Interview by Jessica Clark
09.24.01

on Friday night had an eerie moment: flipping from channel to channel, from network to cable stations, only to see the same mega-stars holding a bicoastal telethon titled "America: a Tribute to Heros."

While this fundraising effort has been praised as surprisingly restrained, the sensation it produced was disturbingly familiar. Whether our selection of channels numbers five or five hundred, too often, Americans flip through the lineup only to find the same faces, the same sentiments, the same production tricks.

On the one-week anniversary of the 9.11.01 attacks, LiP spoke with media critic and political economist Robert McChesney about gaps in the coverage of the events and their aftermath, the news media's impact on democratic decision making in America, and US citizens' incomplete understanding of the role their country plays in the global economy.

What, if anything, has struck you most about the coverage of the 9.11.01 events?

Robert McChesney: That it has been blatant propaganda. Propaganda is the word that's most striking when you look at the nature of the press coverage.

I think a lot of people would look at this TV and media coverage in general, and at first be quite struck with the drama and the emotion of the event. You assume that the coverage is dramatic and emotional, and therefore great as a result. You say "gosh, they've got all of these reporters and cameras covering this, they're trying to track down this great big story, it's pretty exciting...this is really great television, great journalism, really incredible stuff."

But I think what we need to do is stand back and say "What do exactly do we want from our journalism in a crisis like this? What does the society need?"

...especially a society that has a constitutional representative government, like the United States does.

And what we need are a few things: we need to have a clear understanding, to the best of our ability, of what happened, the factual explanation—a detailed journalistic inquiry into what happened, what the events were, how it took place. We also have to understand why it took place—what's the explanation? What led some people to an act so extreme, so extraordinarily grotesque? And third, we have to ask, "What is a viable solution, or policy, or response?" What makes the most sense, and what do we want to do here?

We need our media to really lead and show direction in all three areas: explaining what's happening, explaining why it's happening, and leading debate over what can and should be done about it. And I think the coverage of the technical stuff, like how these planes were hijacked and diverted—I'm not going to fault that. I wish there was more of that; I'm still hungry for some pretty elementary information that might be in some of the press coverage, but I haven't seen it.

That's really not where the main problems are. The main problems come in the explanation of why this took place, and the policies, what do we do about it.

In the first case, the "why this took place," what the propaganda coverage has been completely incapable of doing is providing any context so that Americans could make sense of this attack. Not making sense of it in the sense that justifies it—but sense of it so that you could understand why people would be moved to do this, what forces in the world it reflects, and how strong they are, what the reasons are behind why those forces exist.

What's completely absent in our journalism— both historically and in the last week—is any understanding of the US role in the world. We are [instead] presented this fairy tale picture by our politicians and our journalists of the US as this greatly benevolent democratic force.

Like Bush saying that the attackers did this because they "hate freedom?"

Yeah. In fact, even if you read the CIA's own internal documents, they're all about how the US is supporting sleazeball governments, and we're doing all sorts of terrible stuff. At a certain level, the people in our government understand that that's just public relations hooey, but our journalism gravitates towards that and sticks with it. So, most Americans see this terrible act and they think, "Gosh, we're such a great country—these people are obviously just pure evil. That's the only explanation."

Likewise, Americans have no idea of the United States' own history in the world as a supporter of terrorism. The United States is, I think, by any honest account, the leading terrorist institution in the world today. I think it was Amnesty International, just a few years ago in one of its reports, that wrote that on any given day, some government or private organization is torturing, abusing, or killing people anywhere in the world, and chances are, more often than not, that it's a US-sponsored group or government.

This part of our history is totally unknown to the American people. It's outrageous! If any other country had such a record—if the Iraqi media didn't report on Iraqi atrocities—all of our journalists would be slapping each other on the back, talking about how terrible their press system was.

In our case, precisely the same thing takes place. This is unknown to the American people, and it simply can't be mentioned.

One example of this that is most striking in the case of the Middle East is our support of sanctions against the government of Iraq, which, by the UN's own reckoning, has led up to the death of up to a million civilians, including perhaps as many as 500,000 children. All in an effort to make life basically so unbearable for the poor people of Iraq—the weakest people of Iraq—that they'll rise up and revolt and overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein.

What is that, if not terrorism? 500,000 children murdered to get rid of a government you don't like—what's the difference between that and what Osama bin Laden is accused of doing in New York and Washington DC?

But [after 9.11.01], the minute you say that, you're attacked in the media for "blaming the victim."

