2003-2004: Wagging the People in the USA & U.K.

“We hope you depend on us for the truth, because we’re going to report the situation in Iraq without an agenda or any ideological prejudice.” (The O’Reilly Factor, Fox News, 17.01.2003)

“This chapter serves as an epilogue and summary that accounts for the concurrent events of 2003/4 that embrace both regulatory media changes in the U.S. and the U.K. - and, not coincidentally, desert invasions in the Middle East by the same two western democracies. The account will cross-cut between these developments as they emerged, divided and then coalesced as the year proceeded.

These separate, parallel, but associated events provide rich if provocative insights that reverberate across our discussion. It has been a discussion that at its core has emphasised how the operations of the mass media in America have functioned to voice and dramatise an unrepresentative account of key American principles of democracy in the interests of elite governance and cultural hegemony.

Our opening analysis is sharpened with reference to two noteworthy events that coincidentally occurred during the same wintry week in mid-January 2003 while the Bush administration was preparing the United States for war.

USA, 2003 - Free Speech and the Corporate Environment

The first event was the two-day national strike by more than 17,000 union employees at General Electric on 14^th and 15^th January. This was the first national strike at General Electric since 1969 and affected 48 plants in 23 states.

The second event was more circumscribed but just as significant for our purposes. This was the 16^th January conference at The Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts at Columbia Law School, New York. Here, senior representatives from network television (Fox Entertainment, Viacom, CBS), industry unions from theatre, film, journalism and academia were joined with community activist groups such as the Children’s Press Line, the Harlem Consumer Education Committee and the Third World News Reel. Amongst the academics to speak was Robert McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy (1999). More noteworthy, Commissioners from the Federal Communications Commission, including Chairman Powell, were also present.

While General Electric strikers across America were protesting in the cold against the increasing costs of their health care plans - union officials claimed that these would cost the average worker an extra $300 to $400 a year - the debate in New York focused on the proposed reconsideration of media ownership rules that, if adopted by the FCC, would have a major impact on the American - and global - mass media landscape in the coming century. FCC Chairman Michael Powell put the proposal for a revision of The Telecommunications Act of 1996 forward in 2002 and those proposals were now open to public airing. The forum debate was part of this democratic process that would end with a final decision, it was supposed, later in September 2003 (the decision was brought forward to 2^nd June 2003).

These two events, then, would on the surface seem destined for different and unrelated news categories unless we are alert to the corporate ties that bind General Electric to NBC. Scanning through the MSNBC news website during the General Electric strike of 14^th and 15^th January would reveal a bizarre paradox wherein a national news broadcaster (NBC) reported on a public event (a protest strike) which was directed against a major corporate owner (General Electric) which also happened to fully own the broadcaster and which it operated, under trusted license, from the FCC.

The dramaturgical society is hence truly in play when all parties perform the recognisable rites of participatory democracy - from street protest, banners, and speeches on the one hand and “serving the public interest” through objective news reporting on the other. However, the performance in this case was woven within a public discourse strictly determined and outlined by America’s leading corporate broadcaster whose interests were clearly not limited to delivering objective news coverage for informed public debate.

Now in the 21^st century we witness more fully than ever the problematic conditions of public news broadcasting when it is embedded into the corporate structure of (a very few) commercial entities such as General Electric.

Looking to such events and coverage we can readily recognise why the issue of media ownership is so crucial in any consideration about media news content and how it informs current concerns both in Europe and primarily in the U.S. that focus on citizen rights within the ever-narrowing scope of public debate.

 

We, the media - Homeland Expansion 2003 – 2004

 

The 16^th January 2003 media conference in New York, then, takes on an immediate and useful relevance when we recognise how national broadcasters owned by industrial giants report local news, or not. At the time it was widely believed that FCC Chairman Michael Powell and the two other Republicans on the five-member commission were intent on loosening present regulations (Powell is son of Colin Powell, the Secretary of State and was appointed by President George W. Bush in January 2001).

The FCC was studying whether decades-old ownership restrictions were appropriate in a market changed by the Internet, satellite broadcasts and cable television (but, as we argue, unchanged by the overriding commercial needs of the broadcasters). In summary, those public interest protections under threat/consideration included:

• The Newspaper/Broadcast Cross-Ownership Rule that prevented the owners of broadcast station from owning daily newspapers in the same market, and vice versa.

• The National Broadcast Ownership Cap - that was meant to prevent one company from owning broadcast stations that reached more than 35 percent of U.S. households.

• The Local Radio Ownership Rule - that limited the number of radio stations a company could own in a single listening area to eight or less, depending on the area’s size.

• The Duopoly Rule - that limited a company to owning two broadcast TV stations in any given market.

• The Dual Network Rule - that barred the major TV networks - ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC - from merging with each other (interestingly, Viacom and News Corp. had already secured from the regulators key waivers on television stations they owned that exceeded the 35% cap on the percent of U.S. households any single owner of television stations could reach

Not surprisingly, the deregulation agenda was encouraged by the major broadcasters (Kirkpatrick, 2003; Dreazen, 2003). The joint submission from NBC, News Corp’s Fox Entertainment Group, and Viacom (CBS), was submitted on 2^nd January 2003 and was countered by opposing comments on the same day from the Communications Workers of America, Jonathan Rintels (The Center for the Creative Community), and Charles Slocum of the Writers Guild of America, amongst others.

These submissions against the proposed rulings were further supported by a full critique of the FCC’s own research studies on media ownership as published in December 2002 by Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research at the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (ALF/CIO) (“Democracy Unhinged”).

The FCC, the Citizen and the Consumer - Again

Our Chapter Two overview of media developments since the 1920s outlined the calculated rhetorical twists that tried to equate ‘citizen’ with ‘consumer’. This contest of meanings has always marked a subtle subtextual political divide in U.S. political discourse.

In his written statement, for example, to the U.S. Senate two days before the media conference at Columbia University Chairman Powell (2003) delivered a 16-page report which, in keeping with FCC leanings since 1934, spoke much of “universal service, competition and diversity” as a broad and noble aim. However, Powell listed five key strategies one of which was to “empower consumers, by moving towards greater personalization of communications - when, where, what and how they want it”. In terms that uncannily recall earlier debates about Radio licensing in the 1920s, technological advances in broadband and a ‘free’ de-regulatory environment would allow, said Powell, the,“…marketplace to adapt and stabilize and industry participants can vigorously compete, invest and innovate - all to the benefit of the American telecommunications consumer.” (Powell, 2003, http://www.wga.org 30.01.2004)

While the word ‘consumer’ appears eighteen times, however, it is noticeable that never once does Chairman Powell mention the vital word ‘citizen’.

 

Dissenting Opinions

Advocates for an alternative strategy - one that appeals for a more publicly accountable broadcast system remain, as they were in the 1930s, vigorous, alert, but always pushing up the political hegemonic hill. Since December 2002, for example, Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting posted an “Action Alert” - aimed to focus dissenting opinions towards Washington, D.C. For the writers of FAIR, for example,

“This country’s airwaves belong to the American people, and the FCC is supposed to manage them in the public interest. Unfortunately, the current FCC leadership seems hostile to this very concept. Asked to explain his understanding of the public interest, Chairman Powell once replied that he had “no idea” what it meant.” (http://www.fair.org, 04.01.2003)

A unique alignment of disparate political groupings emerged in concert against the ruling that included Members of the National Rifle Association, The National Organization for Women, Christian fundamentalists and even the Conservative Communications Center. As recorded by FAIR,

“As the country reels from some of the biggest business scandals in U.S. history, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is getting ready to give big media a big gift-the rollback of some of the last regulatory checks on media consolidation…People across the country, from grassroots activists to members of Congress, are raising their voices to stop the FCC’s rush to open the floodgates to another wave of media mergers.” (http://www.fair.org, 04.01.2003)

One of the most vocal groups in opposition to the proposed changes was the combined union between Hollywood writers and producers. In their filing to the FCC (“Protect Competition and Diversity in the Broadcast and Cable Entertainment Marketplace”, 1^st February 2003), the Writers Guild of America (WGA) made arguments that looked sceptically at the new future of greater technological choices made possible through advances in cable and broadband systems:

“Americans should not be fooled into thinking more broadcast and cable channels means greater choice. When the overwhelming majority of channels and programming are owned and produced by only five companies, we have fewer choices not more.”

