[North-NV-Greens] Fwd: International Crisis of the Press

[Paul Etxeberri]

>Note: this is a bit long, so scan it if you 
>must; it's easy to see parallels with the press 
>here.  P Etx
>
>Final edition for the press
>
>By Ignacio Ramonet
>Le Monde Diplomatique
>January 2005
>http://mondediplo.com/2005/01/16press
>
>WHAT could be more symbolic of the disarray of the
>French press, as it faces an alarming fall in sales
>figures, than that the erstwhile Maoist daily
>LibÈration recently decided to cede a major
>shareholding to the banker Edouard de Rothschild? Last
>year the Socpresse group, publisher of some 70 major
>titles including Le Figaro, L'Express, L'Expansion and
>dozens of regional newspapers, was bought by an arms
>manufacturer, Serge Dassault. Another arms
>manufacturer, Arnaud LagardËre, already owns the
>Hachette group (1), with 47 magazines (including Elle
>and PremiËre) besides dailies such as La Provence,
>Nice-Matin and Corse-Presse. If this decline in
>diversity continues, the independent press (2) risks
>being controlled by a few industrialists - Bouygues,
>Dassault, LagardËre, Pinault, Arnault, BollorÈ and
>Bertelsmann - whose busy merger activities threaten
>plurality (3).
>
>The fall in circulation is now affecting the quality
>press. For the first time in more than 15 years Le
>Monde diplomatique is also in the firing line. Since
>1990 we have had a regular rise in sales. Between 2001
>and 2003 we saw record sales, a cumulative rise of more
>than 25% (4). However, for 2004 (although the final
>results are not in yet) we expect a fall of about 12%
>(5). Most major dailies will also report falling sales,
>on top of already disappointing figures from 2003: Le
>Figaro -4.4%; LibËration -6.2%; Les Echos -6.4%; Le
>Monde -7.5%; and La Tribune -12.3%.
>
>This is far from being a French phenomenon. Sales of
>the American daily, the International Herald Tribune,
>dropped by 4.16% in 2003; in Britain sales of the
>Financial Times have fallen by 6.6%; over the past five
>years, newspaper sales have fallen by 7.7% in Germany,
>9.5% in Denmark, 9.9% in Austria and 6.9% in Belgium.
>Even in Japan, with the highest purchase of newspapers
>in the world per head of population, sales have fallen
>by 2.2%. Over the past decade in the European Union the
>number of papers sold overall has fallen by a million a
>day. Worldwide, the distribution of purchased (rather
>than free) papers has been falling at an average of 2%
>a year. Some people are beginning to wonder whether the
>printed press is a thing of the past, a relic of the
>industrial era destined for extinction.
>
>Titles are disappearing everywhere. In Hungary the
>daily Magyar Hirlap (owned by the Swiss Ringier group)
>closed on 5 November 2004. The previous day in Hong
>Kong, the prime reference weekly for Asian affairs, the
>Far Eastern Economic Review (owned by the US Dow Jones
>group), went out of business. In France, on 7 November
>2004, the monthly magazine Nova suspended publication.
>In the US, between 2000 and 2004, more than 2,000 press
>jobs were lost - 4% of the total workforce. The
>recession has also hit agencies that provide papers
>with information, with the industry giant, Reuters,
>recently announcing the lay-off of 4,500 staff.
>Give-away dailies, and the internet
>
>The external causes of this crisis are well-known.
>There is the devastating onslaught of give-away
>dailies. In France 20 Minutes leads the way with more
>than 2 million readers a day, with runners-up Le
>Parisien (1.7 million) and Metro (1.6 million). These
>free papers drain substantial advertising revenue from
>the traditional press, since advertisers do not care
>care whether readers pay for the papers.
>
>As a way of countering this competition - which could
>kill dailies and already threatens weeklies - some
>titles, particularly in Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey
>(although the phenomenon is spreading in France), are
>offering DVDs, CDs, cartoon strips, books, atlases and
>encyclopaedias, plus stamp collections, collectable
>banknotes, sets of glasses and chess games, all in
>return for a small increase in the cover price. This
>only worsens the confusion between information and
>commodification, with the danger that readers no longer
>know what they are buying. In adopting these tactics,
>newspapers lose their distinct identity, their status
>is downgraded and they venture on a slippery slope with
>an unpredictable outcome.
