On Media Toadies

Why do bigshots like Rather, Jennings, and Lehrer swallow everything the White House says and broadcast it as truth on the nightly news? Why is George W. Bush presented as a "straight-shooter" in the media--when his shady dealings with Halliburton, Enron, and the Florida Recount suggest quite a few crooked shots--whereas horny Bill Clinton goes down in history as a major scumbag? Why is the press such a bunch of uncritical, flaccid sycophantic toadies?

In an exclusive ZNet commentary, Dave Edwards offers an explanation: "professional servility."

Although corporations, including media corporations, are indeed totalitarian structures of power, we do not live in a totalitarian society. Control is maintained not by violence, but by deception, self-deception, and by a mass willingness to subordinate our own thoughts and feelings to notions of 'professionalism' and 'objectivity'. There is much evil and violence in the world but the people who make it possible are not for the most part evil or violent.

Psychologist Stanley Milgram reported that the most fundamental lesson of his study on obedience in modern society was, "ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible, destructive process". (Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority, Pinter & Martin, 1974, p.24)

Milgram's second key lesson was that when other "ordinary people" refuse to obey, when they refuse to stay meekly in the box, and instead claim their human right to speak out in the name of their own perceptions, their own thoughts, their own truly felt compassion for the suffering of others, this has an inordinately powerful impact on the world around us. Greedy and destructive power based on thoughtless obedience is supremely vulnerable to compassionate rebellion. We should never lose sight of this.

(This short excerpt is taken from a much longer subscribers-only e-mail to sustainers of Z magazine's ZNET. Become a sustainer at ZNet.)

Two ways to take the media to task: Sign up for FAIR's free e-mail newsletter and be alerted of opportunities for e-mail campaigns and news. To tell key members of the Washington press corps to grow a spine, visit Take Back the Media.