Inventing Reality Read online

  Numerous conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institute send pamphlets, “expert” reports, and other publications to newspeople across the nation, alerting them to the harmful effects of government regulations, corporate taxes, and labor unions, and making a case for a strong national security state and a militant foreign policy. Even if this flood of material does not win the hearts and minds of all journalists, it is read by many and regularly referred to in their stories and news analyses. The unrelenting inundation of business propaganda is likely to affect the consciousness of the working press—especially in the absence of an alternative view of equal currency.50

  Prestigious awards and prizes, funded by big corporations, are given every year for excellence in business reporting. For instance, the University of Missouri School of Journalism awards a prize for energy reporting that is subsidized by the National Gas Association. And the Media Awards for Economic Understanding, which in one year received 1,400 entries from journalists, is supported by Chambion International Corporation.51 The Bagehot Fellowship, “an intensive program of study at Columbia University for journalists interested in improving their understanding of economics, business and finance,” fills its guest speaker program with such elite figures as Paul Volcker, former head of the Federal Reserve System; Donald Regan, formerly secretary of the Treasury and subsequently chief of staff to President Reagan; and financiers Felix Rohatyn and David Rockefeller.52 Since editors are inclined to judge and promote reporters according to the number of awards they win, there is no shortage of eager journalistic applicants. These corporate-backed awards and training programs help “to shape the kinds of stories journalists pursue and the kinds of standards that editors recognize.”53

  Business corporations offer other more familiar enticements, such as dinners, parties, gifts, and free trips to luxury hotels for “conferences” that boost this or that industry. Peter Dreier notes that newspeople claim they are free to write whatever they please about these junkets, but few ever produce critical reports. Most newspaper sections, such as food, auto, real estate, travel, fashion, sports, and business, offer little more than puffery and promotional copy, with stories initiated by business, written by sympathetic reporters, and rewarded with advertising revenue.54

  SUPPRESSING THE NEWS

  In defense of his profession, a journalist once told me: “We simply goes out, we gets the story, and we writes it.” In fact, the process is more complex than that. Reporters carry along their past conditioning, schooling, and political socialization. Before they ever leave the office they are influenced in what they will report by (1) the assignments given them by their superiors, (2) anticipatory responses to the reactions of superiors and public officials, (3) career considerations, and (4) the general political climate and dominant ideology (sustained partly by the press itself). Then they observe events and report to their editors who, responding to the same influences listed above, run the stories often after cutting and rewriting them.

  Despite self-censorship and the various organizational influences and controls, there is always the danger that a reporter or editor might report something that does not rest well with those at the top. On such occasions, direct interposition from owners or sometimes advertisers becomes necessary. Publishers and network bosses will rein in editors and producers who in turn will curb reporters. As the famous newscaster Edward R. Murrow observed, the top managers “make the final and crucial decisions having to do with news and public affairs.”55

  The political radical James Aronson relates how as a young reporter for the New York Post in the 1940s, he did not receive an assistant editorship that ought to have been his. His news editor told him: “You were not advanced, my young friend, because your political views are at variance with those held by the managers of this enterprise and therefore not acceptable to them.”56 Thinking back to the days he worked as a reporter for the New York Times, when that paper was relentlessly committed to US cold war policies, Aronson recalls “a censorship so subtle that it was invisible” yet it “affected everyone on the staff. The ‘approach’ (it was never a vulgar ‘line’) was made clear in casual conversations, in editing of copy for ‘clarity,’ and in the deletion of any forthright interpretation as ‘emotionalism.’ ” He concluded: “The surest way to isolation was the espousal of unpopular radical views.”57

  Another former journalist relates his experiences with a Time magazine news bureau:

  At one time or another those of us out in the field would be sent a suggestion, really a directive from the central office, maybe originating from [Henry] Luce himself, to cover a story or play up some angle. ... If I protested and said that the suggestion didn’t make sense, or was loaded, or presumed something that just was not true, they would say, “Oh, of course, sure, use your own judgment.” There was a big show of not forcing [anyone] to obey a direct order. But after I balked a few more times, I found myself ignored and then reassigned.”58

  A former employee of Time remembers how Whittaker Chambers, foreign news editor of that magazine in the summer of 1944, repeatedly suppressed dispatches from Time's overseas correspondents. Chambers tailored the news to make it conform to his own right-wing view of world affairs. ’ “So many of John Hersey’s stories from Moscow were suppressed that he stopped sending news and confined his cables to accounts of Shostakovich's newest symphony and other cultural events. Reporting from China, Theodore White saw his criticisms of Chiang Kai-shek s autocratic regime replaced with encomiums of Chiang as a defender of democratic principles.”59 Time's researchers protested the distortions but Chambers prevailed, for he was producing stories his publisher, Henry Luce, liked.

