Please visit our new site...

We are moving our blogging efforts to a new site, athensfreepress.blogspot.com. The content on this blog will be maintained, but not updated.

Some useful links to independent media:

Alternet.org - http://alternet.org
Antiwar.com - www.antiwar.com
Center for Constitutional Rights - www.ccrjustice.org
Counter Punch - www.counterpunch.org
Democracy Now! - www.democracynow.org
Economic Policy Institute - www.eipnet.org
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting - www.fair.org
Foreign Policy in Focus - www.fpif.org
Naomi Klein - www.naomiklein.org
Truth Dig - www.truthdig.com
Truth Out - www.truthout.org
Yes! Magazine - www.futurenet.org

Pub radio editorial standards

from Bill Dupuy's blog: "A debate is stirring about the public radio station in Athens, Ohio, refusing to broadast Amy Goodman's 'Demoracy Now.' I ran across the issue in the pub radio journal Current. A retired professor challenges the station's position that Amy's 'DM' does not meet its editorial standards." [read more]

Yes, "Democracy Now" Should be on WOUB!

I am delighted to hear that a group called "Athens Free Press" has been urging WOUB to air the truly independent alternative news program "Democracy Now."

Several years ago, I got fed up with the poor quality and highly filtered nature of the news available in the mainstream US media. As a political scientist specializing in things international, I was painfully aware that the news we get through the corporate media tends to ignore many important stories and facts which might prove inconvenient to corporate owners and their friends. Instead we get what I would call "tabloid news" featuring the current antics of Britney Spear or O. J. Simpson, the search for the latest missing pregnant housewife, etc. International coverage is
sparse and sanitized.

Nor is the admittedly less sensationalist news on public TV significantly more substantial or truly investigative. After all, the budgets for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting must go before Congress and the Republicans are constantly screaming about the mythological "liberal bias" of media. Though he's now returned, the outspoken journalist Bill Moyers was forced off of public television until the Republicans lost their control of Congress in 2006 elections. In addition, our supposedly "commercial free" public media are no longer, in fact, commercial-free. And many of the corporate sponsors of news programs such as the News Hour and Washington Week are big companies that have a vested interest in the way a hugely profitable war, globalization, and global warming are covered. All that tends to delay and inhibit open discussion of important issues on public TV.

Accordingly, the Walkers gave up and switched from cable to dish. As a result, we could watch news programs from Germany, Great Britain and even the Middle East. To our delight, we also discovered two truly independent media outlets, Free Speech TV and Link TV. Funded entirely by donations from private individuals, these rapidly growing stations are completely free from the commercial and political restraints that are put on main stream TV. Their main hour-long news program, "Democracy Now," features really good, hard-hitting investigative journalism and discussion. Many public TV stations around the country are now carrying it. As a donor to both WOUB and the other two stations, I hope WOUB will also soon pick up "Democracy Now."

Tom Walker
Political Science Department
Ohio University

Join effort to bring media reform to WOUB

It's no secret that the commercial media are all too typically mere divisions in larger corporations, the media themselves are becoming increasingly consolidated, already under-resourced news departments are losing support, and local media across the country are reducing their direct coverage of local and regional events, as they rely on feeds from above. As a result, the range of perspectives and analysis of important events are becoming less diverse.

In this regard, consider Bill Moyers' inimitable summary of the situation, and especially his references to public media stations: "As ownership gets more and more concentrated, fewer and fewer independent sources of information have survived in the marketplace; and those few significant alternatives that do survive, such as PBS and NPR, are under growing financial and political pressure to reduce critical news content and to shift their focus in a mainstream direction, which means being more attentive to establishment views than to the bleak realities of powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people."

Concerned about these changes, the Athens Free Press was formed last spring to persuade WOUB to incorporate the award-winning "Democracy Now," a one-hour news and interview program, into its program schedule. "Democracy Now," which has been described as excellent or outstanding by such public media luminaries as Diane Rehm and Bill Moyers, is aired five days a week on more than 650 domestic and international stations.

The first 10 minutes or so of the program highlights breaking stories. Following the news summary, guests, many of whom don't show up on NPR or PBS, are interviewed on a range of domestic and international events and issues. The program would be available for free on a trial basis the first year.

We've been in touch with public radio stations that currently carry "Democracy Now" about their audience reaction and fund-raising experiences with the program. Eleven stations have responded, all of them describing positive audience response to their carrying "Democracy Now." We learned recently that an informal poll of members of the Association of Independents in Radio produced highly positive responses regarding "Democracy Now." In the meantime, we have been busy gathering signatures, 330 so far, on a petition to have WOUB bring "Democracy Now" to the local public radio or TV programming.

We met with WOUB managers on two occasions last summer, presenting a detailed explanation of why "Democracy Now" is needed to complement current programming. They rejected our proposal and have ignored our documented rebuttal to their decision. We followed up at the October WOUB Community Advisory Council Meeting, where four of us distributed our position documents. To date, no response from WOUB or the Council.

