 Daniel Ellsberg, the figure that Henry Kissinger proclaimed as “the most dangerous man in America,” paid a visit to Ithaca College on October 20 to discuss his history, his famous copying and distributing of 7,000 classified documents about the Vietnam War in 1971 and its relevance in modern society.
Ellsberg’s visit came at an eerily perfect time; on the eve of WikiLeaks releasing four thousand more documents about the ongoing warfare in Afghanistan, the parallels between Ellsberg’s Pentagon Papers and WikiLeaks’ Afghanistan Dossier is striking. (Read more on WikiLeaks in my classmate Christine Loman's great blog post).Ellsberg said that he supports the efforts of WikiLeaks, and he highlights how essential it is for documents revealing the truth about this war to be released. He said, “We still need the Pentagon Papers of Afghanistan or Iraq. They need to come out now. We don’t have them. But someone does.”
I didn’t realize to what extent the U.S. government tried to silence Ellsberg and half the publication of the Papers. I found it particularly interesting to see, during the screening of The Most Dangerous Man in America, how Ellsberg ultimately disseminated all of the pertinent information. The way that newspapers from across the country tag-teamed the endeavor of publishing these papers was marvelous – when The New York Times was ordered to stop, The Washington Post picked up the story, followed by The Boston Globe and then The Chicago Sun-Times. I couldn’t believe all of the awesome cooperation between the 17 corporate media juggernauts.
WikiLeaks has it a bit easier now to get the word out. In our virtual world, they have the clear advantage over Ellsberg, who had to systematically Xerox all 7,000+ pages. But some of the roadblocks still stand: even if and when these groundbreaking documents are released, we as an American public need to keep the pressure on our government and our media – why have we not yet heard about these stories and these truths? This is the question that we must empower ourselves to ask.
We need to learn from Ellsberg, the “phantom figure” who’s evolved into a hugely important peace activist. He wasn’t afraid of institutional castigation, and we as an American media base shouldn’t be either. In response to Ellsberg’s biting question from 1971—“Wouldn’t you go to prison to help end this war?,”—we should all be able to answer “yes.”
 Everyone in the world of journalism is biased. We get that. What we don't often see is how biased they really are, and how often news sources, especially mainstream media, disseminate inaccurate, idiotic or simply fabricated information.
Good thing there's the Fifth Estate, comprised of bloggers and, in particular, media watchdog groups like Media Matters, FAIR.org and Newsbusters, which expose and combat conservative and liberal media bias, respectively.
One of the stars of this field, Mark Finkelstein of Newsbusters, lives in Ithaca and came to share his tips on blogging and keeping tabs on the media with our class. It was interesting to hear Mark's tips on how to be a successful blogger, but beyond that, I was unimpressed by the work he does, at least recently (I didn't go too far back into his archives).
Maybe it's because I'm liberal, but I just can't help but taking issue with Mark's statement about all of the misinformation in conservative-minded news sources; when probed, he said, "I have enough to criticize on the Left, I don't have time to criticize the Right."
Is there really an equitable amount of bias coming from both ideological perspectives? And is the bias really as frequently explicitly, deliberately inaccurate in liberal media?
Let's just look at entries in the last week on Finkelstein's blog. He takes inappropriate potshots at Elliot Spitzer, condemns an MSNBC reporter for calling Christine O'Donnell, she of the anti-masturbation, pro-dabbling-in-witchcraft movement, a "freak show," and rightfully called Mike Barnicle "bumbling" because he made two factual errors on air — errors, it is essential to note, that were swiftly corrected by the other news anchors on air with him.
Then there's Media Matters, which has recently posted another one of Glenn Beck's denials of evolution, analyzed the Family Research Council's claims that the gay rights movement is actually to blame for the recent string of LGBT teenage suicides, and takes a look at Fox News' propagandistic, unofficial endorsement of the Tea Party.
Looking at those two lists, for some reason I feel like an anchor calling Christine O'Donnell a freak show is the least of our country's media bias worries.
Gay people are loud, flamboyant and in-your-face obsessed with sex. That’s the stereotype that LGBT Americans commonly live with in our modern society. It comes up every time news coverage about the latest Pride Parade focuses on the men in skimpy leather outfits with rainbows painted all over their shirtless chests. It was reinforced with Showtime’s Queer as Folk from the early 2000s. And there are still people who associate the word “homosexuality” with two men having lurid, scandalous sex, without feelings, love and good taste.
