and since i don't have to space to post to the mirror site, i'll post
c.i.'s year-in-reviews for 2006 and 2007. (i'm not going back to 2005 and 2004.)
Coming
off the first Camp Casey and the spark Cindy Sheehan brought back to
the peace movement, 2006 should have been the year the media truly led
-- instead they didn't even reflect.
All Things Media Big and
Small travelogued through 2006 looking for a topic that interested them
and never finding one. It was a college travel study: 40 topics in 40
days. Nothing was followed up on, just topics ticked off. Then, summer
2006, they apparently thought they'd taxed themselves so that Iraq fell
off the radar for six to eight weeks. Jimmy Breslin, among others,
sounded an alarm, but there was no indication that anyone in media was
listening.
In
one of the most surreal moments of 2006, the media watchdog
FAIR issued a report card for PBS' NewsHour. Among the findings was the deplorable fact that, in the six months studied, the
NewsHour
had not featured one peace activist as a guest. The fact found FAIR in
glass houses territory because, during the same period, their weekly
half-hour program
CounterSpin had also not featured one peace activist as a guest -- a fact they seemed to be unaware of.
That
study, more than anything else, crystalized the problems of independent
media in 2006. They wanted the mainstream media to be more diverse, to
report with follow ups, go down the list, but there was no desire to
use their own outlets to change anything.
If you agreed with FAIR that the
NewsHour should, for instance, feature more female guests, you might wonder why
CounterSpin's ratio of male to female guests was even worse than the
NewsHour's?
Noting the problems with big media is important but doesn't it come off
as more than a bit meaningless when, in your own forums, you don't use
the power you have?
A peace activist invited on the
NewsHour
would have been wonderful -- but it didn't happen. The fact that
independent media also took a pass more often than not was an
abdication of both power and responsibility.
Here's how bookings
largely work -- people see something. They see something covered
somewhere and they think, "Hey, maybe we should cover that?" Bravery in
bookings rarely exist. So possibly
NewsHour bookers read
The Nation?
If so, they'd have no reason to book a peace activist because
The Nation
wasn't interested in Iraq in 2006. You could flip through issue after
issue and never find a single story on a rally, an event, an organizer
. . . You got a lot of coverage of the same topics big media covered,
from a different perspective.
That's called responding, it's not called leading. And
The Nation, a weekly, led the way for the worst trend in independent print media for the year: Democratic Party organ.
The parody
The Elector
pretty much summed up the best known left magazines in 2006. Having
editorialized in 2005 that they would not support the campaigns of any
candidates who did not call for an end to the illegal war, in 2006,
The Nation
(and others) couldn't tear themselves from those same candidates. You
could find a Hillary Clinton cover, but a candidate for ending the war
(Democratic or any other party), who could have actually benefitted
from coverage (cover or otherwise), didn't get the build up. By the
time they were profiling Harold Ford Jr. in their issue that hit the
stores right before the election, they were no longer scraping the
bottom of the barrell, they were outside the barrell, face down in the
gutter.
A number of visitors have e-mailed an intended
highlight, an article in an issue that will arrive to subscribers this
week. It will appear in the January 8, 2007 issue. The topic is the
Appeal for Redress
petition. The article is in a 2007 issue (that most subscribers still
haven't received and isn't in the stores yet) and supposedly, to the
visitors, that makes up for the fact that in 2006, the magazine could
do an entire issue on food but couldn't write one word about the
biggest story to emerge in 2006 related to Iraq: resistance within the
military.
The petition is a story and it's one worth covering.
It's also true that signing a petition is a bit easier than saying "no"
to the illegal war. It's a
MoveOn type of activism, the same
sort of behavior that the "Oy vey, kids today" critics slam in column
after column. In media big and small, the usual desk jockey grumps
dusted off those old columns (which predate the sixties) and gas bagged
about how kids today just aren't active. So while the petition is a
story, is newsworthy, that
The Nation chooses to make this the first story they do on war resistance in print is rather sad.
The story of 2006?
War resisters.
