How the Bush Administration Intimidates the Mainstream U.S. Media




     IN 1984, at the height of Reagan’s militarism, the editor of a Texas suburban newspaper where I had worked as a reporter for two years right out of college told me the paper could not publish a feature article I wrote on a local woman who began a nuclear weapons freeze organization.

     The reason: My story would “upset” advertisers.

     After all, many of those advertisers worked for the U.S. military/industrial complex. After all, many of those advertisers were closely aligned with the Republican Reagan regime.

     So, I did what I thought most any freedom-loving, principled American would do: I quit my job in protest and gave the story to a competing newspaper, which published it.

     This indirect form of government and corporate intimidation is sadly more common in today’s media environment than it was in the year of George Orwell’s 1984.

     In 2003, there was an alarming increase in the number of mainstream reporters fired or reprimanded for simply exercising their Constitutional rights. The result was just what the Bush-Cheney New World Odor [yes, I mean, “Odor,” as in these heartless elitists stink like crap] wanted: A working environment of fear in which people goosestepped behind their political and corporate leaders or remained silent because they were afraid for their jobs or even their lives.

     I feel for these reporters. As much as progressives like to complain about the media - and I do my share - I also realize the constraints of the profession. It’s hard to quit a job in protest - or even mildly go against the grain - when you have to feed a family in a tough job market. Members of the Bush-Cheney New World Odor know this. It’s all part of the plan. It’s why we have a tough job market today. That’s right, the New World Odor wants a tough economic market to better control us.

Reporter fired for participating in demonstration

     In the face of this environment, the convictions and courage of some mainstream journalists continue to inspire me. Henry Norr, a former technology columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, was fired in April 2003 for participating in a demonstration against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. That came despite that newspaper having no policy that reporters or columnists could not participate in demonstrations at that time, and despite the fact that Norr covered areas largely unrelated to politics and war.

     After Norr’s firing, the paper implemented such a hypocritical policy against employees taking part in actions against the war that had a chilling effect on the newsroom. But corporate bigwigs were still free to engage in whatever political activity they wanted.

     Norr filed several complaints with state commissions, including the California State Labor Commission, which prohibited employers from interfering with the political activities of employees. But as he wrote, at least one media corporation in another state got around a similar law by saying - in a bit of Orwellian doublespeak that Bush-Cheney would be proud of - that the First Amendment gave newspaper owners the right to limit the free speech of employees.

     Norr continued to take action - he was shot in the leg with a wooden dowel in Oakland and arrested for civil disobedience outside the gates of Lockheed-Martin, the world’s largest arms manufacturer, in ensuing months. “I intend to continue exercising my constitutional rights and my moral obligation, as I see it, to oppose the Bush administration’s reckless and illegal imperial adventures,” he wrote in a statement published in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. “Someday I may have grandchildren who ask my daughters what our family did in the face of this madness. At least they’ll be able to say we all tried to make our voices heard - my wife and both of my daughters have also been arrested in civil disobedience this month. And I’m glad to know they won’t have to say that I just stood on the sidelines for fear of retaliation from my employer.” 1

     In Jan. 2004, the Chronicle gave Norr an undisclosed financial settlement. Chronicle managing editor Robert Rosenthal said in a statement, “When a reporter brings about that ethical conflict, as occurred here, the unfortunate but necessary result is a separation.”

     Norr responded to Reuters, “Nobody had seen a conflict between being a personal technology writer and being against the war. It's not like some exotic activity to go to an anti-war demonstration, at least not around here.... Where is the conflict? To say that you're against the war, that somehow biases your coverage of personal technology?" 2

More casualties of our McCarthyism times

     Ed Gernon was another casualty of these McCarthyism times in which journalists couldn’t even comment in general about what our country was like without being fired. The veteran TV producer was fired in April 2003 from the company that produced the CBS mini-series Hitler after this comment about that project in TV Guide: “It basically boils down to an entire nation gripped by fear, who ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunge the whole nation into war. I can’t think of a better time to examine this history than now.” 3

     Another note for conspiracy theorists: TV Guide was owned by far-right media mogul Rupert Murdoch in 2003. Was Gernon set up? At the very least, his firing for expressing an opinion about a society when such opinions were suppressed further proved his point about the parallels between 1930s Nazi Germany and the present-day U.S.

