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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Stenographers Kiss the Hand that Feeds Them |
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by Dale Wertz
(No verified email address) |
25 Aug 2001
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The dominant corporate media have been described as stenographers to power, simply repeating what they are told to say, rather than acting as journalists willing to dig for the truth. Dale Wertz deconstructs the example of the Washington Post's recent fawning portrayal of Pacifica's Bessie Wash, one the the main personalities behind the drive to bring Pacifica under corporate control. |
Washington Post staff writer, Frank Ahrens, in \"In Image Battle, Pacifica Takes Aggressive Action,\" (Washington Post, August 21, 2001, Final Edition, p. C01.*) provides a good example of why the capitalist media are called stenographers to power by critics of media. In this case Washington Post radio reporter and stenographer, Frank Ahrens, presents an article that wouldn\'t pass muster in a high school composition class as a fair descriptive essay.
The article could hardly be more biased in favor of the inside-the-beltway \"important people\" that constitute the corporate/Democratic Party based Pacifica management that is killing the democratic Pacifica. Whether in his selective use of quotes or his selective use of background, we have in this article a display of service to power, specifically, the Pacifica Board Executive Committee clique.
Ahrens presents a one-sided discussion of a falsely characterized \"conflict between some former and current employees and radio management over the future\" of Pacifica, that includes several unchallenged quotes and sympathetic paraphrases from Pacifica Executive Director Bessie Wash, who is aligned with the Pacifica Board Executive Committee\'s corporatization of Pacifica, while the \"dissident\" players, who are opposed to the corporatization of Pacifica, are nameless and voiceless. No \"dissident\" members are quoted or named, until the last paragraph, where Amy Goodman\'s sign-off of Democracy Now! is quoted. This non-adversarial kid-glove treatment of Bessie Wash is not journalism; it is stenography.
Compare this article\'s use of quotes with a previous article by Ahren that focused on Amy Goodman and Democracy Now!. Amy Goodman, is also opposed to the Executive Committee\'s corporatization of Pacifica. In this case Goodman\'s version of events is challenged with statements from Pacifica\'s management. Ahren even provides a link to Pacifica\'s home page directing readers to Pacifica\'s rebuttal of Goodman\'s claims. (\"Pacifica Battles Show Host for Control,\" Washington Post, October 31, 2000, p. C02.) In contrast, no links were given to websites which rebutted Bessie Wash\'s statements in the present article. The selective application of balanced sourcing derives from its function as a service to power.
Even Ahren\'s background on the crisis omits important details that would shine an unflattering light on Pacifica management. He notes correctly that, \"Pacifica management is composed of the executive director, the Pacifica Foundation and a board of directors,\" and that some board members have resigned. True and trivially so. More importantly, he mentions nothing about the nature of the resignations, or about the three lawsuits against Pacifica claiming the board is illegally constituted, that the so-called Executive Committee of the Board of Directors has subverted the articles of incorporation and bylaws of Pacifica by illegally amending them to allow selection by the Executive Committee of sympathetic Board members from the corporate sector, that the assets of Pacifica have been mismanaged by the Executive Committee, that the Local Advisory Boards have been illegally disenfranchised, and more. (\"Legal Update.\" http://www.savepacifica.net/, Accessed August 25, 2001.) Some of the Board members, Ahren mentions, have \"sided with the aggrieved employees.\" An understatement to say the least. Two of the Board members have filed one of the lawsuits against the Executive Committee Board members. They are nameless, unquoted entities to Ahren\'s readers. (They are Robert Robinson and Rabbi Aaron Kriegel.)
It\'s not that Ahren doesn\'t know about the lawsuits. It\'s that Ahren\'s sympathies and interests align with the Pacifica Executive Committee objectives. A bit more on this later, but for now it\'s instructive to note when Ahren does name names. Read where he acknowledges the lawsuits against Pacifica. \"Further, the Pacifica board is facing three lawsuits from former employees and listeners, and has hired the white-shoe firm of Williams & Connolly to defend it. Lead lawyer on the case is Greg Craig, who represented President Clinton during his impeachment and Elian Gonzales\' father.\" Again, the bias is obvious. Presumably, it would be noteworthy to Ahren if Monica Lewinsky signed on as a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits.
