for
government “of, by, and for the people.” It’s a battle we can win only
if we work together. We’ve seen that this year. Just a few months ago
the FCC, heavily influenced by lobbyists for the newspaper,
broadcasting and cable interests, prepared a relaxation of the rules
governing ownership of media outlets that would allow still more
diversity-killing mergers among media giants. The proceedings were
conducted in virtual secrecy, and generally ignored by all the major
media, who were of course interested parties. In June, Chairman Powell
and his two Republican colleagues on the FCC announced the revised
regulations as a done deal. But they didn’t count on the voice of
independent journalists and citizens like you. Because of coverage in
independent outlets – including PBS, which was the only broadcasting
system that encouraged its journalists to report what was really
happening – and because citizens like you took quick action, this
largely invisible issue burst out as a major political cause and
ignited a crackling public debate. You exposed Powell’s failure to
conduct an open discussion of the rule changes save for a single
hearing in Richmond, Virginia.
Your efforts led to a real participatory discussion, with open meetings
in Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, New York and Atlanta. Then the
organizing that followed generated millions of letters and “filings” at
the FCC opposing the change. Finally, the outcry mobilized unexpected
support for bi-partisan legislation to reverse the new rules that
cleared the Senate – although House Majority Leader Tom DeLay still
holds it prisoner in the House. But who would have thought six months
ago that the cause would win support from such allies as Senator Trent
Lott or Kay Bailey Hutchinson, from my own Texas. You have moved “media
reform” to center-stage, where it may even now become a catalyst for a
new era of democratic renewal.
We working journalists have something special to bring to this work.
This weekend at your conference there will be plenty of good talk about
the mechanics of reform. What laws are needed? What advocacy programs
and strategies? How can we protect and extend the reach of those tools
that give us some countervailing power against media monopoly –
instruments like the Internet, cable TV, community-based radio and
public broadcasting systems, alternative journals of news and opinion.
But without passion, without a message that has a beating heart, these
won’t be enough. There’s where journalism comes in. It isn’t the only
agent of freedom, obviously; in fact, journalism is a deeply human and
therefore deeply flawed craft – yours truly being a conspicuous
example. But at times it has risen to great occasions, and at times it
has made other freedoms possible.
That’s what the drafters of the First Amendment knew and it’s what we
can’t afford to forget. So to remind us of what our free press has been
at its best and can be again, I will call on the help of unseen
presences, men and women of journalism’s often checkered but sometimes
courageous past.
Think with me for a moment on the reasons behind the establishment of
press freedom. It wasn’t ordained to protect hucksters, and it didn’t
drop like the gentle rain from heaven. It was fought and sacrificed for
by unpretentious but feisty craftsmen who got their hands inky at their
own hand presses and called themselves simply “printers.” The very
first American newspaper was a little three-page affair put out in
Boston in September of 1690. Its name was Publick Occurrences Both
Foreign and Domestick and its editor was Benjamin Harris, who said he
simply wanted “to give an account of such considerable things as have
come to my attention.” The government shut it down after one issue –
just one issue! – for the official reason that printer Ben Harris
hadn’t applied for the required government license to publish. But I
wonder if some Massachusetts pooh-bah didn’t take personally one of
Harris’s proclaimed motives for starting the paper – “To cure the
spirit of Lying much among us”?
