Danny Schechter
We Need A Media War On All Fronts
When do you feel like you are over the hill?
When you get letters like this one from Jose Hevia after writing an op-ed featuring an essay from your recent book Blogothon, recounting your experiences as a network TV insider turned independent media outsider. The essay offered a case study of how the nominally non-commercial network, PBS, turned its back on a human rights TV series I co-produced. It is about the challenges progressives face in offering a counter-narrative to parochial mainstream thinking.
My critical correspondent wondered what I was whining about:
Complaining that the old media is getting more and more monopolized is … Who cares about old media? … Nobody is my inner circle under 30 watches old media any more.
Bye.
Take that, old man. Ha, ha, ha.
I am not sure his view is totally true, what with Comedy Central, movie channels galore and unlimited sports coverage. The New York Times reports “Television is…
The Axis of Indifference In The Media World
The following is an excerpt from my new book Blogothon. It was originally given as a speech to a media conference and has been updated slightly.
Foreign correspondents have always been revered within journalism. That’s why covering Iraq or other wars are assignments so many reporters cultivate. Many see them as a ticket up the media pecking order.
Being “under fire” promise excitement, danger and—let’s face it, on TV —precious “face time.” Going overseas is often a route to more visibility and better jobs at home on the strength of your “bravery.” War reporting can be the macho oxygen of ambition.
Just as covering a turbulent world is attractive in the ranks, up in the suites of media power “foreign news” is, according to Michael Wolff, a “nostalgist’s beat” said to turn off American audiences and tune them out. That’s why decision-makers shutter bureaus and redefine news of the world as news of American power…
Iceberg Ahead: The Big Money That is Sinking Democracy
I keep thinking of that clear April night 100 years ago when the unsinkable RMS Titanic steamed towards New York. It was actually on its way to dock just a few blocks from where I live at what are now the Chelsea Piers. There was a sense of optimism abroad as a new record for a speedy transatlantic passage was about to be set.
There was music, dancing and fine wine. That is, until they saw that iceberg high in the water. The captain and his mates were aware that 80 percent of it was underwater and out of sight. They didn’t react in time.
Everyone knows the story—most recently recreated in 3D—but the lesson is really not just about that great ship that went down, or even the company that bypassed safety regulations, or even the hubris of the owners whose greed sent so many passengers to that legendary “watery grave.”
It…
Robots ‘R’ Us: Drones Reportedly Used On 63 U.S. Bases
It’s easy to understand why presidents, politicians and the military love robots. They don’t talk back. They follow orders. You press a button and they do what they are told. They are considered so efficient, and so lethal.
These modern killing machines represent science fiction reborn as science “faction.” Robots and drones don’t burn Korans or pose with the heads of their captives on the battlefield. (Robots also don’t protest wars.) Lose the human factor and you get silent but deadly total destruction.
And that’s why drone warfare has become such a weapon of choice. You have video game jockeys sitting on their asses in front of consoles of digital displays at an Air Force base outside Las Vegas, targeting suspected terrorists in Afghanistan. After a couple of quick kills, they take the rest of the day off.
It’s only later, that we get the reports of civilians decimated as collateral damage.
Oops! These…
Are You ‘Spring Training’ For May Day?
Stand fast, then, Oh Workers, your ground,
Together pull, strong and united:
Link your hands like a chain the world round,
If you will that your hopes be requited.When the World’s Workers, sisters and brothers,
Shall build, in the new coming years,
A lair house of life—not for others,
For the earth and its fulness is theirs.—Walter Crane, The Workers’ Maypole (1894)
When you hear the term “spring training,” most of us think baseball, but, this year, it has a different context because the Occupy Movement has appropriated the term to describe educating and preparing activists for nationwide protests and a hoped for General Strike slated for May Day 2012, this May 1st.
The idea of “spring” may be more connected to the “Arab Spring,” a time of revolt than the season we’ve entered.
