Page 31 - Conflict, Terrorism, and the Media In Asia

20 Toby Miller
contracts (Roy 2004). Could these ties constitute conflicts of interest (Benaim
et al. 2003)? Even amongst the thoroughly ideologized US public, 36 per cent
believed that the media over-emphasized the opinions of these retirees (Pew
Research Center for the People & the Press 2004a: 15). CNN’s gleeful coverage
of the invasion of Iraq was typified by one superannuated military officer who
rejoiced with ‘Slam, bam, bye-bye Saddam’ as missiles struck Baghdad (quoted
in Goldstein 2003).
Improper links were not only directly connected to killing. Clear Channel
Worldwide, the dominant force in US radio and concert promotion with over 1,200
stations, had banned 150 songs after September 11, including ‘Bridge over Troubled
Water’. It refused permission for protest groups to disseminate literature at an Ani
DiFranco concert and organized pro-war rallies and boycotts of anti-war performers,
just as it was lobbying for new ownership regulations from Federal Communications
Commission, Chair Michael Powell, son of the Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Another concentration beneficiary, Cumulus Media, rented a 33,000-pound tractor
to destroy Dixie Chicks music and memorabilia and purged the band from 262 play
lists for daring to question Bush minor. Further, Clear Channel’s board included a
Republican activist who had paid Bush minor vast sums for his failed baseball team
and handed over public money to Bush and his apparatchiks (Aufderheide 2004:
335; D’Entremont 2003; Grieve 2003; Jones 2003; Kellner 2003: 68; Krugman
2003). Could such arrangements constitute conflicts of interest?
In a competent media system, they would be understood as precisely that
(Timms 2003), with independent intellectuals trained in area studies, military
strategy, international law, and business ethics as counters. But that would depend
on power to cosmopolitan working journalists, rather than hack finance executives,
and serious action to provide media coverage that was both impartial and seen to
be so. Instead, the paranoid form of reporting favoured by US networks militates
against journalistic autonomy, other than when the information comes directly
from battlefields and is a ‘soldier’s story’ or derives from the Pentagon or the
Israeli government (Fisk 2003a). The prevailing doctrines of regulation favour
ownership of television stations by a small number of large entities that appeal to
anti-intellectual tendencies, regardless of their niches. For example, CNN and Fox
market themselves differently – the former to urban, educated viewers, the latter
to rural, uneducated viewers. One functions like a broadsheet, the other like a
tabloid, with CNN punditry coming mostly from outsiders and Fox punditry as
much from presenters as guests. CNN costs more to produce and attracts fewer rou-
tine viewers (but many more occasional ones). It brings in much higher advertising
revenue because of the composition of its audience and because of its fawning and
trite business coverage addresses and because it valourizes high-profile investors
and corporations in ways that Fox’s down-market populism does not (Alterman
2003: 136–137; Farhi 2003). Neither has any interest in academic expertise.
Those intellectuals who do obtain access to the US media have mostly
adopted the logic of global manifest destiny. For example, philosophical liberal
and lapsed feminist sex symbol Michael Ignatieff (2003) has called for a new and
thoroughgoing imperialism in the New York Times magazine, echoing Time, which