     Not even a respected Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent like Peter Arnett could get away with saying general comments. He was fired by NBC in March 2003 after saying on an Iraqi television station that war planners “misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces” and that there was “a growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war.” 4

     An NBC statement said, “It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV - especially at a time of war - and it was wrong for him to discuss his personal observations and opinions in that interview.” 5

     Why is it ever wrong to state opinions in a so-called “free society?” Could it be that our society is not as free as we like to think it is? Why does our “free society” have to stop allowing freedom of speech and the press when there is a war? Could it be because those opinions might get in the way of executing that war and reduce advertising and thus media owners’ profits? So much for freedom of speech and the press by such hypocritical, greedy media owners.

     I don’t buy the argument that Arnett’s comments could have led to more American troops dying, or that he shouldn’t be talking to Iraqi media. American and Iraqi troops and thousands of Iraqi civilians died because Bush-Cheney invaded Iraq for their own selfish political and economic reasons, not because of anything Arnett said. Put the blood on Bush-Cheney’s hands.

     And to really get beyond war, we have to stop seeing everything in nationalistic terms. As the American patriot Tom Paine said, “My country is the world.” But of course, Bush-Cheney won’t stop the patriotic nationalism wave because it keeps them in power. They want an American empire.

     Republican Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky and others even called for Arnett, who quickly found another job with England’s Daily Mirror, to be arrested and tried for treason. And people in this country still think there are no parallels to Nazi Germany here? 6

The rise of the thought police

     The corporate masters even want to control our private thoughts. Former Fort Worth Star-Telegram business reporter Steve McLinden, who I competed against at one time, was axed in March 2003 for simply sending a private email critical of a political group called Young Conservatives of Texas. Like Norr, McLinden’s job had little to do with politics, and he wasn’t even getting arrested in a demonstration.

     All McLinden did was send an email to this group in response to a mass email sent by the conservative organization announcing its plans to protest an Austin speech by President Clinton in February. The hypocrites, who typically called on others to take responsibility for their actions but looked for someone to blame whenever something went wrong under a Republican regime, predictably blamed the Sept. 11 terrorist acts on Clinton. That was despite those actions happening under Bush, who had plenty of warning and went on a month-long vacation right before Sept. 11, 2001, and despite Republicans’ long history of support for military aid and training for terrorists like bin Laden.

     As the Fort Worth Weekly pointed out, Young Conservatives of Texas was the same group that objected to Rice University’s annual Hispanic Professionals’ Leadership Day, called affirmative action “anti-white,” labeled an idea by Democrat Ron Kirk to require high school students to perform community service as a “scheme for Soviet-style social engineering at the hands of Washington bureaucrats,” and filed complaints against Texas hospitals that provide non-emergency care to undocumented immigrants. 7

     So McLinden had every right to send a private email - he didn’t even roast this group in public as the Weekly did - stating that he did not like this organization’s actions. McLinden did so in admirable, colorful fashion: “Ah, the heartless, greedy, anti-intellectual little fascists are mobilizing again. Let me guess. All you frat boys saved up your allowances and monies from your McDonald’s jobs for those Beemers you’ll be driving to the protest, and those new jackboots you’ll be sportin’ en route. Hey, don’t forget all the nasty little deals that Reagan’s henchmen cut with Middle East figures that got us directly into this mess today. I’m sure you’ll be protesting the Reagan household any day now. By the way, is it not enough to have the White House and Congress? Would you like to stamp out all signs that we are a two-party, Democratic country? What’s that? You would? How noble of you. I salute you and your polarized, little status-quo world.” 8

     Touche. I couldn’t have written a better response myself. I sent such biting, sarcastic emails to similar groups many times when I was employed under the Thou Shall Not State a Political Opinion Newspaper Slave Owners - I just was smart enough to use a pseudonym and not the company computer.

     Then came the owners who controlled McLinden’s former place of employment, who were informed of the sarcastic email by another mailing by the Young Conservatives. His boss actually sent the conservatives an email apologizing for McLinden’s PRIVATE comments and promptly fired McLinden, who had SIX children. He was canned despite the Young Conservatives organization saying in another press release it did not want McLinden fired.

     So why did the Star-Telegram fire McLinden? To send another chilling message to its employees that you have no political rights, you are our slaves. We even want to control your PRIVATE thoughts. That is the ultimate Orwellian nightmare coming home to roost.

     But McLinden landed on his feet. As of early 2004, he was working for bankrate.com.

