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Schudson, ch. 5, due 12-4 5pm


Submitted by longaker on Fri, 12/02/2005 - 12:04pm.

In chapter 5, Schudson blames a code of journalistic ethics for the resulting collusion between news media and government during the 1960s (especially regarding the Vietnam War). In short, he argues that the journalistic code of objectivity and the reliance on official sources led reporters to accept what the government had to say and to assume that, since no official sources offered a significantly oppositional viewpoint, covering the perspectives of all official sources was sufficient to provide an objective and fair account of the event and the competing perspectives thereabout. McChesney and Nichols claim, however, that presently the reliance on official sources has less to do with a journalistic code of objectivity and more to do with the private ownership of news media. News corporations, say McChesney and Nichols, are driven by a need to cheaply produce stories and to curry favor with governments who then lard favorable treatment on those corporations who depict the present administration favorably. Since it’s cheaper to listen to what the government sez about the war in Iraq (without paying people to do a lot of investigative work), and since it’s also one way to gain favor with the government, why not go ahead and repeat the administration’s line about, say, the war in Iraq?

Referencing a specific story or a specific outlet’s coverage of an issue, argue for Schudson’s or McChesney’s and Nichols’s position. Is the code of journalistic ethics to blame, or is it the private ownership of the media?

‹ Lakoff selections, due 12-6 5pm Schudson, ch. 4, due 12-1 5pm ›
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It's hard to say which is
Submitted by shirey on Mon, 12/05/2005 - 2:26am.

It's hard to say which is worse: the ethics or the corporations. I agree with londie that there should be more "holding individual journalists" accountable. but i wonder about the guys we don't see, the intentions we don't hear about from the corporations. it's all about money, cuz that's what keeps 'em going...and really, if someone's paycheck is bigger than all the others' and all that's required to get that paycheck is a slight blanketed bias, then why not take it? who cares about the public and whether or not they get all the info as long as i've got mine. that tends to be the nature of buisness. what can create that altruism needed, that golden idea of truth-seeking, 'care about the people' journalism? the journalists are supposed to take on that role, but they gotta get paid too. so, i dunno which is the main player (journalists or private ownership). i suppose it depends on where the money's coming from.

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CHIP off the old block
Submitted by btdillon on Sun, 12/04/2005 - 8:42pm.

I choose to use a New York Times article entitled “Fewer uninsured kids in the U.S.”, published Sunday. I actually winced when reading this article, nothing could be further from the truth. This is indeed a national article, but one can hardly talk about the uninsured without talking about Texas. Additionally, as a huge state with a complex bureaucracy that has proven unable to provide ample resources for it’s masses, Texas could very well be the very vision of a national healthcare program. As such, it makes sense for Texas to be mentioned throughout the article, and to also mention the pitfalls of children’s insurance in the state.

In 2003, the 78th Texas Legislature dramatically cut the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), deeming visual, dental, and mental health coverage as ‘frivolous’. There was horrendous backlash from all of this, actually enough for the 79th Lege to re-instate CHIP. What does the article say about CHIP in Texas and the fury of controversy that surrounds it? “The picture is somewhat brighter for children than for adults in large part because of enactment of the State Children's Health Insurance Program in 1997.” It doesn’t mention that Texas is the most uninsured state. It fails to note that the Texas Lege has been assailing the CHIP for the last 4 years. And it doesn’t inform the readers that Texas currently ranks 49th nationally in healthcare spending per capita.

While the utter lack of objectivity in this story appalling, I sense something else is going on here. The Bush Administration has been advocating a ‘pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps’ method of dealing with those hovering around the poverty line in the United States. Temporary Assistance to Needy Families has been cut again and again. Welfare-to-Work programs have been show to exploit those who apply to the program, and not provide applicants with the $$$ needed to survive. Given this information, it’s not hard to believe that this lack of information, or misinformation, is the work of a large media corporation. The New York Times Company, with 3.3 Billion in its coffers, is a conglomerate that owns more than 15 newspapers. A target that big could use a ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card from the feds, or could do with being endorsed as ‘fair and balanced’ by a slew of D.C. fat cats. Or could use more embedded reporters in Iraq, or an advance on press releases issued by the White House.