In other documents submitted, I challenged WOUB's assertion that "Democracy Now" does not measure up to certain journalistic standards. With respect to journalistic standards, we wonder about WOUB's own journalistic standards, when the station recently accepted a $500,000 donation from Roger Ailes to help pay for a technologically advanced newsroom. Ailes is best known for his association with the right-wing Fox News Channel as news chairman and then, since 2005, as chairman of the Fox Television Stations Group.

Additionally, my first analysis focused on the coverage of Secretary of State Colin Powell's address to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003, in which Powell marshaled the evidence for invading Iraq. "Democracy Now" had experts who expressed skepticism about Powell's evidence, while the guests on NPR and PBS largely accepted the evidence in favor of an invasion. I will be investigating coverage of other significant events in coming months.

Our group, Athens Free Press, will be holding a public forum to discuss these issues at the Athens Public Library on Feb. 11, beginning at 7 p.m. In addition, please join us as we again present our case at the WOUB Community Advisory Council Meeting on Feb. 19, from 10 a.m until noon, in Radio Studio A, Radio and Television Building, on the campus of Ohio University. If you have questions, please contact Bob Sheak at bobsheak@columbus.rr.com.

Bob Sheak of Athens is an Ohio University emeritus professor of sociology.

Letter supporting Democracy Now from Bob McChesney

October 17, 2004

To Whom it May Concern:

I am a historian and scholar of journalism and media systems. I have written or edited eleven books, and have had my work translated into 14 languages. I have taught journalism students for the past 16 years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and now at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I am also a practicing journalist. I published a monthly magazine in Seattle in the 1980s and currently host a weekly hour-long program on journalism and media issues on WILL-AM, the NPR affiliate in eastern Illinois. The show is titled “Media Matters with Bob McChesney.” It will be syndicated nationally in 2005.

With all of this experience in practicing and studying journalism, I have been concerned by the way in which Democracy Now has been characterized as “advocacy journalism” or in some manner less professional than the journalism produced by NPR or much of the commercial news media. The implication or insinuation is the Democracy Now! is more interested in pushing a political agenda than mainstream – it is partisan – and therefore must not be regarded in the same light as NPR or most mainstream commercial news.

The perception is understandable, but it is dead wrong. Please let me explain.

Much of what is considered professional journalism in the United States is rigorously committed to being neutral politically, and providing a forum for those in power to debate each other on the issues of the day. If those in power, leading Republicans and Democrats, are debating an issue – say, for example, abortion rights – then journalism can appear combative as it reports the views of the contrasting sides. But if those in power do not disagree on an issue, or elect not to debate it, then contemporary professional journalism is severely hamstrung. It provides no opposition to the official story; if journalists elect to challenge what those in power agree upon they are accused of being “ideological” and pushing their own agenda. It is a terrible thing for a professional journalist to be accused of. It is, for example, one of the main reasons the press coverage of the build-up to the invasion of Iraq was so deplorable and unsatisfactory.

This version of professional journalism was not “natural.” In fact, it was the result of a decades long process in the first half of the twentieth century when journalists, editors and publishers grappled with how to establish a credible journalism that did not appear to simply promote the political views of the owners, as had been the practice in the first 125 years of the Republic. It was one thing to have partisan journalists when newspaper markets were highly competitive and a wide range of views would be present, but quite another thing to have stridently partisan journalism in the increasing number of one and two newspaper towns by the 20th century. The struggle for professional journalism was born.

It reached a head in the 1930s. Leading U.S. journalists like Heywood Broun and George Seldes argued that democracy required a truly independent journalism that did not simply reflect what official sources said and provide a forum for their debates. They did not want a partisan journalism but rather a journalism that saw itself as representing the broad interests of the people in constant pursuit of the truth. All people in power, all official sources, were to be regarded with skepticism. The vision of Broun and Seldes – and embodied in the journalists union they formed, The Newspaper Guild – was for a journalism rigorously committed to research and investigation and enlightenment, not to pontification.

Press owners were not enthralled with this type of journalism, nor were some journalists. It put the newspaper in constant hot water with the powers-that-be and that was not good for business. Also the owners themselves were part of the power structure and not especially interested in such a rigorous application of journalism. By the 1940s the more modest version of professional journalism was ascendant.

But the other version remained alive on the margins. Its greatest practitioner in the postwar years was I.F. Stone, the legendary reporter and editor of I.F. Stone’s Weekly, who broke scores of major stories that professional journalists never touched. Stone could never do his work with a conventional newspaper; it was considered far too controversial. But Stone never carried water for any political party of the movement; he was simply unsparing in his critical reporting on those in power. By the end of Stone’s life, and certainly today, Stone is considered one of the greatest journalists in U.S. history and arguably the greatest journalist of the second half of the twentieth century.