As evidence, the Guild provided revealing data that indicated how, since the deregulation of the financial syndication rules in 1992, greater proportions of broadcast content was being produced by the networks themselves, leaving less scope for more creative and challenging work from the independent sector.

These changes indicated for the Guild the degree to which the broadcasters were opting for greater security in tried and tested genre formulas that lacked narrative and imaginative challenge. The WGA argued, further, that,

“Of 230 cable program services cited by the FCC as an example of diversity, only 91 reach 16 million homes and can be considered “major” networks. Of those, 80% (73) are owned or co-owned by six companies; five of those six are the same companies that control the broadcast networks.” (WGA (West) filings to FCC, 12.02.2004)

In total, and looking at the impoverished quality of broadcast drama on American television, the Guild from Hollywood insisted that,

“…none of the studies prepared by the commission addressed the impact consolidation has had on competition and diversity in the television production marketplace.” (WGA (West) filings to FCC, 12.02.2004).

Rather than rules supporting the present corporate interests, the Guild called instead for a greater focus on the needs of citizens, “…for the adoption of a rule to protect the interests of the American people by requiring diversity and open competition in the television production marketplace.”

It is of some uncomfortable coincidence that such concerns about democracy and free speech from FAIR and the need for wider variability in television dramas from the Hollywood Writers Guild should emerge at a time within the United States when the administration of that country had already undertaken one invasion of an Arab Middle East country - Afghanistan - and was preparing its detailed but questionable arguments for another - Iraq - with the expressed intention of bringing to that part of the world the kind of freedoms that such advocates for diversity in news and drama now found lacking in the Homeland.

Advancing the argument for war, for example, was the main priority of NewsCorp’s 175 newspapers around the world. In an account in mid-February 2003 that detailed editorial commentaries in Australia’s five leading cities, Roy Greenslade (2003) highlighted how,“…a series of gung-ho front pages have been backed up by vehemently pro-Bush articles inside. A typical example, by a retired US army intelligence officer, Ralph Peters, heaped praise on a “flawless” Colin Powell for doing a “superb job” (Feb 5th, 2003) in revealing “hard evidence” which justified war on Iraq… These papers show their colours by giving unswerving support to the rabidly pro-American Prime Minister John Howard… One Australian media watcher said that all the paper’s right-leaning columnists have been given license to bang the war drums while belittling opponents.” (Greenslade, The Guardian Media. 17.02.2003: 7)

The efforts of Australian editors to match the leading claims of Fox News were themselves in line with NewsCorp’s U.K publications. Both tabloid (The Sun) and broadsheets (The Times) worked hard to engineer the growing anti-war objections (often pejoratively described as “sentiments”) away from anti-Americanism and, to meet another NewsCorp agenda that generated familiar suspicions of Europe. As Greenslade (2003) documents it, “The Sunday Times also laid into the French and Germans, claiming that to adopt their attitudes “would be, to adapt the three wise monkeys, neither seeing, hearing nor acting on a brutal regime that defies the U.N.” An earlier Sunday Times leader revealed the truth about the world-wide struggle of the Murdoch press to secure the hearts and minds of its millions of readers. “Winning the public relations battle is almost as vital as military victory,” said the Sunday Times.” (Greenslade, The Guardian Media. 17.02.2003: 7)

AntiWar Protest, Feb 15th 2003, London UK

While major American forces were already being prepared for desert battle, another vital public relations battle - and which NewsCorp was equally instrumental in staging - continued inside Washington, D.C.’s beltway. The FCC review that was under way came under intense scrutiny, from a range of community, professional and civic bodies. However, it is perhaps timely to question what prompted the FCC to pursue this de-regulatory agenda in the first instance and at this particular time. The answer lies buried in the more arcane details of The Telecommunications Act of 1996 and reveals the nuanced close relationship between key Washington, D.C. legal bodies - the D.C. Circuit of Appeals, the FCC and certain news organisations. The following short account is submitted if only to confirm how even judicial processes that might otherwise seem natural or ideologically neutral are themselves vulnerable to the knowing prompts of interested parties.

Real Insiders - How and Why a Review Takes Place

The details of Clause 202 (h) of The Telecommunications Act of 1996 instructed the FCC to review every two years its rules limiting media ownership - and to “repeal or modify” any rule that “it determines to be no longer in the public interest”. The judges on the D.C. Circuit of Appeals had an opportunity to examine this clause when several media companies attempted to sue the FCC to overturn limits on their expansion, merger, and cross-ownership plans. One of the cases at issue was Fox Television Stations vs FCC. In two influential rulings that followed in 2002, the Court ruled for the companies and against the FCC.

The ruling came with a significant expectation for the FCC to observe. As instructed now by the Court, the five members of the FCC were impelled to prove the need to maintain its regulations and specifically those limits on cross-ownership that NewsCorp had now challenged. Failure to justify the rulings meant that the FCC had to change or remove the 1996 controls immediately. How that ruling from the Court was interpreted depended on the political judgment of the newly appointed Chair of the FCC, Michael Powell. Powell was in the best position in this regard since in 1993 he had become a clerk for Harry Edwards, the-then chief judge of the same D.C. Circuit. Powell’s interpretation of the ruling accommodated the known ideological reputation of the Court as a forum of appeals against Federal institutions and as a traditional source of conservative intellectual energy - Neo-conservatives Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas both came to the Supreme Court from the D.C. Circuit, Robert Bork was on this circuit when Ronald Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court and Douglas Ginsburg, now the D.C. Circuit’s chief judge, had been nominated by President Reagan for the Supreme Court as well.

Given the range of options available, Powell determined from his accurate working knowledge of the Court that it expected not just an explanation of FCC decisions, but a full review of The Telecommunications Act itself (Fallows, 2003). It was therefore the combined moves of media giants, a sympathetic Conservative court and an ideologically aligned government agency, which created this major review to broaden key provisions of The Telecommunications Act of 1996.

A similar alignment of corporate, administration and family interests also combined in staging at the same time another defence of democratic values - this time beyond Washington, D.C.

 

Opening Market Territories in Iraq, the USA and the U.K.

“We will pass through this time of peril and carry on the work of peace. We will defend our freedom. We will bring freedom to others. And we will prevail.” President George W. Bush announcing on American live TV the beginning of military action in Iraq, March 2003

Within days of the opening curtain display of “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense, provided his own impromptu account of the media coverage then blanketing the news networks, cable and the ‘worldwide’ Internet. In an observation (Stanley, 2003a) noted for its apparent postmodern spin, Richard Nixon’s lawyer during Watergate emphasised to the watching millions that,

“What we are seeing is not the war in Iraq. What we’re seeing are slices of the war in Iraq. We’re seeing that particularized perspective that that reporter or that commentator or that television camera happens to be able to see at that moment. And it is not what’s taking place.” (Stanley, The New York Times. 23.03.2003: A.1)

To distance himself from any accusation of epistemological relativism, however, Rumsfeld quickly confirmed within the same breadth that, indeed,

“What you see is taking place, to be sure, but it is one slice, and it is the totality of that that is what this war is about and being made up of…” (Stanley, The New York Times. 23.03.2003: A.1)

However, Rumsfeld’s own form of media education quickly returned to more secure ideological ground in a final declaration more in keeping with traditional accounts that neatly bracketed the work of the Fourth Estate within the Pentagon agenda, “I doubt”, he ended,“…that in a conflict of this type there’s ever been the degree of free press coverage as you are witnessing in this instance.” (Stanley, The New York Times. 23.03.2003: A.1).

