Sleuths of Spin

[Guest guest]

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21307/

 

Sleuths of Spin

 

By Bill Berkowitz, AlterNet. Posted February 22, 2005.

 

Given the sorry state of the journalism these days, The Center for

Media and Democracy's John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton are setting

about an ambitious – yet necessary – undertaking: reinventing journalism.

 

Several right-wing activists/pundits/columnists have already developed

their own roadmap for reinventing journalism. The latest case is that

of Jeff Gannon, whose real name is James D. Guckert. As Gannon,

Guckert reported for a conservative news site called Talon News.

Somehow, Guckert gained access to White House briefings and and was

seen tossing softballs at White House officials. Gannon/Guckert even

got called on by President Bush at a news conference. He ended his

question with " How are you going to work with people who seem to have

divorced themselves from reality? " referring to Sen. Hillary Clinton

and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.

 

Gannon/Guckert had about 13 of his 15 minutes before Media Matters for

America and John Aravosis' Americablog blew the lid off his charade.

Underneath that lid was James D. Guckert on full display – he was

outed as a contributor to such sites as Hotmilitarystud.com,

Workingboys.net, Militaryescorts.com, MilitaryescortsM4M.com and

Meetlocalmen.com.

 

The administration's payoffs to syndicated newspaper columnists

Armstrong Williams, Mike McManus and Maggie Gallagher may not be

nearly as scrumptious a story as the Gannon/Guckert Affair, but they

could be far more significant. After all, this loose coalition of the

shilling received government money to write about their support for

Bush administration policies. In early January, USA Today revealed

that Williams, a prominent African-American radio and television

personality, had received $240,000 from the Department of Education –

through a contract with the Ketchum public relations firm – for his

support for the president's No Child Left Behind project. Mike McManus

and Maggie Gallagher received their checks from the Department of

Health and Human Services to help promote the president's healthy

marriages initiative.

 

Sleuths of spin John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton have exposed how

corporate shills and government spokespersons manipulate the media and

undermine democracy for more than a decade. Through the Madison,

Wis.-based Center for Media and Democracy, they have produced a number

of groundbreaking books, including Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies,

Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry (Common Courage Press,

1995), Trust Us, We're Experts!: How Industry Manipulates Science and

Gambles with Your Future (Tarcher/Penguin, 2001), Weapons of Mass

Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq

(Tarcher/Penguin, 2003) and most recently, Banana Republicans: How the

Right Wing is Turning America into a One-Party State (Tarcher/Penguin,

2004).

 

Two years ago, the Center launched Disinfopedia, a web site that

Rampton described in a recent e-mail as " an experiment in media

democracy and citizen investigative journalism. " Rampton pointed out

that Disinfopedia had " grown into a leading resource on the players

who work behind the scenes to shape public opinion and public policy. "

Since its mission has evolved and expanded during the past two years,

the Center recently renamed it SourceWatch. (Disclosure: I have been

cited by SourceWatch.)

 

Rampton maintains that SourceWatch " is an example of media democracy

in action – an information source that is truly 'of, by and for the

people' who use it. It has become a tool that journalists and

activists use to research and report on key issues such as media

concentration and reform, democratic revitalization, environmental

health and sustainability, the war in Iraq, corporate manipulation of

government agencies, and the power and influence of right-wing special

interest groups and lobbies. "

 

In late February, I conducted an e-mail interview John Stauber. We

covered a number of issues related to the media, starting with the

current payola scandal.

 

Bill Berkowitz: How do you view the recent scandals involving the Bush

administration giving payoffs to Armstrong Williams, Maggie Gallagher

and Michael McManus in exchange for favorable coverage of their issues?

 

I'm very happy to see this coming out, but it's really just the tip of

an iceberg. Sheldon Rampton and I wrote our expose of the Public

Relations industry, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, ten years ago. It's

filled with propaganda horror stories. Forty percent or more of what

passes for news and information these days is the result of organized

PR campaigns. It's been wonderful to see these scandals exposed and

others such as the " Karen Ryan reporting " news reports. Karen Ryan

runs a PR firm, and her government funded video news releases (VNRs)

are aired as news by hundreds of TV news directors.

 

In Toxic Sludge we reported that there were already thousands of

corporate and government VNRs produced and aired each year, and that

number continues to increase. The skillful manipulation of the media

by professional propagandists, often with the consent and approval of

editors and news directors, is rampant and worsening.

 

Do you think there will be more revelations?

 

The mainstream media does a horrific job of reporting on itself, and I

think that there will be more revelations only to the extent that

independent journalists are able to document and expose these abuses.

The best PR, like the best propaganda, is invisible. In the more than

a decade that our organization has been reporting on and exposing

propaganda in the media, not one major newspaper to my knowledge has

committed a reporter to this as an investigative beat.

 

What can reporters do to break through the sound bite/talking points

media culture?

 

Reporters need to understand the business of propaganda and to view

the public relations industry and the culture of spin as anathema to

journalism and to democracy. Today PR flacks outnumber real working

journalists, and many of the flacks are former reporters who know

exactly how best to manage, cajole and manipulate the media because

they are from the media. J-schools have combined journalism and public

relations and told students that it's all the same, it requires the

same skills, and there is little fundamental difference. This is like

combining accounting and embezzling as a field of study.

 

Today in the corporate mainstream media reporters are overworked,

underpaid and pressured to avoid topics that offend advertisers.

