EYE ON THE MEDIA | comment by PATRICE GREANVILLE

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[box] Unchallenged euphemisms and “public relationese” have killed truth with impunity. And we pay the price every single day.[/box]

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The mainstream media, with its false totems of “fairness and objectivity”, and its genteel deference to the convoluted, euphemistic language used by the powerful and their mouthpieces, have been fully complicit in the facilitation of enormous lies and whitewashing of criminal actors. The phenomenon is embedded deeply by now in our social fabric. And we see it every single day, so many times, that few raise an eyebrow or even realize the dimensions of the impostures perpetrated on a generally clueless public (whose assent or “neutralization” is nonetheless being sought).

It may be shocking to most working journalists to be accused of witting or unwitting complicity in this gigantic fraud, the triumph of Orwellianism in our midst, but their track record speaks for itself. If they had been doing a merely acceptable job, if even a modicum of important truth had passed the ideological membranes guarding the interests of the corporate elite, American society, for one, would not be in the catastrophic state it finds itself, its democracy now completely eviscerated.

In a properly informed society many crimes and abuses we regard as common and inevitable in the US today would never happen. Thus, it’s unlikely that Korea or Vietnam would have been attacked; nor for that matter the long rosary of international mayhem and interventions to overthrow popular leaders in favor of our favorite dictators. From Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Chile, to the Congo and Iran, and more recently Iraq and Afghanistan, to mention just a small sample, our tax money and military would not have been used to advance the interests of the superrich.

In the same vein, the market meltdown of 2008 would not have happened either, and if it had, those responsible would be rotting in jail, where they belong, instead of enjoying their stolen billions with nary a judicial worry. And the nation would not be assaulted every single day with more alarms about some terror threat, when real the product of our own crimes abroad, or the need to go to war in some distant corner of the planet to protect a spurious national security that really means the protection of the billionaires’ stranglehold on the rest of humanity. All of that, which is considerable, plus the planet would not be contemplating its final days as a magnificent and vibrant organism full of diverse life, since the curse of climate change and the massive species die-off it has also triggered would not have happened either, since the US and the rest of humanity would have taken serious and decisive action to retire coal and hydrocarbons generations ago. The historical price of allowing corporations to control mass communications is incalculable.

The flatulence of professional journalists

Many “professional” journalists pride themselves in their “objectivity” and integrity, and this is the central catechism of all journalism schools, but such pride is misplaced. The notion that journalists have performed a social service by presenting both sides of an issue is simply false, ludicrously false in fact (as Alex Cockburn once hilariously demonstrated, see below). Such putative professionalism masks intellectual laziness and cowardice, the latter, if we are to use some charity, often a necessity for those who simply want to keep their jobs in institutions where the rightwing and establishment viewpoint can be freely expressed and presented—and routinely is—without jeopardizing anyone’s livelihood or career, but the mere intimation of serious questioning of the status quo, or the infinite right of private property, can quickly terminate employment. After almost 150 years of such buffoonery, this mode of operation has created something resembling a dogma in the ambit of social discourse, and many respectable voices defend it as an exercise in fairness. Unsurprisingly, mass audiences have been trained to believe (and many journalists themselves have become convinced) that truth can be found by inquisitional geometry; that the reality of any situation invariably lies on a point between two opposing views. Truth, however, often refuses to fit such mechanistic formulas. For starters, there may be more than two legitimate sides to an issue, or, as it happens in many cases, there’s only one valid viewpoint, the other, “balancing” position, being utterly lacking in substance or moral weight, a mere cardboard witness.

The duty of true journalists is to present the facts, the truth, as they see it, not to hide behind convenient mechanistic formulas. Equally important, observing the lesson of the United States, in a healthy society they should always be ready to question those who use euphemisms for public consumption. Unfortunately, since ideological indoctrination is the chief pillar by which the capitalist system maintains its hold on the masses, and most practicing journalists have long sold their souls to the devil, no real changes are likely in this field until the country and the world see a true social revolution.

Cecil the Lion (momentarily) shakes the media

The murder of Cecil the lion by a compulsive hunter has provoked such an unprecedented furor that the mass media for a moment felt compelled to join the majority—popular—viewpoint, and report the issue in a manner that accurately represented the depravity of hunting.
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Now, however, the pendulum may be swinging back in the name of “objectivity” and fairness (“We may have gone too far in crucifying the hunters…”), and probably discreet pressure from powerful individuals and groups, asking for their day in the court of public opinion, is also having its effect. The media are a soft touch anyway, especially when it comes to pressure from the well-heeled, their natural constituency.

