The Media in the Media
Orville Schell is worried about the reasons why the American press failed in dealing with the Bush administration:
For three-plus years we have been governed by people who don’t view news, in the traditional sense, as playing any constructive role in our system of governance. At the moment, they are momentarily in retreat, driven back from the front lines of faith-based truth by their own faith-based blunders. But make no mistake, their frightening experiment will continue if Americans allow it. Complete success would mean not just that the press had surrendered its essential watchdog role, but — a far darker thought — that, even were it to refuse to do so, it might be shunted off to a place where it would not matter.
John Theobald publishes an excerpt of his new book Media and the Course of History on Media Lense [look for the July 14 entry]. It deals with the Iraq war and occupation as well:
One may foresee more fighting, more propaganda, and more threatening, anti-democratic measures to quell internal opposition. Entwined media, government and economic elites will continue to wish to make history in their own interests and image, and will correspondingly manipulate and attempt to control publics with a judicious mix of friendly and unfriendly coercion.
The nightmare that they wish to avoid at all costs is a massive, alert, media-wise alliance of articulate citizens who have seen through the genealogy of untruth that has held sway since the beginning of the media age.
Meanwhile, the Dutch government thinks more self regulation will heighten the standards of the our news media [Dutch, pdf]. Oddly enough, they want to stimulate self regulation by giving the powerless Raad voor de Journalistiek [Press Council] more personnel, and by setting up a new bureau to create more debate in the field.
And, they want to professionalize their own communication, which probably means yet more spin again. Even when our media are already totally harmless against trained spokesmen:
Communicatie in het hart van het beleid vraagt niet alleen om nieuwe organisatorische verbanden, maar ook om een verdergaande professionalisering van de communicatiefunctie. Een van de projecten van het Actieprogramma betrof een onderzoek naar de wijze waarop directeuren Communicatie, die in de meeste gevallen ook eerste woordvoerder van het ministerie zijn, hun managerrol kunnen versterken, niet alleen ten gunste van een meer regisserende rol van de eigen directie, maar ook van de gehele communicatiekolom in het ministerie.
[x]#669 fan woensdag 14 juli 2004 @ 18:19:16
