Editor:
The American news media in general and its “Washington media” in particular, according to Gene Lyons’ “Stampeding the herd, Washington style” (Herald, Dec. 29), are failing. Lyons is not alone among professional journalistic observers to have raised the alarm. One of the most direct, thorough and powerfully worded warnings about the media downfall, it seems to me, has come from a sister-brother team of journalists, Amy Goodman and David Goodman, in their recent book, “Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who fight Back” (Hyperion, 2006).
In their Introduction entitled “Unembedded,” the Goodmans criticize what they take to be the Bush administration’s “war on truth”: “President George W. Bush has long preferred illusion to reality. ‘See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda,’ Bush explained of his approach at a public forum in 2005” (p. 6, quoted from the Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, May 24, 2005).
The Goodmans convincingly argue that the “Bush administration officials are obsessed with controlling the flow of information” and that “their strategy for maintaining their grip on power is simple: Perpetuate fear.” Perhaps the Goodmans’ most serious charge is that “The Bush administration has turned psychological warfare, which, by U.S. law, can only be targeted at foreign audiences, on Americans” (p. 7).
Whether or not we might be convinced by the evidence and illustrations of such threats to freedom which the Goodmans compile, we can agree that freedom of the media is necessary to combat such threats. Some such idea is implicit in the Herald editorial for New Year’s Day: “Let’s resolve to hold elected leaders to a higher standard.”
As we know, yet sometimes forget, freedom of the press is necessary beyond the opposing of propaganda and beyond the bringing of information about the world. It is essential to the kind of government our Constitution specifies. Without freedom of the media we could not adequately criticize the government. And criticism of the government is essential to a republic, essential to an elected government not ruled by a monarch or by a monarchial team.
James Madison brilliantly summarized this point when he said, “If we advert to the nature of Republican Government, we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people” (quoted in “The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln,” by Sean Wilentz, 2005, p. 66).
Therefore, the Herald is providing an invaluable service in allowing writers critical of governmental politics to have a forum. For we are living in an era in which our governmental leaders and their often mistaken policies deserve fall and cogent criticism.
Luther Scales
The American news media in general and its “Washington media” in particular, according to Gene Lyons’ “Stampeding the herd, Washington style” (Herald, Dec. 29), are failing. Lyons is not alone among professional journalistic observers to have raised the alarm. One of the most direct, thorough and powerfully worded warnings about the media downfall, it seems to me, has come from a sister-brother team of journalists, Amy Goodman and David Goodman, in their recent book, “Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who fight Back” (Hyperion, 2006).
In their Introduction entitled “Unembedded,” the Goodmans criticize what they take to be the Bush administration’s “war on truth”: “President George W. Bush has long preferred illusion to reality. ‘See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda,’ Bush explained of his approach at a public forum in 2005” (p. 6, quoted from the Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, May 24, 2005).
The Goodmans convincingly argue that the “Bush administration officials are obsessed with controlling the flow of information” and that “their strategy for maintaining their grip on power is simple: Perpetuate fear.” Perhaps the Goodmans’ most serious charge is that “The Bush administration has turned psychological warfare, which, by U.S. law, can only be targeted at foreign audiences, on Americans” (p. 7).
Whether or not we might be convinced by the evidence and illustrations of such threats to freedom which the Goodmans compile, we can agree that freedom of the media is necessary to combat such threats. Some such idea is implicit in the Herald editorial for New Year’s Day: “Let’s resolve to hold elected leaders to a higher standard.”
As we know, yet sometimes forget, freedom of the press is necessary beyond the opposing of propaganda and beyond the bringing of information about the world. It is essential to the kind of government our Constitution specifies. Without freedom of the media we could not adequately criticize the government. And criticism of the government is essential to a republic, essential to an elected government not ruled by a monarch or by a monarchial team.
James Madison brilliantly summarized this point when he said, “If we advert to the nature of Republican Government, we shall find that the censorial power is in the people over the Government, and not in the Government over the people” (quoted in “The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln,” by Sean Wilentz, 2005, p. 66).
Therefore, the Herald is providing an invaluable service in allowing writers critical of governmental politics to have a forum. For we are living in an era in which our governmental leaders and their often mistaken policies deserve fall and cogent criticism.
Luther Scales