Ehren Watada,
Ricky Clousing,
Kyle Snyder, Darrell Anderson,
Mark Wilkerson,
Agustin Aguayo,
and Katherine Jashinski should have been covered in 2006 but most of
the time, they weren't. They joined Joshua Key, Camilo Meija, Pablo
Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon
Hughey, Jeremy Hinzman, Corey Glass, Patrick Hart, Clifford Cornell,
Joshua Despain, and Kevin Benderman as members of the military who have
said no. From June through September, Watada, Clousing, Snyder,
Anderson, Wilkerson and Aguayo all went public and the independent
media response was (at best) underwhelming.
Take Ivan Brobeck who returned from Canada and turned himself in on election day. Who noted that? It's called
The Full Brobeck. November 6th, on
KPFA's
Flashpoints, Nora Barrows-Friedman interviewed him and . . . no one else did or bothered to report on him. The web site
Common Dreams did run a press release put out by
Courage to Resist
which was apparently supposed to pass for coverage that Brobeck was
returning from his self-check out and returning with an open letter to
the Bully Boy.
Rolling Stone and
Left Turn managed to run print articles on Watada.
Left Turn is a monthly,
Rolling Stone is a weekly that focuses more on entertainment. How they managed to cover it when the weekly, political magazine
The Nation couldn't is a question people should be asking?
Sign a petition, vote, and call it a "Sweet Victory," apparently.
The Nation,
in 2006, was about as political as the Big Brothers and Big Sisters
programs across the country. In print, week after week, it seemed to
revel in just how useless it could be -- such as the 'philosophical'
rant of AlterPunk about how the
New York Times shouldn't run
unsigned editorials -- which, as dubious a basis for a column at it
was, might have carried some (mild) weight were it not for the fact
that
The Nation runs . . . unsigned editorials.
Among the many useless articles was one by Ruth Conniff in the June 26, 2006 issue of
The Nation
which was entitled "How to Build a Farm Team" ("Identify candidates.
Add money. Watch the numbers grow."). This was one of the many articles
that demonstrated
The Nation was more concerned with being a
party organ for the Democratic Party than in covering the issues that
mattered. Or possibly you'd prefer the April 24, 2006 issue which
covered the 'issue' of injecting religion into politics to win seats
(for Democrats) with Dan Wakefield ("religious progressives are making
a comeback"), Frances Kissling (who actually raised issues), and
Michael Lerner ("The left's most powerful weapon could be a spiritual
vision of the world.").
There was time to chase celebrity
ambulances ("Can Schwarzenenegger Be Defeated?" asked on the cover of
the June 5, 2006 issue -- all politics are local -- when a celeb's
involved, apparently). There was time to visit the world of What If?
(the February 6, 2006 issue featured not one but twenty pretend State
of the Union addresses). And always, there was time to send how-to
lists to the Democratic Party (one example: March 20, 2006 issue
contained Fred Block's "A Moral Economy" -- "To seize the political
moment, Democrats need a better narrative.")
In what might have
been an attempt not to "forget the ladies" (Abigail Adams would be so
pleased), the May 22, 2006 cover proclaimed "It's Mother's Day." Now
someone at the magazine missed the point that Mother's Day was created
for peace so instead you got
the classicist
"The Motherhood Manifesto" by Joan Blades and Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner.
(Women without children got no shout outs in 2006, for those
wondering.) The insulting article was an adaptation of an insulting
book published by . . . Nation's Books.
Well if Simon & Schuster can use
60 Minutes to promote their wares, why not
The Nation? The most 'radical' suggestion in the article? Start "a whole new conversation about motherhood".
Redbook couldn't have put it better. That article, more than any other, may capture
The Nation in 2006 -- three-plus-pages leading up to the start a conversation "answer." (As
Trina noted: "It read like a make-work project that was done between luncheons.")
Start
a conversation, sign a petition, VOTE, VOTE, VOTE! If it gets any worse
in 2007, look for the cover story: "The Revolution Starts With You:
Brush After Each Meal!"
When this community (at all the sites) began noting the silence on the peace movement and on war resisters by
The Nation, e-mails occassionally came in to correct us.