The upshot is that once again “respectable” voices are being given a tribune to defend “responsible hunting,” the “harvesting” of animals, and many other grotesque oxymorons, all in the name of “conservation”—the last refuge of these scoundrels, and one of the most absurd arguments in the long and repulsive history of crime justifications.

Hunting and particularly trophy hunting have not been discussed very often on network television. Big Media have long been largely reticent on this issue. The exception perhaps was CBS’ The Guns of Autumn, aired in 1975 to widespread surprise among animalists and rage and consternation in the crowd of backwardos who love using animals for live target practice. (See this page still ranting about Guns of Autumn). Let’s hope that the current wave of public interest and newfangled awareness about these issues prompts a sufficiently robust mobilization to compel the politicians to come up with something concrete, not merely token  legislation. One murdered lion, elephant, or rhino, is one too many. For not only does humanity give itself the privilege to kill billions of sentient creatures for food at a time when we finally have a plethora of attractive and harmless alternatives, or destroy the ecosystems on which countless other animals (and ourselves) depend for survival, but it continues to tolerate the idea that animals can also be killed for kicks, for pleasure, for “sport” as the euphemism goes, as a legal act and on the whim of some depraved moron.

The way society decides these and other grave issues will depend on how the existing media report them. I can only hope that, for truth to finally emerge, their vaunted objectivity will not be part of the equation.

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[box] Patrice Greanville is founding editor of The Greanville Post. [/box]

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ADDENDA
Below, three entries reflecting repercussions to Cecil’s killing. The first is a short clip on CBS This Morning (8.3.15), showing how the media bends over backwards to accommodate the “traditional” viewpoint represented by the hunting lobby. Why are such people even given such a platform?  That is a valid question.  Further, as HuffPo’s Mallika Rao points out in her analysis of the bloodthirsty dentist’s defense—Walter Palmer—his arguments, like most of his brethren’s, are riddled with euphemisms, itself a polite word for intentional deception to avoid condemnation.  Where would such people be if the media stuck to plain, unvarnished English and a more confrontational posture toward entrenched power?  Such questions are  broached by the legendary Alex Cockburn in a timeless sendup of  media pretensions and their glorification of a false objectivity.  Read

1. CBS This Morning
Trophy hunting is big business in Africa S (5:34)
With this report CBS begins to tilt the scales back to “objectivity & fairness”. Note that key elements in this fellow’s self-serving apologetics for hunting—he’s arguing the economic value of the “hunting industry”, the thousands of jobs involved, etc., are not really questioned by the hosts. It does not occur to these journalists that any social activity can have economic consequences. The construction and operation of concentration camps and the ovens in which Jews and other victims of the Nazi state were murdered gave some people employment, too.  Is “jobs” the only consideration in any social policy? Plus, while on the topic, doesn’t American society place profits above even sacrosanct jobs? And why is morality automatically excluded from the equation?  Isn’t precisely that one of the central problems rotting the heart of our civilization?

This is how CBS presented this issue:

Sportsmen’s Alliance CEO talks economy of hunting, conservation

2.
Here’s Why Walter Palmer Keeps Saying He ‘Took’ Cecil The Lion

Kill euphemisms can be a hunter’s best friend.

Mallika Rao Arts Reporter, The Huffington Post

George Orwell once wrote that political language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.” The same could be said of the language of the hunter: 

I had no idea that the lion I took was a known, local favorite, was collared and part of a study until the end of the hunt … I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion.

The words come from Walter Palmer, arguably the world’s most infamous dentist. He sent them to patients in a two-pronged letter. In it, he apologizes for his murder of Cecil the Lion — a beloved African male with a black mane and scientific significance — and for the “disruption” the illegal kill caused Palmer’s now shuttered Minnesota practice, River Bluff Dental.

Critics point out his words ring as more contrite about the latter crisis than the former. What some are calling Palmer’s non-apology for the death of Cecil uses the obtuse and passive wordplay characteristic of the shadiest mea culpas in American history, from Ulysses S. Grant’s to Donald Sterling’s. He paints Cecil’s death as an outlier, insisting throughout his email that the hunt was sold to him as “legal” and “responsible.” Not once does he question the frailty of those terms in an industry reliant on players in impoverished countries (grotesque amounts of poaching are de rigeur in Zimbabwe, as any seasoned hunter knows).

But his most egregious abuse of the English language is his smallest: that little verb, “to take.”

Used commonly among hunters, the euphemism reveals a culture of Orwellian doublespeak prevalent throughout the hunting world, meant to assuage critics and lure the conflicted curious.

One of the few critiques of the dentist’s choice of verb came from Jimmy Kimmel, who quipped, “You take aspirin. You killed the animal.” 

