The Fifth Annual Reporters Without Borders Worldwide Press Freedom Index is out and it doesn’t look good for the United States. In a field of 168 countries, the U.S. finishes 53rd, sandwiched between the Dominican Republic and Uruguay. The embarrassment of such a poor ranking is exacerbated by the fact that we dropped nine points since last year to reach this nadir. The reasons for this slippage are summarized in the report:

“Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of ‘national security’ to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his ‘war on terrorism.'”

The report also cites the cases of journalists being held without trial in both Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. The report does not cite the continued use of propaganda in the form of video news releases, or merger of the White House press office with Fox News via the hiring of Tony Snow, or the Attorney General’s overt threat to incarcerate recalcitrant reporters when he told Congress that…

“There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that [prosecution] is a possibility.”

I did some additional numbers crunching to focus the list on the nations with the strongest economies as measured by Gross Domestic Product. In that ranking the U.S. finished in the bottom third at #14 of 20. I then produced a listing of 20 countries that ranked the highest in both population and GDP. Still the U.S. couldn’t manage to do better than tenth place. [Click on more below to view these charts]

The fact that this country, whose Constitution explicitly honors a free press, fares so poorly in this report is shameful. But what makes it worse is that, while the press in other nations is often suppressed by threats of violence, the main reason our media suffers is due to its own cowardice and ineptitude. This report is an exclamation mark for media reform and the movement to break up the Big Media conglomerates.

This sorry appraisal for the United States reflects squarely on the Bush administration and its open antagonism for the press. In its alleged quest to protect America from enemies whom we are told hate us for our freedoms, Bush has alighted on a unique defense:

If he takes away our freedom, they won’t hate us anymore.

Contine reading →

Last June, in a rare display of journalistic responsibility, the New York Times published an article exposing the Bush administration’s efforts to further undermine civil liberties by prying into private banking transactions without due process. The following month, Byron Calame, the Times’ Public Editor, backed up the story and the paper’s decision to publish it. But now he’s had a change of heart:

“After pondering for several months, I have decided I was off base. There were reasons to publish the controversial article, but they were slightly outweighed by two factors to which I gave too little emphasis. While it’s a close call now, as it was then, I don’t think the article should have been published.”

The two factors he cites as having prompted this back flip are, “the apparent legality of the program in the United States, and the absence of any evidence that anyone’s private data had actually been misused.”

On Factor One – Apparent Legality:
Mr. Calame now has doubts about the program’s illegality because, “there have been no Times reports of legal action being taken.” Well, there has been no legal action taken about dozens of BushCo’s legally suspect adventures. Since when is that a determinate of legality from the standpoint of investigative journalism? We have a Republican controlled Congress that refuses to perform its oversight obligations, and a Justice Department headed by Bush’s long-time personal lawyer. If the Times is waiting for them to prosecute wrongdoing on the part of this president, they might as well be waiting for Bush to admit he lied about WMDs. And if Calame thinks he has to wait for the Times to report on prosecutions he should know will never take place, he is being strikingly disingenuous, naive, or both.

On Factor Two – Private Data Misuse:
Mr. Calame is also second-guessing his original conclusions because he has not seen any documentation of harm resulting from the program. Does he really believe that a program that has the potential to produce harm must produce it before the program can be examined by the press? By that standard he would have the Times ignore proposed legislation to bar Episcopalians from voting until the law passed and an Episcopalian voter was turned away at the polls.

Calame cites, “The lack of appropriate oversight – to catch any abuses in the absence of media attention,” as a key reason for originally supporting publication. His new position is an endorsement for even less oversight and more absence of media attention going forward. This is a disappointing reversal that nonetheless affirms the philosophy of News Corpse: The media is dead.

On October 21, 2006, President Bush delivered another in the series of radio addresses that seem now to be presidential obligations. [Can anyone explain why these anachronisms persist in an era when media access is so abundant?] In this address the president makes some interesting remarks that unintentionally correlate his media policy with that of the terrorists.

“Another reason for the recent increase in attacks is that the terrorists are trying to influence public opinion here in the United States.”
The Bush Administration is also trying to influence public opinion here. Through the use of uncredited, government-produced video news releases and payments to friendly pundits, the American government has directed a flood of propaganda at the American people.

“They have a sophisticated propaganda strategy.”
They might have learned it from the Pentagon that has an ongoing policy of paying Iraqi newspapers to publish positive stories written by American PR firms.

“They know they cannot defeat us in the battle, so they conduct high-profile attacks, hoping that the images of violence will demoralize our country and force us to retreat.”
Sounds a lot like Shock and Awe.

“They carry video cameras and film their atrocities, and broadcast them on the Internet.”
This is not so different from the practice of embedding reporters in military units to produce tainted coverage that is then broadcast to the rest of the world. But we could also include the scandalous events at Abu Ghraib as examples of atrocities on film.

“…their goal is to, ‘carry out a media war that is parallel to the military war.'”
That is precisely the goal of the U.S. according to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who said that, “the military needs to focus more on adapting to the changes in global media.”

“The terrorists are trying to divide America and break our will.”
The president is also trying to divide America with characterizations of his critics as soft on terror cut-and-runners who want America to lose. His “with us or with the terrorists” rhetoric is designed explicitly to rip apart the fabric of the American people who, in their hearts, all want the same thing – Peace and security.

If there is one thing that we can claim credit for, it’s that we have been a stalwart role model for the forces we are fighting in Iraq and elsewhere. It is easy to observe that the terrorist’s media strategies, about which the president is complaining, were learned from studying the media strategies employed by Bush and his deputies. We are, if nothing else, good teachers.

The immediate pain of the just announced layoffs at NBC will be felt by the 750 employees that lose their jobs. But there is more harm in this plan, and it may spread even further.

First, many analysts note that the bulk of the cuts are going to come from the news divisions. NBC has stated that they will be consolidating operations from the network news, MSNBC, Telemundo, the station group and the NBC News Channel into one or two sites. This will reduce the diversity of reporting to an ever narrower stream of homogenized content. Good going NBC, that’s just what television news needs.

Secondly, NBC revealed that they will be turning the 8:00 pm hour into a reality block. Reality shows are cheap to make and are owned in greater measure by the network. This decision is a double punch in the gut to the creative producers of scripted programs (comedies and dramas). Not only will there be fewer timeslots available to place their product, they are also being shut out of the market because the network is choosing to buy programs from itself. The result is that independent production companies, which have been disappearing rapidly, will accelerate their exit from the television stage.

So to summarize:

• 750 people lose their jobs.
• Creative programming loses out to Reality programming.
• And all Americans lose even more outlets for their news.

And this is what NBC Uni Television Group CEO Jeff Zucker says is his blueprint for TV 2.0. If this is his idea of an upgrade, I think I’d prefer to stick with the old version. And that’s a pretty depressing thought in and of itself.

But the bottom line is that NBC’s initiative to streamline it’s operations is going to hurt millions more than the 750 unfortunates they are leaving on the cutting room floor. And these decisions are being made by the same executives that plunged NBC into 4th place. If these losers think this plan is going to be good for business, they are just providing new evidence of their cluelessness.