>
>The other external cause is, of course, the internet,
>which continues to expand at an extraordinary rate.
>During the first quarter of 2004 more than 4.7m
>websites were created. The world currently has some 70m
>websites and the net more than 700 million users. In
>developed countries many people have given up reading
>newspapers, and even watching television, in favour of
>the computer screen. The arrival of ADSL (asymetric
>digital subscriber line) has changed things
>dramatically. For between 10 and 30 pounds a month
>people can enjoy broadband access. In France 5.5m
>households have already signed up, giving them high-
>speed downloads of online news (79% of the world's
>newspapers have online editions) and a huge range of
>other information, email, photos, music, radio and
>television, films and video games.
>
>There is also "blogging", which exploded worldwide in
>2004. "Blogs" are personal diaries that mix news and
>opinion, verified facts and rumours, documented
>analysis and personal impressions. They have proved so
>successful that most online newspapers now have them.
>Their popularity suggests that many readers prefer the
>subjectivity and partiality of the bloggers to the
>hypocritical and false objectivity and impartiality of
>major papers. The growing possibility of connecting to
>the net through the new generation of mobile phones is
>likely to accelerate this process. Information is ever
>more mobile and nomadic. People can now access what is
>happening anywhere in the world at any moment of every
>day.
>
>In India the Times Internet company, a multimedia
>subsidiary of the daily Times of India, has a service
>that every month sends to subscribers more than 30m
>messages via SMS, a technology that is rapid, concise
>and inexpensive. In Japan and South Korea a growing
>number of people now receive the day's news via their
>mobile phones, which give continuous access to radio,
>plus television and 24-hour news channels. As a result,
>competition between non-net news sectors has now become
>so severe that all the providers are losing audiences
>(6).
>The internal causes
>
>But this crisis also has internal causes, which are
>mostly due to the loss of credibility of print media.
>One serious reason is that the press is being taken
>over by industrial groups that both run the economy and
>are in league with those who control politics. Another
>is that onesidedness, lack of objectivity, lies,
>manipulations and fraud are on the increase. We are
>under no illusion that there was ever a golden age of
>news, but such excesses now affect even the quality
>press. In the US the scandal of Jayson Blair - a
>journalist who falsified facts, plagiarised articles
>and invented stories - did huge damage to the New York
>Times, which had often put his stories on the front
>page (7). This newspaper of reference among the
>professional classes went through enormous structural
>changes afterwards: executive editor Howell Raines and
>managing editor Gerald Boyd were forced to resign, and
>for the first time a post of ombudsman was created -
>Daniel Okrent, opinion columnist and former editor-at-
>large of Time Inc.
>
>A few months later came an even more shocking scandal
>at the leading daily, USA Today. Its readers were
>astonished to discover that its most celebrated
>journalist, Jack Kelley, a star who had interviewed 36
>heads of state, covered a dozen wars and been a
>household name around the world for 20 years - was a
>compulsive fabricator of stories, a serial forger.
>Between 1993 and 2003 he had invented hundreds of
>sensational stories. By luck he always seemed to be on
>the spot when things happened, and readers would be
>treated to his graphic descriptions of them. He claimed
>to have witnessed a bombing in a pizza parlour in
>Jerusalem and described how three men next to him had
>been lifted up bodily by the explosion; they came down
>again with their heads blown off and rolling around in
>the street.
>
>Another outrageous story was his article about Cuba.
>Kelley had photographed a worker in a hotel
>("Jacqueline") and reported on her clandestine flight
>aboard a makeshift boat, and how she drowned in the
>straits of Florida. In reality the woman (real name
>Yamilet Fernandez) is alive and well, and never endured
>any such dramatic events. Another USA Today journalist,
>Blake Morrison, met her and revealed that Kelley had
>made up the story (8). The Kelley frauds, now regarded
>as among the gravest scandals in the history of US
>journalism, cost the jobs of the USA Today editor,
>Karen Jurgensen, executive editor, Brian Gallagher, and
>news editor, Hal Ritter (9).