Kill euphemisms are tailored for the style of hunt. Trophy hunters like Palmer favor “taking,” or “collecting,” a nod to the golden era of safari hunting, when celebrated British nobles dragged entire families of zebra and gazelle back to their gloomy castles as carcasses. Today, we hear the buck hunter’s analog more often: “harvesting.” This is reserved for those who kill for food — deer, turkeys, elk — usually in their home country. Lively as it is, the debate around the rhetoric of domestic hunting sheds light on the more exotic sin of “taking” a lion. 

“Harvest,” with its undertones of a bygone era of ripe wheat fields and feasting pilgrims, has become the rhetorical weapon of choice for hunting organizations liaising with the American public. On its website, the Arizona Game and Fish Commission slips the word in with two saintlier aims: listing only the “management,” “preservation” and “harvest” of wildlife as its mission. Nowhere in the statement does the word “killing,” or even “hunting,” appear.

Nearly identical language attends an amendment passed this May by the Texas state legislature to protect the rights of hunters in the face of what one NRA director called “extreme animal rights groups” (itself a neat turning of the rhetoric of “extremism”).

At the website of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, the Disneyfication of the term reaches new heights, with the option of printing one’s own “My First Harvest” certificate. Field questions include, “What kind of animal did you harvest?” complete with a drop-down menu specifying type, family and species. There’s even an option to upload a picture of the “harvested” animal, as if it weren’t shot dead, but adopted. 

The perversity of the trick hasn’t escaped ordinary rifle-toting citizens. On hunting forums, the topic inspires entire threads. Some argue that sugarcoating what they do only isolates hunters from the general public, a consequence no rights-lobbying shooter wants. Then there is the whiff of political correctness surrounding the whole thing, practically a dirty phrase in these forums. 

A debate begun in 2003 on Rimfire Central, a pro-gun website, shows how rapidly the conversation can splinter. Titled “Hunting euphemisms: caving to the PC crowd?” the thread opens with a poster — “Bill Bryan” — explaining that he’s recently returned to hunting after a spell, only to notice “magazine writers, brochures from gun makers, websites, etc. using a new kind of lingo.” The change he typifies as a clean swap: “saying ‘harvested’ instead of ‘shot’ and ‘take’ instead of ‘kill.’”

“Is this,” he wonders, “Orwellian, or what? Is it still OK to say ‘kill’ and ‘shoot’?”

Even the first few responses vary wildly. One commenter differentiates based on type and purpose, writing that “one KILLS Rats, Mice, and other vermin. However one HARVEST [sic] game animals that he intends to consume for food.” Immediately below, a writer dismisses all synonyms for killing as “PC BS.” The debate briefly derails when a poster accuses Bryan of actually being a secret “‘hug-a-tree’ sort of guy or Peta lover … just trying to start some BS here!!”

Stripped to its core, the debate over the rightness of the word “kill” is really about killing itself: is hunting wrong or right? Here is where semantics confuse an already confusing issue. The statistics on hunting as conservation — a link that’s led to words like “culling” and “harvesting” in place of “killing” — remain murky. A slice of the data in favor of big-game hunting of the sort Palmer does relies on the self-reporting of hunters, who may well claim to prefer shooting elderly male animals in unscenic venues (the best hunting scenario, from an ecological perspective) to slant research in their favor. 

They would be wise to do so. In the age of the Internet, PR nightmares lead to actual action, from California’s ban on hunting with hounds — a bit of legislative damage control after a photograph leaked of the state’s Fish & Game Commission president grinning next to a dead cougar he shot — to the wave of international airline bans on dead animal cargo, instated after a picture of a reality TV huntress lying next to a bull giraffe she felled went viral. 

Before the age of the shareable image, those who would sway the public understood the power of language. In his 1996 book, In The Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal Relationships, ethicist James Serpell tracked various euphemisms for killing and maiming animals. Many revolve around vivisection, or surgery done on live animals, often for research purposes. 

Vivisectors “do not kill their animal subjects,” Serpell writes. “They ‘dispatch,’ ‘terminate,’ or ‘sacrifice’ them,” just as hunters “are only ‘harvesting,’ ‘bagging,’ or ‘taking’ the animals they shoot to death.”  

As in hunting, leaders in the fur and meat industries are fluent in this alternate language. Furriers routinely describe animals as succumbing to euthanasia — a misuse of a word that literally means a mercy killing, done to alleviate the suffering of the killed (though animals in fur farms may well be living miserable enough lives to justify the usage). Serpell cites an edition of the British Meat Trades Journal published near his time of writing, advising meat purveyors to divorce their product from “the act of slaughter,” by swapping out the words “butcher” and “slaughterhouse” with what Serpell calls “American euphemisms”: “meat plant,” “meat factory.”