What Broun and Seldes promoted, what I.F. Stone did, is exactly what Democracy Now does. It is not partisan journalism. In fact, Democrats get the same treatment as Republicans. Ask Bill Clinton. I have no doubt that if Ralph Nader or John Kerry were in power, Democracy Now would subject them to the same critical analysis as it does George W. Bush. It is not unsubstantiated pontificating. It is very hard research on very serious issues concerning affairs of the state. It is roundly taught in journalism schools as precisely what journalism must do if we are to have a bona fide self-governing political system. As the great journalist Richard Reeves put it, real journalism is stuff we need to know to keep our freedom. That is Democracy Now in a nutshell.

If one understands Democracy Now in this tradition, we can see why it is also so controversial. People in power don’t tend to like it. But since when is that the yardstick of journalism, unless the country in question is a banana republic? If the reports it produces are filled with errors and misrepresentations, that is one thing. But no one makes that claim about Democracy Now. Its standards for factual accuracy equal or triumph mainstream news.

In this light, the occasional effort to characterize Democracy Now as the liberal version of right-wing talk radio or Fox News Channel is nonsensical. Right-wing talk show hosts do not do journalism. They simply bloviate opinions, and, invariably, conservative Republicans can do no wrong and Democrats can do no right. The programs are shameless. The better comparison for right-wing talk radio might be Air America. It is admittedly devoted to Democrats. But at the same time, as one who has listened to Air America, it has a much stronger commitment to factual accuracy and intellectual consistency. It is not shameless.

In short, Democracy Now is an extraordinary and necessary addition to the media diet of Americans. It is a superb complement to other news sources, such as NPR. The Democracy Now audience has mushroomed over the past two years because people who treasure Democracy Now and who treasure public life respond well to what it has to offer.

Please contact me if you wish to discuss the matter further.

Sincerely,

Robert W. McChesney
Research Professor
217-344-1545
rwmcces@uiuc.edu

"Democracy Now!" looks at "War Made Easy," by Norman Solomon

Our group here in Athens wants the local public radio station, WOUB, to include Democracy Now! in its weekly programming. We think that there is a need here for broadened news coverage that reflects another perspective, that offers a different interpretation of the news, and that covers stories that are not covered by public radio.

With this in mind, I watched Democracy Now! today (though I had the option of listening to it), and, after the headlines, the program focused on Norman Solomon's new DVD, War Made Easy. It's based on his book by the same name. There is not much on public radio and television in the DVD - or the book - but what there is doesn't make me confident that they can always be counted on to capture the real or full picture.

Well into Solomon's video, there is a short segment from an interview with Jim Lehrer in which Lehrer admits that his program, The Lehrer News Hour, never thought to question the administration's rationale for invading and occupying Iraq. They just went with the media flow, along with Fox, CNN, and MSNBC.

This implies, I think, that, for example, they uncritically accepted the fallacious testimony that Colin Powell gave at the U.N. in February of 2003. In his book, Solomon writes that "Powell's star turn at the United Nations elicited an outpouring of media adulation. In the process of deference to Powell, many liberals were among the swooners (p. 45). As Solomon's video establishes, Lehrer admitted to being one of the swooners. Democracy Now! remained critical, though few people had the opportunity to watch or listen to its criticisms. We all would have benefited from the information and critical perspective that Democracy Now! brought to its coverage of the pre-invasion news on Iraq.

In the book, Solomon also gives some examples of how NPR was also among the swooners, as it covered the early months of the war in a way that did little to help listeners to understand and become informed citizens on events in Iraq. Here's two examples:

"News stories about [Jessica] Lynch swiftly approached flood stage. On Wednesday, the Baltimore Sun devoted more than a thousand words to Lynch in a page-one article datelined from her hometown of Palestine. The next morning, National Public Radio did its bit by interviewing Lynch's kindergarten teacher, and correspondent Wade Goodwyn closed his report by declaring: 'For the family and friends of those who are held prisoner or who are missing in action, the advance of the American Army toward Baghdad cannot go fast enough" (206)

"A year after the invasion, Marine Corps spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Rick Long told a University of California symposium: 'The reason we embedded so many journalists is that we wanted to dominate the information environment." (Solomon that describes how reporters from an NPR affiliate was embedded and did nothing to raise questions about the validity of the U.S. occupation.) Solomon continues:

"...the National NPR program All Things Considered aired an on-the-scene description from Eric Niiler, a reporter with member station KPBS who was accompanying the 1st Marine Division as it fought to gain control of Fallujah. The report was more stenographic than journalistic. His first words were: "What I understand from the commanders here...." And his account of events seemed to be largly based on statements by those he later referred as 'Marine commanders here.' To the casual listener, it might have sounded like Niiler was actually a Marine himself, as when he began his response to a question from the NPR anchor by saying, 'Well, what's happened is that in the areas where we patrolled today, it's really very quiet.'"

On the basis of these few examples, public radio and television offered little counter-spin to the administration's early celebration of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. How many more examples are there of NPR just reporting the official line at critically important junctures in hugely important news events? We need Democracy Now! to provide critical balance - and independence - in our media news coverage.

Bob Sheak