No one seems to have objected when Harris and his paper disappeared –
that was the way things were. But some forty-odd years later when
printer John Peter Zenger was jailed in New York for criticizing its
royal governor, things were different. The colony brought Zenger to
trial on a charge of “seditious libel,” and since it didn’t matter
whether the libel was true or not, the case seemed open and shut. But
the jury ignored the judge’s charge and freed Zenger, not only because
the governor was widely disliked, but because of the closing appeal of
Zenger’s lawyer, Andrew Hamilton. Just hear him! His client’s case was:
“Not the cause of the poor Printer, nor of New York alone, [but] the
cause of Liberty, and ... every Man who prefers Freedom to a Life of
Slavery will bless and honour You, as Men who … by an impartial and
uncorrupt Verdict, [will] have laid a Noble Foundation for securing to
ourselves, our Posterity and our Neighbors, That, to which Nature and
the Laws of our Country have given us a Right, -- the Liberty – both of
exposing and opposing arbitrary Power … by speaking and writing –
Truth.” Still a pretty good mission statement! During the War for
Independence itself most of the three dozen little weekly newspapers in
the colonies took the Patriot side and mobilized resistance by giving
space to anti-British letters, news of Parliament’s latest outrages,
and calls to action. But the clarion journalistic voice of the
Revolution was my hero, the onetime editor of the Pennsylvania
Magazine, Tom Paine, a penniless recent immigrant from England where he
left a trail of failure as a businessman and husband. In 1776 – just
before enlisting in Washington’s army – he published Common Sense, a
hardhitting pamphlet that slashed through legalisms and doubts to make
an uncompromising case for an independent and republican America. It’s
been called the first best seller, with as many as 100,000 copies
bought by a small literate population.
Paine followed it up with another convincing collection of essays
written in the field and given another punchy title, The Crisis. Passed
from hand to hand and reprinted in other papers, they spread the gospel
of freedom to thousands of doubters. And why I bring Paine up here is
because he had something we need to restore – an unwavering
concentration to reach ordinary people with the message that they
mattered and could stand up for themselves. He couched his gospel of
human rights and equality in a popular style that any working writer
can envy.
“As it is my design,” he said, “to make those that can scarcely read
understand, I shall therefore avoid every literary ornament and put it
in language as plain as the alphabet.” That plain language spun off
memorable one-liners that we’re still quoting. “These are the times
that try men’s souls.” “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.”
“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.” “Virtue is not
hereditary.” Even if your father was president. And this: “Of more
worth is one honest man to society and in the sight of God than all the
crowned ruffians that ever lived.” I don’t know what Paine would have
thought of political debate by bumper sticker and sound bite but he
could have held his own in any modern campaign.
There were also editors who felt responsible to audiences that would
dive deep. In 1787 and ‘88 the little New-York Independent Advertiser
ran all eighty-five numbers of The Federalist, those serious essays in
favor of ratifying the Constitution. They still shine as clear
arguments, but they are, and they were, unforgiving in their demand for
concentrated attention. Nonetheless, The Advertiser felt that it owed
the best to its readers, and the readers knew that the issues of
selfgovernment deserved their best attention. I pray your goal of
“media reform” includes a press as conscientious as the New- York
Advertiser, as pungent as Common Sense, and as publicspirited as both.
Because it takes those qualities to fight against the relentless
pressure of authority and avarice. Remember, back in l79l, when the
First Amendment was ratified, the idea of a free press seemed safely
sheltered in law. It wasn’t. Only seven years later, in the midst of a
war scare with France, Congress passed and John Adams signed the
infamous Sedition Act. The act made it a crime – just listen to how
broad a brush the government could swing – to circulate opinions
“tending to induce a belief” that lawmakers might have unconstitutional
or repressive motives, or “directly or indirectly tending” to justify
France or to “criminate,” whatever that meant, the President or other
Federal officials. No wonder that opponents called it a scheme to
“excite a fervor against foreign aggression only to establish tyranny
at home.” John Ashcroft would have loved it.
But here’s what happened. At least a dozen editors refused to be
frightened and went defiantly to prison, some under state prosecutions.
One of them, Matthew Lyon, who also held a seat in the House of
Representatives, languished for four months in an unheated cell during
a Vermont winter. But such was the spirit of liberty abroad in the land
that admirers chipped in to pay his thousand-dollar fine, and when he
emerged his district re-elected him by a landslide. Luckily, the
Sedition Act had a built-in expiration date of 1801, at which time
President Jefferson – who hated it from the first – pardoned those
remaining under indictment. So the story has an upbeat ending, and so
can ours, but it will take the kind of courage that those early
printers and their readers showed.
