Independence Day, 2003: The State of the Fourth Estate

Students and defenders of democracy alike are worried about the press' behavior at a time when freedoms that we are accustomed to taking for granted seem to hang in the balance. (See the next two items.) But my reading of history leads me to be especially concerned about the way CBS reportedly used the power of its non-news affiliates to score an interview with reputed former Iraqi POW Pfc. Jessica Lynch. As commentator Ed Wasserman reported in the Miami Herald last month, the media giant offered a TV-movie and a raft of other inducements to get the first interview with the 19-year-old West Virginian, who may or may not have been in the clutches of hostile forces.

Wasserman argues that the reported CBS grab is the most audacious, but not isolated example of the way the concentration of media ownership can pervert reporting. For that reason, he cheers Senate scrutiny of the Federal Communications Commission's new rules loosening strictures on media ownership. Despite congressional challenges and other planned appeals, the FCC's July 3 release of its report, "Rules and Regulations Implementing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991," starts the 30-day countdown to putting the rules in effect, according to Steve Klein's column on the Poynter Institute website.

My concern is that such behavior bears an uncomfortable resemblance to that of the German press in the 1920s, as described in Oron Hale's 1964 book, The Captive Press Inside the Third Reich. I am not an expert on European journalism history, (and I welcome comments from someone who is) but Hale's work seems remarkably relevant to our time. One chapter, called "The Organization of Total Control," details the process by which the politically free, privately-owned German press became subservient to the Nazi propaganda machine. The author identified pre-conditions that made the German press vulnerable to co-optation. They sound chillingly familiar:

1. increased concentration of media ownership,
2. the increased ownership of news organizations by non-news
conglomerates,
3. management decisions that compromised news values in
favor of profits,
4. the blurring of advertising and editorial content,
5. an increased preocuppation with news as entertainment, including an
editorial emphasis on sensationalism, celebrity reporting and lurid
scandals.

These preconditions aided the Nazis in several ways. The increased concentration of ownership meant that there were relatively few industry leaders with whom the Nazis had to treat. Their involvement in other industries gave the Nazis multiple levers of influence and encouraged self-censorship. This in turn encouraged the sensationalism and pseudo-news that came to dominate the news pages. The Nazis fed this demand with a steady supply of tabloid-type tales that demonized Jews and other regime scapegoats while valorizing the "Aryan" heroes and heroines who would restore honor to the Fatherland. It is not difficult to understand how these circumstances contributed to the constriction of public discourse and to tolerance for the brutal treatment of people deemed unacceptable or injurious to the nation.

This historical precedent suggests that the potential impact of proposed changes in the regulatory structure of the media industrial is broader, deeper and more complex that even such perceptive observers as Wasserman realize.

(Disclosure statement: Portions of this post appeared on the Jhistory discussion listerve last month.)