Let's
deal with Christian Parenti first. He did write an article about the
peace movement that was available online only. The May 8, 2006 issue
did contain a different article by him, "When GI Joe Says No." If you
can find one war resister named in the three page article, please
e-mail. Find one person who said no to the Iraq war -- one "GI Joe"
saying "no" to the current war -- in the article. You can find history
about Vietnam soldiers who said no, but there's no war resister in the
article. The article Parenti wrote featuring Camilo Mejia, among
others, was an online article only.
The other thing that gets
pointed out in e-mails is that there were two stories on Ehren Watada.
In fact, an e-mail on that came in this weekend. Quote: "You are
forgetting the two articles on Ehren Watada." No, I am not. I am
talking about the magazine that I pay for and no article on Ehren
Watada appeared in print in 2006. The articles visitors (who all claim
to read the magazine but apparently just visit the website) refer to
were "online exclusives." In fact, the authors of that piece have a new
"online exclusive" that went up December 19th and the question that
should be asked of the most recent article is why, since they obviously
participated in the tele-conference Ehren Watada held in November (when
the US military announced their intent to court-martial him --
scheduled for Feb. 5th), they're only now writing about it (and in passing)?
While both
Off Our Backs and
Ms. devoted whole issues in 2006 to address war and peace ,
The Nation
was more interested in providing their food issue, their green
(environmental -- don't think for a moment the Green Party got coverage
in
The Nation) issue and
the non-stop, never ending Hurricane Katrina issues. But the war itself? Four years in and
The Nation rarely gave a damn unless it could be worked into a "Vote!" article.
The official slogan was "Nobody owns
The Nation" but 2006 played out like the slogan was: "
The Nation, tip-sheet for the Democratic Party!" And we can't leave this topic without noting
the shameful attempt to draw a line between the magazine and Harry Belafonte. While that piece was written for the
Washington Post
(and published there) an extended version went up at the website. As
shameful in its own way as uninviting Belafonte from speaking at
Coretta Scott King's funeral (addressed on
Democracy Now!),
The Nation really hit a low with that column -- a low in a year of lows.
Another low happened when
The Nation,
Democracy Now!
and about every left and 'left' outlet decided to continue to give a
platform to the man they portray as a Cassandra but whom the mainstream
media has noted was twice arrested in stings to capture sexual
predators. As Chrissie Hynde once sang in "How Much Did You Get For
Your Soul," "How much did you, How much did you, How much did you get?"
He went around the country with Seymour Hersh slamming the peace
movement (and wanting to turn it into the military -- presumably with
himself as commander), he ridiculed and mocked Cindy Sheehan in an
independent weekly, and despite that, despite the mainstream media's
reports of two busts for seeking out sex with underage girls online, he
was given a platform repeatedly.
Let's move over to radio.
Air America Radio became more of a joke
than ever as it lost both Janeane Garofalo and Mike Malloy -- two who
could and did pull in audiences -- and replaced them with the second
string. In fact, AAR's business model appears to be that of a new-age
coach, "Everyone gets to go on the field . . . whether they're
qualified or not!" (Randi Rhodes and Laura Flanders remain the
strongest reasons to listen to the ever failing and flailing network.)
Air America Radio is both commercial radio and listener supported radio
-- and it couldn't stay out of the red despite running dual models. In
terms of the 'master plan,' it appears to have become "Let's stomp out
community radio and shove our national programming off on local areas."
Getting into bed with Clear Channel only made that model all the more
obvious.
Then there's
Pacifica Radio,
the nation's oldest public radio network. People like Margaret Prescod,
Deepa Fernandez, Dennis Bernstein, Nora Barrows-Friedman, Sonali
Kolhatkur, Aaron Glantz and more did actually cover the war and they
deserve credit for that but, as
Micah pointed out,
it's also true that Pacifica offered at least two election programs
this year (one national -- weekly program, one on KPFA -- daily
program) yet still no program dedicated to covering the Iraq war. The
illegal war hits the four year mark in March and there is no program
devoted to the topic of it.
Flashpoints began as an outlet to cover the first Gulf War. Since Pacifica has cancelled their peace program (
Peacewatch, in 2003), the omission becomes more glaring each day.
The
response to this year's fundraiser for the Pacifica Archives should
have been a wakeup call. In a year when the economy meant many
fundraising targets were not met, the Pacifica Archives fundraiser
exceeded their target goal. The fact that the theme was "Voices for
Peace and Non-Violence" should have been an indication that audiences
would welcome this sort of coverage.