Even before the specter of government bans, shooters had their lingo. Centuries ago, British fox hunters developed synonyms for killing, some more chilling than the word itself: “bowled over,” “rolled over,” “brought to book,” “punished,” “dealt with,” “accounted for.” In a 2012 essay against the euphemistic creep in American hunting circles, Chris Eberhart, a bowhunter and outdoor writer in Michigan, described the surreality he experienced shooting in Germany:

German hunters never use the word blood. The euphemism for blood is the word sweat. And no animal is ever wounded by a German hunter.  Instead, wounded game is described as sick. A non hunter could listen to two German hunters talk about wounding an animal and tracking and have absolutely no idea what they were talking about.

In contrast with the euphemisms of today — intended to endear the public to the cause — European code words came about expressly to exclude. Hunting was the sport of the elite, and elitism thrives on inside knowledge. As Eberhart points out, to regular folk in an old country, hunters speak an incomprehensible language.

American coding traces to a philosophical shift. The great early 20th-century environmentalist Aldo Leopold pioneered the idea of game as a kind of crop. The Rimfire Central debate ends on this note as well. Citing Leopold’s 1933 book Game Management, the thread’s final commenter writes that “effective communication means knowing your audience.” Leopold, the commenter suggests, communicated effectively:

 

We have learned that game, to be successfully conserved, must be positively produced rather than negatively protected. We have learned that game is a crop, which Nature will grow and grow abundantly, provided only that we furnish the seed and a suitable environment.

This language is echoed by trophy hunters, who defend their actions as ultimately beneficial to the ecosystem. (Though Leopold, who changed his views on predator eradication by the end of his life, would surely disagree with them.) A favorite example is of the white rhino, a near-extinct species brought back from the brink, partly due to private South African landowners eager to entice wealthy Westerners to pay to shoot.

The case is provocative — some estimates place the population’s rise from 100 to 11,000 from 1960 to 2007 — even while limited trophy hunting continued. But crediting hunting for the rise misrepresents the reality of the conservation effort, a multidimensional approach that has involved fertilization intervention by researchers, as well as sweeping limitations on poaching and, yes, hunting — both activities of which were blamed for wiping the species’ numbers down so low in the first place.  

In the case of Walter Palmer, the underbelly of the word shows. What he calls “taking” has come to mean an explicit series of events. We know Palmer and a group of men baited a lion out of safe land with a dead animal strapped to a vehicle. The dentist shot the tricked animal with a bow, piercing Cecil’s flesh. The group then stalked the wounded lion for 40 hours until Palmer had a chance to shoot and kill (and claim) his paid-for trophy with a rifle. One, some or all of the men beheaded and skinned the lion, trying before they left the carcass to extract the tagged collar that proved their downfall. This, now, is “taking.”

Unfortunately for Palmer, another word describes the operation: “poaching.” 

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We reproduce below a sampler of responses to Mallika’s piece, which add more information and insight on this tragic event.

3.

Puncturing media pretensions—and the most sacred of cows: the press’ devotion to “objectivity”.

The Political Function of PBS

When tedium is totalizing

Many J-schools continue to regard PBS’ Mac Neil-Lehrer Report as the gold standard for “professional journalism” but this adoration only underscores the myopic acceptance of corporate values in the reporting of reality.  Meantime, as media critic Alex Cockburn dissects here, the Newshour continues to exude the priggish civility of those who can speak of great injuries at several removes…—P. Greanville

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN, Editor, Counterpunch
REPOSTED BY READER REQUESTS 

YEARS AGO, when the nightly program was mandatory viewing in every liberal home from Montauk to Santa Monica, I wrote a parody of the McNeil-Lehrer Show, as it was then called before McNeil hailed down his colors and moved on. The piece ran in Harper’s, and though it prompted a good deal of laughter, there were a surprising number of letters from outraged PBS viewers, wailing about my lack of respect. It was as though I had publicly kicked a respected greybeard.

The other night, glancing Lehrer’s News Hour I shook my head yet again at the precision of my gibes. This particular show was about the efforts of Ken Tomlinson, formerly of Readers’ Digest and Voice of America, to purge PBS of all liberal taint. From the right there was a nutcase from The American Spectator called George Neumayr and from the left but of course there was no one from the left. There never is. There was a “moderate” from the center right called Bill Reed.

JEFFREY BROWN (moderator): Welcome to both of you. Mr. Neumayr Do you see a liberal bias in public broadcasting?

GEORGE NEUMAYR: I do. I see a pervasive bias. I applaud Ken Tomlinson for making an attempt to correct it

JEFFREY BROWN: Mr. Reed, do you see a liberal bias?

BILL REED: I think this is really nonsense. You know, for over 30 years, William F. Buckley was on public television, and I carried him proudly in the stations that I`ve managed in my career. He`s a fine journalist, and so is Bill Moyers.