 

Corporate War Reporting -Up, Close and Deadly

 

That press coverage (which Rumsfeld celebrated in a live press conference) had first shown live footage from CNN of B-52 bombers departing the U.K, and attack aircraft launched from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Indian Ocean. The “shock and awe” night-time coverage of the ‘precision’ bombing of central Baghdad proved, for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, the humanitarian care with which the war had been so thoughtfully planned. As the first Gulf War (1991) became the marketing platform for news cable TV and primarily CNN, so its sequel became the first multi-media Internet war that would help generate greater demands for broadband access.

Rumsfeld’s glowing endorsement of the media coverage, however, also ricocheted across media debates in Washington, D.C. and gave supportive justification to those mogul arguments for deregulation in the light of the fuller information freedoms now clearly enjoyed by the American people through their wider access to a more varied range of media outlets. In this respect, the Defense Secretary’s impromptu remarks chimed very nicely with the stated position of the-then Chair of the FCC, Michael Powell, who would vote for the changes on 2^nd June 2003. To repeat a refrain from my introductory remarks, the theatre of war seemed designed not just to display the humanitarian might of the American armed forces, but the capacity of the news ‘divisions’ in tow to report the event so fully, comprehensively and obligingly. However, in their own report Todd Purdum and Jim Rutenberg (2003) would report how the “riveting” coverage from the invasion was a carefully devised plan by the Pentagon specifically designed to counter the years of complaints by news organisations about restrictions on combat coverage (Carpenter, 1995).

Those complaints had been building since the 1980s when the-then Reagan administration adopted the pool system for journalists which effectively ‘helped’ but curtailed coverage of subsequent ‘wars’ (Chapter Five). For Purdum and Rutenberg:

“…the new policy of “embedding” more than 500 reporters with invading troops has produced riveting images of fighter jets on carriers and tanks plowing across the Iraqi desert, accompanied by household faces like Ted Koppel of ABC’s “Nightline”, and of surrendering Iraqi soldiers with their hands held high.” (Pudrum and Rutenberg, The New York Times. 23.03.2003: B.3).

Close collusion between the broadcast media and the military over the next two weeks of war would allow, “…extraordinary access on secret briefings, watching computerized maps of the battlefield with the latest satellite photos, in the middle of the Kuwait desert, for example.” (Pudrum and Rutenberg, The New York Times. 23.03.2003: B.3)

Indeed, as more Iraqi territory succumbed to the invasion forces, Alessandra Stanley (2003b) reported how the famed,

“…NBC correspondent David Bloom, in helmet, bulletproof vest and sunglasses, delivered reports live on the move from a specially designed armored vehicle. Others hollered updates from the flight decks of aircraft carriers, and even through gas masks… A few seemed so caught up in the adrenaline of battle and the thrill of access that they sounded like sports reporters on the sidelines of the Superbowl. “How do you feel about your performance tonight?” Frank Buckley of CNN, assigned to the aircraft carrier Constellation, asked a pilot who had just returned from a bombing mission over Baghdad.” (Stanley, The New York Times. 30.03.2003: B.15)

Meanwhile, in the same article, Stanley also reported on the Fox studios that went live to Kuwait, and how,

“Two days after the first missile attacks on Baghdad, the network’s morning show, “Fox & Friends” displayed a still photograph of Mr. Bush talking with aides in the Oval Office, his glasses on and his jacket off. ”The administration is really going out of its way to show the truth”, the co-host, Brian Kilmeade exclaimed to his guest, William Kristol, the conservative columnist.” (Stanley, The New York Times. 30.03.2003: B.15)

We should recognise that Brian Kilmeade was carefully embedded into both Fox News magazine programmes where he comments authoritatively on political and social subjects and leads elsewhere on the schedule as main sports anchor/enthusiast. We may also recognise William Kristol as the editor of NewsCorp’s own Weekly Standard who had founded the influential ‘Project for the New American Century’ that had as its rallying cry the kind of U.S. interventionist foreign policy over which he was now, indeed, an ‘expert’ commentator (Chapter Eight). Still at Fox, further authoritative observations emerged from Kilmeade’s even more assertive colleague, anchor ‘Bill’ O’Reilly, who became characteristically vocal in outlining his more comprehensive overview of the war so far. As reported and recorded in full by Peter Hart (2003) at FAIR,

“The politically incorrect strategy O’Reilly called for was the complete destruction of Baghdad, a city of 4.5 million residents (3/26/03): “There is a school of thought that says we should have given the citizens of Baghdad 48 hours to get out of Dodge by dropping leaflets and going with the AM radios and all that. Forty-eight hours, you’ve got to get out of there, and flatten the place. Then the war would be over. We could have done that in two days…You flatten Baghdad, you flatten all the troops, we know where they go, there’s nowhere to hide in the desert. We know where everybody’s moving. And you know as well as I do, this war could have been over in two days. It’s just frustrating for everybody to know that we have been fighting this war with one hand behind our back. And let there be no doubt about where the real responsibility for the safety of the Iraqi people lies: Now after we know that the final battle is going to come to Baghdad, that the people who remain in Baghdad, the civilians, bear some kind of responsibility for their own safety. Am I wrong?” O’Reilly’s guests that night were in agreement.” (Hart, 2003).

Despite the Strangelove rhetoric, U.S. troops strolled into the Iraqi capital in a far less dramatic fashion. By the time news reporters were embedded in the city’s major hotels, results from another battle were being quickly assessed: Fox News had beaten its main rival CNN in the all-important ratings war in an economic leverage that would significantly contribute to the NewsCorp finances as reflected in the healthy quarterly financial statement that followed a few weeks later. The “harshest measures” requested by Fox News Chief executive Richard Ailes to the U.S. President after the 11^th September 2001 air attacks (Woodward, 2002) were now profiting both administration and cable news broadcaster alike.

 

Weapons of Mass Distraction

With a failure to show actual battles (if they existed) and a reluctance to disturb advertisers with images of war casualties, a sanitised Reality War was constructed and delivered by excited embedded reporters, fuelled by packaged video sequences obligingly provided by the Pentagon.

As revealed by Frank Rich (2003a), these were cast according to a specific marketing mise-en-scene concocted by former media representative Victoria Clarke at the Pentagon. In his own article “Iraq around the clock” (The New York Times. 30.03.2003) Rich wryly reminded the reader that,

“The master of the Pentagon media operation, including the program embedding more than 500 journalists among our troops, is Victoria Clarke, whose resumé features a stint directing public affairs for the National Cable Television Association. In that job, according to The Wall Street Journal, she helped persuade the public that cable’s “terrible reputation for customer service” was unjustified. In other words, she’s a p.r. genius.” (Rich, The New York Times. 30.03.2003: 2.1).

In an uncanny echo of Wag the Dog (1997), Rich helpfully also traced the origin of the stage design that served as the ghoulish Pentagon battlefront press conference backdrop:

“Not for nothing was a designer who has worked for Disney, MGM, “Good Morning America” and the illusionist David Blaine hired to build Gen. Tommy Franks a $250,000 set for the briefings in Qatar.” (Rich, The New York Times. 30.03. 2003: 2.1).

The set in question was a mosaic of significantly coloured oily black-and-blue world maps that dominated the press conferences as provided by the U.S. military (pic, April 3rd, 2003).

