The Media
Conversation with David Barsamian
ElectronicIraq.net
24 February 2005
Interviewed by Omar Khan, Electronic Iraq
Journalist, author, and lecturer, David Barsamian is perhaps best
known as the founder and director of Alternative Radio, a weekly
one-hour public affairs program that began in 1986 and today reaches
millions of listeners from on top of an alleyway garage in Boulder,
Colorado. Like Dahr’s Dispatches, Alternative Radio is a news medium
sustained solely by the support of individuals.
Omar Khan: You’ve said of the media that “most of the censorship
occurs by omission, not commission.” Can you illustrate this in the
case of US news coverage of Iraq?
David Barsamian: There is a structural relationship between media and
state power. They are closely linked. Who are the media? Not just in
the United States, but around the world, they’re a handful of
corporations that dominate what people see, hear, and read. They have
been able to manufacture consent, particularly in the United States,
for imperialist wars of aggression. That’s exactly what I call Iraq –
an illegal, immoral war. I’ll just give you one example: the New York
Times, this great liberal newspaper, had 70 editorials between
September 11, 2001 and the attack on Iraq, March 20, 2003. In not one
of those editorials was the UN Charter, the Nuremberg Tribunal, or any
aspect of international law ever mentioned. Now, those guys know that
these things exist, and that’s a perfect example of censorship by
omission. And so if you were reading the New York Times over that
period, during the buildup to the war, you would not have had the
sense that the United States was planning on doing something that was
a gross violation of international law, and national law for that
matter.
The reporting on Iraq has been so atrocious: people talk about how the
bar has been lowered in journalism. I don’t think it’s been
lowered. I think it’s disappeared. It’s not visible anymore. The
servility and sycophancy of journalism has reached appalling levels,
and the catastrophe that’s unfolding in Iraq is a direct result of
this. There are huge consequences for not reporting accurately. And,
sadly, it’s the Iraqi people that are paying in huge numbers, and
Americans to a lesser extent.
OK: You’ve called the media “a conveyer belt.” This departs from a
view of such omissions to be the result of delinquency on the part of
media professionals. Your metaphor instead seems to suggest a mode of
production, rather than any kind of conspiracy.
DB: To describe objective reality is not to conjure a conspiracy
theory. “Conspiracy theory” has become a term of derision that is used
against people that engage in analysis of the official story. One way
to dismiss anyone who challenges the official interpretation of events
is to say that you’re a conspiracy theorist. In other words, you’re a
jerk, you’re a moron, you believe in UFOs, aliens, flying saucers. Of
course there are clearly sectors of the military-industrial complex
that benefit from war. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is a
fact. We know who they are: Honeywell, General Dynamics, General
Electric, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon. These
are the major military contractors that have raked in hundreds of
millions of dollars in contracts for weapons. They are major weapons
traffickers. They don’t meet on a rollercoaster, on a ferris wheel, or
on a carousel. They meet in offices. They sit down at tables. They
drink coffee, they eat donuts. It’s clear, it’s out in the open.
The United States makes 50% of all the weapons that are being exported
around the world. The US spends more money on the military than the 15
largest countries combined. And that spending is increasing
exponentially. The military budget is approaching half a trillion
dollars. So there’re clearly winners and losers. And if you have
stocks in those corporations I just mentioned, you’re raking it in,
man. It’s a picnic for you.
OK: How has the increase in media concentration affected this?
DB: In Ben Bagdikian’s “Media Monopoly” in 1983, he said there were 50
corporations that control most of the media. Then it became 28, then
23, then 14. Then 10. Then, in his latest book, it’s down to 5. 5
corporations control the media. And by the media, I don’t just mean
TV. I mean Hollywood movies, radio, DVDs, magazines, newspapers,
books, books on tapes, CDs. 5 corporations.