JEFFREY BROWN: So Mr. Reed, what do you believe is causing Mr. Tomlinson to raise these questions?

BILL REED: You know, I don`t know. I don`t know.

Feel yourself dozing off?

Now, there were important historical reasons for the rise of this narcotic show. So, without further ado, I give my parody, as it appeared nearly 25 years ago, in august 1982, under the title The Tedium Twins

ROBERT MACNEIL (voice over): A Galilean preacher claims he is the Redeemer and says the poor are blessed. Should he be crucified?

(Titles)

MACNEIL: Good evening. The Roman procurator in Jerusalem is trying to decide whether a man regarded by many as a saint should be put to death. Pontius Pilate is being urged by civil libertarians to intervene in what is seen here in Rome as being basically a local dispute. Tonight, the crucifixion debate. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the provinces of Judaea and Galilee have always been trouble spots, and this year is no exception. The problem is part religious, part political, and in many ways a mixture of both. The Jews believe in one god. Discontent in the province has been growing, with many local businessmen complaining about the tax burden. Terrorism, particularly in Galilee, has been on the increase. In recent months, a carpenter’s son from the town of Nazareth has been attracting a large following with novel doctrines and faith healing. He recently entered Jerusalem amid popular acclaim, but influential Jewish leaders fear his power. Here in Alexandria the situation is seen as dangerous. Robin?

MACNEIL: Recently in Jerusalem on a fact-finding mission for the Emperor’s Emergency Task Force on Provincial Disorders was Quintilius Maximus. Mr. Maximus, how do you see the situation?

MAXIMUS: Robin, I had occasion to hear one of this preacher’s sermons a few months ago and talk with his aides. There is no doubt in my mind that he is a threat to peace and should be crucified.

MACNEIL: Pontius Pilate should wash his hands of the problem?

MAXIMUS: Absolutely.

MACNEIL: I see. Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Now for a view from Mr. Simon, otherwise known as Peter. He is a supporter of Christ and has been standing by in a Jerusalem studio. Robin?

MACNEIL: Mr. Simon Peter, why do you support Christ?

SIMON PETER: He is the Son of God and presages the Second Coming. If I may, I would like to read some relevant passages from the prophet Isaiah.

MACNEIL: Thank you, but I’m afraid we’ll have to break in there. We’ve run out of time. Goodnight, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MACNEIL: Sleep well, Jim.

LEHRER: I hope you sleep well, too, Robin.

MACNEIL: I think I will. Well, good night again, Jim.

LEHRER: Goodnight, Robin.

MACNEIL: We’ll be back again tomorrow night. I’m Robert MacNeil Good night.

Admirers of the ‘MacNeil/Lehrer Report’ – and there are many of them – often talk about it in terms normally reserved for unpalatable but nutritious breakfast foods: unalluring, perhaps, to the frivolous news consumer, but packed full of fiber. It is commended as the sort of news analysis a serious citizen, duly weighing the pros and cons of world history, would wish to masticate before a thoughtful browse through the Federalist Papers, a chat with spouse about civic duties incumbent on them on the morrow, and final blameless repose.

The promotional material for the ‘Report’ has a tone of reverence of the sort usually employed by people reading guidebooks to each other in a French cathedral: ‘The week-nightly newscast’s unique mix of information, expert opinion, and debate has foreshadowed an industry trend toward longer and more detailed coverage, while at the same time helping to reveal a growing public appetite for informational television. Nearly 4.5 million viewers watch the “MacNeil/ Lehrer Report” each night during the prime viewing season. …’

‘A program with meat on its bones,’ said the Association for Continuing Higher Education, in presenting its 1981 Leadership Award. ‘The “MacNeil/ Lehrer Report” goes beyond the commercial networks’ rushed recital of news to bring us in-depth coverage of single issues. … There is a concern for ideas rather than video images and they accord us the unusual media compliment of not telling us what to think, but allowing us to draw our own conclusions after we weigh conflicting views.’ And the handout concludes in triumph with some findings from a 1980 Roper poll: ‘Three quarters of those polled said they had discovered pros and cons on issues on which they had not had opinions beforehand.’

ROBERT MACNEIL (voice over): Should one man own another?

(Titles)

MACNEIL: Good evening. The problem is as old as man himself. Do property rights extend to the absolute ownership of one man by another? Tonight, the slavery problem. Jim?

LEHRER: Robin, advocates of the continuing system of slavery argue that the practice has brought unparalleled benefits to the economy. They fear that new regulations being urged by reformers would undercut America’s economic effectiveness abroad. Reformers, on the other hand, call for legally binding standards and even for a phased reduction in the slave force to something like 75 percent of its present size. Charlayne Hunter- Gault is in Charleston. Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: Robin and Jim, I have here in Charleston, Mr. Ginn, head of the Cottongrowers Association. Robin?

