 Last evening I watched Charlie Rose's PBS interview of Iranian President Ahmadinejad.
What
struck me was how much his style of communication mimicked that of GW
Bush. The same attempt to conceal bald lies with swagger and squinty
smile and smirk. The same transparent insincerity obvious when you look
in their eyes. The same propensity to stick fiercely to rehearsed
'talking points' and refuse to answer any question for which they have
no rehearsed answer.
Both of them are blatant propagandists --
their choice of words, the use of slogans, the constant repetition of
expressions with distorted meanings and disinformation, the deliberate
appeal to base emotion, to the point listeners are no longer interested
in or prepared to listen to reason.
What astonished me was the
utter inability of Charlie Rose, who has access to exceptional research
resources and is himself extremely bright and well-prepared, to handle
the brash and clever Ahmadinejad. A friend of mine at the CBC, Ira Basen,
has studied this phenomenon extensively. He has explained how
politicians, with the help of their wealthy supporters, PR/media whores
and other spin doctors, have effectively abolished open press
conferences and other unrehearsed opportunities for media dialogue, and
replaced them with scripted 'production numbers', often with visually
appealing backdrops or stunts, designed purely to misinform and
obfuscate, and ti reiterate the carefully-crafted 'talking points' and
Orwellian slogans. In other words, to turn them into pure propaganda
events, like the infamous Bush photo-ops.
Bush and Canadian PM
Harper, right-wing birds of a feather highly distrustful of a media
that might reveal the truth behind their orchestrated disinformation
campaigns, are practiced experts at this type of production. We just
learned that Harper's ultra-conservative military cohorts script-wrote the speech that Afghan President Karzai mouthed last year during his visit to Canada.
The
mainstream media are just putty in these propagandists' hands. What
would it take for them, if they were so inclined, to restore some of
the integrity and balance to the reporting process it once had? My
suggestions:
- Insist that the 'stage' be shared with someone
with opposing views. The problem with this is that you can end up with
two propagandists just talking past each other and trying to shout each
other down. The media don't like this because it makes their job of
'dumbing down' the news more difficult, and belies the presumption that
their coverage is somehow accurate and factual.
- Be rude. If the
propagandist doesn't answer the question, interrupt the rehearsed
speech and keep asking the question until the propagandist either
answers it or demonstrates they are incapable of doing so honestly.
Don't let them change the subject. Argue with them. Call them a liar
and confront them with the facts. Don't let their managers manage your interview and program.
- Refuse
to cover 'managed' events. Make it clear you won't be anyone's
mouthpiece. Be faithful to the principles of the fourth estate.
- Do
investigative journalism. When you find and report news that no one
else has, you cease to be dependent on the staged press conferences
that your competition lets pass for 'news'.
This would take courage. As Bill Maher has said,
"the job of the media is to make what's important interesting". You
can't do this with mindless regurgitations of pre-packaged propaganda
productions manufactured by vested interests. You can't do it with
CNN-style blather about the minutiae of what various people think these
productions mean, or should mean. Just because the mainstream media
show up in droves to cover it, doesn't make it news.
I'm not
optimistic that any of the mainstream media will do any of these four
steps. If public broadcasters can't seem to handle the propagandists,
we can hardly expect the mainstream media outlets in the corporatists'
pay and thrall to do so. It's too controversial and too expensive for
their tastes or risk appetites.
So we'll have to continue to depend on the indymedia for real
news. Unfortunately, that means that we'll almost never see interviews
with the rich and the powerful, or those with something to hide. But if
these interviews are mostly just disguised propaganda anyways, perhaps
that's just as well.
PS: The CBC, in addition to running Ira's series on Spin, has done some excellent investigative reporting (check out this startling hidden-cam expose of doctors' failure to follow basic hygiene in hospitals, despite knowing this causes thousands of deaths) -- but their focus seems to be on everything except political parties' and leaders' misdeeds and lies. Too risky for publicly-funded media to be seen as taking sides, I guess.
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