>From 1983 to today, 2005, increase in concentration in the media has
paralleled that of state and corporate power, and also of the
increasing tendency of the United States to become even more
aggressive and militaristic: witness the invasion of Grenada, the
invasion of Panama, the first Gulf War, the bombing of Yugoslavia, the
invasion and ongoing occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
And I am convinced that if Iraq had gone the way the neo-cons
predicted – that they would be greeted with sweets and flowers, and
that the war would be a cakewalk, as they said – they would have
turned their gun sights on Syria and Iran. But right now, because of
the level of resistance in Iraq – and don’t forget about Afghanistan,
as well – they’ve had to slow down.
OK: So what fundamentally distinguishes commercial news from
advertising?
DB: The distinction has become increasingly blurred. There are
instances we know of where the Pentagon generated video news reports
and then gave them to various TV stations. This is spoon-fed
propaganda coming straight from the Pentagon and being broadcast as
news. Yes, there’s supposed to be a difference, but that difference is
increasingly blurred. There’s a dependency relationship between
corporate media journalists and state power. They depend on government
for news, for information, for favors, for all kinds of perks. Thomas
Friedman boasted that he used to play golf with the Secretary of State
James Baker. Brit Hume said he played tennis with Colin Powell. If, on
the other hand, you’re a working journalist, and let’s say, you’re
assigned to the White House – and you ask challenging
questions. Pretty soon, you’re not going to get called on at these
press conferences. Pretty soon when you request a meeting with the
Deputy Secretary of State for Middle East Affairs, your phone calls
aren’t returned. In other words, you’re being blacklisted. Your editor
is flummoxed because he needs stories from people in power – they
depend on people in power for information. That’s the kind of
incestuous relationship, that the dynamic that’s going on there. You
risk your career when you go up against power. I remember Erwin Knoll
used to be the editor of the Progressive Magazine. He died a few years
ago. He told me once that, when he was a reporter in Washington – he
asked Lyndon Johnson a very challenging question. Johnson kind of
brushed him off, and after that, Knoll got the cold shoulder from the
White House.
OK: I hate that.
DB: After that, he was transferred. That’s the way they can control
the game. It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s the way power
works. Look, if you’re a powerful person and I’m a journalist,
wouldn’t you want me to write flattering things about you –
OK: Definitely
DB: –to praise your accomplishments to a wider, national audience? Of
course you would. But there’s also a structural relationship. The
electronic media is actually licensed by the federal government, by
the Federal Communications Commission. So here’s another area where
there’s this relationship. The airwaves belong to the people of the
United States; they constitute – probably, it’s hard to measure – the
most valuable physical resource in the United States.
You can’t grab the airwaves. You can’t put up your finger right now
and touch them. But the airways are part of the patrimony of the
people of the United States. And what has the FCC done over many
years? It has given away this valuable resource, and we don’t even get
anything for it. They don’t even pay for the right to propagandize-we
pay for the right to receive propaganda. All this despite that the
Federal Communications Commission enabling legislation specifically
says that the airways belong to the people.
OK: What about telecommunications reform in 96-97?
DB: The Clinton Telecommunications Reform of 1996 unleashed a tsunami
of mergers and takeovers. It has produced the greatest concentration
of media in the history of the world. That’s when clear channel went
from a few dozen stations, out of its base in San Antonio, to today
where it’s over 1200 radio stations. It’s become /the/ dominant radio
monopoly. And that was under the liberal Clinton, Gore – and I
remember very specifically, the liberal New York Times editorialized
at the time, when the legislation was enacted, that this legislation
would produce a bonanza for the American public. They’ll get more
variety, they’ll get more diversity. They’re the real winners.
Bruce Springsteen had that song about ten or fifteen years ago, “57
Channels and Nothing on.” And now, if he were rerecording that, he’d
have to put a zero at the end. Now there are 570 channels and nothing
on. There is so little information of value that is available to
American consumers of commercial TV.
OK: Thank God for PBS and NPR.
DB: They were created to be genuine alternatives to commercial
media. But they themselves have become largely commercialized. They
have what is now called “enhanced underwriting.” What does that mean?