Instead, it fell to individual shows and, since none has Iraq as it's focus, the results were frequently disappointing.
Flashpoints deserves
special credit for their outstanding coverage. Iraq is not their focus
but they picked up the slack and then some by interviewing more war
resisters than anyone else, by regularly airing reports from
Dahr Jamail
and others and by, honestly, paying attention to what was going on. In
doing that, they didn't lose focus on the occupied territories.
What
other Pacifica programs too often featured was tired guests talking
about tired topics. Want to buy some New Kids On The Block CDs? No?
Didn't think so. But the tired topic of Judith Miller continued to pass
for 'media criticism.' That was truly embarrassing, hearing guests drag
out Miller over and over in 2006 when she penned not one word for the
New York Times in 2006. But they kept heading to the well on that even though the well was dry and then some.
Now Miller wasn't the only one at the
Times who sold the war before it started and in its early days, nor was the
Times
the only mainstream outlet that sold the war. But it's just so much fun
to play Bash the Bitch one more time apparently. It's allowed a great
many to keep their heads down and not get called out for their own
actions. More importantly, in 2006, the war was still being sold and
focusing on the departed Miller provided a lot of cover to the Dexter
Filkins, Michael Gordons, et al.
What Miller (and others --
including Gordo) did in the run up to the war is important, is
historical. But in 2006, if you're going on a radio show to talk about
the war and the press or doing so in print, you need to be able to cite
something a bit more contemporary than articles that ran in 2002 and
2003. As we've long noted here, if (IF) Judith Miller and her crowd got
us over there, it was
the Dexter Filkins that kept us there. But, outside of
Danny Schechter, name a media critic that addressed Filkins.
The
Washington Post outed Dexy as the go-to-guy for the US military when they wanted to plant a story. The reaction to that article?
CounterSpin
addressed it in headlines for a few seconds before rushing on to the
very hot topic of Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly, a national joke, and
Dexter Filkins.
CounterSpin was apparently comfortable addressing O'Reilly and apparently scared to address Dexter Filkins. Not scared to address the
Times,
mind you, because they and their guests were fond of bringing up Judith
Miller. They just lacked the spine and the bravery to address Dexter
Filkins.
For those who don't know, the slaughter of Falluja was
covered by the 'award-winning' Dexy. The lies go straight to the
embedded, ditch digging Filkins who had no wall between himself and the
military and who reportedly allowed them to vet his 'award-winning'
copy before he turned it into the
Times (which would explain why his report took DAYS to make it into print).
Though
CounterSpin didn't applaud his disclosures in speeches, other outlets did.
Those disclosures
aren't brave, they're the sort of things you say when you're speaking
to an audience made up of people who no longer buy the lies of war. But
along with his reporting not being questioned, many rushed to applaud
him as brave for noting that the war was lost. Noting that in a speech
to a small audience, never in print. By
not telling readers the truth,
year after year, the likes of Dexy have kept the US military in Iraq as
much as any Judith Miller got them over there to begin with. A real
independent media, a brave one, would have addressed that a long time
ago. Instead it was play dumb . . . all year long.
Which brings
us back to the summer of 2006 when the Israeli government went into
wack-job mode (or further in) and independent media dropped Iraq (as
though it were Afghanistan?) to jump on the non-stop bandwagon, the
24-7 wall-to-wall coverage.
There was no time to cover
Ehren Watada's Article 32 hearing in August (when
Democracy Now!
tried to sneak it into their headlines weeks later they confused at
least one indy media writer who wrote that a decision had been reached
-- when it hadn't and wouldn't until November -- and he cited
DN!'s
coverage as the proof). They were all obsessed with this one story
(Israel) and no programmer appeared to think, "You know, practically
every show is covering this topic, we should cover some of the events
related to Iraq or anything else because I honestly doubt anyone wants
to hear 24-7, day after day, week after week about one topic." But
independent media seemed to have a really hard time supporting war
resisters -- as though they were all suffering from Revisionist Rambo
damage. (That might also explain the inability to review the brilliant
documentary
Sir! No Sir!)