  In 1949, correspondent Aslan Humbaraci resigned from the New York Times because his journalistic efforts in Turkey met with systematic hostility from Turkish officials and from the US embassy and US military mission in that country. Worst of all, he complained, his reporting in the Times itself, “when it was not completely suppressed, was cut, rewritten, buried somewhere in the back pages or distorted, if it did not happen to fit in with State Department policy.” In his letter of resignation to the Times, Humbaraci wrote:

  The suppression of civil liberties [in Turkey], the brutal treatment of peasants by a ruthless gendarmerie, the police terror in the towns, the revolt of the peasants in remote Anatolian villages, the arrest and imprisonment and torturing of political prisoners, the persecution of intellectuals, the scandalous abuse by officials, and the official support extended to the extreme right wing have found no place in the columns of the New York Times. Further, I cannot remember any anti-Russian news from any sources in Turkey that has not been published in the Times—especially news depicting Russia as Turkey’s enemy and the menace to Turkey’s existence.60

  Humbaraci wrote that letter in 1949. The Times's reporting on Turkey has not changed significantly since then.

  Malcolm Browne said he left the television industry in 1966 because he was unable to communicate the deeper aspects of the Vietnam War to the American public. When dealing with the economic and political problems relating to the war, he often found that “the producer switches you off and cuts the footage that he deems most illustrative of what you’re talking about.”61 One could go on with examples of news suppression, such as the following:

  After working for CBS News for twenty-three years, Daniel Schorr resigned in 1979 when a controversy arose regarding his story on a classified report by the House Intelligence Committee. The report dealt with improper conduct in the FBI and CIA and was never aired by CBS.62

  After Newsday refused to investigate whether the CIA and Henry Kissinger had conspired to assassinate Prime Minister Michael Manley of Jamaica, two of the paper’s veteran reporters wrote the story and published it in Penthouse. Newsday is owned by Times Mirror, whose board of directors was chaired by Franklin Murphy, a man with links to the intelligence community and a good friend of Kissinger. After Kissinger heatedly complained about the s
tory, pressure from above was soon felt at Newsday.

  DOING TIME AT TIME MAGAZINE

  “The bias in any Time story,” says one Time writer, “begins with the query. From the moment it is sent out, the shape of the story has been established.” ... “There is a certain amount of freedom we have,” observes a veteran of the Washington bureau, “but that really works two ways. You can soothe your conscience by throwing in a few opinions of your own at the end of your file, but you know that these will usually be discarded.” The chief of correspondents, he adds, is careful about whom he hires and where a reporter is assigned. Effective dissent is checked at any of several junctions in the system, and frustration in the bureaus is an oft-heard refrain. Says one reporter, “It’s really a masturbatory job.” ...

  Stuart Schoffman, who was a Time writer for four years, now describes that role as one of “an apparatchik in the service of the corporation’s ideas. It is only in retrospect that I realized I was mouthing opinions not my own.”

  John Tirman, “Doing Time,” Progressive, August 1981, p. SI.

  One of the authors of the article, Ernest Volkman, was told he could no longer cover anything having to do with national security. The other author already had been demoted to an obscure post. Volkman’s television appearances to discuss the story were mysteriously canceled. After fourteen years with Newsday he decided to quit.63

  Reporter Gregory Gordon was fired by UPI after seventeen years of service because he co-authored a book about UPI and refused to submit the manuscript to superiors for their approval.64

  UPI reporter Edward Roby discovered that US oil companies were claiming business expenses in Saudi Arabia as tax credits (instead of as ordinary deductions), thereby evading millions of dollars in US income taxes. Roby’s reward for this investigative reporting was to become the object of concerted denunciations by Mobil and Exxon. UPI forbade him from doing any more stories about oil and taxes.65

  Two AP reporters, Robert Parry and Brian Barger, uncovered involvement of CIA-supported contras in the cocaine trade and arms traffic. After their stories were repeatedly spiked or heavily cut, the two quit in disgust.66

  Prior to the 1 984 electoral campaign, ABC suppressed several stories produced by its own investigative unit that were potentially harmful to conservative Republicans, including an FBI cover-up of Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan’s association with organized crime and attempts by Senator Paul Laxalt to stop a probe of his campaign contributors.67

  When New York Times columnist Sydney Schanberg became increasingly attentive to the greed and indifference of New York’s big developers, bankers, and other moneyed interests, his column was permanently canceled by publisher Sulzberger. Schanberg resigned from the paper.68

  After reporter John Hess’s investigative reports on corruption in the Bronx Terminal Market were spiked by the New York Times, seemingly in response to pressure from powerful interests at City Hall, he resigned.69

  Reporter Bill Collins was fired by the publisher of the 'WinstonSalem Journal in North Carolina for union activity and for writing too much about labor. An associate of Collins was fired by the High Point Enterprise (NC) purportedly for covering labor-management disputes in such a way as to give labor’s side of things as well as management’s. Both journalists were blacklisted by North Carolina newspapers after that.70

