Inventing Reality Page 6

  Business interests rail against the “anti-business bias” in the news. It is a way of keeping the press in line. But actually very little of the “investigative reporting” of the last two decades has targeted big business. No wonder when corporate leaders were asked to evaluate the treatment accorded them by the media, only 6 percent said it was “poor,” while 66 percent said “good” or “excellent.”30

  Almost all the discussion regarding freedom of the press focuses on government attempts to influence or limit the information flow. But most of the censorship occurs in the private sector, carried out by owners and advertisers who determine which facts and ideas will reach the public.

  ON THE LINE: EDITORS

  Actual responsibility for daily (or weekly) news production rests with the newspaper editors and radio and television program producers. Without having to answer to reporters, they can cut, rewrite, or kill any story they choose, subject only to final review by their executive superiors.31 The top media executives meet regularly with editors and producers in order to keep tabs on story selection. They can recommend or veto a story whenever they like, even overriding their editors. However, since they have other duties and, within their corporation, are supposed to adhere to a division of labor, most often they refrain from imposing their power on a daily basis.32 As one editor put it: “It is not what [the executive boss] will do or will veto, but what we expect that he will do or veto; that’s his influence.”33 Daily censorship is made unnecessary by anticipatory self-censorship.

  Many editors insist they are nobody’s puppet. Infused with notions of professional integrity and personal autonomy, they will vehemently deny they are objects of corporate control. Indeed, editors are accorded a certain degree of independence—if they demonstrate their ability to produce what their superiors want: copy that generally does not challenge the interests of those of wealth and power. Editors perform without daily interference from their superiors because such interference is not necessary. An editor who has to be reined in every day by the publisher will not last long as editor. But we must not mistake this kind of conditional autonomy for actual autonomy. There is no reason to believe that compliant editors could oppose their publishers even if they wanted to.

  Since many news editors and broadcast producers share the world view of their superiors, they seldom experience any ideological dissonance. They are free because they are in perfect agreement with their bosses and therefore give no cause for being called to account.

  When an editor resists doing what the publisher wants, then the latter—like the boss of any business organization—is not above ramming his or her dictates down the editor’s throat. If they want to keep their jobs, editors learn to swallow. On those relatively rare occasions when it is more than they can swallow, they will resign. The publisher of some local Michigan newspapers wrote a memo provoking his editor to quit. It read in part: “It will be our policy to aggressively support, promote, and report business organizations within our circulation area and/or those business organizations who support us with their advertising.”34 Sometimes editors are not given the choice of resigning and are unceremoniously fired for resisting the owner’s directives or for allowing uncomfortable information or dissident opinions to creep into their pages.35

  It is a rare event when a journalistic defender of capitalism stops pretending that he or she is an independent agent and explicitly admits that a class power relationship exists in the media. In 1983 and again in 1987, James Kilpatrick, a conservative columnist for the Washington

  EDITORS AS INTELLECTUAL PROSTITUTES

  In the early part of the twentieth century, the American radical and journalist John Swinton attended a banquet composed of his fellow newspaper editors. When a toast was tendered to the “independent press,” Swinton startled his colleagues with this response:

  There is no such thing in America as an independent press... . You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares write his honest opinions, and if you did you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.

  I am paid ... for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with—others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things— and any of you who would be so foolish as to write his honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job... .

  We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping-jacks; they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities, and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.

  Quoted in Sender Garlin, Three American Radicals (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991), pp. 31-32.

  Post and himself a former editor, wrote columns supporting the power of high school and college authorities to censor and suppress student newspapers. To give students “absolute freedom of the press is to let the animals run the zoo,” he asserted. Furthermore:

  In a real, grown-up world an editor is subject to a publisher, and if the publisher says “Kill the piece,” that’s it, sweetheart, the piece is killed. The right of a free press attaches to the guy who owns one. Students do not own a school paper. They have invested not one dime in its production.36

  Here Kilpatrick admits, indeed, proclaims that, contrary to the established mythology, freedom of the press is not a reporter’s political right but is a prerogative of ownership and wealth. Owners thereby have license to exercise prior censorship over editors. Kilpatrick is right in saying that’s how things work in the real world. It is just not often that mainstream commentators announce such truths about the real world. (However, if he seriously believes that those who pay should have the final say, then Kilpatrick should keep in mind that most student-run college newspapers are supported by student activities funds. It is the college administrators who “have invested not one dime but who still claim the right of censorship.)