Courage is a timeless quality and surfaces when the government is
tempted to hit the bottle of censorship again during national
emergencies, real or manufactured. As so many of you will recall, in
1971, during the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration resurrected the
doctrine of “prior restraint” from the crypt and tried to ban the
publication of the Pentagon Papers by The New York Times and the
Washington Post – even though the documents themselves were a
classified history of events during four earlier Presidencies. Arthur
Sulzberger, the publisher of the Times, and Katherine Graham of the
Post were both warned by their lawyers that they and their top managers
could face criminal prosecution under espionage laws if they printed
the material that Daniel Ellsberg had leaked – and, by the way, offered
without success to the three major television networks. Or at the
least, punitive lawsuits or whatever political reprisals a furious
Nixon team could devise. But after internal debates – and the threats
of some of their best-known editors, including Ben Bagdikian who is
here, to resign rather than fold under pressure – both owners gave the
green light – and were vindicated by the Supreme Court. Score a round
for democracy.
Bi-partisan fairness requires me to note that the Carter
administration, in 1979, tried to prevent the Progressive magazine,
published right here in Madison, from running an article called “How to
Make an H-Bomb.” The grounds were a supposed threat to “national
security.” But Howard Morland had compiled the piece entirely from
sources open to the public, mainly to show that much of the
classification system was Wizard of Oz smoke and mirrors. The courts
again rejected the government’s claim, but it’s noteworthy that the
journalism of defiance by that time had retreated to a small left-wing
publication like the Progressive.
In all three of those cases, confronted with a clear and present danger
of punishment, none of the owners flinched. Can we think of a single
executive of today’s big media conglomerates showing the kind of
resistance that Sulzberger, Graham, and Erwin Knoll did? Certainly not
Michael Eisner. He said he didn’t even want “ABC News” reporting on its
parent company, Disney. Certainly not General Electric/NBC’s Robert
Wright. He took Phil Donahue off MSNBC because the network didn’t want
to offend conservatives with a liberal sensibility during the invasion
of Iraq. Instead, NBC brought to its cable channel one Michael Savage
whose diatribes on radio had described non-white countries as
“turd-world nations” and who characterized gay men and women as part of
“the grand plan to cut down on the white race.” I am not sure what it
says that the GE/NBC executives calculated that while Donahue was
offensive to conservatives, Savage was not.
And then there’s Leslie Moonves, the chairman of CBS. In the very week
that the once-Tiffany Network was celebrating its 75th anniversary –
and taking kudos for its glory days when it was unafraid to broadcast
“The Harvest of Shame” and “The Selling of the Pentagon” – the
network’s famous eye blinked.
Pressured by a vociferous and relentless right wing campaign and
bullied by the Republican National Committee – and at a time when
Viacom, its parent company has billions resting on whether the White
House, Congress, and the FCC will allow it to own even more stations
than currently permissible – CBS caved in and pulled the miniseries
about Ronald Reagan that conservatives thought insufficiently
worshipful. The chief honcho at CBS, Les Moonves, says taste, not
politics, dictated his decision. But earlier this year, explaining why
CBS intended to air a series about Adolf Hitler, Moonves sang a
different tune: “If you want to play it safe and put on milquetoast
then you get criticized…There are times when as a broadcaster when you
take chances.” This obviously wasn’t one of those times. Granted,
made-for-television movies about living figures are about as vital as
the wax figures at Madame Tussaud’s – and even less authentic – granted
that the canonizers of Ronald Reagan hadn’t even seen the film before
they set to howling; granted, on the surface it’s a silly tempest in a
teapot; still, when a once-great network falls obsequiously to the
ground at the feet of a partisan mob over a cheesy miniseries that
practically no one would have taken seriously as history, you have to
wonder if the slight tremor that just ran through the First Amendment
could be the harbinger of greater earthquakes to come, when the stakes
are really high. And you have to wonder what concessions the media
tycoons-cumsupplicants are making when no one is looking.
