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The Heroic Free Press by Joseph R. Stromberg
A Good Self-Image You’ll never get the heroic investigative journalists of American media on the couch, confessing their sins and blaming their childhood. No, indeed, the knights of the quill hang onto their Woodward-and-Bernstein self-portrait first painted in 1973. They look in the mirror and see Peter Zenger. After all, investigative journalists brought down the tyrant Nixon. Never mind that the press had it in for the Trickster, ever since he attacked them in 1962, after failing to win the governor’s seat in California. Never mind that many in the press only began kicking Nixon once he was already safely down. Never mind that the press, generally, gave Ronald Reagan a free pass mostly because he was much more agreeable than Nixon. With a Democrat in the White House, the relationship between government and media generally becomes one of undying love. Bill Clinton had to be really, really deep in it before the press thought it well to look into his activities. Even then he got a free pass for his foreign policy. Hence, the rise of the Drudge Report and other alternative media. We conclude, then, that the greater part of US media consists of shills for state power, complicated only by little attitudinal nuances about those in office. The press gang find it hard to warm up to a Republican. But if a Republican transforms himself into FDR with two hats – Dr. New Deal and Dr. Win-the-War – the press treats him as an honorary Democrat, who has "grown" in office and overcome his natural narrow-mindedness. Differing Views on the Press Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that "were it left to me to decide whether we should have government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them." Leaving to one side the problem of mass semi-literacy caused by public schools, I have to say that Jefferson could never have anticipated today’s talking heads, Tom, Dan, and Jim, or our great paper of record, the New York Times. Still, if one had to choose between government without NBC, or NBC without government, the choice would be worth looking into. You can turn NBC off. Benjamin Tucker, the dean of the late 19th-century individualist anarchists, based in Boston off all places, became quite vexed by the press. In curmudgeonly fashion, he wrote: "Much as I value the liberty of the press, yes, because I value it, I should like to see the knife of authority buried to the hilt in the tenderest part of the ordinarily truckling newspapers of New York and then turned vigorously and mercilessly round. Perhaps, after that, Comstock laws, anti-lottery laws, and other similar legal villainies would no longer be made possible by the subservient hypocrites who cry out against oppressions only when victimized themselves." In other words, if the press could not be bothered to defend freedom generally, Tucker didn’t much care if government infringed their freedom. He didn’t really mean that. In any case, freedom of the press does not really "belong" to the existing press lords. The people have an interest in it. Suppression of the Times would be good, clean fun, but would also make it harder for anyone to set up an Anti-Times. We even have an amendment about that. It begins "Congress shall make no law" and goes on from there. It seems dead simple, doesn’t it? But Congress can’t – or doesn’t – read our parchment guarantees, and thus their very life falls prey to courts, politicians, and other such worthies. The record of the courts is rather spotty, especially during emergencies. If the Constitution had a Cheshire Cat clause – "this Constitution shall go in and out off effect, depending on whether there is, in the Opinion of the president or his Chief advisors, an Emergency requiring Special measures" – I would feel better about it. At least then we would know that there is no Constitution, and could quit worrying about it and get back to our daily affairs. Much time would be saved. Congress shall make no law – what a joke, but then we all recall what Will Rogers said. The Incredible Lightness of Pragmatism Now the press is nothing if not practical or pragmatic. The press keeps away from real criticism. Barring the return of Nixon, this will remain true. As for the US government, its attitude toward criticism was underscored by the bombing of the Belgrade TV station, two years ago, and the missile attack on the Kabul office of Al-Jazeera this week. Of course those were enemy media and we know what a broad construction the US government has of the word "target." We have come to expect this sort of thing. What was interesting was the near silence of certified US media about these attacks. Obviously the First Amendment doesn’t apply to foreign media, enemy or otherwise, but one might have expected our media to spot some sort of general principle worth noting. But I digress. The real point is that for most of the US media, politics – not to mention all discussion outside a very narrowly defined spectrum of respectable opinion – stops at the water’s edge, with few exceptions. Some cynic has said that the reason we didn’t have censorship all through the Cold War was that US media censored themselves. That puts things in an overly favorable light. The role of the media is actually more proactive than that. US media see themselves as an arm of government, they love government and wish for Americans and the world to have much more of it. Now and then a critic sees that posture as a problem. One of these nay-sayers is Noam Chomsky – full stop. Yes, the Noam Chomsky; the very embodiment of anti-American hate and criminality lately pilloried on a website where all thoughts are second thoughts. I need say no more. Chomsky, it is true, has some funny economic views. Chomsky kicked off a revolution in linguistics, when that discipline was still wandering in the desert of behaviorism looking for the oasis of structuralism. Not everyone likes generative grammar. So what? What made Chomsky known and controversial was not what made Milwaukee famous, but was instead his running critique of the US empire, dating from the Vietnam War. Anyone who believes that we have an heroic, critical press in this country should read Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York, 1988). Their point is not just that US policy-makers have been hellbent for empire for many decades. The interest in this book is the role that American media play in relation to power. It has largely consisted of overall support, tempered by nagging. If foreign policies were self-evidently just, such thorough-going support would be less of a problem. They are not, however, and that makes much of US news coverage a seamless web of "systematically misleading expressions" – to steal a phrase from a philosopher. To be systematically misled on matters which might require the sacrifice of our sons and daughters, our prosperity, and other things of value, would be very unfortunate. Unhappily, it seems to be our fate. On such matters, Chomsky and Herman are better guides to the doings of the press than are the various office-bound bombardiers of the Neo-Con variety, who can only fault the press for not being as war-crazed as they themselves are. A Further Thought At LRC, we are entirely in favor of first thoughts, second thoughts, or third thoughts, provided that the thoughts have some connection with reality. This is one reason why, in this happy era of the net, we read the foreign press. There are many things that Dan, Tom, and Jim just won’t tell us. November 17, 2001 Joseph R. Stromberg [send him mail] is the JoAnn B. Rothbard Historian in Residence at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and a columnist for Antiwar.com. Copyright © 2001 LewRockwell.com The
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