MACNEIL: Mr. Ginn, what are the arguments for unregulated slavery?

GINN: Robin, our economic data show that attempts at regulation of working hours, slave quarters, and so forth would reduce productivity and indeed would be widely resented by the slaves themselves.

MACNEIL: You mean, the slaves would not like new regulations? They would resent them?

GINN: Exactly. Any curbing of the slave trade would offer the Tsar dangerous political opportunities in western Africa, and menace the strategic slave-ship routes.

LEHRER: Thank you, Mr. Ginn. Robin?

MACNEIL: Thank you, Mr. Ginn and Jim. The secretary of the Committee for Regulatory Reform in Slavery is Eric Halfmeasure. Mr. Halfmeasure, give us the other side of the story.

HALFMEASURE: Robin, I would like to make one thing perfectly clear. We are wholeheartedly in favor of slavery. We just see abuses that diminish productivity and reduce incentives for free men and women to compete in the marketplace. Lynching, tarring and feathering, rape, lack of holidays, and that sort of thing. One recent study suggests that regulation could raise productivity by 15 percent.

MACNEIL: I see. Thank you, Mr. Halfmeasure. Mr. Ginn?

GINN: Our studies show the opposite.

MACNEIL: Jim?

LEHRER: Charlayne?

HUNTER-GAULT: A few critics of slavery argue that it should be abolished outright. One of them is Mr. Garrison. Mr. Garrison, why abolish slavery?

GARRISON: It is immoral for one man …

MACNEIL: Mr. Garrison, we’re running out of time, I’m afraid. Let me very quickly get some other points of view. Mr. Ginn, you think slavery is good?

GINN: Yes.

MACNEIL: And you, Mr. Halfmeasure, think it should be regulated.

HALFMEASURE: Yes.

MACNEIL: Well, I’ve got you to disagree, haven’t I? (Laughter) That’s all we’ve got time for tonight. Goodnight, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MACNEIL: Did you sleep well last night?

LEHRER: I did, thank you.

MACNEIL: That’s good. So did I. We’ll be back again tomorrow night. I’m Robert MacNeil Good night.

The ‘MacNeil/Lehrer Report’ started in October 1975, in the aftermath of Watergate. It was a show dedicated to the proposition that there are two sides to every question, a valuable corrective in a period when the American people had finally decided that there were absolutely and definitely not two sides to every question. Nixon was a crook who had rightly been driven from office; corporations were often headed by crooks who carried hot money around in suitcases; federal officials were crooks who broke the law on the say-so of the president.

It was a dangerous moment, for a citizenry suddenly imbued with the notion that there is not only a thesis and antithesis, but also a synthesis, is a citizenry, capable of all manner of harm to the harmonious motions of the status quo.

Thus came the ‘MacNeil/ Lehrer Report,’ sponsored by public-television funds and by the most powerful corporate forces in America, in the form of Exxon, ‘AT&T and the Bell System,’ and other upstanding bodies. Back to Sunday school went the excited viewers, to be instructed that reality, as conveyed to them by television, is not an exciting affair of crooked businessmen and lying politicians but a serious continuum in which parties may disagree but in which all involved are struggling manfully and disinterestedly for the public weal.

The narcotizing, humorless properties of the ‘MacNeil/Lehrer Report,’ familiar to anyone who has felt fatigue creep over him at 7:40 Eastern time, are crucial to the show. Tedium is of the essence, since the all-but- conscious design of the program is to project vacuous dithering (‘And now, for another view of Hitler …’) into the mind of the viewers, until they are properly convinced that there is not one answer to ‘the problem,’ but two or even three, and that since two answers are no better than none, they might as well not bother with the problem at all.

The techniques employed by the show enhance this distancing and anesthetizing. The recipe is unvarying. MacNeil and Lehrer exchange modest gobbets of information with each other about the topic under discussion. Then, with MacNeil crouching – rather like Kermit the Frog in old age – down to the left and peering up, a huge face appears on the screen and discussion is under way. The slightest discommoding exchange, some intemperate observation on the part of the interviewee, causes MacNeil to bat the ball hastily down to Washington, where Lehrer sedately sits with his interviewee.

By fits and starts, with Jim batting back to Robin and Robin batting across to Charlayne, the program lurches along. The antagonists are rarely permitted to joust with one another and ideally are sequestered on their large screens. Sometimes, near the end of the show, the camera will reveal that these supposed antagonists are in fact sitting chummily, shoulder to shoulder, around the same table as Lehrer thus indicating to the viewer that, while opinions may differ, all are united in general decency of purpose. Toward the very end, MacNeil’s true role becomes increasingly exposed as he desperately tries to suppress debate and substantive argument, with volley after volley of ‘We’re nearly out of time,’ ‘Congressman, in ten seconds could you’ and the final, relieved, ‘That’s all for tonight.’