I’ve always been bothered by this stereotype, unsure of where exactly it came from. How did this community become so pigeonholed as huge, slutty messes?
It turns out, according to Roger Streitmatter’s book Voices of Revolution, that the earliest LGBT trailblazers themselves are responsible for creating the image. The first gay-focused niche publications, including Gay, Come Out! and The San Francisco Gay Free Press, relied heavily on sexual imagery to convey their message: Gay people are here, they’re queer, and they’re rebelling against your heteronormative society. The advertising, covers and other photos screamed images that conveyed this point.
I think that a large part of that is because gays and lesbians in the 1960s were so unfamiliar with seeing their own sexuality—the sexuality that they had been expressing uniquely in private for years—in any form of published media, so they reveled in that lack of censorship, perhaps overdoing the sex-crazed concepts of gay media.
What’s interesting about it all is the number of LGBT publications released that acted as dissident papers to the dissident gay press. Magazines like The Ladder disagreed with the idea of heralding a guy giving a blowjob as the face of the gay rights movement. Instead, the presented a publication that trumpeted the successes of gay community members—demonstrating, of course, that they could be functioning and contributing members of society even when out of the closet— and covered the progress of the political and social movement, demanding the government and the country to see that gay was okay and that guaranteed equality was necessary. No dicks or gratuitous nudity involved.
I know it’s already old news, but if you haven’t heard, Tom Tomorrow, the famous cartoonist of the “This Modern World” syndicated strip, came to speak at Ithaca College, thanks again to the Park Center for Independent Media.
Lacking the necessary hand-eye-brain-imagination coordination for drawing, I don’t have a huge interest in comics and visual art, but I was fascinated by Tom Tomorrow (formerly, of course, Dan Perkins) and the way he uses comics as a form of media criticism. Yes, he does the political cartoons about politics in general, but more specifically, he focuses on the incredulous content broadcast all over corporate TV “news” – the stations that give airtime and serious consideration to whether Obama is a Muslim, the stations that mocked those who spoke out against the Iraq War, and the stations that in general sensationalize their reporting.
More interestingly, I loved seeing Dan’s favorite news sources and listening to him speak about where he goes for his own news and inspiration. All of the sources he uses for actual news-gathering are the same indy media publications we’ve read about and studied in class – HuffPost, TPM, FAIR, A Tiny Revolution, Glenn Greenwald. It’s an example of the elite news packagers learning from the elite news producers. Tom Tomorrow just packages his with some color and cartoon penguins.
We’ve started talking in class about some more historical examples of dissident journalism – the more radical predecessors to Democracy Now and Talking Points Memo, if you will. Rodger Streitmatter, author of the also-excellent Mightier than the Sword: How the News Media Have Shaped American History, details in Voices of Revolution: The Dissident Press in America a wide range of advocate journalists who expertly and nobly used the press to further their passionate causes.
And one thing is common among nearly all of these journalists: at the time, they were ridiculed by the mainstream media. See William Lloyd Garrison of The Liberator, an abolitionist newspaper that contributed to the decline of slavery in the U.S. He was blasted mercilessly in the pages of mainstream newspapers, attacked for being extremist and abrasive. Or Susan B. Anthony, whose appearance was torn to sheds and sexual orientation was questioned when she fought for women’s suffrage and other rights. And Lucifer, the “free love” advocacy paper of the 1870s, was denounced as a “rotten concern,” a “fearful demoralizing sheet” and an “abomination” by various mainstream newspapers. Clearly, mainstream journalists believed, the only way to maintain the status quo and suppress the liberal revolutions was to personally attack the editors and writers and thought leaders behind those publications.
It got me thinking…who are the “dissident” journalists of today? Is Amy Goodman being arrested at the 2008 Republican National Convention akin to newspapers like The New York Times lambasting Ida B. Wells, head of the anti-lynching movement, as a “slanderous and nasty-minded mulatress”? Is Fox News dismissing the independent journalists who were opposed to the U.S. invasion of Iraq on the same level as Margaret Sanger’s birth control advocacy paper Woman Rebel being deemed “nauseating”?
The optimistic thing, at least, is that eventually, in almost all of the historical examples of the mainstream press ridiculing the indy, advocacy press, the coverage slowly but surely becomes positive, and the media forgets that they ever criticized the cause at all, refusing to apologize or correct itself.
Why the hell don’t we learn?