Very quickly, therefore, the Liberal print press were in a position to question the mainstream broadcast delivery of the invasion. Over at The New York Times, Lucien K. Truscott (2003) was to observe how, despite the video footage supplied from aircraft carriers and tank commanders, such imagery served a wider more questionable strategic purpose, since,

“…not since the halcyon days of Ronald Reagan has an administration been so adept at managing information and manipulating images. In Iraq, the Bush administration has beaten the press at its own game. It has turned the media into a weapon of war, using the information it provides to harass and intimidate the Iraqi military leadership.” (Truscott, The New York Times. 25.03.2003: A.17)

 

Howevermuch we can agree with Truscott’s overall position, it would be within the frame of this overview to strongly suggest that the broadcast media in question were far less naive and far more knowing - and ideologically supportive - of the Bush administration’s military adventure and provided such footage in the full knowledge of its propaganda potential (Rich, 2003b).

In the absence of genuine war footage, what images did emerge were quickly contextualised into narratives of battle culled from either Hollywood films or previous wars. In an article strap lined “‘shock and awe’: a reality-TV war”, Michiko Kakutani (2003) would observe how,

“…the opening salvos of the war had taken place during prime-time entertainment, and television stations did their best to serve up gaudily produced coverage: the war in Iraq as the ultimate in reality television, as the apotheosis of every favorite Hollywood genre.” (Katutani, The International Herald Tribune. 26.03.2003: 20)

Hence, black-and-white close-up images of harassed marines crossing bridges (Remagen?) or the Stars and Stripes hoisted by Marines over the central Baghdad statute of Saddam Hussein (Iwo Jima?). In the absence of securing Hussein himself, victory seemed only assured with repeated destruction of his ubiquitous poster images. Further, in the days following the first cruise missile assault, “…television anchors took to promising viewers that there was more “shock and awe” to come and military analysts talked about how the new technology had made the Pentagon “more imaginative than its been in the past” and “more creative”. It all might have been a trailer for the disaster movie “the Core”…but it may be recalled that many television networks, including ABC, CBS, CNN and Fox are owned by multimedia corporations well practiced in the manufacture of entertainment.” (Kakutani, The International Herald Tribune. 26.03.2003: 20)

While the deserts of Iraq provided timely and much needed revenues for U.S. television broadcasters at a time of severe economic downturn, the FCC regulators back in Washington, D.C. were debating more fully the future prognosis for the industry for the generations of Americans to come.

Chairman Charles Powell revealed that the five-member commission had tentatively scheduled a meeting on 2^nd June 2003 to adopt new rules on media ownership, thus bringing forward the real possibility of an open free market eagerly advanced by the corporate giants and as Dreazen (2003) reported earlier in the year,

“Three of the U.S.’s biggest media companies asked federal regulators to scrap all of the government’s media-ownership rules, a move that would make it for easier for television, radio and newspaper companies to combine with or acquire one another… The joint request by News Corp’s Fox Entertainment Group; VIACOM Inc., which owns CBS and UPN networks; and General Electric Co.’s NBC unit may receive a warm reception at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.” (Dreazen, The Wall Street Journal. 06.01.2003: A.6).

While the news divisions faithfully reported around the clock live from the deserts of Iraq, FCC regulators were working to untie their last remaining restrictions on media ownership and control.

So, in keeping the overall account of this book, the vital interests of mass media corporations and the U.S. Defense Department became just as close in meeting each others’ ideological and commercial needs and requirements in the early part of the 21^st century as they had been a century before when RCA was formed by the Signal Corps from the Marconi Company. In contrast to conditions prevailing in 1996 when The Telecommunications Act was first framed, a new but very similar climate of synergies had formed. “…What’s different this time”, observed Dreazen (2003),“… is that a changed legal and regulatory climate means the companies’ requests could become reality. FCC Chairman Michael Powell often has hinted that he would be willing to drop or substantially modify many of the rules which have also come under fire from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.” (Dreazen, The Wall Street Journal. 06.01.2003: A.6)

That “changed legal and regulatory climate” is code for a change to a Republican administration that, harking back to the Reagan administration of the 1980s, enjoyed a determinedly pro-industry Right-Wing de-regulatory agenda as shared by the commercial broadcasters and their industry owners.

 

Homeland Questions on a Free Press

In the light of the minimal amount of public hearings organised by the FCC (a single formal public hearing was arranged on 27^th February 2003 in Virginia) some activists and independent media analysts made studies during this period on how much the general public were aware - or not - of such impending radical changes to their media. It was a shared irony that though media companies filed extensive comments with the FCC in support of the proposed changes, “It’s what they haven’t done that is more troubling: None of the big three networks have found the story worth reporting in depth. Since the FCC issued its notice on the ownership rules last September, a search of the Nexis news database turns up one network story: a short summary of the FCC’s announcement on ABC’s World News This Morning (9/9/02), which according to the transcript aired at 4:30 AM.” (www.fair.org, 29.01.2003)

The findings would support a February 2003 telephone poll conducted by the Project For Excellence in Journalism in collaboration with the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which decided to probe Americans on the subject of the proposed FCC changes. The Project is a research institute on the press affiliated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism while the Center is an independent polling institute that specialises in matters of public awareness of press issues. Both groups are funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts (Pew Research Center survey of February 2003).

Two reasons were routinely forwarded by corporate voices that justified such minimal media coverage - firstly, that it was a (convenient) technical regulatory agency matter of often great complexity or that, secondly, but more suspiciously, that there was an inherent moral conflict of interest for the news media in covering their own industry.

However, the figures gave credence to those media advocate arguments that the news organisations were clearly failing in their duty in reporting a major public issue that, on this occasion, centred importantly on their own industry and, by extension, on the workings of democracy itself. It was argued by activists that such limited coverage only supported the long-term interests of those media corporations who were likely to benefit from the FCC changes.

One corporation, even under the cloud of war, was already flexing its capital muscle as a sign of things to come.

Capturing Baghdad andThe U.S Airwaves: 10^th

April 2003

On Friday, 11^th April 2003, when the world’s media were focused on the previous day’s dramatic events in “liberated” Baghdad, it was also reported (though not so brazenly) that Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp had markedly extended its U.S. cable reach by buying DirecTV for $6.6 billion that very same day. Negotiations had been on-going for three years between NewsCorp, General Motors and the owners of Hughes Electronics. The purchase was to confirm how the outright ownership of DirecTV would be central feature of NewsCorps’ more powerful leverage over the whole U.S. industry. That power and market influence would be grounded on DirecTV’s then estimated 11.3 million subscriber base, making it the single biggest distributor of programming in the United States. Already there was a concern that the deal would be agreed by the FCC regulators and would allow NewsCorp thereafter to squeeze smaller cable competitors out of the market by raising the price of content as generated by its own massive Fox Entertainment Group.

Such market advances made by the major media operators in the United States, and the profits gleaned from the Iraqi war, did not go unnoticed by certain other institutions, notably in the U.K.