Along
with Watada's Article 32 hearing, this included the revelations during
the August military inquiry into the rape and murder of
fourteen-year-old
Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi,
the murder of her parents and the murder of her five-year-old sister.
They were murdered by, and Abeer was raped by? The US military. When
James P. Barker confessed in court in November "alleged" was no longer
an adjective that was needed. But even Barker's confession didn't
prompt independent media to cover Abeer.
Democracy Now!,
The Nation,
no one rushed in to cover the war crime. They still haven't. They
couldn't cover it in August and they didn't cover it in November when
one of the accused confessed and gave his account of what the others
(allegedly) involved did. Now nickled and dimed conventional wisdom
could gas bag on Hurricane Katrina -- in an attempt at gas bag cute --
and any number of topics. But could she write about Abeer? No, which,
if you ask me, qualifies as "
a real stab."
Robin Morgan's "
Their Bodies as Weapons: Rapes in conflict zones result from the idea that violence is erotic, and it pervades the US military" (The
Guardian of London via
Common Dreams) is a strong article but it's also true it has had little competition. Other than
Off Our Backs,
no one else has seen Abeer as a story worth telling in independent
media. Maybe it's too embarrassing to admit that while the wall-to-wall
was being provided, Abeer was being ignored? Maybe Abeer wasn't seen as
'economic' and, goodness knows, our independent media was all about
'economcis' (so much so, James Carville could have been the editor of
many publications). The reality is that "property" was once defined to
include women and children as well as slaves and serfs of all
ethnicities and races and 'living wages' do not combat and end racism,
sexism, homophobia or any other issue. Robin Morgan perfectly captured
the various elements at work when adults think they have a 'right' to
rape a 14-year-old girl.
Also ignored during that period was
CODEPINK's
Troops Home Fast, the fast that led to a meeting between activists and
Iraqi parliamentarians in Jordan to discuss peace. If you're asking,
"What meeting?" -- well, take that up with indepdendent media. (And
before a visitor writes, "
The Nation had a piece in an issue
this summer . . ." No, they didn't. They had an "online exclusive" by
Tom Hayden about the trip to Jordan -- a piece that someone decided was
worth posting online but not printing.) Or how about the fact that the
US military was keeping a body count on Iraqi deaths? Nancy A. Youssef
broke that story, that the US military had been doing that for almost a
year, in June. That news lost out to elections . . . in Mexico -- what
independent media was all geared up to make the summer story until they
dropped everything to head off to the Middle East.
How bad was the summer when independent media forgot Iraq? Cindy Sheehan had
Camp Casey III in Crawford and where was independent media?
Democracy Now!
broadcast Mark Wilkerson's announcement that he was turning himself in
and that was it -- for them and for all of independent media. When even
Camp Casey can't register, you
better believe independent media forgot Iraq. Ironically, while Camp
Casey III couldn't register, various independent media voices were
giving interviews citing their 2005 work on Camp Casey as evidence as
the kind of power independent media can have -- while ignoring Camp
Casey III.
Sadly though, we're not done. There was also Camp
Democracy in D.C. which did take place, day after day, workshop after
workshop, it just took place with little to no independent media
coverage. John Nichols (who did write about it online), Elizabeth
Holtzman, Ann Wright, Antonia Juhasz, Ricky Clousing, and more. What
was it? Camp Casey moved to DC to be part of Camp Democracy on
Constitution Ave, right there on the Washington Mall. Impeachment, the
war, immigration rights, and much more were addressed each day. It
began on the fifth of September and was due to close on the 21st but
had to be extended because it proved so popular. Along with those
already named, others participating included Danny Schechter, Diane
Wilson, Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Ray McGovern, Dave Lindorff, Kevin
Zeese, Jennifer van Bergen, Howard Zinn, Kim Gandy, Elizabeth de la
Vega, Mark Karlin, Raed Jarrar, Robert Greenwald, Jim McGovern . . .
The list goes on. Enough people to launch the mastheads of several
independent magazines and then some. But you didn't get much coverage
of it.