There’s a very good ole boy feeling to all of it; we scratch your back, so you’d better scratch ours. I do believe that McChesney and Nicols get it right in saying that in order to gain favor, and therefore considerable rewards from the government, media will print favorable coverage—dumbing down media at large and thus the public.

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whole lotta back scratchin'
Submitted by christien on Sun, 12/04/2005 - 11:41pm.

I really can't take a side on the whole Schudson v. McChesney and Nichols debate.

On the one hand I saw a chilling Washington Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/03/AR200512...

It seems investigative and adversarial, but I have to wonder about timing. Is it possible that this was the first time journalists have heard of this? I kind of think that it's just as likely that they have been sitting on this - which supports Schudson.

Then there is the recent trend of big pharmaceutical companies issuing press releases for medication, which the newspapers then print as if they are actual news stories. There is zero investigation into the claims, and negative aspects to a drug are ignored. I think that somehow the corps. are tied into this one, but I don't know exactly how. I do know that Papa Bush had big pharma ties, so perhaps even this issue lends some Schudson cred. I don't have actual articles. I got this info in another class.

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whoops: In reference to nkhan's post, 'private ownership...'
Submitted by jkoh on Sun, 12/04/2005 - 3:54pm.

In reference to the above post, I tend towards Schudson's view, and blame journalistic ethics rather than corporations. The reason for this is because since reading Mcchesney and Nichols I have often wondered how their claim (in this instance, that CNN covered the Iraq invasion from the government's perspective) plays out in real life. How exactly does CNN control what Wolf Blitzer says? I imagine it is at the levels of high/mid management and producers of individual shows that the general perspective decisions are made (if any). But, Is it the case that a perspective just filters down unchallenged from from the higher ups straight to the journalists? Maybe it is naive, but I think there must be at least a little room for dissent at the journalist-level, especially for big name "journalists" like wolf blizter.

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no incentive
Submitted by nkhan on Sun, 12/04/2005 - 4:44pm.

Hey Jonathan, I don't think it's so much that CNN controls what Wolf Blitzer says per se--just that they do not provide any other perspective except for the one Wolf Blitzer advances. There are no counter-balancing views. Also, Blitzer's discussion is limited to the themes of President Bush's speech without going beyond to any type of adversarial criticism or challenge whatsoever. I am not sure how well-received any dissent from Wolf Blitzer would be. Nor do I imagine that any big name reporters would dissent much given their need to meet CNN's standards of reporting. You do bring up a really good point-I am not sure specifically how corporations would keep all their reporters within the same lens of reporting. But to me, it seems that the incentive to go beyond reporting within the context of what official sources say just isn't there.

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I agree
Submitted by pzovath on Sun, 12/04/2005 - 8:18pm.

Specifically, on the topic of the War in Iraq. You never see major coverage on the actual soldiers accounts, minor events, etc. Everything that CNN seems to report on is a press conference by a Congressman, commanding General, or Bush himself. They all seem to have the same perspective. I have a couple of friends over there who have told me some scary things that they have seen, and I personally think that these things need to be heard. It is these things that are brushed under the table, yet they are some of the most important things that should be considered when going to war. I think it all just comes down to perspective. I think if you aren't going to give full in depth coverage to all sides involved, then maybe they shouldn't cover the story. But I do not believe that this is ALL Blitzer's fault. I'm sure that there are many people and positions that are above him that give him pressure to say certain things and ignore others. I thiink someone mentioned earlier in the class that the government got mad during the Vietnam war because of the gory coverage on the news. They said it was upsetting the public. This war has been extremely censored. I'm sure that people watch the news accounts and see inactivity or only clips that show the US troops winning and start to believe that this war isn't as bad as others. Its sad but probably true. There seems to be no easy answer.

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Well, I guess they would
Submitted by londiem on Sun, 12/04/2005 - 6:31pm.