So what must we devise to make the media safe for individuals stubborn
about protecting freedom and serving the truth? And what do we all –
educators, administrators, legislators and agitators – need to do to
restore the disappearing diversity of media opinions? America had
plenty of that in the early days when the republic and the press were
growing up together. It took no great amount of capital and credit –
just a few hundred dollars – to start a paper, especially with a little
political sponsorship and help. There were well over a thousand of them
by 1840, mostly small-town weeklies. And they weren’t objective by any
stretch. Here’s William Cobbett, another Anglo-American hell-raiser
like Paine, shouting his creed in the opening number of his 1790s
paper, Porcupine’s Gazette. “Peter Porcupine,” Cobbett’s self-bestowed
nickname, declared: “Professions of impartiality I shall make none.
They are always useless, and are besides perfect nonsense, when used by
a newsmonger; for, he that does not relate news as he finds it, is
something worse than partial; and . . . he that does not exercise his
own judgment, either in admitting or rejecting what is sent him, is a
poor passive tool, and not an editor.” In Cobbett’s day you could
flaunt your partisan banners as you cut and thrust, and not inflict
serious damage on open public discussion because there were plenty of
competitors. It didn’t matter if the local gazette presented the day’s
events entirely through a Democratic lens. There was always an
alternate Whig or Republican choice handy – there were, in other words,
choices. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted, these many blooming journals
kept even rural Americans amazingly well informed. They also made it
possible for Americans to exercise one of their most democratic habits
– that of forming associations to carry out civic enterprises. And they
operated against the dreaded tyranny of the majority by letting lonely
thinkers know that they had allies elsewhere. Here’s how de Tocqueville
put it in his own words: “It often happens in democratic countries that
many men who have the desire or directed toward that light, and those
wandering spirits who had long sought each other the need to associate
cannot do it, because all being very small and lost in the crowd, they
do not see each other and do not know where to find each other. Up
comes a newspaper that exposes to their view the sentiment or the idea
that had been presented to each of them simultaneously but separately.
All are immediately in the shadows finally meet each other and unite.”
No wandering spirit could fail to find a voice in print. And so in that
pre-Civil War explosion of humanitarian reform movements, it was a
diverse press that put the yeast in freedom’s ferment. Of course there
were plenty of papers that spoke for Indian-haters, immigrant-bashers,
bigots, jingoes and land-grabbers proclaiming America’s Manifest
Destiny to dominate North America. But one way or another, journalism
mattered, and had purpose and direction. Past and present are never as
separate as we think. Horace Greeley, the reformloving editor of the
New York Tribune, not only kept his pages “ever open to the plaints of
the wronged and suffering,” but said that whoever sat in an editor’s
chair and didn’t work to promote human progress hadn’t tasted “the
luxury” of journalism. I liken that to the words of a kindred spirit
closer to our own time, I.F. Stone. In his four-page little I.F.
Stone’s Weekly, “Izzy” loved to catch the government’s lies and
contradictions in the government’s own official documents. And amid the
thunder of battle with the reactionaries, he said: “I have so much fun
I ought to be arrested.” Think about that. Two newsmen, a century
apart, believing that being in a position to fight the good fight isn’t
a burden but a lucky break. How can our work here bring that attitude
back into the newsrooms?
That era of a wide-open and crowded newspaper playing field began to
fade as the old hand-presses gave way to giant machines with press runs
and readerships in the hundreds of thousands and costs in the millions.