If you're interested in coverage of it,
David Swanson's website offers this:
For
the holidays this year, give your loved ones some TRUTH:Camp Democracy
lasted for 18 days this past fall; 18 days of workshops, press
conferences, education, and actions. Some of the highlights have been
captured in a 45-minute documentary. You and your friends and family
can listen to the wisdom of Howard Zinn, Jeff Cohen, Elizabeth
Holtzman, Col. Ann Wright, Ray McGovern, Iraq War vets, Iraq War
resisters, Hurricane Katrina survivors, and many more. Watch the Bush
Crimes Commission verdict being delivered to the White House and hear a
panel of experts lay out the case for impeachment. See Helga Aguayo
tell the story of her husband's refusal to serve in Iraq. Camp
Democracy can continue to educate and engage those newly awakened to
the issues before us; those who were there can remember the lessons
learned. Read more about the DVD.Purchase the DVD. They're $17 each. The cost of shipping and handling is included.Now
they couldn't cover Camp Democracy but, after the election, the same
independent media wanted to tell you it was all about Iraq. I
personally believe that Iraq did influence the election and think the
polling bears that out, but if independent media thinks so, shouldn't
the polling have been their wake up call? Shouldn't they have stopped
offering their laughable excuses for not covering Iraq ("The public
doesn't care . . ." -- or as 'Truth' Conniff 'bragged' on KPFA, no one
in her community has been effected by the illegal war), rolled up their
sleeves and started addressing Iraq?
Didn't happen. Instead it
was time to gasbag about who deserved credit for the 'wins.' And
amazingly, though it was the one demographic that could be most easily
verified, they managed, in all their hours of gas baggery, to avoid
mentioning
women were the deciding factor.
Reality check for all the bean counters who ignored or forgot the
gender gap, in the US women are in the majority. So the next time you
schedule your gas baggery, you should do a check to see who you have
on, or give print space to, to discuss the way women voted -- in 2006,
women's votes weren't discussed which might be expected from the
mainstream media, but which is appalling from independent media.
Along
with Iraq, Iraq related stories such as war resisters and women, race
and youth also lost out. You really wouldn't know it to read the gas
baggery (
The Progressive was the worst here but no one's hands
were clean) on the immigrant rights wave but young people led that.
They led it, they fueled it and they moved the nation. The gas bags and
the desk jockeys could bemoan the so-called apathy of youth today (in
fact,
The Nation awarded a prize to the student who wrote
about how apthetic her peers were -- in those contests, it always helps
to repeat false stereotypes) but to do so, they had to ignore reality.
That meant ignoring who led on the immigrant rights demonstrations,
that meant ignoring the students across the country who are actively
protesting the war and, most of all, that meant ignoring
Gallaudet.
Months and months of campus protests by students (who won a victory)
and they got ignored. It's hard to repeat the (false) line on apathy
and cover Gallaudet so maybe that's why our independent media ignored
the story? Or maybe it was because hearing impaired and deaf students
were just 'too different' from those making decisions in our
independent media? Regardless, the students of Galladuet, the students
leading the immigration rights movement, the students standing up
against the war, deserved credit they never got.
Race? If you
missed it, independent media remains largely White. The Ego Of Us All
dies and it was time for a non-stop outpouring. Coretta Scott King dies
and she's either included as an after thought or ignored. Don't kid
that it wasn't about race. Coretta Scott King was more than "the wife
of." She was politically active until the end. She spoke out against
the illegal war, she spoke out against homophobia. From the moment that
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. died, she was thrust into the lead role and
took it because Dr. King's mission was not to be a footnote in history.
Both for his legacy and for the struggle that still needed to be
fought, she took on the leadership role and her thanks from (White)
independent media was to be ignored or relegated to an aside for 2006.
It was racism. And it was sexism. And it was disgusting.
All of the above added up to make 2006, for independent media,
The Year of Living Dumbly. I would say that there's no way 2007 could be worse but I'm afraid some would eagerly accept that as a challenge.
The e-mail address for this site is
common_ills@yahoo.com.
iraqricky clousingehren watadasir! no sir!danny schechtertrinas kitchencedrics big mixcindy sheehankpfaflashpointsnora barrows friedmandahr jamailali al-fadhilythe third estate sunday reviewkyle snyderagustin aguayodarrell andersonivan brobeckcodepinkcounterspincamp democracydahr jamaildavid swanson