>
>More recently, during the presidential election
>campaign, a new ethical storm hit the media. Dan
>Rather, star presenter of CBS's television news
>programme and anchorman for the prestigious Sixty
>Minutes programme, admitted that he had made public,
>without checking, forged documents that cast doubt on
>President George Bush's service in the Texas National
>Air Guard (10). Rather announced that he was stepping
>down from his job.
>Agents of propaganda
>
>Compounding these disasters we now have a situation in
>which major media, notably television's Fox News (11),
>have been transformed into propaganda organs for White
>House lies about the war in Iraq. Newspapers failed
>either to check or challenge statements from the Bush
>administration. If they had, a documentary such as
>Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 would not have enjoyed
>the success that it did. The information in the film
>had been around for a long time, but it had been kept
>under wraps by the media.
>
>Even the Washington Post and the New York Times took
>part in this "brainwashing", as was revealed in a
>recent article by John Pilger (12). He quoted headlines
>claiming that Iraq had secret arsenals of
>bacteriological, chemical and nuclear weapons and
>concluded that all these articles were propaganda. An
>internal email from New York Times star reporter Judith
>Miller (which was published in the Washington Post)
>admitted that her main source for such stories had been
>Ahmed Chalabi, an Iraqi exile known for his dubious
>statements. He was the leader of the Iraqi National
>Congress (INC), based in Washington and funded by the
>CIA. A US Congress inquiry later concluded that all the
>information supplied by Chalabi and other INC exiles
>had been worthless.
>
>A CIA officer, Robert Baer, revealed how the system of
>disinformation worked. The INC took information from
>supposed defectors and passed it to the CIA. Then the
>INC would tell reporters, "If you don't believe us,
>phone the CIA", setting up a self-confirming loop. In
>this way, the New York Times could claim that it had
>two sources for its stories about weapons of mass
>destruction in Iraq, the Washington Post likewise.
>Journalists didn't bother to inquire further. Anyway
>their editors were asking them to support the
>government, out of patriotism (13).
>
>The Washington Post's editor, Steve Coll, was forced to
>resign on 25 August 2004, after an inquiry highlighted
>the lack of space given to articles that contested the
>government's positions before the invasion of Iraq
>(14). The New York Times also offered a mea culpa in an
>editorial on 26 May 2004, in which it admitted a lack
>of rigour in its presentation of events leading up to
>the war, and publicly regretted having given "erroneous
>information".
>
>France has also had its share of media disasters,
>including the way major papers treated recent stories
>about the victimisation of an Algerian-born baggage
>handler at Orly airport, a paedophile ring in Outreau
>and a woman who falsely claimed to have been the victim
>of an anti-Semitic attack on the Paris underground.
>Similar things have happened in other countries. In
>Spain, after the Madrid bombings of 11 March 2004, the
>media controlled by the government of JosÈ-Maria Aznar
>tried to manipulate the situation for electoral
>purposes by concealing the involvement of al-Qaida and
>blaming Eta, the Basque separatist organisation.
>Journalism of compliancy
>
>All these scandals, plus media cosying up to the
>economic and political powers-that-be, have done
>tremendous harm to press credibility. They reveal a
>disturbing democratic deficit. A journalism of
>compliance is in the ascendancy and critical journalism
>on the decline. We could be forgiven for thinking that,
>given the new realities of globalisation and media
>mega-groups, the idea of a free press is threatened
>with extinction.
>
>Recent statements by Serge Dassault confirm the worst
>fears. When he took over Le Figaro, he told his
>editors: "I would hope that, where possible, the
>newspaper will devote more thought to our commercial
>interests. In my view, there are sometimes news items
>that require a lot of caution. For instance, articles
>that talk about contracts being negotiated. There is
>some news that does more harm than good. The risk is
>that it threatens the commercial or industrial
>interests of our country" (15). What he meant by "our
>country" was his arms manufacturing company, Dassault-
>Aviation. Presumably it was also to protect his company
>that he censored the story about the fraudulent sale of
>Mirage aircraft to Taiwan, and the story about
>discussions between Jacques Chirac and Abdelaziz
>Bouteflika on the planned sale of Rafale aircraft to
>Algeria (16).