 

Embedded Reporting - Critical Views from the BBC and Oxford

In a 24^th April 2003 speech at Goldsmith’s College in London, Greg Dyke, then Head of the BBC, was to openly question standards in U.S. network war reporting (Wells, 2003a). He quickly singled out both radio broadcaster Clear Channel and Fox News, the most watched U.S. cable news network during the conflict. Of the former he said, ““We are genuinely shocked when we discover that the largest radio group in the United States was using its airwaves to organize pro-war rallies… We are even more shocked to discover the same group wants to become a big radio player in the U.K.”.” (in Wells, The Guardian. 25.04.2003: 5)

Dyke’s stinging rebukes towards Fox extended to include the commercial paradigm itself, ““Commercial pressures may tempt others to follow the Fox News formulae of gung-ho patriotism, but for the BBC this would be a terrible mistake…many of the large television news organizations in the states are no longer profitable or confident of their future. The effect of this fragmentation is to make government - the White House and the Pentagon - all-powerful, with no news operation strong enough of brave enough to stand up against it…this is particularly so since September 11 when many U.S. networks wrapped themselves in the American flag and swapped impartiality for patriotism”.” (in Wells, The Guardian. 25.04.2003: 5)

In support, (and, again, in the NewsCorp rival Guardian newspaper), Andrew Graham (Master of Balliol College, Oxford and non-executive director of Channel Four) would highlight to some dismay the NewsCorp pro-war agenda which, across all global news outlets “displayed a unanimity of view greater even than the Pentagon”. Moreover, and considering the U.S. news provision in general, Graham (2003) ruminated in The Guardian how,

“When a large proportion of Americans are reputed to believe that Saddam Hussein was implicated in Al-Quaida terrorism, a belief for which there is not a shred of credible evidence, one wonders if the world’s largest democracy is being so well served by its media.” (Graham, The Guardian. 01.09.2003: 12)

As if to confirm the worst case scenarios no doubt contemplated at the BBC and Oxford, White House communications staff were busily preparing at the same time for what would perhaps be one of the defining media moments of the summer, a production that would segue the skills of Pentagon officials, White House staff and former broadcast professionals into one marketing whole.

 

The White House - Lights, Camera and the Rhetoric of Power

The 1^st May 2003 declaration of war’s end by George W. Bush was a form of dramaturgical chutzpah that surreally wove discourses of politics, military and entertainment together. As such it was the kind of manufactured golden-hour scenario ideally suited to prime-time live television that would immediately touch the valued criteria of media event and so somehow stem the leaking fortunes of the broadcasters that Dyke referred to. For Elisabeth Bumiller (2003a), the,

“…“Top Gun” landing on the deck of the carrier Abraham Lincoln will be remembered as one of the most audacious moments of presidential theater in U.S. history. But it was only the latest example of how the Bush administration, going far beyond the stagecraft set by Ronald Reagan’s White House, is using the powers of television and technology to promote a presidency like never before.” (Bumiller, The International Herald Tribune. 17-18.05.2003: 3)

As an example, Bumiller’s extensive account outlined how in a Presidential speech in the summer of 2002, conveniently set at Mount Rushmore, White House personnel positioned television camera crews to Bush’s side so as to catch the profile of the 43^rd President in alignment with the carved outlines of his eminent predecessors. Another national stage was appropriated, this time at night, when on the first anniversary of the 11^th September 2001 attacks three large barges were tied to the Statue of Liberty and provided a giant lighting backdrop to Bush’s speech.

The mise-en-scenes that Bumiller (2003) describes were carefully co-ordinated by three key personnel formally employed by U.S. news broadcasters but who were by now fully signed up to the White House marketing operations. Former ABC news producer, Scott Sforza operated through the offices of White House communications director Dan Bartlett and was directly responsible co-ordinating the $250,000 design for the U.S. Central Command forward headquarters in Quatar. Sforza was teamed with Robert de Servi, former NBC cameraman who was responsible for shipping the British lighting system that covered the U.S. President’s speech in Bucharest in November 2002.

The third component that helped shape and define the Presidential image was Greg Jenkins, a former Fox News television producer who acted as director of the advance party and who co-ordinated all aspects of the planned mise-en-scenes. As explained and then justified by Bartlett,

”We pay particular attention to not only what the president says, but what the American people see. Americans are leading busy lives, and sometimes they don’t have the opportunity to read a story or listen to an entire broadcast. But if they can have an instant understanding of what the president is talking about by seeing 60 seconds of television, you accomplish your goals, as communicators. So we take it seriously.” (in Bumiller, The International Herald Tribune. 17-18.05.2003: 3)

The fact that George W. Bush had never wandered further than a curtailed one-year stint with the Texas National Guard during the Vietnam war would of course be a significant downside factor in taking and then marketing his role as Commander in Chief very seriously. By associating himself so manfully to such visible displays of hulking military might as an aircraft carrier could, for some, be regarded as a classic case of awkward over-compensation in the younger Bush. Despite the best intentions of the communications professionals, however, the venture of the California coast, exposed the degree to which tightened market forces in the broadcast industry demand ever-greater gestures towards theatre, where even the President of the United States must grandiosely perform and have his words heard above the commercial babble.

 

The U.K. Communications Bill

The extended concerns from Oxford and the BBC about the breadth and depth of U.S. news journalism during the invasion of Iraq took place at a time when the British media landscape was itself subject to extended political debate that had begun a year earlier when Tony Blair’s government introduced the UK Communications Bill White Paper. Amongst the Bill’s proposed was,

“…widest possible access to a choice of diverse communications services of the highest quality. All of us can benefit from new services - as citizens, as parents, as workers, as students, and as consumers. We want to include every section of our society in the benefits of these services, and use to the full the opportunities now available for enhancing their diversity and quality.” (08.06.2003)

The noble commitment to citizens, however, was neatly and delicately balanced with later reference to a commitment, as well, to reform the rules,

“…which protect media plurality, in the light of the new converging market conditions. We seek to combine a lighter touch in many aspects with tough protection of the genuine public interest”.

It was only by the summer of 2003, when the Bill was in the last stages of its final reading through the House of Commons and then the House of Lords, that the full implications of its impact on its ‘lighter’ ownership rules came into view. In terms already familiar to readers of media regulation changes in the United States, two key clauses became the quick focus of intense debate: the first abolished the requirement for owners of television companies to be British or E.U. citizens, and the second clause removed existing laws that prohibited anyone who owned 20% or more of newspaper readership from buying into television. These two inclusions signalled a debate that made NewsCorp, again, the subject for much speculation and increased concern about Rupert Murdoch’s U.K. media ambitions that had originally surfaced a year previously (Shah, 2002).

Overshadowing and perhaps driving the debates through May and June 2003 were ratings figures released in April 2003 that showed how for the first time ever, in the week ending Sunday, 20^th April 2003, multichannel (non terrestrial) TV accounted for 26.1% of all viewing compared with a 23.9% share for terrestrials BBC1 and 23.8% for the independent television network (ITV). Their figures overtook the main terrestrial channels even though fewer than half of all U.K. households had access to digital channels through cable, satellite or Freeview, where Sky had no less than four channels (Gibson, The Guardian, 24.05.2003). Leading the ratings was the soccer Championship title game between Arsenal and Manchester United (on Sky Sports) and the much-publicised 300^th episode of The Simpsons (on Sky One), both NewsCorp’s productions and the latter produced by James L. Brooks, director and writer of Broadcast News (1987). While the top ten shows on multichannel TV showed digital services, they still relied heavily on sport, movies and American imports while just one home-grown drama secured a place in the list of top ten programmes.

The true significance of the figures - a “psychological milestone” - was properly seen in the context of government designs to convert the entire U.K. population from analogue to digital by 2010 and the fact that the only terrestrial threat to NewsCorp’s digital development was ITV Digital which, by 2003, no longer existed. With no legal prohibition anymore on owning the terrestrial Channel 5, Rupert Murdoch would own the ideal platform for building Sky’s pay-TV operations. For many critics of the Communications Bill, there was only one villain. Polly Toynbee (2003) in an article entitled: The threat to our TV from this corrupter of politicians, commented with onomatopoeic vitriol how,

“With both Labour and Conservative leaders in humiliating thrall to the menacing might of Rupert Murdoch, this is the legitimate time for the unelected Lords to rebel against the elected Commons and stop Murdoch seizing yet another slab of the British media.” (Toynbee, The Guardian. 30.05.2003). At the time of Toynbee’s (2003) concern, NewsCorp already controlled 35% of BSkyB, and owned News International, publisher of The Sun, The News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times, and Sky remained on course to meet its target of 7 million subscribers by the end of the year.