More journalistic firings for telling the truth

     There were several other examples of such firings under the Bush regime. Dan Guthrie, a former columnist for the Grants Pass Daily Courier in Oregon, was fired for describing Bush as “hiding in a Nebraska hole” rather than returning to Washington immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. Tom Gutting, former city editor of the Texas City Sun, was also fired after he wrote that Bush “was flying around the country like a scared child seeking refuge in his mother’s bed after having a nightmare.” 9

     Las Vegas Mercury editor Geoff Schumacher was among those to condemn those firings. He quoted author Barbara Kingsolver: “It’s a fact of our culture that the loudest mouths get the most airplay, and the loudmouths are saying now that in times of crisis it is treasonous to question our leaders. Nonsense. That kind of thinking let fascism grow out of the international depression of the 1930s. In critical times, our leaders need most to be influenced by the moderating force of dissent. That is the basis of democracy, in sickness and in health, and especially when national choices are difficult, and bear grave consequences.” 10

     Then there was MSNBC’s firing of liberal talk show host Phil Donahue in February 2003. While officials blamed the firing on supposed low ratings, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting pointed out that the show had the best ratings on the network. An internal MSNBC memo stated that Donahue was a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war.” In effect, Donahue was fired simply because he was liberal, still another McCarthyism action. 11

     FAIR noted that MSNBC hired right-wing, racist talk show host Michael Savage, who has threatened opponents with violence and called on the Bush administration to investigate liberal activists, just like the government harassed anti-Vietnam War and African-American leaders in the 1960s and 1970s through the FBI’s COINTELPRO program.

     Other journalists were not fired from their jobs, but they lost columns or other forums. Brent Flynn, a reporter for the Lewisville Leader in Texas, saw his column axed in 2003 after he wrote about a Dallas anti-war demonstration in which he participated. “It is ironic that after writing a forceful essay in support of the first amendment, my column was cancelled,” Flynn wrote in a note on his personal Web site. “I was told that because I had attended an anti-war rally, I had violated the newspaper’s ethics policy that prohibits members of the editorial staff from participating in any political activity other than voting. I am convinced that if my column was supportive of the war and it was a pro-war rally that I attended, they would not have dared to cancel my column.....

     “I was also told that my objectivity as a reporter would be called into question. However, my opposition to an invasion of Iraq was well documented in previous columns before I revealed that I had participated in the protest. But instead of taking me off of my beat or terminating my employment as a staff reporter, my opinion column was cancelled - the aspect of my job that was enhanced by my participation in the rally. In my opinion, a powerful liberal voice was unwelcome in the conservative Republican county served by my newspaper. The fact that the column was cancelled just days before the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq raises serious questions about the motives for the cancellation.” 12

     Flynn continued to be a news reporter for the paper, while writing more interesting columns on his Internet site.

     Kurt Hauglie, a former reporter and columnist for Michigan’s Huron Daily Tribune, actually resigned in protest from the paper in March 2003 after his bosses declined to publish an anti-war column he wrote because it might upset readers. 13 Meanwhile, right-wing radio disc jocks like Clear Channel’s Glenn Beck - who admittedly weren’t really journalists - could go as far as to organize, not just attend and participate in, pro-war rallies. 14

Reporters admit they were intimidated by Bush administration

     Another case came in April 2003 when NBC reporter Ashleigh Banfield was rebuked by network President Neal Shapiro for saying in a speech at Kansas State University that television reporters sugarcoated Iraqi war coverage with patriotism and did not show the realities of the conflict. Banfield’s comments were true. 15 For example, CNN’s Moneyline host Lou Dobbs appeared on camera with an American flag pin in his lapel and called weapons inspection head Hans Blix “a petulant UN bureaucrat.” No one dared broadcast pictures of Iraqi children blown to bits by our “smart bombs.” The bottom line was that NBC bigwigs didn’t really care as much about telling the truth as they did about making the bucks. 16

     Other journalists, including ABC news anchor Peter Jennings, said similar statements. CNN’s top war correspondent, Christiane Amanpour went so far to say during a CNBC talk show that the press muzzled itself during the Iraq war and CNN was intimidated by the Bush administration and Fox News. 17

     Perhaps some of these reporters really were scared for their lives during wartime and didn’t want to further risk their lives by getting the U.S. military mad. Reporters Without Borders, which ranked the U.S. 17th in press freedom in 2003, with Finland, Iceland, Norway and Holland at the top, accused the U.S. Defense Department and the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission of ignoring its demands for a proper search for two journalists that were missing in southern Iraq for a month. The agencies also refused to investigate deaths of several journalists there. Those were real concerns. 18

Censorship extended to more areas

     The censorship wave extended to other areas. The country band Dixie Chicks was taken off the air of several radio stations in 2003 simply for questioning the Iraqi invasion and saying they were ashamed that Bush was from their home state. Right-wingers organized a campaign to revoke filmmaker Michael Moore’s Oscar and try to keep Bowling for Columbine out of theaters.