Special Extended Post: Exploring The Bilerico Project's impact on LGBT-specific news, commentary and analysisIn December of 2008, The Advocate, the granddaddy of U.S. publications focusing specifically on news pertaining to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, was in crisis mode. After 41 years of bi-weekly publication, readership had fallen drastically, advertisers were fleeing and its ownership had changed hands countless times. Print media, of course, was failing across the board, but in the case of The Advocate, the crisis caused the editors to refocus the entire magazine, booking more celebrity covers, scaling back its investigative journalism efforts and amping up the fluff content generally seen in less hard-hitting queer publications. The Advocate used to be the LGBT version of The New York Times, breaking new and interesting stories about the gay community, nabbing the most ground-breaking interviews and fully exploring every angle to gay rights issues that plagued the time. At that point, however, it seemed to be trading in its esteemed legacy for a shot at staying afloat in an increasingly challenging market. In a cost-cutting move by corporate owners Regent and Here Media, publication went monthly instead of bi-weekly, and by November of 2009, the staff admitted its defeat; the magazine ceased publication as a stand-alone, newsstand and subscription-based entity. It would now be whittled down to 32 pages each month and packaged with Out magazine, which, to continue with the mainstream media parallels, could be the LGBT version of People. Advocate.com, the press releases raved, would still be delivering all of the news and commentary fit to print about the LGBT community. But readers dedicated to understanding gay-related issues were unimpressed with the bare-bones, inverted pyramid news updates of The Advocate online, so they scoured for other media offerings to satisfy their cravings. That’s where queer-focused online blogs stepped in to claim the newly-available market as their own. One of the most important of these LGBT blogs is The Bilerico Project, an independent, citizen journalism-focused blog still owned by its original founder, Bil Browning. The site closely follows The Huffington Post’s successful “group blog” model, publishing news reports, editorials and analyses, primarily those pertaining to LGBT communities, written by experts in a wide array of fields and disciplines.
Ithaca College may have its fair share of debatably frustrating academic issues in its journalism department, but several journalism schools across the country are getting it right, passing my “Is This Worthwhile Education” test with flying colors. The colleges I’m talking about are networked together in a really exciting initiative called News 21, a national endeavor to reinvigorate journalism schools and be truly groundbreaking in the way that they explore important, pertinent issues with in-depth reporting, investigation and interviewing. News 21 is one of the few organizations involving my generation that not only recognizes that the face of storytelling and reporting is changing, but is also actually doing something explicitly awesome to ensure that they can keep up with the times as journalists. The universities involved with News 21, an effort sponsored largely by two major foundations, include eight from all parts of the country: Arizona State, Berkeley, Columbia, Maryland, North Carolina, Northwestern, Southern Carolina and Syracuse. The website featuring the work that’s been completed so far by the universities is, for lack of a more descriptive word, beautiful. Its visual presentation is inviting and stunning, with some standouts being the “ California in Crisis” page, bedecked with postcards from different regions of California struggling with an array of difficult issues, and the “ Brave Old World” superstory, which boasts incredible photography and heart-wrenching video about what it’s like to grow old and physically deteriorate. I honestly get emotional reading and watching these stories. Syracuse’s “ Apart from War,” which details the lasting consequences of today’s war veterans across the country, is particularly powerful. News 21, with its gorgeous multimedia features and compelling storytelling, is a real inspiration to student journalists, showing us how to think outside the box and engage our readers (and viewers, and listeners) in something exciting and important that makes us care. Is it bad that I’m more than a little jealous I don’t go to one of the News 21 schools?