But that didn’t necessarily or immediately kill public-spirited
journalism. Not so long as the new owners were still strong-minded
individuals with big professional egos to match their thick
pocketbooks. When Joseph Pulitzer, a one-time immigrant reporter for a
Germanlanguage paper in St. Louis, took over the New York World in 1883
he was already a millionaire in the making. But here’s his recommended
short platform for politicians: 1. Tax luxuries, 2. Tax Inheritances,
3. Tax Large Incomes, 4. Tax monopolies, 5. Tax the Privileged
Corporation, 6. A Tariff for Revenue, 7. Reform the Civil Service, 8.
Punish Corrupt Officers, 9. Punish Vote Buying, 10. Punish Employers
who Coerce their Employees in Elections. Also not a bad mission
statement. Can you imagine one of today’s huge newspaper chains taking
that on as an agenda?
Don’t get me wrong. The World certainly offered people plenty of the
spice that they wanted – entertainment, sensation, earthy advice on
living – but not at the expense of news that let them know who was on
their side against the boodlers and bosses. Nor did big-time, big-town,
big bucks journalism extinguish the possibility of a reform-minded
investigative journalism that took the name of muckraking during the
Progressive Era. Those days of early last century saw a second great
awakening of the democratic impulse. What brought it into being was a
reaction against the Social Darwinism and unrestrained capitalistic
exploitation that is back in full force today. Certain popular
magazines made space for – and profited by – the work of such
journalists – to name only a few – as Lincoln Steffens, Ida Tarbell,
Upton Sinclair, Samuel Hopkins Adams and David Graham Phillips. They
ripped the veils from – among other things – the shame of the cities,
the crimes of the trusts, the treason of the Senate and the villainies
of those who sold tainted meat and poisonous medicines. And why were
they given those opportunities? Because, in the words of Samuel S.
McClure, owner of McClure’s Magazine, when special interests defied the
law and flouted the general welfare, there was a social debt incurred.
And, as he put it: “We have to pay in the end, every one of us. And in
the end, the sum total of the debt will be our liberty.” Muckraking
lingers on today, but alas, a good deal of it consists of raking
personal and sexual scandal in high and celebrated places. Surely, if
democracy is to be served, we have to get back to putting the rake
where the important dirt lies, in the fleecing of the public and the
abuse of its faith in good government.
When that landmark Communications Act of 1934 was under consideration a
vigorous public movement of educators, labor officials, and religious
and institutional leaders emerged to argue for a broadcast system that
would serve the interests of citizens and communities. A movement like
that is coming to life again and we now have to build on this momentum.
It won’t be easy, because the tide’s been flowing the other way for a
long time. The deregulation pressure began during the Reagan era, when
then-FCC chairman Mark Fowler, who said that TV didn’t need much
regulation because it was just a “toaster with pictures,” eliminated
many public-interest rules. That opened the door for networks to cut
their news staffs, scuttle their documentary units (goodbye to “The
Harvest of Shame” and “The Selling of the Pentagon”), and exile
investigative producers and reporters to the under-funded hinterlands
of independent production. It was like turning out searchlights on dark
and dangerous corners. A crowning achievement of that drive was the
Telecommunications Act of 1996, the largest corporate welfare program
ever for the most powerful media and entertainment conglomerates in the
world – passed, I must add, with support from both parties. And the
beat of “convergence” between once-distinct forms of media goes on at
increased tempo, with the communications conglomerates and the
advertisers calling the tune. As safeguards to competition fall, an
octopus like GE-NBC-Vivendi-Universal will be able to secure cable
channels that can deliver interactive multimedia content – text, sound
and images – to digital TVs, home computers, personal video recorders
and portable wireless devices like cell phones. The goal? To corner the
market on new ways of selling more things to more people for more hours
in the day. And in the long run, to fill the airwaves with customized
pitches to you and your children. That will melt down the surviving
boundaries between editorial and marketing divisions and create a
hybrid known to the new-media hucksters as “branded entertainment.”