>
>He set off alarm bells for journalists when he expanded
>on his reasons for deciding to buy L'Express and Le
>Figaro (17). A newspaper, he said, "makes it possible
>to convey a certain number of healthy ideas . . .
>Leftwing ideas are non-healthy ideas. Today we're in a
>mess because of leftwing ideas that are still around"
>(18). We could put these remarks beside comments by
>Patrick Le Lay of French media giant TF1. Describing
>his company's mission he said: "The job of TF1 is to
>help Coca-Cola to sell its product. What we sell to
>Coca-Cola is an availability of human brain-time" (19).
>Such statements express starkly the dangers inherent in
>the overlap of information and marketing. Obsessive
>commercialism directly contradicts the ethics of
>journalism.
>
>Commercial interests can make substantial inroads into
>journalism without readers even realising it. Walter
>Wells, editor of the International Herald Tribune
>(which belongs to the New York Times, a company that is
>quoted on the stock exchange) recently warned of the
>dangers of press enterprises going public on the Stock
>Exchange. As he said, when people take an editorial
>decision they have to ask themselves whether it will
>raise or lower the value of their publishing company's
>shares. This has become a major preoccupation. Editors
>constantly receive directives from a paper's financial
>owners, which is something new in journalism (20).
>
>On the net, manipulation and entrapment of readers can
>go even further. So the Forbes.com site, owned by US
>economics journal Forbes, creates new possibilities for
>advertising by including promotional links within the
>content of articles. Advertisers buy keywords, and when
>a reader's mouse passes over them, a pop-up appears
>with an advertising message. Journalists are not told
>in advance which keywords have been bought, and some
>wonder if they will soon be asked to write articles
>containing keywords to keep advertisers happy and
>revenues rolling.
>Public awareness
>
>The public is increasingly aware of these new dangers
>and sensitive to media manipulation. Yet it also
>paradoxically believes that, despite the media
>saturation in our society, we live in a state of
>information insecurity. Information may proliferate but
>we have zero guarantee of its reliability. It may turn
>out to be false. Journalism today is characterised by
>speculation and spectacle, to the detriment of properly
>investigative journalism. Display and packaging have
>taken over from verification of facts.
>
>Instead of functioning as a last bastion against
>standards declining because of the pressures of high-
>speed communication, newspapers are failing in their
>duty. By sometimes adopting a lazy police-style (21)
>approach to investigation they have helped discredit an
>institution that used to be regarded as the fourth
>estate. As Le Monde diplomatique's founder, Hubert
>Beuve-MÈry, always used to remark: "Comment is free;
>facts are sacred." But current media attitudes take the
>opposite position - and editors seem to think that
>their opinions, rarely substantiated, are sacred, while
>facts can happily be distorted to fit those opinions.
>
>In our current situation, in which enthusiasm for
>action is waning and people's visions of the future are
>pessimistic, the editorial team of Le Monde
>diplomatique is making every effort to improve its
>content. For us, it is crucially important not to
>betray our readers' trust. More than ever we rely on
>their activity and solidarity to defend our
>independence and the freedom that this guarantees for
>us. We would like to remind them gently that the best
>way to support us is to subscribe and to encourage
>friends and family to do the same.
>
>We are the paper of a society in movement, of those
>with a critical view of society, of those who want the
>world to change. We intend to stay faithful to the
>fundamental principles of our way of making news. That
>means slowing down the acceleration of media; opting
>for journalism that can illuminate the darker areas of
>present reality; interesting ourselves in situations
>that are not in the media's spotlight, but that can
>help us to a better understanding of the international
>context; offering even more complete, deep-ranging and
>better-documented supplements on major contemporary
>issues; going to the heart of those issues with rigour
>and seriousness; presenting news and information not
>often published, and, indeed, often concealed; and
>daring to go against the tide of the dominant media.
>
>We remain convinced that the quality of public debate
>depends on the quality of available information, and
>that the quality of public discussion is the crucial
>factor in creating a rich democracy.
>
>_______________________________________________________
>

-- 
Paul Etxeberri

"Forests precede civilizations and deserts follow"   ---Chateaubriand