     The Web site YellowTimes.org, which featured original anti-war commentary, was shut down by its Internet hosting company in March 2003, after it posted images of U.S. POWs and Iraqi civilian victims of the war. Orlando-based Vortech Hosting told Yellow Times in an e-mail, “Your account has been suspended because [of] inappropriate graphic material,” according to a press release by Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting. 19

     Another Vortech email said, “As ‘NO’ TV station in the U.S. is allowing any dead U.S. soldiers or POWs to be displayed and we will not either.” The site was soon back, however.

     In two separate cases at malls in New York and Arkansas in 2003, people were arrested and charged with trespassing simply for wearing t-shirts with peace messages on them. They were not in the mall to protest, just to have lunch and shop.

     In March 2003, attorney Stephen Downs was arrested and taken away in handcuffs after he refused to take off a shirt he had just bought at the Crossgates Mall in Guilderland, N.Y., that said, “Give Peace a Chance.” 20

     After more than 100 people protested the arrest at the mall, the trespassing charges against Downs were dropped.

     The following month, Daniel Vaught was arrested at the Northwest Arkansas Mall in Fayetteville, Ark., for wearing a shirt that read, “"Support the troops, not war or Bu$h." 21

     People could wear all kinds of vulgar, hateful messages on shirts in these malls, but not ones that called for peace, something which Christ and other religious leaders that so many people claimed to follow have done.

My battle against government and corporate media intimidation

     In my case back in 1984, I had a choice: I could meekly resign myself to the ethical roadblock and go back to work, essentially letting advertisers and government officials dictate to me what I could cover. Or I could quit my job in protest and find another way to get the story to the public.

     I was 24, probably even more liberal and idealistic than I am now, and the proverbial “angry young man” who wasn’t going to compromise my idealism and integrity or let anyone stop me from my mission to expose our society’s evil doers. I was single and didn’t have to worry about feeding a family, as I do now. In my two years with that suburban paper, I had openly participated in demonstrations against Reagan’s military build-up and written for other newspapers that advocated against the Republican regime.

     So, of course, I chose the latter option. I took the story to a competition paper - which published it - and submitted my letter of resignation to my boss. I didn’t regret it then, and I don’t regret it now. In fact, I’m prouder of my stand now, despite what my parents and others think.

     I didn’t just quit my job in protest - I joined an intensive, Survivor-like protest march against the worldwide nuclear arms race across this country and Europe to Russia. The stand I took on my former job helped me march some 5,000 miles for the next 18 months. But not even walking all those miles lessened the anger in me or my resolve to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

     Once that was over, I returned to journalism in Texas, starting with weekly suburban newspapers and eventually working as a reporter for a bureau of one of the largest newspapers in the Southwest. Though I had to confront numerous other times in which stories I suggested or did were shot down for various excuses, I did not resign in protest again.

     I tried to work within the limited corporate framework, taking consolation in small victories, such as being able to cover certain peace demonstrations and progressive causes. I was one of the few to give a voice to local progressive community activists who were shunned by many media outlets. With one of those activists, I wrote a book on the history of a certain Texas city that was viewed as opening the door to greater understanding of the plight of minorities and the disenfranchised.

Newspapers take away journalists’ political rights

     But that wasn’t enough for me. The large newspaper where I started working in the mid-1990s had this hypocritical policy that reporters and editors could not express any political viewpoint beyond voting, supposedly because doing so would compromise our so-called “objectivity,” one of many journalism myths with which I had problems. Although many large U.S. papers, including The Washington Post and The New York Times, have this suppressive policy, that doesn’t make it right. Europe is more progressive in this area - the leading papers defend the political rights of journalists.

     In my case, I thought I could adequately separate my professional and personal life, while retaining my Constitutional rights. I mean, what my employer was saying was, “We don’t trust you to be fair and professional in your stories if you care enough about our country to get politically involved.” In effect, we were denied our Constitutional rights if we wanted to keep our jobs. We couldn’t sign petitions, participate in demonstrations, work on political campaigns, or give money to candidates.

