Anti-War Protesters Attack Mainstream Media

TomPaine.com ^ | March 31, 2003 | Richard Blow

[albertp]

Anti-War Protesters Attack Mainstream Media Is This All Political Outsiders Can Do To Be Heard?

Richard Blow is the former executive editor of George Magazine. He is author of American Son: A Portrait of John F. Kennedy, Jr., and is writing a book about Harvard University.

About 1,000 people and I were standing at an anti-war rally in Harvard Yard a few days ago listening to the speaker, a Harvard professor named Brian Palmer, take the offensive. Palmer was angry -- not just at President Bush, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, but at the American media.

The press won't tell the truth about this war, Palmer declared. "CNN will show Iraqis dancing in the streets, but it won't show burned and crushed and obliterated bodies." The line brought a huge cheer.

Hostility to the American media has become an emerging theme of the anti-war movement. Protesters are giving voice to a feeling of betrayal, a sense that the media ought to be sympathetic to liberals but isn't -- and as a result, we're getting more propaganda than truth.

Even lefty media are under fire for not being liberal enough.

Thus, a Web site called UnitedForPeace.org lists the networks' phone numbers, urging callers to demand that the stations recite the numbers of civilian casualties. Protesters in Oregon have spat at and used pepper spray on media photographers.

Even lefty media are under fire for not being liberal enough. At a recent San Francisco rally, a speaker from Pacifica Radio announced that he listened to NPR "to know what the enemy is saying. He added, "They talk a lot about being objective.... Well, we see what the objective of the mainstream media is. Their objective is to cheer the war on."

And in a letter to the Romenesko's Media News, a hangout for journalists, Nation columnist Katha Pollitt joined the anti-NPR chorus. Usually she loved NPR, she said, but now she found a lack of "serious discussion of how the invasion of Iraq is being discussed around the world." (Really? Sometimes I think that's all there is on NPR.)

Meanwhile, if I hear one more person tell me that I really need to watch the BBC to hear the truth, I'm going to start watching "Are You Hot?" just to show my patriotism. Some of this lashing out merely reflects the Left's cultural preference for things international -- if it's European, whether it's film, diplomacy or journalism, it must be better than the homegrown stuff.

Nor is all of the criticism wrong. The media have grown increasingly corporate, and large companies tend to be politically conservative. Partly as a result, the media have probably underplayed the intensity of the anti-war movement.

It's creepy to hear about Clear Channel, which seems to own just about every radio station in the country except NPR, forcing its station managers to organize pro-war rallies. Fox News, meanwhile, has become like Voice of America with prettier anchors.

Progressives have become American outsiders, as marginalized as conservatives used to be.

During a recent New York protest, the electronic sign that runs around Fox's Manhattan office actually mocked the protesters, saying, "How do you keep a war protester in suspense? Ignore them." Fox's grammar is as lacking as its professionalism.

But when the Left starts to attack NPR, you know there's something more primal at work -- because NPR is simpatico, in an aging, baby-boomerish sort of way. Conservatives have complained for decades about NPR's lefty tint, and they've had a legitimate gripe -- even if it's become more editorially cautious and Washington-centric in recent years.

No, this hostility isn't really a reaction to the failings of the media. What's really going on is a struggle for cultural power. Progressives have become American outsiders, as marginalized as conservatives used to be.

They don't influence the Congress; they hardly even influence the Democratic Party. They're a minority on the Supreme Court, as the decision that put George W. into office demonstrated -- a decision that kept liberals out of the White House. Sure, the Left controls Hollywood, but as the reaction to Michael Moore's Academy Awards speech showed, it's pretty tepid about talking truth to the man. The media, however, are always up for grabs. In recent years, conservatives (Fox, The Weekly Standard, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage) have steamrolled liberal opposition. Now liberals are fighting back. Their argument isn't particularly nuanced, and at times they sound as open-minded as a Boston shock jock whom I recently heard refer to Iraqis as "monkeys."

Macing a photographer isn't the best way to make your case. It is, in fact, repulsive. But despite my qualms about the hyperbole of their arguments and the actions of some, I think the protesters' anger may prove to be a good thing.

It is time for the media pendulum to swing back to the left. If it does, maybe it'll stop in the center -- which, in the long run, is exactly where the news media ought to be.

Click here to subscribe to our free e-mail dispatch and get the latest on what's new at TomPaine.com before everyone else! You can unsubscribe at any time and we will never distribute your information to any other entity.