For Toynbee (2003) and more involved activists in Parliament - including former film producer Lord (David) Putman - the clauses would allow Murdoch (or some other non-British, non-EU multibillionaire news broadcaster) to purchase U.K.’s fifth terrestrial channel, Channel Five (Wells, 2003b, The Guardian 03.07.2003. 14). This would then allow NewsCorp to buy more valued sports rights for both terrestrial and satellite television. More significantly, the Bill would finally free the new purchaser of Channel Five from the expensive public service obligations and so emerge as a viable threat to the alternative ITV system and become, in time, the only major alternative to the BBC.

 

Final Moves Towards Media Consolidation - USA & U.K.

In the few weeks that followed, parallel events in both London and Washington, D.C. focused on the final stages of regulatory media changes that signalled a wider scope for the commercial broadcasters in both countries.

It is not without irony, though, that one of the most prominent voices at this time against the deregulation moves both in the U.K and the U.S. was Barry Diller (2003) who, amongst his various illustrious roles as media mogul in Hollywood and in cable TV, actually launched Murdoch’s Fox Network in the 1980s. Speaking on 7^th April 2003 at a U.S. Conference of the National Association of Broadcasters, Diller was convinced that the U.K.’s attitude to media was fundamentally flawed. There were, “…real dangers in complete concentration. The conventional wisdom is wrong - we need more regulation, not less… Conglomerates buy eyeballs. That’s it. They leverage their producing power to drive content, their distribution power to drive new services and their promotional power to literally obliterate competitors.” (Diller, 2003).

However, back in Washington, D.C., in keeping with his remit for ‘change’, Charles Powell convened the brief 2^nd June 2003 FCC meeting that - by a divisive three to two vote - supported the proposed changes to The Communications Act of 1996 (Shales, 2003). Speaking after the vote, he claimed in reverential tomes that,

“I have had to make peace with myself, to know with every fiber of my being and intellect and faith with the law that this is the right answer - at least in the short term.” (Ahrens, The Washington Post. 02.06.2003: A.06)

In the U.K. events moved quickly enough in favour of NewsCorp with the Lords vote of 8^th July 2003 that scuppered Lord McNally’s amendment to undermine the key clauses concerning ownership status. With a specific aim to thwart NewsCorp, the Liberal Democrat peer had tabled his amendment to retain the ban on newspaper owners with more than 20% of the market from buying Channel Five.

The lurking threat of industry gutting became quickly manifest by September 2003 when, just a few months following the passing of the U.K. Communications Bill, moves were already being taken - not by NewsCorps - but by Hallmark, maker of feely-good greeting cards, to take over the ITV network - not to establish a better public service for the British television public, but to quickly strip the company of its extensive programme library and production assets. The revelation came amid speculation that U.S. broadcasters, including VIACOM and Time Warner, were interested in Carlton and Granada, co-owners of the whole ITV franchise. However, as a measure of the speeding process of merger activity, both U.K. companies sought and gained regulatory approval to combine by October 2003 (Timmons, The Guardian. 08.10.2003. 11).

While in the U.K. events ran smoothly for the commercial broadcasters, Washington, D.C lawmakers in the House of Representatives and Senate moved quickly to block the FCC ruling of 2^nd June 2003. The House voted 400 to 21 for a bill restoring the 35% limit and in the Senate, a bipartisan group pushed legislation to erase all of the FCC’s media ownership rule changes. The votes followed criticism from lawmakers that Powell had given little regard to public opinion before the FCC approved the media rules. As a result, by 3^rd September 2003 the agency stopped accepting new merger applications and froze all pending deal reviews after the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit barred it from implementing the media ownership rules until after the three-judge panel considered if the regulations were legal. At the time of writing, therefore, there exists an awkward unprecedented standoff in the United States between the FCC and the lawmakers who listened and acted in favour of the hundreds of thousands of citizen objections to the 2^nd June 2003 ruling (Sevastopulo, 2003).

However, we are reminded again of past victories of a similar kind. As was the case in 1987 and the tussle over the Fairness Doctrine, the mechanics of democratic accountability compel the good members of the House and Senate to at least gesture in some apparent agreement with the populist temper of the many. Speaking critically, however, the tortured process seems only to support a dramaturgy that encourages some on-going faith in the overall process of representative government (the people have been heard), while postponing the final decision and deflecting it ultimately to the D.C. Circuit Court judges. It is a common expectation amongst most parties that, as with the case of the Fairness Doctrine, the issue could be finally settled either by the judges or by a Presidential veto and that, whichever, will invariably come down in favour of the corporate few.

In way of contrast, the early autumn merger between ITV giants Granada and Carlton had created a U.K. media company with a combined estimate worth of 3.5 billion GB pounds and control of 52% of the British television advertising market (The International Herald Tribune. 08.10.2003. 11). More ominously, the merger already confirmed earlier suspicions that, as permitted by the Communications Bill, the new company would be an attractive proposition to a foreign buyer looking to extend operations into the British broadcasting market. The future shape of that market was already projected as a likely tussle for viewers between the BBC and a possible American media giant, hence for Wells (2003c),

“…the prospect of a US-owned ITV has caused unease amongst British broadcasters, who fear wholesale cost-cutting and the imposition of bland global TV formats…high in entertainment and drama and low on news, documentaries and off-beat shows.” (Wells, The Guardian. 06.10.2003: 6)

 

We return to Andrew Graham whose 1^st September 2003 article was written after the passing of the Communication Bill that summer. Graham’s central concern - that the U.K. broadcast system was now vulnerable to commercial takeovers, particularly from abroad - was grounded on those principles of democratic accountability and citizen rights familiar to media reform lobbyists since the 1930s. For Graham (2003), “Citizens are entitled to core information about their society, much of which now comes from broadcasting. Citizens are also entitled to participate fully in society; and democratic discussion, much of which takes place via television and radio, is an essential part of such participation. The delivery of these rights is not the purpose of the market… In much the same way that we do not expect our schools or universities to be run by McDonalds or Nike, we should not expect those parts of broadcasting that exist to inform, educate and possibly even entertain to be run in the interest of maximising profits and the returns to shareholders…the score line in 2006 may read: BBC: minus 1, citizens: minus 2, Mr Murdoch: 4. This would be a dreadful mistake.” (Graham, The Guardian. 01.09.2003: 12)

Placing Graham (2003) within a well-established historical tradition of media reformers that extends back to the early days of U.S. (and Canadian) broadcasting is not intended to qualify or curtly undermine his arguments for a more responsive and representative media. On the contrary, as McChesney (1999) helpfully points out, this tradition provides a continuum of historical importance that reminds the media historian (and citizen) that the development of the present commercial broadcast system was not free of sophisticated critique and extensive social protest, even at the beginning. For McChesney (1999), it is,

“…a critique which in certain respects is every bit as valid today as it was then. It is a political critique which places the fight for public service broadcasting necessarily in the broader context of the fight for a more social democratic, even democratic socialist, society.” (McChesney, 1999, p. 339)

Similarly, to provide further useful context in our coverage of present and future media debates, McChesney (1999) highlights how the work of those earlier media reformers of the 1930s - the “first generation of media activists” - established the key principle,“…that control over broadcasting (and communication) must always be the duty of the citizenry in a democratic society; it should never, ever, be entrusted to the tender mercies of corporate and commercial interests.” (McChesney, 1999, p. 240)

However, as if to anticipate Graham’s (2003) misgivings, and as a measure of how quickly corporations can activate the agenda, BSkyB announced in mid-October 2003 a new programming initiative that would invest more fully in both world cinema and the highbrow arts. In a move deemed by commentators to enhance its public service credentials, BSkyB executives confirmed that a rota of established classics and contemporary international titles would be showcased and premiered on regular Saturday and Wednesday evenings on its Sky Cinema One channel. This was the first real commitment to non-commercial filmmaking outside the safer orbit of its major studio distribution deals that had characterised its programming thus far. The gesture to cineastes was coupled with an earlier 50% stake in the digital channel Artsworld which, valued at 3 million GB pounds, allowed the broadcaster to sponsor the English National Opera over the next three years.