Can this relatively new movement pull off an ambitious General Strike to shut down a city like New York? In many ways, the success of this tactic…
Battle for The ‘Soul’ of Occupy: Fear of Co-option Leads to Self-Destructive Polemics
Perhaps my problem is that I live in too many worlds at the same time, while many political eras live in me.
That may be why I responded so negatively to a recent polemic wrapped up in a poetic communique from Adbusters, the culturejammers in Canada, who do so much good work (and often so creatively) battling the consumption virus promoted by big corporations many of us have grown to despise.
I respect their magazine and marvel at the impact they have had in helping to stir Occupy Wall Street into existence. They clearly feel a sense of ownership in the movement and act not just as the midwife that promoted the occupy idea, but as the guardians of their version of the movement’s essence, as if they own the copyright and have to defend it aggressively in the court of public opinion.
Their latest communique, directed to “jammers, occupiers and Springtime dreamers,”…
Sayonara to Mike Wallace and The News Era He Led
Mike Wallace in 1957
Mike Wallace lived a long life and became one of America’s best-known non-anchor news stars, whose frequent appearances stirred controversies and broke countless stories.
The picture in the New York Times obit showed his wall of Emmys—I am sure he had a museum-full—all thanks to his relentless drive and unlimited energy.
Later in life, he would acknowledge that he was a manic depressive, but it was that manic part that pushed him to interview a who’s who of who was, and expose endless bad guys often with gimmicky confrontational interviews that showcased his considerable talents on 60 Minutes, for decades. America’s most watched news magazine.
My earliest memory of him was not on CBS where he achieved iconic status but on a network that came and went called Dumont, where he did an interview show for many years before he went national.
The show was called Night Beat, and was shot in…
It’s Tax Time: Time to Occupy the IRS
Every year I trek down to a nondescript office building near Wall Street with a bag full of receipts and a belly full of anxiety.
When it’s tax time, I always hope for the best but … I also had an accountant who I trusted to keep me on the up and up. He was recommended years earlier by the Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman, who wanted to avoid the Al Capone problem.
Abbie had been busted enough for his political activities and didn’t want more jail time for non-payment of taxes. So he had to be like the driven snow to withstand any audit. And he was. He was a revolutionary who held his nose and paid the man.
Back in the day, the government used IRS investigations to threaten political activists and intimidate activists that paid their taxes as opposed to those who became tax resisters to refuse to pay for wars.
Those…
The Final Four Or More?
March seems to be leaving us like a lamb, although “March Madness” is still in effect, as college basketball marched into “The Final Four”
It is safe to predict that more Americans are paying attention to the action on the courts than the tired rhetoric and electoral mash-up where another final four bid for our attention, over-hyped in confrontational terms by political commentators who, like their sports counterparts, are just there to keep score:
They are in the endless update business focused on who is up, who’s down, and who is out — in the cold.
The sports analysts tend to be better dressed and more adept at “color” coverage while the pundits become more and more knee jerk and predictable which is why networks like CNN seem to invent new gadgets and graphic displays by the day. Have you seen their “cube?”
Let’s see: in the elephant camp, we have Mitt on first,…
Go Left, The Season Has Changed: Time for an OWS Spring Offensive
For years, in the last century, when I was in School and learning about the early days of journalism, we were taught that author Horace Greeley who founded the New York Herald Tribune, was famous for saying, “Go West Young Man And Grow Up With The Country.”
One problem, as we learned recently, he didn’t coin the phrase but only popularized it. (Another media mistake involving a top dog in the media!) Indiana newspaper writer John Soule actually gave the advice in 1851 and, it would serve as the mantra for 19th century “action” in the form of Westward migration.
These days, those good and the great men and women who won their struggle stripes in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam war movements have a new mantra for action.
Some, who recently appeared at New York’s annual Left Forum, were sharing it with younger people, “Go Left.”