That means commercials. They have moved way to the right, in terms of
their programming. PBS, for instance, which I call the Petroleum
Broadcasting Service. So much of its revenue comes Exxon Mobil, and
Chevron-Texaco. NPR has become a mere shadow of its former self. I
mean – and I don’t want to overstate it, since it was never
spectacular – in its early days, it still had some cojones, it still
had some sense of rebelliousness. It’s been largely tamed now. You
hear the commentaries, the discussions on Iraq…it’s not that
different from commercial media. It’s different in a key area of
sophistication and civility. They’re very sophisticated. They’re very
polite. People speak in complete sentences. You’re not interrupted. No
one’s yelling at you. (These are the characteristics of “Hardball,”
and the shout shows of commercial TV.) And so it’s seductive in that
way, particularly to the kind of ruling class. They like that. People
who’ve gone to Ivy League colleges, you know, they like to have to
have their news, sip a glass of port, and listen to some “reasonable
discourse.” I listen, particularly to National Public Radio; their
range of opinion – maybe it’s A to D. Whereas the commercial media,
maybe it’s A to B. That’s not a big difference. They both pick from
the same golden rolodex of pundits and experts from the Washington and
New York think tanks: the American Enterprise Institute, the Cato
Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Georgetown Center for
Strategic Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
There’s one woman in particular that I listen to, on NPR. She hosts
“Sunday Edition” in the morning, her name is Lianne Hanson. She
constantly has people like Walter Russell Meade, from the Council on
Foreign Relations, or Kenneth Pollack from the Brookings Institution
in D.C. These guests come on, and they make the most outrageous
comments. Those comments simply go unchallenged. And they come back
time and time again. They’re part of the golden rolodex, this list of
these names that circulates. And people like Michael Parenti, Noam
Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and many others who are critical – they don’t
get airtime. But they’re saying the wrong things. They’re not saying
the things that are acceptable; they’re saying things that are outside
the spectrum of legitimate opinion.
Any kid with a basic education can figure this out. If you watch the
programs, or listen to the programs, or you read Newsweek, Time, the
New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, and
the other newspapers and magazines, and whose name appears? How often
does it appear? How are the pundits that are on talk shows on Sunday
morning? Who gets on “Meet the Press”? “Face the Nation”? It’s not
complicated.
OK: All of this talk of expertise sort of reminds me of a reason given
for all sorts of problems that the US military encounters abroad: “bad
intelligence.” This reason is cited across party lines by folks who
know full well the repressive role the CIA and FBI have played
throughout the last century.
DB: And keep in the mind the utter condescension for international law
that this implies. If we have a smarter CIA, we can fight aggressive,
illegal wars more effectively.
OK: Contrast this voice in both commercial and public media with the
one that you’ve been putting on radio stations every week for almost
20 years.
DB: I started Alternative Radio very much with the mission of public
broadcasting in mind – to provide a voice for groups that may
otherwise be unheard. I took on this mission because public
broadcasting had abandoned it. We don’t chase money from corporations
and foundations, so actually have the means to pursue it. We need to
build coalitions with marginalized groups here and in the Third
World. Today, on the radio and in my other projects, I’m trying to
bring more voices from the Third World. Two of the books I’m working
on right now, for example, are with Arundhati Roy and Tariq Ali. I
think it’s important to reach out to other groups who are also
struggling for justice.
OK: On behalf of Dahr Jamail, Abu Talat, and Webmaster Jeff Pflueger,
thank you for your time.
Omar Khan is a writer and editor in Oakland. He is writing regular
analysis, ‘Covering Iraq’, for Dahr Jamail’s website. ‘Covering Iraq’
provides analysis and discussion of US mainstream news in light of
Dahr Jamail’s reports and photographs from Occupied Iraq. Its intent
is to identify unreported news from Iraq and to make a broader
audience aware of events there. ‘Covering Iraq’ encourages your
comments, reactions, and participation.