It’s even important that MacNeil and Lehrer say good night to each other so politely every evening. In that final, sedate nocturnal exchange everything is finally resolved, even though nothing has been resolved. We can all go to bed now.

And so to bed we go. The pretense is that viewers, duly presented with both sides of the case, will spend the next segment of the evening weighing the pro against the con and coming up with the answer. It is, in fact, enormously difficult to recall anything that anyone has ever said on a ‘MacNeil/Lehrer Report,’ because the point has been to demonstrate that since everything can be contradicted, nothing is worth remembering. The show praised above all others for content derives its attention entirely from form: the unvarying illustration that if one man can be found to argue that cannibalism is bad, another can be found to argue that it is not.

Actually, this is an overstatement. ‘MacNeil/ Lehrer’ hates such violent extremes, and, by careful selection of the show’s participants, the show tries to make sure that the viewer will not be perturbed by any views overly critical of the political and business establishment.

ROBERT MACNEIL (voice over): Should one man eat another?

(Titles)

MACNEIL: Good evening. Reports from the Donner Pass indicate that survivors fed upon their companions. Tonight, should cannibalism be regulated? Jim?

LEHRER: Robin, the debate pits two diametrically opposed sides against each other: the Human Meat-eaters Association, who favor a free market in human flesh, and their regulatory opponents in Congress and the consumer movement. Robin?

MACNEIL: Mr. Tooth, why eat human flesh?

TOOTH: Robin, it is full of protein and delicious too. Without human meat, our pioneers would be unable to explore the West properly. This would present an inviting opportunity to the French, who menace our pioneer routes from the north.

MACNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Now for another view of cannibalism. Bertram Brussell-Sprout is leading the fight to control the eating of animal fats and meats. Mr. Sprout, would you include human flesh in this proposed regulation?

SPROUT: Most certainly, Jim. Our studies show that some human flesh available for sale to the public is maggot-ridden, improperly cut, and often incorrectly graded. We think the public should be protected from such abuses.

MACNEIL: Some say it is wrong to eat human flesh at all. Mr. Prodnose, give us this point of view.

PRODNOSE: Robin, eating people is wrong. We say …

MACNEIL: I’m afraid we’re out of time. Good night, Jim, etc., etc.

Trudging back through the ‘MacNeil/ Lehrer’ scripts, the hardy reader will soon observe how extraordinarily narrow is the range of opinion canvassed by a show dedicated to dispassionate examination of the issues of the day. The favored blend is usually a couple of congressmen or senators, barking at each other from either side of the fence, corporate chieftains, government executives, ranking lobbyists, and the odd foreign statesman. The mix is ludicrously respectable, almost always heavily establishment in tone. Official spokesmen of trade and interest groups are preferred over people who only have something interesting to say.

This constriction of viewpoint is particularly conspicuous in the case of energy, an issue dear to the ‘MacNeil/Lehrer Report.’ ‘Economics of Nuclear Power,’ for example, was screened on November 25, 1980, and purported to examine why a large number of nuclear utilities were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Mustered to ponder the issue we had the following rich and varied banquet: the president of the Virginia Electric and Power Company; the vice president (for nuclear operations) of Commonwealth Edison of Chicago; a vice president (responsible for scrutinizing utility investments) at Paine Webber; and the president of the Atomic Industrial Forum. The viewers of ‘MacNeil/ Lehrer’ did not, you may correctly surmise, hear much critical opinion about nuclear power on that particular evening.

On May 1, 1981, the ‘Report’ examined ‘the problems and prospects of getting even more oil out of our ground.’ Participants in the discussion about oil glut included some independent oil drillers, and ‘experts’ from Merrill Lynch, Phillips Petroleum Company, and the Rand Corporation.

At least on May 1 the viewers had more than one person saying the same thing (‘regulation is bad’). On March 27 they were invited to consider the plans of the Reagan administration for a rebuilt navy. The inquiring citizen was offered a trip around the battleship Iowa in the company of MacNeil, and an extremely meek interview, conducted by both MacNeil and Lehrer, of the Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman. No dissenting views were allowed to intrude, beyond the deferential inquiries of MacNeil and Lehrer, both of whom, it should be said, are very bad interviewers, usually ignorant and always timid. By contrast, Ted Koppel of ABC’s ‘Nightline’ is a veritable tiger in interrogatory technique.