  Editors are more frequently the conduits of, rather than resisters to, the owner’s censorship. Former managing editor of the Neiv York Times Turner Catledge notes how he used to pass his publisher s numerous criticisms to reporters and editors as if they were his own so that his staff would not feel “the publisher was constantly looking over their shoulders. In truth, however, he was.”37

  SELF-CENSORSHIP: REPORTERS

  Like editors, reporters are granted autonomy by demonstrating that they will not use it beyond acceptable limits. They are independent agents in a conditional way, free to report what they like as long as their superiors like what they report. Journalistic competence is measured in part by one’s ability to cover things from an ideologically acceptable perspective, defined as “balanced” and “objective.” Like social scientists and other investigators, journalists rarely doubt their own objectivity even as they faithfully echo the established orthodoxy. Since they do not cross any forbidden lines, they are not reined in. Thus they are likely to be unaware they are on an ideological leash. This is why some reporters insist they are free agents. Only when they stray off the beaten path is the pressure from above likely to be felt. And they almost never do.

  If every reporter had to be policed continually by superiors when producing the news, the system could not maintain its democratic appearance and probably could not function very smoothly. As it turns out, editors and owners do not have to exercise ubiquitous supervision; intermittent control will do. As already mentioned, the anticipation that superiors might disapprove of this or that story is usually enough to discourage a reporter from writing it, or an editor from assigning it. Many of the limitations placed on reporting come not from direct censorship but from self-censorship, from journalists who design their stories so as to anticipate complaints from superiors. This anticipatory avoidance makes direct intervention from above a less frequent necessity and leaves the journalist with a greater feeling of autonomy than might be justified by the actual power relationship.

  After an extended study of major media, one sociologist concluded that self-censorship becomes a matter of habit, “in which ca
se journalists may not be aware they are responding to pressure.”38 Gans mentions one reporter who considered arguing with an editor for deleting an uncomplimentary fact about the CIA but since “too much disagreement with superiors types people as ‘cranks,’ she decided to save her scarce political capital for an issue about which she felt more strongly.”39

  Many people who learn to hold their fire eventually end up never doing battle. After a while anticipatory avoidance becomes a kind of second nature. Former FCC chairperson Nicholas Johnson describes the process of self-censorship:

  A reporter ... first comes up with an investigative story idea, writes it up and submits it to the editor and is told the story is not going to run. He wonders why, but the next time he is cautious enough to check with the editor first. He is told by the editor that it would be better not to write that story. The third time he thinks of an investigative story idea but doesn’t bother the editor with it because he knows it’s silly. The fourth time he doesn’t even think of the idea anymore.40

  One might add a fifth time when the reporter bristles with indignation at the suggestion that he is on an ideological leash and is not part of a free and democratic press.

  Many reporters insist they owe their souls to no one. This despite the fact that they frequently wonder aloud to each other how the boss is taking things. They talk of good stories spiked or rewritten by politically motivated editors. They know of potentially combustible events that go unreported and of editors who decide to favor officialdom’s version of events while ignoring abundant information to the contrary. They can recall instructions from above on how not to antagonize big advertisers and other powerful interests. They can name journalists who have been let go or banished to some obscure section of the paper. They know of political dissidents who have been invited to appear on opinion shows or write guest columns only to be suddenly disinvited when word of the event reached higher news echelons. Still most of them treat these incidents as aberrant departures from a basically democratic system of news production.

  Journalists will treat their self-censorship as a matter of being “realistic” or “pragmatic” or “playing by the rules.” In their ability to live in a constant, if not always conscious, state of anticipatory response while maintaining an appearance of independence, newspeople are not much different from professionals in other hierarchical organizations.

  Journalists are subjected to on-the-job ideological conditioning conducted informally through hints and casual inferences that masquerade as “professional” advice. Thus, they might be admonished not to get too “emotionally involved” and not to lose their “objectivity,” when they are producing copy that is disturbing to persons of wealth and power. While deputy editor of the Washington Post editorial page Meg Greenfield advised a colleague on how to keep a safe distance from a particularly controversial subject as follows: “I don’t know much. I m like you. I’ve never been a ‘cause’ person.”41 Eventually Greenfield was promoted to editorial page editor.

  Veteran newspeople “have remarkably finely tuned antennae for finding out the limits” to which they can go, remarked one former reporter.42 Some even admit there are invisible restraints. ABC correspondent Sam Donaldson says: “There is a line when you’re questioning public officials, particularly in public, beyond which you don’t go. I can’t define that line and I have never purposely gone over it, although once in a while I come close.”43

  THE RULING CULTURE

  When determining what to treat as news, media organizations often take their cues from one another, moving in a kind of rough unison, a phenomenon that has been called “pack journalism.” The pack may run in one direction or it may suddenly stampede in another. But it is not entirely free to roam as it chooses, for past images influence present ones, and if a media opinion already exists about what is true and important, it usually will shape subsequent reporting on the topic.