They would probably agree with Mitt Romney…
UN Should Treat The Global Financial Crisis As A Global Human Rights Crisis
Journalists for the most part report what they know and hope that someone pays attention. With so many media outlets, brands, bloggers and sloggers out there, it is rare for challenging ideas to touch a larger nerve or get visibility beyond fragmented followings.
The idea of winning global attention is a far off dream unless you break the biggest exclusive or win the first interview with, say, Jesus on his return to earth. (And that could be ignored if your name isn’t Oprah, etc.)
Yes, sometimes going viral is the way to go—as is the case of a new video exposing the head of the Lords Resistance Army, the Ugandan terror crazies.
But even then, stories are always flashing one minute, gone the next, unless other media outlets pile on and raise their profile as happened here during Watergate and other issues, mostly sex scandals, since.
By and large, you labor on in the media…
Sweet Home Chicago: G8 Meeting Moved But Protests Will Continue
Who called whom first?
Did the Obama alumni Association in Chicago — David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, and Bill Daley — get nervous and call the White House, or was it Barack himself, having disposed/co-opted one threat by the name of Netanyahu, who recognized he had a more serious problem the horizon.
The President has been playing Ronald Reagan these days, talking tough while feinting towards the center. What he most decidedly does not want to do is play Hubert Humphrey and relive the summer of 1968 in Chicago.
That’s why the G8 meeting was shifted from contested ground there to safe space by in the ultra secure, well-guarded environment of Maryland’s Camp David. The last thing The President needs in the middle of his campaign is another police riot in the second city
Someone must have pointed out that the Occupy Movement was already in the process of planning another battle ala Seattle in…
Olympia Snowe and Andrew Breitbart: Is It The End of An Era?
There was an eerie synchronicity between the pending resignation of veteran Maine Senator Olympia Snowe, a Republican who had more than she could take of hyper-partisan “conservative” correct-lineism in Congress, and the death of Andrew Breitbart, the right-wing provocateur who did his very best to create the dynamic that Snowe was rejecting.
She would never use the language of her Party-mate Rick Santorum who confessed that some policies he disagreed with made him want to throw up, but if we lived in the age when all roads led to Rome, Congress would surely have its own vomitorium in the basement and it would be well attended.
Breibart’s unexpected passing of “natural causes” at might foreshadow the death of his political brand just as Snowe’s retreat to the State lobsters made famous may mark the end of the center in the GOP.
There was nothing natural about Andrew’s angst and activism as he smeared…
Memo To POTUS (Eyes Only): From The Department of Pre-War Planning And Threat Exaggeration
Here are excerpts from a “secret document” whose authenticity cannot be authenticated, perhaps because I wrote it myself.
As you requested, here is the scenario for how we can launch a war on Iran while publicly denying we are doing so.
This is a digest of the multi-dimensional and multi-track strategy that is in place, and is being pursued simultaneously in a coordinated manner, by The Executive Branch, Defense Department, State Department, and all intelligence agencies. (And despite reports from our spy agencies that Iran is right to insist it is not making nuclear bombs. Why let a denial get in the way of useful paranoia?)
This high-level strategy involves three core missions:
l. PREPARING THE PUBLIC
Thanks to our media friends and assets, we have been orchestrating a campaign that, at the same time, demonizes Iran’s leaders, while reinforcing our own posture as favoring defensive diplomacy, promoting global security and peace while refusing be led…
‘We Are Drowning’ On A Road To Nowhere
From Military Resistance: “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.” —Frederick Douglass, 1852
Oil prices are rocketing. Iranian warships are moving into the Mediterranean to shadow the US warships already there. Propaganda news is growing with rumors of Al Qaeda links with Iran, and, then, less speculative news about real links between the terror groups and the armed opposition in Syria.
As Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi puts it, the smell of war is in the air and on the air,
“You can just feel it: many of the same newspapers and TV stations we saw leading the charge in the Bush years have gone back to the attic and are dusting off their war pom-poms.”
The Consummate Special Ops Warrior
William H. McRaven is an admiral in Obama’s Navy. He was a member of Seal Team 3, and oversaw the killing of Osama Bin Laden.
