Back to the 70's
PBS "Frontline" airs the first of a four part series tonight, called "News Wars: Secret Spin and The Future of News". According to the show, in the aftermath of Watergate journalists enjoyed a level of respect in a touted "watchdog" role. That role and the respect attached to it has now diminished under political, economic, and legal pressures. The show will cover a lot of ground, but one question it ponders is whether American media can continue to be withstand these current pressures without morphing into insignificance, or becoming a compliant agent of state and corporate interests.
Some people might not care about these issues. I'm sure some believe that news and its demise or survival is irrelevant or even beneficial to blogging and that the print news and its future have little to do with science. However for years people have complained that mainstream news more often delivers pablum then news. Most of us readily question that which is called "news" is, as does the show. Even this site, Acronym Required, was partially spurred into existence by the fact that science in mainstream news was incomplete, misleading, and often inaccurate. What actually put us over the edge was a television news story that presented Lyme tick arthritis as a threat comparable in scope and severity to the AIDS epidemic. We've hardly remained faithful to the original purpose, and now there are hundreds of science blogs that cover these issues succinctly, as well as blogs on history, economics and politics that do also.
Jon Stewart has been addressing quality of news issues on The Daily Show for ten years. Academic studies and even the mainstream media acknowledge that the Daily Show is a more comprehensive compendium of current events and politics as a "fake" news show than most evening news shows. A contingent of independent journalists, citizen journalists, and bloggers fill in the gaps of traditional media. When the New York Times writes front page articles supporting the war in Iraq based on unquestioned "leaks" that reporters receive from White House officials, as they did during the build-up to the Iraq war, or publishes a front page story supporting administration's agenda against Iran, as they did yesterday, independent journalists and bloggers step in to take a stand.
Not content with accepting obsequious news for information, many readers seek out independent journalists whose writing, observations, protests and collective blogospheric activity fits their own world view or satisfies curiosity not met on the evening news. Journalism that is not mainstream has become increasingly important. Lowell Bergman and Steve Talbot of "Frontline" spoke to the influence of the internet in their talk about the upcoming "Frontline" show back on January 11th. While recognizing the web as a disruptive force on traditional media, they also stated that 85% of new information is delivered via traditional reporting. They seemed to acknowledge that new media is a force to be reckoned with while at the same time questioning whether it is capable of the challenge it sets for itself. Or whether in the end it would be subsumed by traditional media. To wit, they reported (and we don't know what's happened since) that "The Daily Show" was being courted by the Washington Post to cover the 2008 campaign. This is the same Washington Post that asked just last year whether Jon Stewart was "An Enemy of Democracy?"
Other than to mention the web's sometimes beleaguered image, we won't dwell on this theme now except to note that blogging or its approach has a place on most mainstream papers, albeit after much kicking and screaming by those same papers. Even some major editorialists like the New York Times' Frank Rich have incorporated the online style by including hyperlinks to outside sources within recent Times editorials. Why shun sensible technology?
Going To Jail
What is potentially more threatening to independent bloggers and citizen journalists than being incorporated into traditional media, are the new strong armed tactics of the government. While science bloggers aren't necessarily writing contentious topics that would prompt government crackdowns, censorship will have a widespread effect on many independent journalists.
To this end, "Frontline's" "News Wars" also addresses the issue of who has the right to publish. The show notes that the Judith Miller case established the prerogative of government to demand a journalists' sources, something that since the 1970's has been completely off limits. The government is now using this precedent to prosecute other journalists who try to protect sources. Documenting this history, the show contends that we haven't seen this type of encroachment on journalistic freedom for 35 years.
Again, independent journalists and certainly not scientist journalists might not feel an immediate chill from these developments. However citizen journalists and independent journalists potentially have the most to lose. Large, established media outlets, like the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, can afford to hire lawyers to protect their journalists from the types of legal demands that the government is making. However independent journalists who try to cover news not covered by traditional media don't necessarily have the legal and institutional resources to back them up.
Josh Wolf is one such journalist, imprisoned for the last six months in a Dublin, California federal correctional institution for refusing to share his sources with a federal grand jury. He was interviewed for the Frontline show, and was also interviewed from his jail cell for the show Democracy Now yesterday. As an independent journalist, Josh filmed a G-8 protest in San Francisco. The Federal government became aware of the footage via his site, and claimed that he had more film footage that federal prosecutors could use to investigate whether crimes were committed during the protest. They also wanted to use him as a witness against protesters. Josh refused to turn over the footage. The state of California affords journalists the right to protect sources. However federal prosecutors are circumventing California State law in order to imprison Josh Wolf.
Furthermore, in a January 29th document, according to Democracy Now, federal prosecutors stated that it was in Josh Wolf's "imagination" that he was a journalist. Asked by "Democracy Now" to comment on the characterization, Wolf questioned the right of the state to designate who was and who wasn't a journalist. The Society of Professional Journalists named Josh Wolf Northern California 2006 Journalist of the Year and awarded him the James Madison Award for Online Journalism.
Wolf noted that newspaper journalists faced with similar charges are threatened with imprisonment based on circuit court decisions, whereas he was imprisoned immediately after his hearing, and has been incarcerated throughout ninth circuit court proceedings. Martin Garbis, Wolf's lawyer, notes that the grand jury is a thinly veiled attempt on the part of a joint terrorism task force to identify and persecute people who are hostile to the Bush administration.
These new rules on how journalists are allowed to report could continue to frame how independent journalism is or isn't allowed the freedom to contribute to how citizens think about pertinent issues, matters of science, history, politics, or international affairs. The Frontline show will address these and many other themes central to today's journalism. Based the January 11th presentation the shows seem like they'll be really compelling. The third hour deals with the fate of the Los Angeles Times, which has been pressed by it's nonlocal corporate owners to discontinue investigative reporting, and has also faced significant and destructive reorganization. The fourth hour was outlined in January by Bergman and Talbot, they thought it might cover a South Korean site called OhmyNews.com. However the show wasn't completely edited at the time and the current Frontline website suggests that the final hour might highlight the role of Arab media in influencing politics and news.