Right—it's simply not discussable. Our press system doesn't allow that. The reasons for that are many, but one crucial reason that goes to the nature of professional journalism is its reliance upon official and credentialed sources as the legitimate basis for news stories.

In this case, what that means is that the official sources, the legitimate sources, are almost entirely going to be so-called "terrorism experts": intelligence people, military people, national security people who are either currently in office or have held positions in previous administrations. They all pretty much share the same values and the same desires: their goal is to have increased military spending, increased spending on the intelligence communities, even less (if that's possible) oversight on what governments can do with regard to civil liberties and assassinating and killing people. They want to basically unleash this as the solution to the problem.

They have no interest in condoning or participating in an honest evaluation of US foreign policy and the US role in the world...no interest whatsoever in participating in a critical examination of why the CIA and the military establishment in this country completely failed this country and allowed [what is now estimated at more than 6000] people to be murdered senselessly due to their incompetence.

If any other branch of government—say, the Federal Aviation Administration—had allowed 200 planes to crash one day last week, killing 5000 people, the chances are small that the result of that would be "let's double the budget of the current staff of the FAA and have even less accountability, because the problem was the people leaning over their shoulders giving them a hard time."

Of course, that's unthinkable. But, in this case, that's exactly what we're being told, and there's no debate over it whatsoever. It's just "where do we sign to give them more money and power?"

Right—one lone dissenting voice in the darkness in Congress.

Yes, Barbara Lee is the only one who has voted against this unbelievable bill in this sort of emotional, flag-waving hurricane that's been crossing the country.

The point is, simply, that there is no connection, per se, between the emotion and the anger and the pain that we all feel about those lost lives and the loved ones who remain whose lives will be forever damaged—the agony of those people, it's heart-wrenching and extraordinary—between that and military violence. It's appalling that the press system would permit that legitimate anger and pain to be manipulated by powerful interests to suit their own political and financial agenda. To do that is a real abdication of any notion of what a free press has to be in a democratic society.

One other example of this—you see, trotted out as experts, these hacks who have been discredited time and time again in the past, like Steve Emerson, whose definition of terrorism is that terrorism can only be done by those who are hostile to the United States. That's the starting point of your definition...I mean, you see people like Tom Clancy [being] brought in as an expert.

We have in this country some of the most brilliant scholars and critics of US foreign policy, in the Middle East specifically: Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman. They are nowhere to be found. We have critics of US-sponsored terrorism in the Middle East, who understand it. They are nowhere to be found. Crucial information is being lost.

And then, in grandest irony—or tragedy—in the Washington Post, on CNN and other networks, one of the key figures providing unquestioned "brilliant" analysis throughout these last few days has been former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

As you might recall, just two days before this took place, on September 9th, CBS's 60 Minutes did an exposé of Kissinger that showed that, while he was working in the Nixon administration in 1970, he approved of, encouraged, and aggressively helped organize the assassination of the Chilean Chief of Military, Rene Schneider, after the election of Salvadore Allende. Schneider was politically neutral, and would not overthrow the democratically-elected government of Chile.

So, Kissinger literally helped organize his being assassinated so he could be replaced by General Pinochet, who had no qualms about overthrowing the democratically-elected constitutional government of Chile to install a regime more to the US's liking. Now, Kissinger not only did that—in grotesque violation of US treaties...it's a treasonous act and he should be thrown in prison for life if not worse—but he lied to the US Congress about it. He lied under oath about it.

This comes out Sunday night, and two days later, that's completely forgotten. He's again the great genius expert on the US role in the world and the need to combat terrorism.

What do you think of Christopher Hitchens' attempts to have him recognized as an international war criminal?

I think they're wonderful, and I think that maybe the CBS show, to some small extent, is a result of that campaign. But, what is quite striking is, despite the impressive amount of evidence that Hitchens has collected—and that others have provided as well—in our media, [Kissinger] still is regarded as this great seer. Being a war criminal in the United States, or a human rights abuser, or a murderer, if you're doing it for the United States government, is no problem for your qualifications.

There's one other point that needs to be talked about in relation to the Middle East which weighs heavily in the American people's ignorance about the area. That is the issue of Israel and Palestine.

Palestine is one of the truly tragic stories of the twentieth—and now the twenty-first—century. It's a wonderful nation that has been deprived of its independence, and now is trying to survive against an extraordinarily aggressive and powerful country that gets exceptional aid from the US, which makes it so powerful.

