The Job of the Press and Why We Need to Resist the Bushies' Efforts to Change it

As much as we ridicule the press and we see shortcomings and spin in what they do, we have to understand its role in public life, regardless of the country, the president, and the specific circumstances.

At its core, the job of the press is to inform. Not all journalism is about stings, and reporting on corruption, et al, but that's a very vital part of what the press should do.

For years, many of us have screamed bloody murder about what it means for the press to be increasingly dependent on a few corporate master owners. There's a reason for that and I'm glad the first cries were sounded well in advance of 9/11 and the Bush years of non-stop war.

If you have to depend on your boss (say General Electric, which has a big stake in any US-involved war) for your paycheck as a journalist (and most journalists are NOT the well paid celebrities of TVdom), you've got a built-in conflict when that boss doesn't want you to expose corruption and greed and the improprieties of war. Gone, sadly, are the times when a Katie Graham of the Washington Post would stand up to the White House and corporate masters in order to expose a Watergate.

Add to that mix the problems inherent on trying to report about the "crap" an administration or a Department of Defense does in a time of war. There's a fine line between good reporting and what some might consider treasonous behavior that may endanger either troops, or undercover spies, etc.

But with all of the war and efforts being done ostensibly in "our name" as citizens, the role of journalists is more rather than less important. We need to know what is being done, and we need to know when practices of our government violate the "rules of war" or our laws, or Constitution. If we don't, there is no check and balance and we end up with far worse than what we saw with Vietnam.

The Bushies have used their corporate relationships to forge a situation where the corporate masters are VERY concerned with what is allowed to go out in the mainstream media. At the same time, the Bushies want to insist that journalists become an arm of their propaganda machine (and no administration has devoted itself to propaganda and talking points like this one has). Simultaneously, they've done whatever they can to distance the American public from the press through forcing reporters to be "embedded" in the military making it hard for a reporter to distinguish between being part of the troop effort, through numerous attacks on reporters who try to do original reporting, and just in general making statements and instituting programs that make it clear in what low regard they hold journalists and the media.

When I see a study like the one reported the other day where 22% of Americans feel the government has the right to censor the press, I get scared. Even more want checks and balances used against the press. Scarier still.

What they're saying, essentially, is that they're willing to have partisan politicians control everything, where the politicians - because they're concealing so much - have no accountability to the public who vote them into office, and to allow this to go on with no journalist trying to dig around and find what is going on. This isn't just blind faith, it sets up catastrophe and disaster that goes well beyond a few corrupt pols. It allows pols to become a machine with unbridled power.

The situation with Newsweek is an example of all that is wrong here. Bushies don't allow anyone to speak on the record who isn't spinning "facts" their way. They very much control the press' access to anything and everything.

To sit there and point fingers at Newsweek and say Newsweek is responsible for the anger in the Arab/Muslim community for reporting on one of a system of practices and policies the Bushies have put into place that have been reported on several times over four years is preposterous. The story of the Koran destruction wasn't new. The first occurrence of this occurred in news reports maybe 2-3 years ago. US practices and policies endanger lives, including the lives of our troops, the safety of Americans here at home, and destabilize the entire world.

Now, Newsweek isn't blameless in this. But their chief fault here was to cave under the Bush machine. They make it harder for any other reporter from any other organization to try to get at the truth.

You can't say, "Well, we're at war so the rules change" because Mr. Bush is the one who's had us in a constant state of war - with no apparent end in sight - and he's set up a situation where the press isn't supposed to question any of this. But anger should not be directed at the press for reporting, but at the Bushies for doing.

Think about what you're saying if you agree that the press should be kept out. You're essentially saying it's OK to go to war on false pretenses, OK if thousands die needlessly, OK if Mr. Bush bankrupts the country, OK if corruption takes over everything.

Killing the messenger (Newsweek) won't fix anything.