DISMAY OVER A WORLD DIVIDED 60-40 ON IMPORTANCE OF A FREE PRESS
December 12th 2007 03:14
The recent item that world opinion is divided on the importance of having a free press, according to a poll of 11,344 people in 14 countries conducted for the BBC World Service, has prompted anguished comments from this blog’s readers, not to mention spirited debate.
Some blog readers were dismayed that almost 40 percent of respondents said it was more important to maintain social harmony and peace, even if it meant curbing the press's freedom to report news truthfully.
To make matters worse, the Australian Rationalist magazine in its current issue features an article by John Pilger titled, Time for a Fifth Estate.
Essentially Pilger agrees that the notion of major mainstream press being a free press is mostly a myth.
This is the stirring opening to his challenging piece:
“Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented.
It is a history few journalists talk about or know about, and it began with the
arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called ‘professional journalism’ was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishment – objective, impartial, balanced. The first
schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and the whole thing was, as the prominent mass media critic Robert McChesney
put it so well, ‘entirely bogus’.
For what the public did not know was that in order to be professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were dominated by official sources, and that has not changed. Go through the New York Times
on any day, and check the sources of the main political stories – domestic and foreign – and you’ll find they’re dominated by government and other established interests. That is the essence of professional journalism. I am not suggesting that independent journalism was or is excluded, but it is more likely to be an honourable exception.
Consider how the power of this invisible government has grown. In 1983 the principle global media was owned by fifty corporations, most of them American. In 2002 this had fallen to just nine corporations. Today it is probably about five. Rupert Murdoch has predicted that there will be just three global media giants, and his company will be one of them.”
Some blog readers were dismayed that almost 40 percent of respondents said it was more important to maintain social harmony and peace, even if it meant curbing the press's freedom to report news truthfully.
To make matters worse, the Australian Rationalist magazine in its current issue features an article by John Pilger titled, Time for a Fifth Estate.
This is the stirring opening to his challenging piece:
“Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country. He was referring to journalism, the media. That was almost 80 years ago, not long after corporate journalism was invented.
It is a history few journalists talk about or know about, and it began with the
arrival of corporate advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press, something called ‘professional journalism’ was invented. To attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear respectable, pillars of the establishment – objective, impartial, balanced. The first
schools of journalism were set up, and a mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with the new media and with the great corporations, and the whole thing was, as the prominent mass media critic Robert McChesney
For what the public did not know was that in order to be professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were dominated by official sources, and that has not changed. Go through the New York Times
on any day, and check the sources of the main political stories – domestic and foreign – and you’ll find they’re dominated by government and other established interests. That is the essence of professional journalism. I am not suggesting that independent journalism was or is excluded, but it is more likely to be an honourable exception.
Consider how the power of this invisible government has grown. In 1983 the principle global media was owned by fifty corporations, most of them American. In 2002 this had fallen to just nine corporations. Today it is probably about five. Rupert Murdoch has predicted that there will be just three global media giants, and his company will be one of them.”
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