Let’s consider what’s happening to newspapers. A study by Mark Cooper
of the Consumer Federation of America reports that two-thirds of
today’s newspaper markets are monopolies. And now most of the country’s
powerful newspaper chains are lobbying for co-ownership of newspaper
and broadcast outlets in the same market, increasing their grip on
community after community. And are they up-front about it? Hear this:
Last December 3 such media giants as The New York Times, Gannett, Cox,
and Tribune, along with the trade group representing almost all the
country’s broadcasting stations, filed a petition to the FCC making the
case for that cross ownership the owners so desperately seek. They
actually told the FCC that lifting the regulation on cross ownership
would strengthen local journalism. But did those same news
organizations tell their readers what they were doing? Not all. None of
them on that day believed they had an obligation to report in their own
news pages what their parent companies were asking of the FCC. As these
huge media conglomerates increase their control over what we see, read,
and hear, they rarely report on how they are themselves are using their
power to further their own interests and power as big business,
including their influence over the political process.
Take a look at a new book called Leaving Readers Behind: The Age of
Corporate Newspapering published as part of the Project on the State of
the American Newspaper under the auspices of the Pew Charitable Trusts.
The people who produced the book all love newspapers – Gene Roberts,
former managing editor of The New York Times; Thomas Kunkel, dean of
the Philip Merrill College of Journalism; Charles Layton, a veteran
wire service reporter and news and feature editor at the Philadelphia
Inquirer, as well as contributors such as Ken Auletta, Geneva
Overholser, and Roy Reed. Their conclusion: The newspaper industry is
in the middle of the most momentous change in its three hundred year
history – a change that is diminishing the amount of real news
available to the consumer.
A generation of relentless corporatization is now culminating in a
furious, unprecedented blitz of buying, selling and consolidating of
newspapers, from the mightiest dailies to the humblest weeklies. It is
a world where “small hometown dailies in particular are being bought
and sold like hog futures. Where chains, once content to grow one
property at a time, now devour other chains whole. Where they are
effectively ceding whole regions of the country to one another, further
minimizing competition. Where money is pouring into the business from
interests with little knowledge and even less concern about the special
obligations newspapers have to democracy.” They go on to describe the
toll that the never-ending drive for profits is taking on the news. In
Cumberland, Maryland, for example, the police reporter had so many
duties piled upon him he no longer had time to go to the police station
for the daily reports. But newspaper management had a cost-saving
solution: put a fax machine in the police station and let the cops send
over the news they thought the paper should have. In New Jersey, the
Gannett chain bought the Asbury Park Press, then sent in a publisher
who slashed fifty-five people from the staff and cut the space for
news, and was rewarded by being named Gannett’s Manager of the Year. In
New Jersey, by the way, the Newhouse and Gannett chains between them
now own thirteen of the state’s nineteen dailies, or seventy three
percent of all the circulation of New Jersey-based papers. Then there
is The Northwestern in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with a circulation of
23,500. Here, the authors report, is a paper that prided itself on
being in hometown hands since the Johnson administration – the Andrew
Johnson administration. But in 1998 it was sold not once but twice,
within the space of two months. Two years later it was sold again: four
owners in less than three years. You’d better get used to it, concluded
Leaving Readers Behind, because the real momentum of consolidation is
just beginning – it won’t be long now before America is reduced to half
a dozen major print conglomerates.
You can see the results even now in the waning of robust journalism. In
the dearth of in-depth reporting as news organizations try to do more
with fewer resources. In the failure of the major news organizations to
cover their own corporate deals and lobbying as well as other forms of
“crime in the suites” such as Enron story. And in helping people
understand what their government is up to. The report by the Roberts
team includes a survey in l999 that showed a wholesale retreat in
coverage of nineteen key departments and agencies in Washington.
Regular reporting of the Supreme Court and State Department dropped off
considerably through the decade. At the Social Security Administration,
whose activities literally affect every American, only The New York
Times was maintaining a full-time reporter and, incredibly, at the
Interior Department, which controls five to six hundred million acres
of public land and looks after everything from the National Park
Service to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, there were no full-time
reporters around. That’s in Washington, our nation’s capital.