These moves towards quality programming traditionally secured within the remit of the BBC were immediately seen in the context of the charter renewal debate that was already building as the BBC headed to renew its parliamentary remit in 2006. One vital argument that legitimises the BBC continued presence is the provision of special-interest services (coded as ‘quality’) - of the kind being enthusiastically adopted by BSkyB. By broadening its programming provision beyond the attractions of immediate commercial profit BSkyB would position the NewsCorp organisation for a likely take over of the terrestrial Channel Five system that had only been possible just a few months earlier. The BSkyB October 2003 announcements (conveniently staged at the prestigious Ivy restaurant in central London) confirmed Diller’s (2003) ground rules about mogul clout that can quickly combine production, distribution and promotional power towards favourable repositioning in the public and political sphere.

Further developments at the end of November 2003 confirmed earlier unease and fears when plans for a 57 million GB pound cost-cutting measure were announced at Granada-Carlton that lead to reductions in production and administrative staff and the sale of buildings. In a seven-point business strategy that has been duplicated since the 1950s chief designate Charles Allen committed to a bigger commercial impact where,

““Advertisers will say we need more housewives and children watching in day time, and we will drive our investment to deliver what they want”.” (Milmo, The Guardian. 27.11.2003:14)

 

2003 Outcomes - Territories Secured

The close of the year also witnessed the appointment in the U.K. of Rupert Murdoch’s younger son, James, 30, as the Chief Executive of BSkyB (Beard, 2003b) and, in the U.S., the FCC approval of the NewsCorp controlling purchase of DirecTV. The deal, compelling DirecTV to offer local channels in 130 markets by the end of 2004, was approved by a 3 to 2 vote in the closing weeks of December 2003.

At the same time results of an independent research project were published that focused on the coverage of the Iraqi war by the main U.K. news broadcasters that included NewsCorps’ Sky News. The research project was undertaken by the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies led by Professor Justin Lewis and was commissioned by the BBC. The findings confirmed how,

• embedded reporters avoided images they knew would be too graphic or violent

• that such reporters, despite their own wishes, were forced under constraints to produce the kind of coverage that made the war appear more acceptable

• that both reporters and viewers strongly supported independent reporting and wanted a multiplicity of voices to be heard that provided a wider coverage

As summarised by Wells (2003d), nine reports out of ten concerning the existence of weapons of mass destruction assumed that such weapons existed, that broadcasters were twice as likely to show Iraqi enthusiasm for the invading allied forces, and attribution to official sources often got lost through journalist short-hand as it got shuttled forwards by the competitive demands of 24-hour delivery. According to research leader Professor Justin Lewis (2003) of the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, “Following the death of many independent reporters - a number killed by US forces - there are some fears among journalists that US military strategy will make embedding the only safe option. This is a fear that interviews with the Pentagon - which makes it clear that the battlefield is no place for unauthorized reporters - suggest is justified.” (Lewis, The Guardian. 06.11.2003: 15).

This deliberate organisation of news coverage by the U.S. military - characterised by explicit restraint on movement and subsequent coverage and an obliging allowance of source video footage - seemed as a surprise to many contemporary observers. It should, however, be no surprise if we consider from Chapter Five how such policies of pooling, support and limitation have been a conscious design since the 1980s with the specific aim to fashion news towards that level of objectivity most acceptable to the Pentagon (Carpenter, 1995).

In support of such earlier contentions, and writing specifically about the policy of embedding reporters, Lewis (2003) made clear that the Pentagon, “…was happy to have them there, because they would show US-led forces winning the war. If this kind of “action footage” dominates the coverage, it forces wider issues off the margins, reducing the war to a simple narrative of “us” vs “them”.” (Lewis, The Guardian. 06.11.2003: 15).

A convergence of technological factors, institutional restraint, deliberate military policy and market pressure thus established that narrative perspective that webbed uncertain chaos into packaged narrative forms. That scenario would ultimately adhere to Altheide’s (2002) “problem frame” that confirms threat, identifies clear sources of such threat and works towards fixing a problem through easily measured outcomes. It is a frame, however, that emerges as if naturally to uphold certain specific ideological imperatives that support the underlying dominant hegemony.

(Charles Powell, addressing SUPERCOMM, June 20th-24th, 2004 & father Colin Powell on the publication of a new terrorist report from the Department ofState, 22, June, 2004).

Creating Spaces and Filling Voids

It is a hegemony that scrupulously oversees the news management of its own narrative practices, foreshadowing some elements, while assiduously burying others. While Defense Secretary Rumsfeld would at the beginning of the war in February 2003 celebrate the “free press coverage” that his forces were permitting and which, by inference, signalled the democratic principles for which the war was being fought, no such freedoms were activated by the end of the year in the United States itself when increasing numbers of American soldiers were returning from Iraq to be laid to rest.

For example, following a strict March 2003 directive from the Pentagon, media coverage of military services was already sharply curtailed. More specifically, coverage of the arrival of the war dead at the country’s only military mortuary in Dover, Delaware, would be banned outright. As reported by Gary Younge (2003),

“…for the first time since war in the television era, the sight of flag-covered caskets arriving to the salute of military colleagues and the tears of mourning relatives are no longer part of the national narrative.” (Younge, The Guardian G2. 07.11.2003: 3)

Other narrative erasures on the Homeland front were reported in the The International Herald Tribune in early November 2003 by the late Charles Levendosky (2003) who assembled a number of recent instances of peaceful public protest that highlighted the sudden creation of Free Speech Zones - by the Secret Service. As outlined by Levondosky,

“President George W. Bush has never been an advocate of the First Amendment. Even when he was governor of Texas, he prohibited demonstrations on the walkways in front of the governor’s mansion, an area which had traditionally been used for peaceful protests… As president Bush he has widened his restrictions on demonstrations against his policies. Anti-Bush protestors are now relegated to what are euphemistically called Free Speech Zones. These are areas cordoned off as far as a mile away from the president…are only for those who disagree with the administration’s current policies (and)…local law enforcement officers under orders of the Secret Service demand that protestors move into a free speech area.” (Levondosky, The International Herald Tribune. 06.11.2003: 9)

The same policies of news control and access that seemed so successful in the prosecution of the war in Iraq were applied more fully in the Free Speech Zone which many had supposed to be America itself. Indeed, no better tangible example could be envisioned in 2003 to so fully evidence the constrained conditions that characterised the sharply limited range of allowable social discourses and as were outlined in Chapter One.

Lastly, by the end of November 2003 Congress made changes to the FCC ruling of June 2003 that concerned the percentage of American viewers who could be reached by stations owned by a single owner. Rather than roll back the national television cap from the proposed 45% to the pre-June level of 35%, Congress settled for a 39% limit. The figure was hardly arbitrary since Viacom and NewsCorp were already operating stations with a reach of 38.8% (VIACOM) and 37.8% (NewsCorp). If the 35% limit were imposed, these corporations would have been compelled to sell the offending stations. The 39% increase effectively sanctioned their rule-breaking and gave rivals NBC and ABC the allowance to substantially expand their own holdings. Bizarrely, one loophole in the ruling permitted any company to violate the ruling for two years without any penalty.