Ithaca College’s Park School of Communications is supposed to have one of the best journalism programs in the country. The faculty includes some of the brightest thinkers in the field, from War on Drugs expert Todd Schack to Peace Journalism guru Matt Mogekwu. The Ithacan continues to win award after award for its weekly coverage of the campus and surrounding area. And, of course, the college is home to the Park Center for Independent Media and has attracted huge indy media stars, including Arianna Huffington, Jeremy Scahill and Josh Marshall. (For transparency’s sake, it should be noted that PCIM was founded by Jeff Cohen, who is my professor and the advisor for Buzzsaw , the student magazine I co-edit).So why, in this school that seems to be a haven for progressive, forward-thinking journalism, are the academic curriculums still passing on outdated practices and demonstrating how to conform to the corporate press? I’ve seen many examples in my two years as a Park School student that promulgate this notion: we should idolize The New York Times and happily fork over the membership fee for the esteemed Society of Professional Journalists and revere the Associated Press as The King of All That Is Awesome and Objectively Sound. But those observations don’t matter in this blog post. No, the particular occasion that drives this rant is my Journalism Ethics class, taught by Mead Loop. Today’s topic was about the Values, Virtues and Loyalties of the Fourth Estate, where we listed and discussed the philosophies that drive journalists. At one point, we discussed where journalists’ loyalties should lie. The audience, one student brainstormed. Yourself and your own moral code, another posited. Other possibilities were thrown out: your family, your sources, your friends, your country, your religion, your employer, your advertisers. Professor Loop asked us to rank these loyalties in terms of importance, assuming that “Self” was #1, since the Universal Ethical Principle in Lawrence Kohlberg’s Stages of Moral Development says that the individual must make his or her own decisions based on their own perception of ethics. When the majority of the class responded that the second most important loyalty was to the audience, Professor Loop looked surprised, murmuring, “That’s really interesting.” He reasoned that in some situations, the reader is certainly the most important, but that in other situations, journalists may find their loyalty to their sources, or to their employer, more fundamental because without their sources, they’d have no story and without their employer, they’d have nowhere to publish. I half-laughed during the class. Surely this statement would be followed up with an explanation that bad journalists value their loyalty to their sources or employers over that of their reader. But no follow-up emerged, and we all walked out of class having been instructed that your primary loyalty as a journalist depends largely on the situation. The idea that we as journalists have a loyalty to our employers is laughably ridiculous. Glenn Greenwald proves the right way to do it every time he deviates from the official perspectives of his own employer, Salon.com. But this is the philosophy of the corporate journalism world, and that’s what’s being preached to some IC journalism classrooms. Of course, Professor Loop and others with similar mindsets don’t call it “corporate journalism.” Instead, it’s “ professional journalism,” whereas everything else is simply “citizen journalism,” said with a sneer. I understand that a Journalism Ethics class is supposed to serve as an exploration of our personal moral codes, and that some students may ultimately value job security over getting out the real story, no matter what cost. But the fact that an educational institution like Ithaca College is not discouraging this distortion of loyalties is insane. If we as journalists are not universally viewing our accountability to tell the reader the full truth as best as possible, as the most important value in our field, then we are failing. There are already enough colleges teaching over and over and over again that objectivity is king and media conglomerates are the way to go for a big paycheck and a national stage. At Ithaca College, we shouldn’t be taught how to conform and work with the mainstream media; we need to be taught to change and challenge that behemoth. And what’s the best way for us to do that? Through independent publications and courageous storytelling that doesn’t confuse its intended goal.
When I received my acceptance to the Park School of Communication’s Journalism program at Ithaca College in Fall 2007, my definition of journalism included phrases like “objective reporting,” “two sides to every story,” “newspapers are far more serious than any other medium,” and “ The New York Times is king!” But in the past two years, I’ve learned that those phrases describe journalism at its least interesting, most rigid, most restricted, and most in need of an IV drip or an emergency defibrillator. That type of traditional reporting, which generally finds itself in bed with huge corporations whose own monetary interests trump Freedom of the Press any day, is dying. And with good reason: there are more effective, more interesting and more inventive ways to break news. That’s what independent media proves on a daily basis. From the larger indy behemoths like The Huffington Post, National Review and Democracy Now! to the less-prominent but universally-acclaimed publications like Talking Points Memo and Mother Jones magazine, these are the thinkers that are beginning to break the most important stories, reach the larger, younger readerships and get people excited about journalism again. It’s a truer, more noble, less tainted form of reporting, writing and storytelling, and it’s growing. This blog is called The Lone Ranger for two reasons. The obvious, of course, is that it will dissect the development of "independent media" - publications and art forms that are inherently badass in nature (hence the "Ranger" descriptor) that are not supported or influenced by corporate funds and decisions. To be "independent" as a producer of journalism, you must, as a rule, stand alone. The second reason? To be ironic, naturally. The name "independent media" is in and of itself a misrepresentation of the essence of the field. As proved by Talking Points Memo, The Huffington Post and non-corporate publications time and time again, in order to break the biggest stories and make the biggest impact, you need to pool your resources; everyone's an expert on something...and if building a better story means calling upon some of your readers' expertise to help you out, do it! In that respect, the most successful "independent" sources are communal, hodgepodged nodes of information. I’m no expert on independent media. I don’t pretend to be. But I hope that this semester in my Independent Media class I can learn a ton about yesterday’s corporate machines and journalistic failures, today’s independent media sources that are consistently improving on the tired old news reporting formula and tomorrow’s triumphs thanks to these emerging technologies, ideologies and ways of truly thinking outside the box.
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