Published: Mar 31 2003

[albertp]

I posted this article from a liberal website because I thought that it would be interesting to note that liberals view the media as lackeys of the military-industrial complex.

I find it revealing that Professor Palmer of Harvard doesn't think there was enough blood and gore revealed on his television screen - as if the rest of us were trying to sanitize and downplay the obvious human tragedies that did in fact occur. The alleviation of suffering, the restoration of lost rights, healing the sick and wounded and hopefully providing compensation to the innocents caught in the crossfire, repairs to property and infrastructure, etc., constitute the purpose of the next phase of the war: our humanitarian aid.

So, even the lefty media are not liberal enough for the antiwar protesters. They are thoroughly dissatisfied with the "minimal" coverage they have received. By all means, let the media give them MAXIMUM coverage - maybe, just maybe - these antiwar protesters will be revealed for the violent hypocrites that they are. "SMASHING WINDOWS FOR PEACE," indeed!

Too bad France and Germany (am I correct?) now OPPOSE the lifting of sanctions against Iraq. One can only wonder why. International politics and intrigue. Proof positive, in my opinion, that it is time to thoroughly revamp the United Nations and reduce it to a strictly advisory or humanitarian role - or to dismantle it altogether.

[Gorzaloon]

Richard Blow...

...a Harvard professor named Brian Palmer

Heh.

[xm177e2]

And in a letter to the Romenesko's Media News, a hangout for journalists, Nation columnist Katha Pollitt joined the anti-NPR chorus. Usually she loved NPR, she said, but now she found a lack of "serious discussion of how the invasion of Iraq is being discussed around the world." (Really? Sometimes I think that's all there is on NPR.)

The very idea that anyone could complain that NPR is not left-wing enough is on its face laughable. Katha Pollit, when asked by Andrew Sullivan several months after 9/11 what she would do (instead of invading Afghanistan), just stammered. She couldn't come up with an answer. What a moron.

And what is her big complaint about NPR? She says it's not giving enough coverage to foreign anti-war rallies. That's her big complaint. Waah. Waaah.

[My2Cents]

I can see why Richard Blow goes by the name "Richard" and not "Dick."

[camle]

aw poor leftist babies. media won't cover their temper tantrum. aw.

give them some cheese to go with their whine.

[Paul Ross]

I did a little checking and found this guy at Harvard:

Brian Palmer

Anthropologist Palmer is Lecturer on the Modern West in the Study of Religion at Harvard. His current research interests include humanitarian engagement and national identity, cosmologies of the global market, the poetics of political satire, and the cultural construction of moral consciousness. His dissertation, which examined the efforts of Swedes to uphold egalitarian values and institutions in the face of an increasingly market-driven national and global order, won the 2001 Jepson Award for contributions to leadership studies. Palmer's ethnographic fieldwork has been supported by the American-Scandinavian Foundation, Council for European Studies, Fulbright, Mellon, and Sheldon grants. His lecture courses include "Personal Choice and Global Transformation," "Ethnographic Imaginations," and "Globalization and Human Values: Envisioning World Community." In 2002, Palmer won the Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize for best teaching by a junior faculty member. He will spend fall 2002 doing research in Stockholm on a fellowship from the Swedish Institute. bpalmer@fas.harvard.edu

Harvard  FAS Home CES Home
Calendar  Conferences  Affiliation  Information  Publications  Events  Grants  People

Search the CES WebSite
Search tips

Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies
Adolphus Busch Hall
27 Kirkland St. at Cabot Way
Cambridge MA 02138

voice 617 495-4303
fax 617 495-8509

© Copyright 2003 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

All Rights Reserved.

contact Webmaster

Friday, January 24, 2003

URL: http:// www.ces.fas.harvard.edu /people/Palmer/Palmer.html

[Paul Ross]

Brian Palmer, lecturer at Harvard. Jr. Faculty member. His themes seem to fit the profile. I note that CNN also has a reporter named Brian Palmer, but unlikely to be the same.

[nothingnew]

Beat me to it. Note to Richard Blow----You have cruel parents, Dick.

FMCDH

[Shermy]

The networks gave full coverage to the anti-war protests, even encouraging people to come out to them.

The lefties are upset for two reasons: one, they lost. Two, people are challenging their views. Whenever you hear one talk about the "world view" they're talking about their views, projected on a supposed world actor.

[Incorrigible]

but it won't show burned and crushed and obliterated bodies.