Our news media coverage has always been rather hostile to taking Palestine seriously, and is very generous towards Israel. There are tremendous interests in the US government and population that always are eager to do anything to associate Palestinians with terrorism and to make Israel look like the good-guy ally to the US. These [tropes] push our media coverage along too to give it this idiotic, no-brainer understanding of how the news media works.

To give [an example] of what took place just right before the September 11th World Trade Center attacks, to put this in context...Israel has begun the policy of systematically assassinating Palestinian leaders, or any Palestinians that they think are going to give them trouble. No trial, no jury—just flat out go and kill someone you don't like. A couple of weeks ago, Vice President Cheney announced that he thought that was a fine policy.

Imagine, if you're a Palestinian, and you've got the Vice President of the United States—a country that's supposedly brokering a deal—approving of a policy for your enemy to murder your leaders at random with no pretext.

You add [that] in with the Iraq sanctions, in with the US support for extraordinarily corrupt and vile governments in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and then you begin to see that, gee, there might be grounds for some people in the Middle East and the Islamic world not to think that the US is the font of all wonderfulness.

But those issues, which are elementary, which are really not even debated—one could debate the interpretation, but the factual basis of them is beyond debate—are simply unmentionable in the US media, any more than you could mention that the Soviet Union was a corrupt dictatorship during the era of Breshnev over Pravda or Izvestia.

The reason for this—there are lots of reasons, but a significant reason—is based in the codes of professional journalism which evolved in the last hundred years. I can't go into why professional journalism evolved this way, but, in a nutshell, it did so as a way that monopoly media and newspaper owners could make their content look nonpartisan, even though they were in very noncompetitive markets. Having partisan journalism was very bad for business; people didn't trust it. So they said, well, we'll be "professional."

That's where the reliance upon official sources becomes so important. That was a new thing to twentieth-century journalism—like if the president or governor says something, it's a news story, regardless of what they're saying. It gives the people in power a lot of influence over news. If the official sources are talking or debating over an issue, it gets covered. If they aren't talking about an issue, it doesn't become a news story. You can't raise it.

If you raise a story that the people in power aren't talking about, you're considered partisan.

If a journalist were to report this week on the Iraq sanctions, the response of the people in power—and other journalists—would be "Why are you raising that issue now? No one's talking about it. You're just trying to interject your own opinions." But, as long as they volley between the range—in this case, almost no range—of official debate, then [journalists] are being objective, neutral, fair, nonpartisan, and professional. That bias is strongly implicated in our problems here.

Another one is that professional journalism has always feared any sort of context. Because if you provide context and background to stories, it's impossible to do that without coming to a conclusion, usually.

Then you suddenly have an "opinion piece."

Then you suddenly have to wrestle with the controversy of saying something. This is something that professional journalism avoids like the plague. So much of what professional journalism produces are disconnected facts. The context is then whatever the elites or official sources consider relevant for you to know. That's exactly what's going on here.

There's probably no foreign policy story over the past ten or twenty that has gotten more ink and air time in the US news media than the Middle East. At the same time, I suspect 95% of Americans—maybe even 98%—couldn't pass a rudimentary, fifth-grade-level test about what's going on in the Middle East today, and they wouldn't know a darned thing about how the Iranian situation is different from the Iraqi or Saudi Arabian.

This is why people from South Asia are afraid of being beaten up in the streets of America, because [the bullies] can't even distinguish anybody of color from one another.

Precisely. That's because we have a journalism that avoids giving the necessary context to make sense of stories because that's politically controversial. It's much easier just to throw disconnected facts at people.

One of the ironies here is that journalism, which is supposed to engage people and get them informed about politics and policies, has the effect of basically depoliticizing them, because it makes politics so confusing and uninteresting by taking the partisanship out of it. Therefore you get situations like these, where you get these fairy-tale storylines straight out of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie...All we need is Schwarzenegger or the World Wrestling Federation smackdown team, with The Rock. Because that's basically what we're seeing: pure good versus pure evil.

It's a tragedy of the greatest dimension, because the problems we're talking about here, as we learned last week, we're all going to be affected by them. We're all on this planet together, and either we're all going to make it through this thing together, or we're all going to go down. At some point, we've got to really come to an understanding of how that works.

How do you think the new climate of suspicion and increased militarism is going to affect the World Bank protesters and others who have been mobilizing against globalization? [ NOTE: the late-September World Bank meetings in DC were cancelled.]