Reporters need to dedicate themselves to real journalism and find ways

to practice it. Journalism is a sacred trust in a democracy, and if

you don't believe that you should probably go into PR.

 

Your books have generally focused on the way the American people are

getting hoodwinked by PR companies that set and then explain the

agenda of powerful corporations and politicians. Is there any way to

render them less powerful?

 

Simply stated, PR firms are corporations that help other corporations

and government agencies to manage public information, perceptions and

policy. Many people think that propaganda doesn't exist in democratic

societies, that it is a problem of dictatorships. Alex Carey, the

Australian academic, and others have pointed out that it is precisely

in democracies where sophisticated, hidden propaganda is most

prevalent, and the news media has become the major disseminator of

propaganda, rather than a force for exposing it.

 

In our book Weapons of Mass Deception, Sheldon and I explained how

rather than challenge Bush's war and exposing the falsehoods and

failures in Bush's claims, the U.S. news media became a propaganda arm

of the government. It shut out and ridiculed critics of the war, and

enabled it to take place. There are many fundamental reforms that

could be legislated to limit and control the power of corporations to

dominate our news and our politics. But powerful special interests and

governmental ideologues will use the best available techniques of

propaganda to manipulate and manage public perception. It is the

responsibility of journalists, educators and citizen activists to

expose and thwart such manipulation, and it's specifically our mission.

 

Given such a closed system, why the efforts around building media

democracy?

 

Twelve years ago when I founded our investigative quarterly PR Watch,

I chose the name Center for Media and Democracy for our non-profit

organization in order to emphasize the idea that without a vigorous,

independent, courageous and muckraking media, democracy cannot

survive, especially in this age of cranked-up propaganda. I've been

happy to see the term " media democracy " come into wide use. With the

emergence of the internet it has taken on new meaning in the age of

blogs, indymedia, wiki web sites like SourceWatch, and all the

wonderful reporting from web sites like AlterNet, Common Dreams,

Buzzflash, WorkingForChange, and those associated with the left[ist]

press.

 

Media democracy seems like a catch-all phrase that is pretty

ambiguous. How would you define it?

 

Media democracy means that we recognize that one-way, top-down,

corporate mass communications has become much more a foe of democracy

than its friend. Democratic society is impossible without a courageous

and independent news media. The dominant mainstream media, the MSM, is

driven by the corporate bottom line and filled primarily with fluff,

sensationalism, right-wing politics, PR posing as news, and a

commitment to serve corporate advertisers. We need a powerful new

political movement to fundamentally challenge and change the corporate

media environment, and we also need to create new media that takes

advantage of internet technology to better serve democracy. Community

radio stations, non-profit media watchdogs, investigative bloggers,

and alternative news websites are all becoming important producers of

online web-based news and information that is building media

democracy. One project our organization is currently discussing with

other groups committed to media democracy is to develop standards for

online journalism that enable it to fulfill its promise of becoming a

vital media that serves our democracy.

 

What makes " SourceWatch " unique?

 

SourceWatch is unique because it is an experiment in collaborative

online investigative reporting. It's a very powerful educational,

organizing, research and networking tool that allows a growing

community of global citizens to collaborate to research and write

investigative news articles.

 

The open source " wiki " software that powers SourceWatch is in the

public domain, as are the articles that are written. Anyone can go to

SourceWatch and read, write and edit the information there. And every

change made in any article is logged for transparency. Bob Burton, an

investigative journalist, author and activist from Australia, is our

online editor.

 

We are constantly striving to improve the accuracy, depth and quality

of articles on SourceWatch. It is only two years old [it was

originally launched as Disinfopedia], and we are really just at the

beginning of this experiment. Anyone who first hears about it

understandably says, as I did when my colleague Sheldon Rampton

proposed SourceWatch, " what good is it if anyone with internet access

can write or edit or for that matter vandalize its articles? " But the

fact is that the vast majority of users are dedicated to the concept

of investigative online journalism, and by insisting on journalistic

standards of accuracy and fairness, and relegating opinions to an

opinion page, the experiment is working.

 

One problem it is solving is that by harnessing the investigative

power of hundreds of citizen journalists, we are finally able to keep

track of the myriad of industry front groups, PR firms, lobbyists and

anti-environmental PR campaigns that exist and are created every day.

 

SourceWatch has been a great success in its first two years, yet it is

just starting to take off. That said, everyone who reads an article on

the site should understand its limitations; that the article has not

necessarily been vetted by us, that no article is 100 percent

accurate, that anyone can contribute, and that it is a work in

progress with no copyright on its articles. So SourceWatch, like every

other bit of the news media, needs to be read with a critical eye. But

with that qualification I must say that I find most of the information

very accurate and much of it very unique. Wiki websites like

SourceWatch are becoming an important part of the online information

environment.

 

Are you working on another book? What will it be about and when can we

expect it?

 

Sheldon and I have just begun outlining a new book examining media

corruption, spin and the growing media democracy movement. It would in

some ways be a return to the territory of our first and third books,

Toxic Sludge Is Good For You and Trust Us, We're Experts. We hope to

have it out in hardcover sometime in 2006. We've co-authored two books

in less than two years, timely paperbacks exposing the selling of the

war on Iraq and the political propaganda and strategy of the

Republican right. It seems to be a good time to step back and examine

how citizens might understand and overcome the toxic propaganda

emanating from the right-wing echo chamber.

 

Bill Berkowitz is a freelance writer covering right-wing groups and

movements.