     Yet, the senior managers could do all that and more - most gave boatloads of cash to conservative politicians. This hypocrisy not only burned me up on the face of it - our upper bosses could flaunt a policy they placed on us - but here we were, an institution that was supposed to support the First Amendment, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to issue hypocritical policies, freedom to find ways to get around them, and we were not exactly practicing what we preached.

     Not wanting to openly protest this policy by quitting again because I had a family by this time and I thought I needed the job, the rebel part of me had to find ways to break that policy without getting caught. It became an on-the-edge type of engagement to me, one that gave me a somewhat exciting double life to lead.

     I attended demonstrations on the guise of covering them for the paper, and usually I would use material and quotes in later stories. I used a pseudonym - my late dog’s name, Jackson - to sign petitions. I helped the campaigns of progressive candidates in ways that I hoped would not be detected. This went on for all of the ten years I worked for that media company.

     There were a few times when I thought I would be fired, such as when the book, which we originally self-published before I began working for this larger media company, was reprinted by a local publisher while I worked for that firm. But my immediate supervisor was a cool guy - for a moderate Republican - who also knew the activist, and he probably helped save my job.

     After Bush Inc. stole the 2000 presidential election, I became much more active. I added the Thoreau last name to my pseudonym to honor one of my favorite writers and Americans. I began arguing with conservatives on message boards, chat rooms and anyplace I could. I started contributing to progressive electronic journals and Web sites using this pseudonym.

     I continue to this day to expose and work against Bush-Cheney through my mostly Web-based writings and activism, primarily under my pseudonym, which has become more popular than my real name. I find it interesting that reporters and other representatives from the Los Angeles Times, CNN, and other major media have contacted me about some non-paying Internet column I wrote, wanting to follow it up. Maybe I’m making more of a difference in taking this road than I think.

Most reporters play it safe these days

     I think it’s important for readers, especially those who criticize the mainstream media with a wide brush, to know something about my story and other journalists who fight against censorship. You never know how many other reporters are doing something like I did, leading a sort of double life because they believe in that basic journalism tenet to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Unless they are a journalist like Seymour Hersh, who inspired me to get into journalism during a speech at my college in the late 1970s, or Molly Ivins, who I met during my stint as a board member for the Dallas ACLU chapter, they can’t really openly carry out that principle in today’s corporate media environment.

     Many reporters today are ordered to concentrate on safe puff pieces that speak favorably about companies that advertise. Others are forced to focus on lifestyle stories on the latest high-tech gadget or how to open an IRA - news you can supposedly use - and to make sure you get “real people” to say something to make it appear like the media cares about what the average reader thinks. A few reporters are allowed to chase government and even corporate secrets to make it look like the media still wants to do its job, but their numbers are dwindling and their reports are watered down beside the puff pieces.

     Let’s just scratch one myth right off the bat: The media is no more liberal than Bush is sincere. Many reporters and editors might have been liberal in the Watergate days. But in 2004, most were either moderate or leaned to the right and cared more about making money and advancing their own careers than helping society, based on my observations of working in the media for more than two decades.

     And the ones who called the shots - the corporate media bigwigs - were mostly true conservatives. Just review federal election records, and you will find the names of big media executives like Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch giving money only to Republicans. You won’t find many who gave to Clinton or Gore.

Studies show media bias against Democrats

     That’s why a study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a group organized by Columbia University and others, concluded that overall Bush was twice as likely to receive positive media coverage as Gore in the last weeks of the 2000 presidential campaign. Another study by that group found that more than three-quarters of the campaign coverage of Gore cast him as someone who lied, exaggerated, or was tainted by scandal. Meanwhile, most coverage of Bush carried the theme that he was a “different kind of Republican.” 22

     That’s why books on presidential news coverage like Robert Entman’s Democracy Without Citizens and Mark Hertsgaard’s On Bended Knee: The Press and the Reagan Presidency show that Democrats Clinton and Carter received tougher media scrutiny than Republicans Bush and Reagan. 23

     That’s why Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, the New York-based organization that superbly watched the supposed watchdogs, continually put out releases and reports on how biased the media’s coverage of W. Bush was. One blasted Newsweek’s puff piece on Bush in December 2001 for failing to ask a more substantial question on the “war on terrorism” than this: “From where does George W. Bush - or Laura, for that matter - draw the strength for this grand mission, the ambitious aim of which is nothing less than to ‘rid the world of evildoers’?” 24

     The magazine was so thorough in fawning all over Bush that it dismissed flaws, such as explaining why Bush doesn’t read many books because “he’s busy making history,” FAIR noted.