The Naked and The Dead

This chapter has underscored the prevailing assimilation of such entertainment values into the practices of mainstream commercial news media as they were manifest across events in 2003. This overview is brought to a fitting close with reference to how the American media and governing administration attended to the uncomfortable aftermath of the Iraqi invasion in the Homeland.

While the American dead were arriving back to the USA out of media range, preparations were being made that, across the areas of book publishing, film and network news, secured in the public imagination a more unifying media event of suitably uplifting national symbolic importance.

The event in question was the publication of “I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story” that focused on the capture and ‘rescue’ of the-then nineteen-year-old clerk from Palestine, West Virginia, in the southern Iraqi city of Nasriyah in March 2003 (Teather, 2003). Lynch joined the army, it was said, because she could not secure a part-time job at Wal-Mart. The book had been written by journalist Rick Bragg who had earlier in the year created his own media storm when he resigned from The New York Times following his suspension for faking a by-line. He and Lynch were dividing the $1 million advance from publishers Knopf. As well as exposure to CBS PrimeTime, Lynch would also be prominently featured shortly thereafter as a cover story in Time magazine and in an inside article in Vanity Fair.

Adding to the media mix was the Sunday television showing of NBC’s film version of Lynch’s experiences, imaginatively entitled Saving Jessica Lynch. With no assistance from Lynch, NBC pieced together a version of events based on the account of Iraqi lawyer Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief who informed the U.S. military of Lynch’s location (his own book “Because Each Life Is Precious” was itself published by Harper Collins (NewsCorp)). To widen viewer choice, CBS transmitted at the same time their own specially made TV film - “The Elizabeth Smart Story” - which was based on the real-life abduction of the fourteen-year-old blonde girl from her home in Salt Lake City in 2002 and, who, like Lynch, was eventually returned to safety. Both film and interview were coincidentally transmitted during the highly competitive “sweeps month” when advertisers had the window of opportunity to access the relative strengths of the broadcasters and commit their dollars to prime spots for the year ahead. The narrow scope of provision that night from the main broadcasters is testimony to concerns from the Writers Guild as earlier recorded in Chapter Nine and which highlighted the increasing homogenisation of America’s broadcast airwaves.

To repeat accounts that readers are perhaps familiar with, the Lynch ‘story’ was first galvanised by the U.S. military when it released an edited five-minute video recording her ‘rescue’ as accompanied by claims that she had stab and bullet wounds. Intriguingly, the video was prompted by a ‘stray’ question from CNN’s Tom Mintier the day before that itself was lightly nudged by Pentagon officials. However, hospital doctor Anwar Uday would in May 2003 recall how, “…it was like a Hollywood film. They cried ‘go, go, go’, with guns and blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show - an action movie like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan, with jumping and shouting, breaking down doors…we were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital.” (Kampfner, The Guardian G2. 15.05.2003: 2-3)

In such an instance, the high-density micro mobile camera attached to the soldiers’ helmet could render the grim practice of pseudo-war into a dramaturgical appropriation of Reality TV which, wedded to the theatrics of Hollywood, provided a tightly edited and packaged (outsourced) news event that provided some opportune positive narrative spin at a time when advances across Iraq were said to be stymied - four Marines had earlier died in a helicopter crash and U.S. troops had killed a van full of Iraqi women and children (Eviatar, 2003). The whole scenario confirmed how the enterprising investigative journalist of former times who might have wrenched the story from the teeth of danger (Up, Close and Personal, 1996), had been deftly replaced by Navy Seals and Army Rangers who now undertook in more dramatic but staged terms their own version of the investigative ‘ambush’.

The example only serves to prove a general point made earlier that Pentagon commanders were themselves, as news workers/rhetors, primed to shape, enact and report events according to immediate dramaturgical and political exigencies. In this case it may have been to deflect negative attention away from the initial attack that led to Lynch’s capture and where eleven members of her 507 Maintenance Company were killed after, it was said, they took a wrong turning. Considering how rumours became ‘reports’ that turned quickly into convenient ‘news’,

“On NBC, Forrest Sawyer reported that, “Lynch continued firing at Iraqi troops, even after she was wounded,” while Robin Roberts on ABC’s Good Morning America announced that Lynch “fought fiercely”, “shooting several Iraqis” and “emptying her weapon before being stabbed and finally taken prisoner”. Although they all credited the Post, none of the networks made any reference to the fact that the Post itself acknowledged it was citing “rumors”.” (Eviatar, The Nation. 07.07.2003: 19)

The representation of the invading American forces as innocents who take ‘wrong turnings’ and are then unfairly overwhelmed by massive enemy numbers echoes other mythic scenarios and inverted narratives that have helped support and provide moral justification for other invasions of ‘underdeveloped nations’ - familiar scenarios of stranded and ‘outnumbered’ pioneers of the ‘wild’ west come easily to mind. The later appropriation of the ambush event by broadcasters NBC and CBS confirms Altheid’s (2001) acute point that underlined how,

“…the way in which news coverage foreshadows future TV movies. In this way, TV news becomes a kind of preview or advertisement for coming attractions. News as a form of knowledge is transformed through news as entertainment into news as advertising.” (Altheide, 2002, p. 47)

It is a perspective that wisely reframes any claim by television producers that their dramas can ever be based on a real-life story since, under market pressure, news stories must already conform to mainstream story paradigms as largely determined by Hollywood to have broadcast prominence in the first instance (Jacobs, 1996).

By way of uncomfortable ironic contrast to the media blitz that became the Jessica Lynch distraction, we end this chapter on the proceedings in 2003 on a note of suitable surrealty as pulled from Gary Younge’s article on how the U.S. Department of Defense laid to rest some of its dead by the end of the year. Conforming to the understood codes and conventions, for example, the burial of Artimus Brassfeld proceeded in accordance with tradition - he had been a tank driver during the war, killed instantly in a mortar attack while playing basketball at a military base in Samiri, Iraq, and his funeral was the fifth to date in Flint, Michigan. In a subdued scene too surreal for even Levinson’s Wag the Dog (1997), Younge reported how,

“Brassfeld was buried with full military honours, the purple heart and bronze star presented to his wife Andrea. In the distance, the bugle played. It was not clear whether it was just a man puffing his cheeks or really playing. Since last month the military has been using ”ceremonial buglers” at some military funerals - a tape that can be inserted into the bugle and sounds like the real thing. “We’ve got 1,800 veterans dying each day, and only 500 buglers”, said Lt Col Cynthia Colin, a defence department spokeswoman, “We needed to do something to fill the void”.” (Younge, The Guardian G2. 07.11.2003: 3)

 

Post-script, 2004-2005: The BBC Humbled

 

As a post-script to our 2003 coverage, Andrew Graham’s wary prognostications about the fate of commercial-free broadcasting were to resurface with the final release of the Lord Hutton Report in January 2004 that was intended to clarify the circumstances behind the suicide of arms inspector Dr. David Kelly and bring judgment upon BBC accounts of how the U.K. government justified its case for war.

As we know, the comprehensive severity of the report’s findings against the BBC resulted in the resignations of Gavyn Davies (Chairman) and Greg Dyke himself. In line with Graham’s (2003) fears voiced four months earlier, only one rival corporation could benefit from the bitter contest between the Blair office and the BBC, since “…it is obvious on straightforward commercial grounds that Sky would love to see the BBC much smaller. Anything - such as Hutton - that weakens the BBC is in the interests of News Corporation.” (Graham, The Guardian. 01.09.2003: 12)”.

Where to Now?

Why Not back to the Movies with this 2007 Update: http://wethemedia.edublogs.org/2007-lions-for-lambs/

END, for now…