I agree, it's a real problem.

[Steely Tom]

Even lefty media are under fire for not being liberal enough. At a recent San Francisco rally, a speaker from Pacifica Radio announced that he listened to NPR "to know what the enemy is saying. He added, "They talk a lot about being objective.... Well, we see what the objective of the mainstream media is. Their objective is to cheer the war on."

Look. This is real simple.

As far as the left is concerned, George Bush is the worst monster in the world. He's worse than Saddam. Worse than Hitler. He's a scourge.

The media should be focussing everything they have on this scourge, they same way they should have focussed on the holocaust when it was underway. The awfulness of George Bush should obviously be the number one topic of all media outlets, all the time, 24/7, until he is driven from office in disgrace.

Any media outlet that fails to do this is obviously not objective

If, as a result of crass commercial considerations of the bottom line, the various media outlets feel they have to pander to the 70-plus percent of the American people who are in favor of this war, well, then, further steps will have to be taken. The American lumpenproletariat will have to be taught the error of its ways. The true horror of George Bush's war will have to be rubbed in their faces by other means, as one might rub a puppy's nose in its puddle.

< /lefty thought processes > (steely)

[albertp]

Yes, and we should challenge their worldview.

"Progressives have become American outsiders, as marginalized as conservatives used to be."

I don't know where these "progressives" get their perception that they are outsiders. If we focus on education, for example, it is obvious that they have infiltrated colleges and universities, public school departments, Head Start and even private preschools, all across the country. If you dare to challenge them by calling for a complete separation of school and state, they are beside themselves with rage. Most of them have teacher unions and tenure to protect them. But their focus is on referring to defenders of homeschooling or public schooling far from the grip of their socialist "unions," as UNCONSTITUTIONAL. This is amazing in itself since there is no constitutional provision for public schooling at all, nor any definition of the structure of such education.

They persist in teaching "values clarification," "critical thinking, "skepticism," and "deconstructionism" or "postmodernism." It is amusing to behold high school students of a liberal bent accusing their conservative peers of "not really thinking about the issues." But their liberal "thinking" is anything but "critical." It most definitely is hostile, since it follows only the established universe of LIBERAL discourse, any critical opposition be damned!

If these liberals examine "deconstructionism" and "skepticism" as they define those terms, they would see that those systems are fatally flawed and contain the seeds of self-destruction. We can only encourage them to go all the way with their worldview. But we must, at the same time, challenge them every step of the way. Their "progressive humanistic values" are quite scary, to say the least.

Just say NO to NION. ANSWER is the CANCER that will kill us all. Question ANSWER!

[Bigg Red]

Yes, ST, you have articulated the left's position quite well. I call it Bushophobia.

[Blue Screen of Death]

Swedes to uphold egalitarian values and institutions in the face of an increasingly market-driven national and global order, won the 2001 Jepson Award for contributions to leadership studies.

Leadership in an egalitarian society? Huh?

[FlatLandBeer]

Standard leftest attack. If you can't get your story out then shoot the messenger.

[jiggyboy]

It is time for the media pendulum to swing back to the left.

LOL if he thinks the media is too far to the "right", he's going to have a long, hard couple of years while Big Media connects the two dots of "declining media ratings" and "amount of truth vs amount of bankrupt ideology and commentators' spin" and discovers why Fox News has good ratings.

[VRWC_minion]

Simple liberal logic at work

Liberals are always right and everyone must agree.

If no one agrees then either the media isn't playing the message or the people are too stupid.

[SwinneySwitch]

LOL!! DICKY BLOW!!!

[Becki]

And in a letter to the Romenesko's Media News, a hangout for journalists, Nation columnist Katha Pollitt joined the anti-NPR chorus. Usually she loved NPR, she said, but now she found a lack of "serious discussion of how the invasion of Iraq is being discussed around the world." (Really? Sometimes I think that's all there is on NPR.)

Has she tried DU lately?

Becki

[SunStar]

It is time for the media pendulum to swing back to the left. If it does, maybe it'll stop in the center -- which, in the long run, is exactly where the news media ought to be.

Excuse me? The media pendulum is still to the Left, with the few exceptions listed in the article (Fox, The Weekly Standard, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage).

Give it a rest! Conservatives have been marginalized up until now, you're right. There is no reason to go back to marginalizing conservatives! There are plenty of reasons to force the progressives/leftists to sit out for a few years (or decades for that matter).