Ways that Bush administration directly intimidates media

     Bush-Cheney raised a lot of cash to give to big media companies for advertising, which is, in effect, little more than bribes.

     For the 2000 campaign, Bush had more than $100 million to spend, about double what Gore had. In 2004, he will have much more, probably more than $300 million.

     You don’t think spending that money on media advertising carries some weight when owners and senior managers decide what was covered? It sure had an effect on the small newspaper where I worked in 1984. It sure had an effect on the media outlets where Norr, Hauglie, Arnett, Flynn, and others covered in this essay worked. Our experiences were by no means isolated incidents.

     Another way Republicans intimidate the media is through threats and ugly phone calls by party activists to journalists who try to do their jobs the way they should be done. The Republican phone calls are usually vicious and profanity-laced. I received my share and had to bite my tongue more than a few times.

     Remember when Bush publicly called former New York Times reporter Adam Clymer a “major league asshole” just for doing his job during the 2000 campaign? That was a mild retort for a Republican. Republican activists get the message when their presidential candidate uses such language in public about a journalist that they can employ even worse profanity when calling reporters. And that message was reinforced after Bush refused to apologize for his public profanity, only saying that he regretted that a live microphone picked up his remark to Cheney. 25

     Many reporters just do not want to deal with harsh phone calls from Republican rightists, and I can kind of understand that. But somebody has to do it; I proudly volunteered to answer the call and considered taking such heat part of my job. More often than not, I would hold the phone with my middle finger fully extended as I listened to the latest right-wing tirade, most of which suspiciously sounded the same.

     Then, there were the instances in which reporters admitted they were intimidated by the Bush administration, such as during the Iraqi war, as covered above. And there were instances in which Bush administration officials directly and publicly criticized the media for certain comments, although the administration usually let its rabid-right attack dogs like Limbaugh, Coulter, and O’Reilly perform such dirty work.

     After Politically Incorrect talk show host Bill Maher said the Sept. 11 hijackers were not cowardly, but the U.S. was for launching cruise missiles at distant targets, Ari Fleischer, the White House press secretary, directly denounced Maher. “People have to watch what they say and watch what they do,” Fleischer threatened. 26

     Joshua Green, an editor at The Washington Monthly, wrote in late 2002 that the Bush administration “famously intimidates aggressive beat reporters.” That, and other factors like the lack of a “liberal equivalent of the right-wing press,” result in “less overall scrutiny of the administration,” Green said. 27

     In a Jan. 2004 speech at the University of Wisconsin, The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman also said the Bush administration intimidated journalists into not questioning its policies by accusing them of liberal bias and treason.

     Krugman jokingly said he could always retreat to his academic career if the administration’s attacks on the media resulted in him losing his newspaper column. "I can always go back to just being a college professor, in England, if necessary," he said. 28

A few signs of hope

     In the face of such intimidation, some journalists still find other ways to live out the afflicted principle, as I did and am doing. And you will never hear about most of those ways.

     While today’s society seems like it is becoming increasingly less free on the surface, perhaps there is more happening underneath that will one day unearth itself. Journalism may not be the right-the-wrongs watchdog profession I envisioned it as more than two decades ago, but some people are still trying. Maybe there are more Henry Norrs and Kurt Hauglies in mainstream journalism willing to put their principles on the line than we realize.

     On the surface, the owners may seem to win when they fire one of us, or make us resign in protest. But that’s only on the surface. Deep down, we push on. The firings and resignations only make us push on harder.

     For instance, The New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning war correspondent Chris Hedges gave an inspiring commencement address to Rockford [Ill.] College’s graduating class in May 2003 in which he warned of the dangers of a U.S. empire.

