May. 14, 2003 - 19:40 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

Whatcha Callit ?

What ever happened to integrity ? There seems to be quite a lack of that commodity around here, nowadays. According to Paul Krugman in a column in the Rocky Mountain News today, May 14 he has something to say about the media in that respect.

Headlined, "Kowtowing media beset by "China syndrome"

He says in part, "A funny thing happened during the Iraq war. Many Americans turned to the BBC for their TV news. They were looking for an alternative point of view -- something they couldn't find on domestic networks, which in the words of the BBC's director general, "wrapped themselves in the American Flag and substituted patriotism for impartiality."

He says further, "Leave aside the rights and wrongs of the war itself, and consider the paradox. The BBC is owned by the British government, and one might have expected it to support that government's policies. In fact, however, it tried to stay impartial. America's TV networks are privately owned, yet they behaved like state ran media."

Mr. Krugman gives an example, "What explains this paradox ? It might have something to do with the China Syndrome. No, not the one involving nuclear reactors -- the one exhibited by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. when dealing with the government of the people's republic.

In the United States, Murdoch's media empire -- which includes Fox News and the New York Post -- is known for its flag-waving patriotism. But all that patriotism didn't stop him from, as a Fortune article put it, "pandering to China's repressive regime to get his programming into that vast market." The pandering included dropping the BBC's World Service - which reports news China's goverment doesn't want disseminated -- from his satellite programming, and having his publishing company cancel the publication of a book critical of the Chinese regime."

Mr. Krugman says more, "Can something like that happen in this country ? Of course it can. Through its policy decisions -- especially, though not only, decisions involving media regulation - the US government can reward media companies that please it, punish those that don't."

"This gives private networks an incentive to curry favor with those in power."

"A recent report by Stephen Labaton of The New York Times contained a nice illustration of the U.S. government's ability to reward media compaines that do what it wants. The issue was a proposal by Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission to relax regulations on media ownership."

"The plan's defects aside - it will further reduce the diversity of news available to most people - what struck me was the horse-trading involved. One media group wrote to Powell, dropping its opposition to part of his plan "in return for favorable commission action" on another matter. That was indiscrete, but you'd have to be very naive not to imagine that there are a lot of implicit quid pro quos out there.

And the implicit trading surely extends to news content. Imagine a TV news exeutive considering whether to run a major story that might damage the Bush administration -- say, a follow-up on Sen Bob Grahamn's charge that a congressional report on Sept. 11 has been kept classified because it would raise embarassing questions about the administration's performance. Surely it would occur to that executive that the administration could punish any network running that story.

Mr. Krugman's final paragraph says what I have always thought about the media as a whole, and in my feeble mind applied my thoughts only to the pressure that big advertisers can exert to control the news.

Herewith is said paragraph, "We don't have censorship in this country: its still possible to find different points of view. But we do have a system in which the major media have strong incentives to present the news in a way that pleases the party in power, and no incentive not to." End of quotes.

It seems insidious to me the way that the ownership of newspapers and TV news, etc. can be merged into groups of one which expresses the point of view of their advertisers and/or government, maybe both !

It isn't censorship, but warped and twisted news that might be worse yet. I don't know Whatcha Callit . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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