He’s the consummate Special Ops warrior and wants more special ops forces, more drones and, most significantly, more “autonomy” (read, power) to position “his” troops in more places. He is now lobbying to expand his “freedom” by building a bigger personal arsenal of undercover operatives under his command.
The New York Times refers to his guys somewhat vaguely as “elite units” that “have traditionally operated” in “the dark corners of American foreign policy.”
That shines light on it, doesn’t it? What it says is: forget transparency and accountability. The hidden government is always hiding.
These units, like Special Forces, Delta Force, SEALs, and Rangers, often operate outside the chain of command and, as they become institutionally stronger, tend to dominate military decisionmaking.
McRaven’s ambition represents a takeover of the military…
Is The Past The Future? The News Dissector Reports From And On Iran
The TV series House of Lies is about business but it could as easily be about government and foreign policy.
In a recent episode, one of the management consultants pitches a company about the need to launch a new product. She recounts the story of the Polaroid Company known as the Apple of its day, widely admired for the cool design of its instant cameras.
When I lived in Cambridge, Mass., Polaroid was one of the town’s biggest employers, an economic powerhouse.
But soon it was gone. It failed to see new competitive products on the horizon. It only saw the future as its past.
It went bankrupt.
That seems to be the case of our own bankrupt foreign policy that operates with a limited playbook, of negative “options” build around threats, warnings, covert actions and military adventures.
The gap between what we say and what we do has become a chasm, a paper tiger in words…
Meeting Ahmadinejad, Trashing ‘Hollywoodism,’ And Eating Kabob
Tehran, Iran: Iran seems to many to be next in line for the Iraqi freedom treatment, the latest in a long line of “enemy” nations menaced by overt and covert military threats by the United States and its allies.
Tehran. Photo: Maryam Ashoori (CC)
As the psyops operations and media propaganda intensifies, you might think war is imminent for defense and that Iran is doing what countries under threat do in these circumstances—such as mobilizing their people and preparing for a bombing onslaught.
Think again. While I have been told that military targets have been or are being moved around, the atmosphere in Tehran is relaxed with more talk of a cultural battlefield than a military one. There’s a commemoration under way of the 33rd anniversary of the Iranian revolution and an international conference on “Hollywoodism and Cinema” as an extension of an annual Fajr film festival.
And that’s what I am doing here, as a…
Remember Rousseau: Property Rights And Human Rights Are Still At War
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The conflict between property rights and human rights has entered a new chapter. It is a debate that goes back to the challenge by landowners and merchants behind the American Revolution’s war on British control over the colonial economy.
Only today, as those speaking in the name of the 99% challenge the super wealthy of the 1% (actually the .001 %) there is a new battleground in what’s known as the housing market with as many as 14 million Americans in or facing foreclosure.
The defense of property rights is the holy of the holies for the propertied classes with a whole industry set up to enforce their claims of ownership.
We have seen how this plays out with the courts, run by often bought off and complicit judges rubberstamping claims by banks and realty interests even when laws are disregarded amidst fraudulent filings, biased contracts, and phony robot signings. They control the…
Living In A Real World House Of Lies
If you go to the corner of 8th Avenue and 42nd Street near Times Square in Manhattan, just down from the Wax Museum and around the corner from the bus station, and look up, you’ll see an oversized billboard for Showtime’s fast -paced “House of Lies,” a new cable TV series that is more like a realistic docudrama about the world of hard-charging management consultants.
Don Cheadle stars in this tightly written challenge to the popular “Mad Men” glorification of Madison Avenue in the 1950’s, spiced with the insertion of pretty graphic hot sex that makes Janet Jackson’s Superbowl moment seem like it belonged on the Disney Channel. An actor on the series laughingly downplays the explicit physical grappling as “naughty.”
At a time when Mitt Romney, a former management consultant himself in his years at Bain, is running for president, this show offers insight into just how vulgar vulgar capitalism can be.
In one…