Out across the country there is simultaneously a near blackout of local
politics by broadcasters. The public interest group Alliance for Better
Campaigns studied forty-five stations in six cities in one week in
October. Out of 7,560 hours of programming analyzed, only 13 were
devoted to local public affairs – less than one-half of 1% of local
programming nationwide. Mayors, town councils, school boards, civic
leaders get no time from broadcasters who have filled their coffers by
looting the public airwaves over which they were placed as stewards.
Last year, when a movement sprang up in the House of Representatives to
require these broadcasters to obey the law that says they must sell
campaign advertising to candidates for office at the lowest commercial
rate, the powerful broadcast lobby brought the Congress to heel. So
much for the “public interest, convenience, and necessity.” So what do
we do? What is our strategy for taking on what seems a hopeless fight
for a media system that serves as effectively as it sells – one that
holds all the institutions of society, itself included, accountable?
There’s plenty we can do.
Here’s one journalist’s list of some of the overlapping and connected
goals that a vital media reform movement might pursue. First, we have
to take Tom Paine’s example – and Danny Schechter’s advice – and reach
out to regular citizens. We have to raise an even bigger tent than you
have here. Those of us in this place speak a common language about the
“media.” We must reach the audience that’s not here – carry the fight
to radio talk shows, local television, and the letters columns of our
newspapers. As Danny says, we must engage the mainstream, not retreat
from it. We have to get our fellow citizens to understand that what
they see, hear, and read is not only the taste of programmers and
producers but also a set of policy decisions made by the people we vote
for.
We have to fight to keep the gates to the Internet open to all. The web
has enabled many new voices in our democracy – and globally – to be
heard: advocacy groups, artists, individuals, and non-profit
organizations. Just about anyone can speak online, and often with an
impact greater than in the days when orators had to climb on soap box
in a park. The media industry lobbyists point to the Internet and say
it’s why concerns about media concentration are ill founded in an
environment where anyone can speak and where there are literally
hundreds of competing channels. What those lobbyists for big media
don’t tell you is that the traffic patterns of the online world are
beginning to resemble those of television and radio. In one study, for
example, AOL Time Warner (as it was then known) accounted for nearly a
third of all user time spent online. And two others companies – Yahoo
and Microsoft – bring that figure to fully 50%. As for the growing
number of channels available on today’s cable systems, most are owned
by a small handful of companies. Of the ninety-one major networks that
appear on most cable systems, 79 are part of such multiple network
groups such as Time Warner, Viacom, Liberty Media, NBC, and Disney. In
order to program a channel on cable today, you must either be owned by
or affiliated with one of the giants. If we’re not vigilant the
wide-open spaces of the Internet could be transformed into a system in
which a handful of companies use their control over high-speed access
to ensure they remain at the top of the digital heap in the broadband
era at the expense of the democratic potential of this amazing
technology. So we must fight to make sure the Internet remains open to
all as the present-day analogue of that many-tongued world of small
newspapers so admired by de Tocqueville. We must fight for a
regulatory, market and public opinion environment that lets local and
community-based content be heard rather than drowned out by nationwide
commercial programming. We must fight to limit conglomerate swallowing
of media outlets by sensible limits on multiple and cross-ownership of
TV and radio stations, newspapers, magazines, publishing companies and
other information sources. Let the message go forth: No Berlusconis in
America! We must fight to expand a noncommercial media system –
something made possible in part by new digital spectrum awarded to PBS
stations – and fight off attempts to privatize what’s left of public
broadcasting.
Commercial speech must not be the only free speech in America! We must
fight to create new opportunities, through public policies and private
agreements, to let historically marginalized media players into more
ownership of channels and control of content.