  During a strike by New York Daily News workers, New York Times reporter Bruce Lambert wrote a thorough story on the Tribune Company, the conglomerate that owned the News. It was killed. The Times metropolitan denied any managerial intervention, but Lambert was suddenly dropped as the labor reporter and sent off to the real estate page.71

  When Jon Alpert, an NBC stringer, returned from Iraq, during the Gulf war, with revealing footage of civilian areas devastated by US aerial attacks, NBC News president Michael Gartner not only refused to air the film but terminated Alpert’s twelve-year relationship with the network.72

  More examples could be provided of stories suppressed and reporters silenced, and more will be given in the pages ahead. Each act of suppression has a chilling effect on other staff members. Needless to say, these instances of news repression do not themselves usually become news items in the mainstream press. Most often the reporters do not resign; they learn to accept the existing state of affairs in order to survive in their profession. The consequences of this kind of control are that “coverage is limited and certain questions never get asked,” according to Len Ackland, a Chicago Tribune writer. Reporters think twice before delving into sensitive areas. “They worry about the editing. They worry about being removed from choice beats, or being fired.” 3

  James O’Shea, former business editor of the Des Moines Register, argues that the media’s pattern of business ownership and interlocking directorates is “going to affect the reporter, 1 don’t care who he is; or it will affect his editors. You’re more cautious. ... A lot of reporters and editors will tell you that it has no effect on them, but I don’t believe it.”74 Chris Welles, a former journalist and director of a program on business journalism at Columbia University, commented: “I daresay anyone who has been in the business for more than a few months can cite plenty of examples of editorial compromises due to pressure, real and imagined, from publishers, owners, and advertisers.”75

  Most reporters are probably not right-wingers but they do not have to be. Their owners are. Years ago, media mogul Henry Luce demonstrated what has been repeatedly demonstrated by other owners before and since: that you can turn out conservative publications—as he did with Time, Life, and Fortune —while employing liberal editors and reporters. Luce never made a fortune out of the media business by crusading for the downtrodden and attacking the large moneyed interests, favoring the have-nots against the haves.

  Those conservative critics who complain that the press is composed of liberals and pinkos have failed to explain why this same “liberal press” has consistently favored conservative candidates. Lee and Solomon point out that since 1932 every Republican presidential nominee except Barry Goldwater (who was running against a conservative Southern Democrat Lyndon Johnson) has been favored by the majority of daily newspapers, that is, favored by their rich conservative owners. Ronald Reagan was endorsed by 77 percent of the dailies in 1980 and 86 percent in 1984. George Bush received 70 percent backing in 1988.76

  There is nothing mysterious about who controls the ideological direction and political content of the news. As with any profit-making corporation, the chain of command in the media runs from the top down, with final authority in the hands of the owners or those who represent the ownership interests of the company. “News organizations are not democratic; in fact, they are described as militaristic by some journalists. ... The links that bind reporter to editor to news executive to corporate executive to board members to bankers and corporate advertisers are not just work relationships but class power relationships.

  We might best conclude this chapter with a comment made by an American working-class leader Fanny Wright back in 1829: “The press does not speak the voice of the nation. It does not even speak the voice of those who write for it.”

  Objectivity and Government Manipulation

  To hear some newspeople tell it, the primary goal of professional journalism is objectivity. But what is objectivity? One’s perceptions are inescapably selective. Subjective judgments and biases are introduced even before the writing begins—at the moment one defines what is to be considered a story. Total objectivity—whatever that might be—is impossible. Perceptions of events are inevitably influenced by past experience, dominant social beliefs, and the limitations of the human condition.

  As used by the journalism profession, “objectivity” means reporters should not inject their own opinions or biases into their reporting. But this worthy ideal has been debased in practice to mean that reporters must discard their critical thinking and questioning. They must not press too deeply into areas that might cause discomfort to those of power, wealth, and conservati
ve ideology. In so trying to neutralize themselves, they often succeed only in neutralizing their subject matter.

  THE MYTH OF OBJECTIVITY

  Along with owning the media, the corporate business class controls much of the rest of America too, including its financial, legal, educational, medical, cultural, and recreational institutions.1 Thus corporate interests not only structure the way the media report reality, they structure much of reality itself. The ideological character of the news, then, is partly a reflection of the journalist’s “routine reliance on raw materials which are already ideological.”2 The financier’s statement about economic prosperity, the Pentagon’s advocacy of new weapons systems, the president’s assertions about the need for military

  intervention to stop demon aggressors, the corporation’s call for less government regulation—such actualities are laden with subjective political interests. But taken at face value, they are just the “events of the day.” What passes for journalistic objectivity is the acceptance of a social reality shaped by the dominant forces of society—without any critical examination of that reality’s hidden agendas, its class interests, and its ideological biases.

  Opinions that arise from the existing arrangements of economic and political power are treated as facts, while facts that are troublesome to the prevailing powers are likely to be dismissed as opinionated. Those who censor the seemingly opinionated views see themselves as protectors of objectivity and keepers of heterodoxy when, in fact, they are the guardians of ideological conformity.