WAR AND CENSORSHIP

WAR AND CENSORSHIP

It’s an old story, almost as old as the country – the conflict between the military and the press over what can be told and shown in wartime. In his media column today in the New York Times, David Carr reveals how the Defense Department has all but banned photos from the war zone depicting wounded or dead American soldiers. (The new rules don’t explicitly forbid such photos, but they require photographers to obtain written permission in advance from any soldier who might end up hurt or killed. Fat chance. )

As it happens, on this Memorial Day, I am working on the chapter in my book that covers World War II. In that war, when our national survival was at stake, the government went in the opposite direction. At the war’s start, the Roosevelt administration acted on instinct and censored a lot of information, including all photos of dead G.I.s. In 1943, though, after intense lobbying from Life magazine, the Censorship Board reversed its policy and gave permission. The first photo showed several dead Marines lying face down on a beach in New Guinea.

The evidence for the impact of that photo and the ones that followed is sketchy. But among U.S. fighting forces, the new policy certainly had no measurable impact on morale. And among civilians, we know that during the next bond drive (which were a recurring sort of popular referendum on the war, in which citizens were asked to lend the government the money it needed – rather than depend on lenders in China and Japan, as we do to finance this war), sales actually increased.

Of course, there was one difference between the two wars, which may be key: by 1943, we were winning.

Fine, sad reporting

Fine, sad reporting

A salute to the intrepid, incomparable Anne Garrels, reporting for NPR from Baghdad. She had a piece on Thursday (5/24/07) that spells out, fact by depressing fact, why our efforts in Iraq are so fruitless. Without a line of editorializing or polemic, she nails down the case that what we have done for the past four years has been a failure.

Here’s a link to Anne Garrels’ piece.

As I listened, I kept wondering: What was so different about the U.S. occupations of Berlin and Tokyo after WWII? Certainly, the traffic lights were working by 1949.

Readers to the rescue?

NEWSPAPERS NEED A NEW KIND OF OWNER: READERS


By Chris Daly



"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."
--A.J. Liebling.
The New Yorker, May 14, 1960


The recent challenges to the ownership structure of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal have put the spotlight on an issue that rarely gets the attention it deserves, even from shrewd media critics. That is, what are the implications of the various forms of ownership of the mass media that produce journalism?

Does it make any difference HOW a news operation is owned? Does it make any difference WHO owns it?

Based on my research into the history of journalism, I’d say, You bet it does. If it didn’t, people would not be in such a swivet over the rebellion at the Times or the attempted takeover at the Journal.

At the Times, the problem is this: Some people bought shares of Class A stock (knowing full well that those shares come with only limited rights to run the company) and now they are disappointed that the stock price isn’t rising, so they want to upset the ownership structure that vests control of the newspaper in the Class B stock, which is held by members of the Sulzberger family. So, when publisher Arthur Sulzberger faces those unhappy shareholders, the question on their minds is not whether he has raised the standards of journalism, it’s whether he has raised the prices of the company’s stock.

At the Journal, the crisis was provoked by conservative media baron Rupert Murdoch, who came calling with an offer to nearly double the value of the stock if the controlling Bancroft family will sell. The concern then is will Murdoch maintain the Journal’s integrity, or will he use the paper to settle scores, promote conservative causes, and coddle the dictators in China?

What both of these valuable news operations need is essentially the same thing: a way to keep ownership in the hands of people who really care about journalism and to insulate themselves from ever being controlled by someone with a different motive. What they need, in short, is a new form of ownership.

One solution would be to find a large number of affluent people who really care about upholding the highest standards in journalism. In fact, they are not hard to find. They are: THE READERS.

The existing subscriber base of both newspapers is a precious asset, one that is not realizing its full potential. The owners of both papers should take a cue from public broadcasting and launch a “pledge drive” the likes of which no one has ever seen. Instead of just sending money, the subscribers could be enlisted to buy stock.

Actually, a campaign to buy stock in the Times or the Journal is not even that much of a financial sacrifice, unless the stock prices completely collapse, because the new shareholders end up with both a great newspaper and shares of stock. And if those stocks should ever rebound, the rescuers of these great news institutions would find their virtue rewarded.

Could it work? Some back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest it could.

The Times has about 1 million subscribers, and the Journal has a few more. Even leaving aside the people who regularly share the subscriber’s copy of the paper as well as the free-loaders who just read the free stuff on the Web, there is still a hard core of people a million strong who are serious enough about quality journalism to pony up the cost of a subscription.

Consider what they could do at the Times. If each of those million subscribers invested $2,000 in the company by purchasing shares of the Class A stock, that would create an investment pool of $2 billion. With $2 billion, the readers could buy a majority of the value of the company, which is capitalized at about $3.6 billion.

Of course, it could be objected that a lot of Times readers cannot afford to devote $2,000 to the cause. Fine. But the demographics of the Times audience would also suggest that there are plenty of Times readers who could afford quite a bit more, and I am sure that there is a minority of the readers who could buy plenty more shares.

Ditto for the Journal.

So, if those of us who are serious about serious journalism would step up and become part-owners, we could do it. After all, as the pioneer press critic A.J. Liebling pointed out almost 50 years ago, the Constitution doesn’t protect readers of the news, or even news reporters. It really only works for press owners.

Any buyers?