Well, I guess they would fire him, and then run a segment on how the Blitzer "got himself fired." I agree that corporate ownership of the media affects what we know and how we know it, but I cannot get past the personal responsibility of the individual journalist. I can't readily imagine big name reporters challenging CNN's standards of reporting, but that makes me mad at them, not CNN. Schudson gives several criticisms of objectivity; one of them proposes that objectivity "is a practice rather than a belief" (186). This practice "itself constructs an image of reality which reinforces official viewpoints" (185). A reporter, operating with objectivity in mind, cannot be held responsible for her words because they were never truly hers; they were only an echo of White House PR. This form of reporting may protect a journalist from "self-inflicted wounds," but it does not protect her from cries of "bias" or "integrity."

Schudson makes a good case for the influence of young reporters in the 60s--that their push for investigative journalism was not indicative of "perennial generational conflict," but a "manifestation of a social and cultural movement" (181). The response of investigative journalism to "stories" like Vietnam and Watergate--and the ensuing rise of an adversary or critical culture--did not happen in a time free from corporate/government collusion to manage information. Today, corporate control of the media may be a much larger, more contemptible monster, but I believe that journalists are armed with much more than tiny pebbles of "objectivity." I sort of think that the perpetuation of the idea that corporately-controlled media threatens representative democracy further mystifies the real problem. Remember Jon Stewart on CNN, asking Guy A and Guy B to stop hurting America? I think we need more of that--holding individual journalists, and professional journalism itself, accountable for their questionable (if not outdated) ethics.

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I am all for personal
Submitted by Shannon on Sun, 12/04/2005 - 11:33pm.

I am all for personal responsibility on the side of the journalist, but I would argue that *a good majority* of journalists are genuinely attempting to report the news as it appears to them, and it is their editors and producers who must answer to the needs of the media corporation. That being said, I hardly consider Wolf Blitzer and the like to be journalists; they are entertainers - and I no more trust them to report the news than I would Britney Spears.

But as for corporate control, if you have ever studied Edward R. Murrow and his coverage of McCarthy (or seen Good Night and Good Luck), you can just watch and see how the corporation controls what airs. Even after Murrow arguably helped bring down McCarthy (by paying for the ads accompanying the show with money out of pocket), the big guys at CBS still stopped funding for the news program "See It Now". Their problems were not with the footage of McCarthy himself that Murrow and Fred Friendly broadcast, it was the commentary/condemnation.

I think the same can/does happen today.

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The first line of this post
Submitted by christien on Sun, 12/04/2005 - 11:32pm.

The first line of this post reminds me of the whole Dan Rather thing with George W and his National Guard record.

He challenged the president's record directly, and then his work was scrutinized really closely and trashed. He tried to report on something that wasn't just an official government report, and it completely backfired.

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But then again, maybe Wolf
Submitted by jkoh on Sun, 12/04/2005 - 4:02pm.

But then again, maybe Wolf Blitzer is just a cyborg-reporter created by a team of scientists at TimeWarner with absolutely no journalistic ethics, to further their goal of world domination. I mean - the man has no emotion. And what human mother names their kid 'Wolf Blitzer'?

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private ownership is to blame
Submitted by nkhan on Sun, 12/04/2005 - 2:32pm.

I think that CNN's coverage of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq is a good example of how private ownership of the media led CNN to report in favor of the government so that the FCC would deregulate ownership laws for them. What persuades me that CNN was, in fact, trying to curry favor with government officials is the coincidental timing of a change in corporate media ownership policy and Iraqi war coverage. In early March 2003, the FCC held a public hearing on the proposed changes to FCC regulations, which would make media ownership rules more lax.

Granting that the hearings on ownership rules only coincidentally occurred around the same time that the U.S. invaded Iraq, one could reasonably argue that the Time Warner Company (which owns CNN) along with other big media corporations had increased incentive to cover the government perspective of the war favorably. The Time Warner Company had much to gain from the changes proposed (such as the repeal of the law that prevented companies from owning television stations that serve more than 35% of the population.

