" Making News" And The Corporate Media In America
By Timothy V. Gatto
04 August,
2008
Countercurrents.org
I’m probably no different than most people in this country in that I’m constantly re-evaluating this presidential race, especially when I am presented with information that is new (to me at least). I don’t claim to know everything about all the candidates and I probably won’t know what I really need to know to make a conscious, informed decision. The truth is that I’m still finding out information about past campaigns even now.
The reason for this is because now that these campaigns are over, information that was considered damaging or would confuse voters now isn’t. I believe that another reason is that in order to appeal to all of the different factions that a candidate must impress in order to win their support, certain beliefs and opinions that politicians have must be suppressed, least they alienate more voters than they gain.
This is unfortunately something that’s endemic to all political campaigns. The media of the 21st century makes it even more important to guard certain items of political interest in that the lack of real content about political campaigns, and the time given to pundits to talk about the campaigns, is totally skewed. The networks only understand that the public’s interest in the presidential race is their top priority, so the networks allocate a great deal of airtime to it. It’s up to the individual producers of these shows to fill up the time slots with interesting content, but on some days very little news emerges, it’s now up to them to ‘manufacture” the content they need. If they can not only succeed in producing the content they need, but they can also come up with something that grows “legs” and becomes a whole new issue, they can provide content for many more shows.
This is what I believe happened with Obama’s remarks about the McCain campaign when he mentioned that his face doesn’t look like the other faces of other Presidents on our money. Sure he said it, but it was an innocuous remark that was meant to show he was different than those that had come before, and that was totally blown out of proportion. It was extremely good for the media however, in that it now opened an entirely new avenue that could provide content for weeks to come. This new and exciting avenue was bound to be explored; it was just waiting for the right moment. “The race card” was now being played. Now the networks could examine who played it, why it was being played and who would benefit. The campaign obliged by making charges against each other and counter-charges. Interviews could now center on this “development” and this would infuse the campaign with a new dynamic.
The beauty of the tactic by the media of ascribing importance to events or statements that otherwise wouldn’t really be of great significance, is that who is there to call them out on what they did? There are really no independent news outlets that have national exposure. There are the newspapers and columnists that could expose them for “manufacturing” the news, but do they really want to make enemies of the networks that mention them and plug their columns nationally and invite them on shows to provide “independent analysis”? I don’t believe that the networks, or any news outlets for that matter, are held responsible to the extent that they should be held responsible.
Sometimes we lay the blame the lack of transparency of political campaigns on the candidates without trying to understand why that is. I believe that candidates would be more forthcoming if the media was more interested in the facts than it was on sensationalism. The media was more responsible when the networks were owned by the networks. The days of Walter Cronkite when Americans “trusted” networks to bring them unbiased news are gone. While some Americans believe that an example like this particular “race card” story underscores the honesty of American television’s fearlessness in stepping on toes, they don’t realize that it was the networks that decided what was to be “news” in the first place. One only has to look at the corporate coverage during the lead-up to the Iraq War to understand how complicit the media is in government propaganda.
There is a solution to the media’s problem of how to provide content during the days when the campaigns or the candidates fail to make news worth reporting on. It’s as simple as this; there are questions that aren’t being asked and positions that aren’t being evaluated. Why are we still wondering if Senator Barack Obama will rescind the assaults on the Constitution? Why can’t we hear what John McCain’s definition of “winning” in Iraq is? Why can’t we hear about former Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s ideas? Then there is Nader and Barr and Moore and other third party candidates most Americans know nothing about. I believe that some people, if they only watch TV for their news, would believe that there are only two political parties in this country. It’s not unpatriotic to report on third party candidates. It sure would better than making up news stories.
There is not much difference between any of the networks. What passes
for news on one, passes for news on the others. This is a big country,
and an even bigger world. If these networks really wanted to report
the news it would be an effort to report everything that happens in
a 24 hour period, even on a 24 hour news channel. It is a sad commentary
that with so many technological advances that have happened since
TV first came on the scene; we still see the same news on all the
channels. It’s even sadder that all the news offered can be
shown on a twenty minute loop. There are so many questions and so
few answers. So much is happening and so little reported on. So many
news organizations are cutting staff and relying on wire services.
It is no wonder that so many are becoming more ignorant with each
passing day. If you are reading this you at least know where to look
for an alternative and that is a gift that we should all be grateful
for.
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