     “As we revel in our military prowess - the sophistication of our military hardware and technology, for this is what most of the press coverage consisted of in Iraq - we lose sight of the fact that just because we have the capacity to wage war it does not give us the right to wage war,” Hedges said. “This capacity has doomed empires in the past....War, we have come to believe, is a spectator sport. The military and the press - remember in wartime the press is always part of the problem - have turned war into a vast video arcade came. Its very essence - death - is hidden from public view.....We no longer understand that war begins by calling for the annihilation of others but ends if we do not know when to make or maintain peace with self-annihilation. We flirt, given the potency of modern weapons, with our own destruction.” 29

     That a journalist would give such a speech at a relatively conservative university - which admittedly did not receive it well - was reason in itself for hope. Though officials actually turned off Hedges’ microphone at one point - which he called “heartbreaking” - still some got the message.

     In addition, perhaps there are more journalists like me in my latter career, leading double lives and getting our messages through in other ways. Perhaps some, like me, write for progressive journals and Web sites under pseudonyms, if just to show those in power that they haven’t gotten to us entirely.

     Another sign of hope was that five liberal books were among The New York Times’ top 15 hard-cover nonfiction bestsellers in September 2003. The first position went to Al Franken’s Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. 30

     Some 20 years after the year for the setting of Orwell’s 1984 and two decades after my resignation from a newspaper in protest of journalistic censorship, I can take comfort that some reporters and writers are still making such stands. And unlike the characters in Orwell’s classic novel, Big Brother Bush-Cheney have yet to totally break our spirits.

     They can cut us with their doublespeak, jolt us with electricity. But they’ll never take the better part of us, the spirit that makes us freer than they will ever know.

Footnotes

1. San Francisco Bay Guardian, May 2003, http://www.sfbg.com/wartime/norr.html
2. Reuters, Jan. 5, 2004, http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040105/us_nm/media_chronicle_dc_1
3. New York Observer, May 12, 2003, http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m0ICQ/2003_May_12/101875639/p1/article.jhtml
4. CNN, March 31, 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/30/sprj.irq.arnett/
5. CNN, April 1, 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/03/31/sprj.irq.arnett/
6. Cincinnati Enquirer, April 2, 2003, http://www.enquirer.com/editions/2003/04/02/loc_rail.bunning02.html
7. Fort Worth Weekly, March 27, 2003, http://www.fwweekly.com/issues/2003-03-27/metropolis2.html
8. Ibid., http://www.fwweekly.com/issues/2003-03-27/metropolis2.html
9. Los Angeles Times, Oct. 2, 2001, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-100201editorial.story
10. Las Vegas Mercury, 2001, http://www.lasvegasmercury.com/archive.html
11. FAIR Activism Update, March 7, 2003, http://www.fair.org/activism/savage-donahue.html
12. BrentFlynn.com, 2003, http://brentflynn.com/brent/useful_idiots.htm
13. ABC affiliate, March 28, 2003, http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/news/032803_NW_da_paper.html
14. GlennBeck.com, April 1, 2003, http://www.glennbeck.com/al/04-01-03-al.shtml
15. MediaChannel.org, May 1, 2003, http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/moveon.shtml
16. FAIR, column by Norman Solomon, April 24, 2003, http://www.fair.org/media-beat/030424.html
17. Moderate Independent, Sept. 16, 2003, http://www.moderateindependent.com/v1i11mediawatch.htm
18. Reporters Without Borders, April 23, 2003, http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=6430
19. FAIR news release, April 3, 2003, http://www.fair.org/press-releases/iraq-censorship.html
20. CNN, March 4, 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/03/04/iraq.usa.shirt.reut/
21. Northwest Arkansas Times, April 2003, http://www.rense.com/general37/anti.htm
22. CNN, July 28, 2000, http://www.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/07/28/liberal.media/
23. FAIR, column by Jeff Cohen, March 25, 2001, http://www.fair.org/articles/softball.html, http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=10663
24. FAIR Action Alert, Nov. 30, 2001, http://www.fair.org/activism/newsweek-bush.html
25. BBC, Sept. 5, 2000, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/910614.stm
26. Los Angeles Times, Oct. 2, 2001, http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-100201editorial.story
27. New Democrats Online, Nov./Dec. 2002, http://www.ndol.org/blueprint/2002_nov_dec/11_rovery.html
28. The Daily Cardinal, Jan. 16, 2004, http://www.dailycardinal.com/main.cfm/include/detail/storyid/527633
29. Rockford Register Star, May 20, 2003, http://www.rrstar.com/localnews/your_community/rockford/0521hedgesspeech.shtml
30. The Boston Globe, Sept. 14, 2003, http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2003/09/14/liberal_authors_triumphant_as_us_bookshelves_lean_left/

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© 2004 Jackson Thoreau