I think it's one of the real casualties here. It's really terrible. Already, you see all of the official sources and powerful interests who support globalization, who support neoliberalism, are quick and eager to tar terrorism with the anti-neoliberal globalization protests...an utterly ludicrous connection. There are vastly closer connections between the terrorists and the US government, historically. But, because of the way our journalism works, those sorts of charges can be volleyed around, and there will be hardly any dissenting voices.

At best, you'll get a tepid, "well there's no real connection; most of them are good kids," or some baloney.

Or that they're just pierced, green-haired dopes who will grow out of it.

But the fact that it's an inane charge made by powerful interests to undercut this movement—that notion will not [show up] in our commercial news media, or PBS or NPR, for that matter.

It's disturbing to see something that was gaining momentum, and was really fairly nonviolent despite various incidents, suddenly effectively being quashed.

It's extraordinarily depressing. This is one of the worse things that has ever happened on a number of different levels: from the loss of life in New York and Washington, to the political climate it engenders, to what it does to the burgeoning and very exciting grassroots movements comprised disproportionately of young people. We just have to muddle through.

I'm always an optimist, but the near term is going to require resolve, and I think it's going to require a lot more courage than people are normally asked to show. Courage in our society isn't just the physical courage to be willing to go out and have someone smash you in the head. It's the courage to go into a room of people who disagree with you and tell them what you think, to stand up for what you believe—to take the sort of abuse you're going to take, which won't always be yelling, but it just might be that you are blackballed from our culture, seen as a weirdo.

In our culture, that's a tremendous disciplinary thing. You don't want to seem like a weirdo, so you just shut up and go with the flow. These are precisely the types of moments when we need people to stand up and be willing to suffer severe disapproval, and do so in such a way that isn't contentious or rude, but to stand for principle and truth and honesty and open debate, and not back down.

War is generally more profitable for the media, right?

Crisis situations are. In this kind of situation, you can't run ads—who's going to run ads for toilet paper after the World Trade Center collapses? But what's very good for the media in the long term or medium term is that something like CNN, its ratings shoot up, and history shows that they'll keep a good number of those viewers for the next couple of weeks, so it's really a great way to grab 20 million people and get them to check out your station. The Gulf War did wonders for CNN's profits....

I think that the news services, television especially, tremendously benefit by these sorts of crises: the Florida election thing as well. But I'm not conspiratorial enough to think that they would arrange this. But what they do along these lines is to create bogus things like Gary Condit and OJ and Jon Benet.

Let's talk about the media owners a little bit more.

Professionalism is largely responsible for the terrible coverage, there's no question of that. And professional journalism and its code is largely the result of the monopolization of media at the beginning of the twentieth century to try to create nonpartisan journalism which has deep biases built into it that produce this propaganda-type coverage, especially in times of crisis.

But also, media owners play a role here. Our news media industry—at least the people who cover international and national politics with resources and lead the way for everyone else: AP, three or four major newspapers, CNN and a few of the television networks—consists of maybe twelve or fifteen major organizations covering these issues. It's a very small number, and these news media are increasingly the property of very large companies...much larger than the same companies were 20 or 30 years ago, even allowing for traditional growth in a market economy.

They are not disinterested parties in how the world works. General Electric, which owns NBC, is a corporation that does a significant amount of its business outside the United States, an amount that has grown dramatically in the last decade. It's the largest company in the world.

These companies, without exception, all strongly benefit from the sort of neoliberal globalization policies the US government pushes, that the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are [implementing], NAFTA...they benefit greatly by that. They also benefit greatly by having the US government play the job of enforcing global political etiquette, so that the world operates the way that the US thinks it ought to.

So, you have a real conflict of interest with your media system that covers these sorts of events being owned by institutions that have a distinct self-interest that these policies go in a certain direction. How can we count on them to cover issues of the US role in the world, the nature of the global political economy, with the sort of fairness that journalism demands for a free society?

This is an issue that hasn't been raised at all, but it is absolutely is at the bottom of all of this. How far could NBC go in analyzing the nature of our global political economy, the inequality it creates, or this corruption of the way decisions are made due to corporate power around the world?

Theoretically, professional journalists will tell you, "Sure, we can do that. No one's stopping us." But the proof is in the pudding—we don't see those sorts of stories. This is something that our society is going to have to come to terms with if we're at all serious about having a viable media system.

Reproduction of material from any LiP pages without written permission is strictly prohibited | Copyright 2002 LiPmagazine.org | info@lipmagazine.org