Thus, CNN wanting to maintain good ties with the administration and needing to cheaply produce war coverage to compete with other news sources, chose to cover the war in a light that brought the suggestion of Iraq’s ownership of weapons of mass destruction into prominence. A skewed emphasis on the possibility that Iraq, indeed possessed weapons and the suggestion of the country’s rogue-like intentions for the use of these weapons, led CNN to marginalize alternative assessments of the situations (e.g. that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, or that invastion was not necessary). Overall, this narrowing of perspectives and sheer dominance of one political lens cost the American public the possibility of rich deliberation over the policy of preemptive war.

For instance, in a special edition of “CNN Wolf Blitzer Reports,” CNN analyzes President Bush’s address to the nation about the war with an obvious bias toward the assumption that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction. Wolf Blitzer and other reporters’ commentary on the address focused entirely on this assumption. During the dialogue, Blitzer reaffirms that the president’s articulated themes were “[n]ot only disarmament, getting rid of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, but also regime change.” The broadcast proceeds to cover analysis of the Iraq war, but all the perspectives offered are in line with the assumption that weapons of mass destruction exist. Though we get to hear British Secretary Jack Straw and retired Brigade General David Grange discuss the issue, we hear no expert or official opinion discussing the opposing view point. CNN did not pay their reporters to do investigative work and present the critical perspectives involved in the debate over WMDs--coverage was largely limited to what officials said. The theme of this show represented a broader trend within CNN’s coverage of failing to adequately represent multiple perspectives on Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.

This trend is interesting because of the fact that the Iraq Survey Group, a fact-finding commission sent to Iraq after the 2003 invasion, found in their final report that there were no weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. officially banned its search for weapons of mass destruction in January 2005, and up to the present there have been no discoveries of such weapons in Iraq. Given this outcome, it was arguably reasonable for CNN to have presented the perspective that no weapons existed. So why would it choose not to? Precisely because, as McChesney and Nichols argue, CNN needed to keep costs low (rely heavily on official sources) and maintain favor with the government (cover the invasion from the government's perspective).

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I am more inclined to agree
Submitted by chaos666 on Mon, 12/05/2005 - 4:56am.

I am more inclined to agree with the claim that private ownership of media is to blame for the reliance on official sources. As Devon mentioned, the disparity between media outlets owned by large corporations and those of independant ones is greatly noticeable to me at least. I remember when we did a search to discover the various owners of different news sources. I also vaguely remember going through some of those news sources and finding a clear bias upon reading through various articles of political content. It was my opinion then as it is now that this bias could be correlated with private ownership.

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I agree with private
Submitted by DevonRyan on Sun, 12/04/2005 - 6:57pm.

I agree with private ownership being to blame. There is a great disparity between independent journalism and that which is put out by large corporate owned outlets. I think the reason for this is not entirely a difference in one source being objective and the other being slanted... I think it's because it is in the best interest of a given news source to agree with the government's position because the source is then favored with government approval.

I think a major issue of corporate ownership is also crappy journalism. Reporters get the same money whether they rely on official sources or actually investigate something. This system within the profession of journalism encourages laziness and indifference.

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Consider this too...
Submitted by Evan A Autry on Sun, 12/04/2005 - 5:13pm.

In response to: The U.S. officially banned its search for weapons of mass destruction in January 2005, and up to the present there have been no discoveries of such weapons in Iraq. Given this outcome, it was arguably reasonable for CNN to have presented the perspective that no weapons existed. So why would it choose not to? Precisely because, as McChesney and Nichols argue, CNN needed to keep costs low (rely heavily on official sources) and maintain favor with the government (cover the invasion from the government's perspective).

Starting on the bottom of page 64, McChesney and Nichols talk about the War on Terrorims and Iraq. They explained that skewed journalism is not always a result of corporate lobbying or favoritism. They said, "The main reason for this distorted coverage is due tot he way in which so-called "professionalism" journalism is practiced in the United States. To avoid the taint of partisanship, and to keep costs low, professionalism makes official or credentialed sources the basis for new stories" (66).

I think distorted coverage comes from several different areas. First, I think that our media is all about business. They want to get the best story because they want to rake in the cash. Also, I believe that our journalists are often afraid to step on toes (especially the governments). Stories that address the war in Iraq are probably watered down not to offend anyone. At the same time, there is definately that business interest.

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