Ahren characterizes (in various articles) the conflict at Pacifica as a \"civil war,\" a \"self- immolation,\" and as Pacifica \"eating itself alive.\" There are other interpretations of this crisis, though one will not get them from Ahren. Reading the summaries at the Save Pacifica website of the legal actions brings to mind a theft of Pacifica or a coup at Pacifica. Ahren\'s interpretation avoids assigning proportionate responsibility for the crisis, but instead asserts a false symetrical responsibility. This makes it easier to urge both sides to compromise. One doesn\'t compromise with thieves. This is quite a service for Pacifica\'s management as it shifts blame for the crisis away from management which instigated it. But Ahren does not only mischaracterize the struggle on the ground. He mischaracterizes the access to media attention each side in the crisis has obtained.
Ahrens covers his ass for his one-sided coverage by alleging that the dissidents, \"have had the megaphone,\" most of the past two years of the ongoing Pacifica struggle, while management \"has been mostly mute.\" Presumably, Ahren is leveling the playing field for an embattled Pacifica management. But if Pacifica management has been mute, it has been by choice. The dissidents, however, have been under management gag rules, so they can\'t use Pacifica as a megaphone. People can judge from their own reading and listening whether the dissidents have been given a megaphone in any mass media forum. Surely, the Washington Post has not provided any such megaphone, as Ahrens well knows, since he wrote the two other Post articles in the past year that cover the Pacifica crisis. These articles do at least present dissidents\' opinions, but in these cases they are countered with opposing management opinions, in the standard practice of stenography to power.
In other words, the dissidents\' views have been ostracized from day one by the capitalist media as a matter of course, and have been banned from their own media by management gag rules. Amy Goodman and colleagues are now making Democracy Now! literally in exile, and her current programs are completely censored by Pacifica management. Ahrens \"megaphone\" comment rings true only if taken literally. What the dissidents do have is a devoted community; more accurately, the dissidents are the Pacifica community. The dissidents megaphone is the grassroots networks. Hardly the access to media coverage that Ahren alleges, but enough of an organized noise to worry Pacifica\'s Executive Committee.
To counter the dissidents megaphone, the embattled Pacifica management has now hired \"Westhill Public Affairs, a high-end Washington flack outfit,\" notes Ahren. Accordingly, the formerly mute and \"tough to get\" an interview with, Bessie Wash, found her voice, so Ahren dutifully appears with blank paper and mind, to provide Pacifica management access to the corporate media when it wants it. Pacifica and Westhill Public Affairs did their homework and undoubtedly chose to interview with Ahren because of his sympathetic views on relevant matters.
In an article, \"Tiny Pacifica\'s Big Troubles\" (Washington Post, February 8, 2000, p. C02) Ahren called for corporate funding of Pacifica. Arguing for amending Pacifica\'s charter, which prohibits corporate underwriting, he wrote that, \"Pacifica reporters can retain the purity of their agenda and continue to report the same unique stories if the network abandons its out-of-date, no-corporate-money dogma.\" Since \"[s]ocialism and communism are now widely discredited,\" and \"[t]he revolution is over,\" Pacifica should accept corporate underwriting. Furthermore the \"opposition to taking corporate money... that the sponsors will affect news coverage\" is \"[p]oppycock,\" since \"fire walls can be raised between Pacifica\'s journalists and its funders.\"
Westhill Public Relations and Pacifica (management) were looking for a service. Ahren provided that service. Bessie Wash was given a forum to say what she wanted to say, uncontested. Accordingly, there is no question to Bessie Wash about Pacifica management\'s supposed policy of increasing listening audience by gutting the radical heart out of the most popular show in the Pacifica network. Such questions do not get stenographers interviews with important people. Stenographers without access to important people are not much use to a capitalist media corporation.
*Articles were accessed August 25, 2001 via the Lexis-Nexis Academic Universe database and the Washington Post website: |
See also:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/style/columns/radiolistener/
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