From Mumia Abu-Jamal on death row:
When the press serves power
Published Jan 22, 2006 10:34 AM
The recent news report that media outlets kept mum on
American secret prisons in Eastern Europe for nearly a year, has erupted in the
midst of the NSA’s (National Security Administration) spying
scandal.
Both events reflect the massive power of the state; the power to
gag the press when it suits them; and the power to blithely violate the U.S.
Constitution at will.
Today, the Bush Administration has resurrected an
old Nixonian idea: executive privilege or the notion that whatever the president
does is inherently constitutional.
What is surprising is the
surprise!
This isn’t the first time that the White House has killed
or delayed a story; nor will it be the last; nor is the idea new that presidents
seek to expand their power, without serious regard to provisions in the
constitution.
Presidents, both Republican and Democrat, have spied on
Americans, invaded their privacy, wiretapped their phones, and broken into their
homes. In this regard, the FBI served as a kind of presidential police, who
bugged, spied on, tapped anyone that their boss in the White House wanted them
to.
Anyone who doubts this fact, need only read my book on the history of
the Black Panthers, entitled We Want Freedom (South End Press,
2004).
We were all raised with the dogma of the First Amendment, which
‘guarantees’ (among other things) the freedom of the
press.
What is less known is how often the press surrendered those
freedoms, to the White House, the FBI, the CIA, or some other government
entity.
Remember the infamous Bay of Pigs? This was a CIA-backed invasion
of Cuba, fronted by Cuban exiles. The April 17, 1961 invasion was crushed by the
Cuban army, and is remembered on the island as the battle of Bahia de Cochinos,
a victory that has all the significance of David and Goliath for the Cuban
people.
The New York Times knew about the invasion, and planned to
editorially denounce it. President John F. Kennedy persuaded the Times to not
run their denunciation, citing national security.
The rest is
history.
The CIA has (secretly) owned hundreds of media outlets, and thus
employed many journalists who didn’t know (or didn’t want to know)
who they worked for. It has used the services of at least fifty journalists both
here and abroad, among them writers for Newsweek, TIME, the New York Times,
United Press International, CBS News, and other periodicals published in English
all around the world (Howard Zinn, Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining
American Ideology, N.Y.: HarperPerennial, 1990, pp. 215-17.)
As historian
Howard Zinn has documented in his book, Declarations of Independence
(1990), the cases are, quite literally, legion in which government has changed
stories, had reporters transferred, or had other stories killed.
Even now,
in the midst of the NSA spying scandal of “thousands” of Americans,
the political elites have targeted journalists, not those who have done the
illegal spying!
There is a reason why circulation in many major papers is
rapidly declining; and while most point towards the lack of interest among young
folks, surely another element is distrust.
One need only look at this war
and the media’s role as chaperone to imperial power, to see why there is
such massive distrust.
The press, far too often, reflects the world of the
powerful, not of the people. It begins by observing the feasts of the famous and
the powerful, then, through the power of the media, it becomes a diner at the
feast. The interests of the wealthy becomes their interest, and coverage
certainly reflects it.
Major news outlets boasted anchors and reporters
who became wealthy celebrities, miles removed from the best reporting, or street
reporting that began their careers. As they moved farther from the streets, so
did their product, which should now be called
‘narrowcasting.’
To call “this” a free press is
but to demean it.
Go to leftbooks.com to order
“We Want Freedom.”
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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