  If an opinion prevails for any great length of time without benefit of critical examination or hard evidence (for instance, the view that a conservative president is concerned about the well-being of working people in America or that the US government supports democracy and human rights in the Third World), it is usually because of a durable ideological underpinning. Opinion inertia is easier to sustain if it is rolling with, rather than against, the ideological tilt of the land. By definition, opinion inertia favors the existing framework of institution, power, and persuasion and generally operates with conservative effect. Pack journalism is a conformist journalism. But where does the conformity come from?

  Journalists are exposed to the same communities, schools, universities, graduate schools, popular culture—and media—that socialize other Americans into the dominant belief system. They react to much the same news that inundates their audiences. They seldom look to the radical press for a different viewpoint or for information unreported in the mainstream media. The establishment biases that predefine what is acceptable news and commentary are subjected to no critical examination by them. With cyclical effect, they find confirmation for the images they report in the images they have already created and internalized.

  The image of the reporter propagated by Hollywood films of an earlier era is of a tough-talking, two-fisted, regular guy, more at home in a local bar than in a fancy country club, scornful of bluebloods and stuffed shirts. With a fedora shoved back on his head, he gives his typewriter a furious two-finger pounding, pausing only to gulp coffee from a cardboard container, showing himself every inch the courageous investigator, ready to “blow this town wide open” with revelations that will rock City Hall and other venal powers.

  Turning from Hollywood fantasy to reality, we find that most journalists employed by major media were raised in upper-middle-class homes. Only one in five come from blue-collar or low-status white-collar families. Almost all have college degrees and a majority have attended graduate school. Despite journalism’s reputation as a low-paid profession, most newspeople have family incomes that put them in the top 10 percent bracket. Network correspondents, senior editors, and producers make considerably more, usually well into the high six-figure range, while network TV-news anchorpersons earn million-dollar salaries.44

  As in other fields, so in the world of journalism: “knowing and pleasing the right people, and coming from a prestigious background do not hurt in the competition for promotions.”45 Syndicated columnists like Stewart and Joseph Alsop, William Buckley, and George Will often start out with personal wealth or diplomas from elite schools or important political friends and business connections—or all of the above. The apprenticeship they serve in the lower ranks is usually a brief one, if any. Jonathan Schell’s meteoric rise from college graduate to a leading New Yorker writer was helped by his Harvard background, a father who was a successful Manhattan lawyer, and a family friend, William Shawn, editor of the New Yorker. Benjamin Bradlee’s family connections with multimillionaire Eugene Meyer helped him get a reporter’s job on the Washington Post, owned by Meyer. While still a young reporter, Bradlee was invited into his publisher’s social circle, not a usual practice, but Bradlee came from “aristocratic northeastern stock,” a family of bankers. He later became Washington bureau chief of Newsweek (owned by the Grahams) and was then picked by Katharine Graham (Eugene Meyer’s daughter and subsequent owner of the Post) to become the paper’s executive editor.46

  Diane Sawyer reached the elevated heights of a national television news host who makes $1.2 million yearly partly by hard work and good looks. But it also happened that her father had political contacts in Washington which helped her get a position with Ron Ziegler, President Nixon’s press secretary. She worked loyally with Nixon on his memoirs for an extended time. Then Bill Small, senior vice president of CBS and old friend of the Sawyer family, hired her to work at CBS.47

  Most newspeople lack contact with working-class people, have a low opinion of labor unions, and know very little about people outside their own social class.48 Martin Lee and Norman Solomon c
ite a number of studies showing that journalists identify themselves as either “conservative” or “middle of the road” and are slightly less inclined than the general public to see government act to reduce the gap between rich and poor.49

  Persons of almost any political persuasion can get jobs at the lower entry ranks of journalism (unless they have gamed some notoriety as radicals or have other credentials that markedly indicate political deviancy). The process of selection becomes more ideologically exacting the higher one goes up the communication hierarchy. Above the ordinary reporters stand the more prominent and influential columnists and commentators who are drawn from that portion of the spectrum ranging from arch-conservative to mildly liberal.

  In regard to economic and class issues, most journalists are educated into a world view that supports rather than opposes the existing corporate system. Most journalism schools offer politically conventional curricula. While repeatedly lectured to about the importance of objectivity and professionalism, a journalism student can easily go through an entire program without ever raising critical questions about how and why the capitalist economic system functions and malfunctions as it does. Corporations and foundations have endowed journalism schools with courses and programs designed to make newspeople “more understanding” of the business viewpoint. At best, most journalists have only a feeble grasp of economics.