Let us encourage traditional mainstream journalism to get tougher about
keeping a critical eye on those in public and private power and keeping
us all informed of what’s important – not necessarily simple or
entertaining or good for the bottom line. Not all news is
“Entertainment Tonight.” And news departments are trustees of the
public, not the corporate media’s stockholders. In that last job,
schools of journalism and professional news associations have their
work cut out. We need journalism graduates who are not only better
informed in a whole spectrum of special fields – and the schools do a
competent job there – but who take from their training a strong sense
of public service. And also graduates who are perhaps a little more
hard-boiled and street-smart than the present crop, though that’s hard
to teach. Thanks to the high cost of education, we get very few
recruits from the ranks of those who do the world’s unglamorous and
low-paid work. But as a onetime “cub” in a very different kind of
setting, I cherish H.L. Mencken’s description of what being a young
Baltimore reporter a hundred years ago meant to him. “I was at large,”
he wrote, “... in a wicked seaport of half a million people with a
front seat at every public … [B]y all orthodox cultural standards I
probably reached my all-time low, for the heavy reading of my teens had
been abandoned in favor of life itself … But it would be an
exaggeration to say I was ignorant, for if I neglected the humanities I
was meanwhile laying in all the worldly wisdom of a police lieutenant,
a bartender, a shyster lawyer or a midwife.” We need some of that
worldly wisdom in our newsrooms. Let’s figure out how to attract
youngsters who have acquired it.
And as for those professional associations of editors they might
remember that in union there is strength. One journalist alone can’t
extract from an employer a commitment to let editors and not
accountants choose the appropriate subject matter for coverage. But
what if news councils blew the whistle on shoddy or cowardly
managements? What if foundations gave magazines such as FAIR’s EXTRA!
and the Columbia Journalism Review sufficient resources to spread their
stories of journalistic bias, failure or incompetence? What if entire
editorial departments simply refused any longer to quote anonymous
sources – or give Kobe Bryant’s trial more than the minimal space it
rates by any reasonable standard – or to run stories planted by the
Defense Department and impossible, for alleged security reasons, to
verify? What if a professional association backed them to the hilt? Or
required the same stance from all its members? It would take courage to
confront powerful ownerships that way.
But not as much courage as is asked of those brave journalists in some
countries who face the dungeon, the executioner or the secret assassin
for speaking out. All this may be in the domain of fantasy. And then
again, maybe not. What I know to be real is that we are in for the
fight of our lives. I am not a romantic about democracy or journalism;
the writer Andre Gide may have been right when he said that all things
human, given time, go badly. But I know journalism and democracy are
deeply linked in whatever chance we human beings have to redress our
grievances, renew our politics, and reclaim our revolutionary ideals.
Those are difficult tasks at any time, and they are even more difficult
in a cynical age as this, when a deep and pervasive corruption has
settled upon the republic. But too much is at stake for our spirits to
flag. Earlier this week the Library of Congress gave the first Kluge
Lifetime Award in the Humanities to the Polish philosopher Leslie
Kolakowski. In an interview Kolakowski said: “There is one freedom on
which all other liberties depend – and that is freedom of expression,
freedom of speech, of print. If this is taken away, no other freedom
can exist, or at least it would be soon suppressed.” That’s the flame
of truth your movement must carry forward. I am older than almost all
of you and am not likely to be around for the duration; I have said for
several years now that I will retire from active journalism when I turn
70 next year.
But I take heart from the presence in this room, unseen, of Peter
Zenger, Thomas Paine, the muckrakers, I.F. Stone and all those heroes
and heroines, celebrated or forgotten, who faced odds no less than ours
and did not flinch. I take heart in your presence here. It’s your fight
now. Look around. You are not alone.
[These are Bill Moyers’ complete remarks. Due to time constraints he
was unable to deliver the entire speech]
Program closing music: Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy — Television,
the Drug of the Nation
Other Bill Moyers AR programs: The Progressive Story of America
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Alternative Radio
P.O. Box 551 Boulder CO 80306
(800) 444-1977
info@alternativeradio.org
www.alternativeradio.org
© 2004
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