SPEAKING
FREELY Media fail to report for
duty By Kent Ewing
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HONG KONG -
It is already patently clear who the biggest loser will
be in the US presidential election - and it is neither
President George W Bush nor Senator John Kerry. Rather,
it is the US news media, which (to borrow a recurrent
theme of the interminable campaign) failed to report for
duty.
We thought US journalism had reached its
nadir on election night nearly four years ago when the
country's major news networks, without a shred of
reliable data, prematurely projected that Bush had
carried the key state of Florida and thus won the
presidency. That claim was as irresponsible as it was
incorrect and had to be retracted later that night. But
the damage had been done: Bush had already acquired the
aura of a president and wound up the winner of the
protracted legal battle that followed his virtual draw
with Al Gore in Florida.
But how many of us know
that it was a cousin of Bush who made that initial,
baseless projection for Rupert Murdoch's Fox News
Channel? And how many of us remember the slavish
stampede as other networks followed the Fox report with
the same groundless projection, which they then falsely
claimed to be their own?
Yes, that was bad
enough, but things are even worse this time around.
There is no other way to explain why a recent Newsweek
poll shows that 42% of Americans continue to believe
that Saddam Hussein was "directly involved" in the
September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in
New York and the Pentagon near Washington, DC. Or why
the smears against Kerry's honorable military record
have gained such sticking power. This is not just a
bitter battle between two candidates; the US media have
in large part renounced their role as objective
reporters of the campaign and leaped into the partisan
fray.
Murdoch's Fox News, which is little more
than a propaganda arm (and fist) of the Republican
Party, is the main culprit, but because Fox is so
entertainingly good at being bad, others are now
imitating the Fox style. Since Fox has won a monopoly on
die-hard Republicans, for example, CNN seems to have
decided to join the Kerry camp. And what do you suppose
compelled veteran CBS news anchor Dan Rather to jump
into an unflattering story about Bush's service in the
Texas Air National Guard that was apparently based on
forged documents? After a week of fending off attacks on
the reliability of their source, Rather and CBS were
forced to apologize.
But let's not just pick on
these three giants of the television media. For a more
general indictment, go on the Internet and take a look
at the transcript of the now-infamous presidential news
conference of March 2003. It was there and then that
President Bush articulated what has turned out to be an
almost entirely bogus rationale for going to war against
Iraq. And, since the president gives press conferences
just about as often as North Korea's Kim Jong-il, this
was the time for the White House press corps to rise to
the occasion. Yet the transcript is notable for its lack
of substantive questions. This was not only a president
girding the nation for war, but also a US media too
cowered to question why.
While the right
questions are finally being asked, they come too late
and in the midst of a furious campaign of distraction -
about Kerry's service in Vietnam, about Bush's service
(or lack thereof) in the Texas Air National Guard, about
anything but the heart of the matter.
The
Fox-driven agenda has triumphed. US journalism is no
longer a question of who, what, where, when, why and
how. Instead, it is more about us versus them. Both the
country and the world suffer for this woeful loss of
balance and credibility.
Kent Ewing is
a writer and teacher at Hong Kong International School
who worked as a journalist in the US before moving
overseas. Several of his articles have appeared on the
op-ed page of the South China Morning Post.
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Pleaseclick here
if you are
interested in contributing.