The Devil's in the Printer

PRINTER INKS

Back in the dark ages of journalism, young apprentices were bound for years to a master printer, who taught the young men the arts of printing. Such an apprentice was called a “printer’s devil.” They don’t exist anymore. Instead, the devil seems to be IN the printer.

Recently (May 17, 2007), the New York Times presented a column on the section front of “Business Day” which touted the arrival of a new printer by the Kodak company that offers the promise of less-overpriced ink. As we all know, companies like HP and Epson are really in the ink business. They sell us printers very cheaply, only to get us hooked as customers so that they can sell us ink very expensively.

So, a company offering truly cheaper ink would actually be pretty big news.

But that’s not the only problem with printers and their inks. In my experience, the real problem is that the ink cartridges are so small that I am always running out of ink. And it seems that I am always running out of ink at the worst possible times – in the middle of the night, or when I have a huge project due, or (even worse!) when my kids have a huge project due.

What I’d like to see is a printer that comes with a lifetime supply. Now, THAT would be progress.

Things You Can Learn from Fox News

THINGS YOU CAN LEARN FROM FOX NEWS

By Chris Daly

With the recent disclosure that Rupert Murdoch, global media mogul, is attempting to buy the Dow Jones Company and its flagship, the Wall Street Journal, I have been paying more attention lately to one of Murdoch’s journalistic operations, the Fox News Channel. You can learn a lot from watching Fox News, especially if you ignore what is being said and focus instead on what is not being said. Here are some things I learned:


1. President Bush is perfect and never makes mistakes.

2. If Bush makes a mistake, see #1.

3. Real men have blunt-sounding, single-syllable names like Biff, Brent, Shep. They sound like names from a rodeo rather than a newsroom.

4. America has an endless supply of fairly young, totally blonde women who are fairly smart and totally deferential.

5. The oil business is complicated and off-limits. All you need to know is this: everything would be fine if we could just increase the supply of oil, but liberals won’t let us.

6. Everything bad is Clinton’s fault.

7. Ronald Reagan is the godhead.

8. The cops are always right and just need more firepower.

9. Prosecutors are always right and need stiffer penalties, including the death penalty.

10. When things are going badly in Iraq, it’s time for a story about the weather.

11. Left-wing celebrities are all hypocritical kooks.

12. Right-wing celebrities are charming individuals.

13. America is a Christian country, so (obviously) there should be Christmas displays outside our city halls and the 10 Commandments in our courtrooms. Anyone who disagrees is a dangerous atheist.

14. A lot of the countries we don’t like are theocracies, but they’re not usually Christian, so that doesn’t count. We can still make fun of their practices and cluck over their backwardness.

15. In sports, what matters is football and NASCAR. Everything else is for liberals, girls and foreigners.

16. The “culture wars” matter, 24/7.

17. Most Americans need regular instruction in how to think about politics.

18. Foreigners come in two flavors: Silly and Scary. That’s because…

19. All of the decent, hard-working foreigners came to America long ago (when our own ancestors did), before our leaders discovered an immigration crisis.

20. A subject that cannot be mentioned: corporate CEO compensation rates. Shhh.

21. That’s because in America all rich people deserve to be rich (except for left-wing Hollywood stars).

22. People like Oprah, Michael Jordan and Beyonce are a pain the ass and can give you a headache if you think about them long enough, but they are useful because their success “proves” that America is not a racist country… so GET OVER IT.

23. History is complicated and can also give you a headache. But history comes in handy when you need to rationalize anything that conservatives want to do, and there are conservative “intellectuals” who will provide the proper historical analogies just in time, on an as-needed basis.

24. The average, normal American is rightly aggrieved because un-deserving people are always trying to take things from us. (Jobs, certitude, etc.)

25. Taxation is theft.

26. All government spending is wasteful. (Except military spending and Republican earmarks).

27. The following statements are all ones that reasonable people disagree over but can be asserted as self-evident:
--Human life begins at conception.
--Lower taxes stimulate the economy and thereby yield greater revenue.
--Crime is the result of liberal coddling.

28. If you say “fair and balanced” often enough, who knows?

I have also noticed that whenever the news is really bad for conservatives, Fox finds a reason to change the subject. It seems there is always a blonde abduction case, a tornado in a Blue State, or a low-speed car chase being held in reserve. Sex offender, anyone?

More to read

I have been thinking a lot about the Murdoch offer to buy Dow Jones. I would hope that my book, with a consistent emphasis on the business side of the news business, will help people think about these issues. Based on all my research, I think the form of ownership has lots of consequences.

In the case of Murdoch, leaving aside his political impact for a moment, think about the enormous, inherent conflicts of interest built into his potential ownership of Dow Jones. A case in point: through one of his News Corp's subsidiaries (Star TV), Murdoch is the major supplier of satellite television signals to mainland China. In a censorious dictatorship like China, it may have been inevitable, but Murdoch has been turned into part of the regime's program of controlling information.

Now, suppose Murdoch owns the company that publishes the Wall Street Journal. Some of the Journal's best reporting in recent years has been done in China, where a number of correspondents have contributed to hard-hitting series of articles exploring the costs of China's environmental degradation, or the human suffering caused by the government's persistent human rights abuses.

What can we expect Murdoch to do when the Chinese leaders come to him and say they want him to tell "his" reporters to back off?
Does he say, "To hell with you (and your giant market, too)"?