The spectrum of opinion thus offered is one that ranges from the corporate right to cautious center-liberal. One should not be misled, by the theatrical diversity of views deployed on the program,into thinking that a genuinely wide spectrum of opinion is permitted. Moldering piles of ‘MacNeil/ Lehrer’ transcripts before me on my desk attest to the fact.

The show would be nothing without Robert (‘Robin’) MacNeil. Canadian, with a layer of high seriousness so thick it sticks to the screen, MacNeil anchors the show to tedium and yanks at the hawser everytime the craft shows any sign of floating off into uncharted waters. He seems to have learned – on the evidence of his recent memoir, The Right Place at the Right Time – the elements of his deadly craft in London, watching the BBC and writing for Reuters.

MacNeil is a man so self-righteously boring that he apparently had no qualms in setting down the truth about his disgraceful conduct in Dallas on November 22, 1963. MacNeil was there covering Kennedy’s visit for NBC. The shots rang out and he sprinted to the nearest telephone he could find. It so happens that he dashed, without knowing its significance, into the Texas Book Depository: ‘As I ran up the steps and through the door, a young man in shirt sleeves was coming out. In great agitation I asked him where there was a phone. He pointed inside to an open space where another man was talking on a phone situated next to a pillar and said, “Better ask him.” I ran inside. …’

Later, MacNeil writes, ‘I heard on television that a young man called Oswald, arrested for the shooting, worked at the Texas Book Depository and had left by the front door immediately afterward. Isn’t that strange, I told myself. He must have been leaving just about the time I was running in…’

Later still, William Manchester demonstrated that there was a 95 percent certainty that MacNeil had met Oswald. Any reporter, any human, with anything other than treacle in his veins, would naturally make much of the coincidence and divert children, acquaintances, and indeed a wider public, with interesting accounts of Oswald’s demeanor at this significant moment. Not MacNeil. With Pecksniffian virtuousness, he insists that the encounter was merely ‘possible,’ and that ‘it is titillating, but it doesn’t matter very much.’

Such is the aversion to storytelling, the sodden addiction to the mundane, that produced ‘MacNeil/ Lehrer.’ Like an Exocet missile, MacNeil can spot a cliche, a patch of ennui, and home in on it with dreadful speed. Witness his proclamation of political belief:

Instinctively, I find it more satisfying to belong with those people in all countries who put their trust in Man’s best quality, his rational intellect and its ability to recognize and solve problems. It is distressing that the recent course of American politics has caused that trust to be ridiculed or dismissed as some sort of soft-headedness, inappropriate to a virile nation confronting the dangerous world. It will be unfortunate if being a ‘liberal’ remains an embarrassment, if young Americans should begin to believe that conservatives are the only realists.

Each has its absurd extreme: liberalism tending to inspire foolish altruism and unwarranted optimism; conservatism leading to unbridled selfishness and paranoia. Taken in moderation, I prefer the liberal impulse: it is the impulse behind the great forces that have advanced mankind, like Christianity. I find it hard to believe that Jesus Christ was a political conservative, whatever views are espoused in his name today.

For all my instinctive liberalism, my experience of politics in many countries has not left me wedded to any particular political parties. Rather, I have found myself politically dining a la carte, on particular issues.

This is the mind-set behind ‘MacNeil/ Lehrer.’ ‘I have my own instinctive aversion to being snowed,’ he writes at another point. ‘The more I hear everyone telling me that some public person is wonderful, the more I ask myself, Can he really be all that wonderful? Conversely [for MacNeil there is always a ‘conversely’ poking its head round the door], I never believe anyone can be quite as consistently terrible as his reputation.’

Hitler? Attila the Hun? Pol Pot? Nixon? John D. Rockefeller? I’m afraid that’s all we have time for tonight. We’ve run out of time. Good night.

Alex Cockburn is a well known social and political critic, and a pioneer in the field of media analysis. His essays have appeared in The Nation, Harper’s, The Village Voice, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, and many other publications in Britain, Europe and the Americas.

(First published in Counterpunch, 6.30.05)

 

 

 

FACT TO REMEMBER:
IF THE WESTERN MEDIA HAD ITS PRIORITIES IN ORDER AND ACTUALLY INFORMED, EDUCATED AND UPLIFTED THE MASSES INSTEAD OF SHILLING FOR A GLOBAL EMPIRE OF ENDLESS WARS, OUTRAGEOUS ECONOMIC INEQUALITY, AND DEEPENING DEVASTATION OF NATURE AND THE ANIMAL WORLD,  HORRORS LIKE THESE WOULD HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED MANY YEARS, PERHAPS DECADES AGO.  EVERY SINGLE DAY SOCIAL BACKWARDNESS COLLECTS ITS OWN INNUMERABLE VICTIMS. 

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