Media, Democracy & the Post-Modern Age

The Truth Deficit

In the Watergate era, journalists were often seen as heroes. Even commercial TV and radio news outlets, although on the way to becoming showcases for infotainment, were considered by many to be potential parts of the solution. By the end of the 20th Century, however, most people didn't trust reporters any more than politicians, and a Roper poll found that 88 percent of those surveyed felt corporate owners and advertisers improperly influenced the press.

Most journalists who work for mainstream media outlets deny such influence, a lack of self-awareness (or candor) that tends to make matters worse. The fact that getting ahead means at times going along with the prevailing consensus remains one of the profession's debilitating secrets. But the issue isn't just that, or that a few media giants control the origination of most content, distribution, and transmission into our homes and computers, or that we're heading toward a pay-for-access Internet world that could make notions about its democratic potential sound like utopian fiction. The underlying problem is how public discussion of vital matters is shaped by gatekeepers.

Here’s an example that remains relevant in the age of Trump: In August 2005, a cover story in Newsweek on Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts aggressively dismissed reports that he was a conservative partisan. Two primary examples cited were the nominee's role on Bush's legal team in the court fight after the 2000 election, described by Newsweek as "minimal," and his membership in the conservative Federalist Society, which was pronounced an irrelevant distortion. Roberts "is not the hard-line ideologue that true believers on both sides had hoped for," the publication concluded.

The facts suggested a different appraisal. Roberts was a significant legal consultant, lawsuit editor and prep coach for Bush's arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court in December 2000, and wasn’t just a Federalist Society member but on the Washington chapter's steering committee in the late 1990s. More to the point, his roots in the conservative vanguard date back to his days with the Reagan administration, when he provided legal justifications for recasting the way government and the courts approached civil rights, defended attempts to narrow the reach of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, challenged arguments in favor of busing and affirmative action, and even argued that Congress should strip the Supreme Court of its ability to hear broad classes of civil-rights cases.

Nevertheless, most press reports echoed Newsweek's excitement about his "intellectual rigor and honesty."

Given the Supreme Court’s decisions since Roberts became Chief Justice, whether the narrative framing of his confirmation qualifies as disinformation is worth considering. In any case it shows how journalists may assist political leaders, albeit sometimes unwittingly, in shaping public awareness. As a practice, this is known in both government and public relations circles as "perception management," and it’s been happening for years.

That's why I was eager to attend the second Media and Democracy Congress in 1998. Journalists and media activists from across the country had gathered in New York to talk about the problems – things like concentration of ownership, the relentless slide into infotainment, an avalanche of gossip, disinformation, and "news" people don't need – and trade ideas about what to do. It was encouraging to be among colleagues and friends who weren't afraid of the A-word – advocacy.

During one panel journalistic iconoclast Christopher Hitchens noted wryly that the word partisan is almost always used in a negative context, while bipartisan is presented as a positive solution. It made me think: If that isn't an endorsement for the one-party state, what is?

Similarly, most journalists assiduously avoided saying, in print or on the air, that George W. Bush, Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan lied while president, although these were verifiable facts. But they did often note that Clinton and Reagan were great communicators, which is merely an opinion. The issue, Hitchens suggested, wasn't a lack of information – it's all out there somewhere – but how most reporters think and how the news is constructed.

Which brings us to the “free market” and competition, two basic tenets of the corporate faith. Unfortunately, most journalists are loyal missionaries of the Capitalist Church, the kind of true believers who described utility deregulation in the late 1990s as a "movement to bring competition to the electric industry." That was a classic corporate sermon, not a fact. The same kind of thing was said – when anything was mentioned – about the Telecommunications Act of 1996, although the actual result of that legislation was to reduce competition and sweep away consumer protections.

In 2009, when Sen. John McCain introduced The Internet Freedom Act, designed to “free” giant telecom companies from restrictions on their ability to block or slow down access to the content of their competitors, the sermon hadn’t changed. For example, The Wall Street Journal announced that he was just trying to stop regulators from “micromanaging the Web.”

The mainstream media also had little to say about the giveaway of the digital TV spectrum, a prime example of corporate welfare. Making the giants pay for this enormous new public resource could have dramatically reduced the federal deficit and adequately funded public broadcasting and children's TV. Instead spectrum rights were handed out for free. The only "string" was a vague contribution to be determined at a later date.

The Media and Democracy Congress did propose some alternatives: anti-trust laws to deal with the new world of global media, a tax on advertising – including the millions in political contributions that mainly end up in the coffers of media corporations – to adequately fund public broadcasting and public access, corporate divestment of news divisions, and a ban on children's advertising, to name a few. Unfortunately, none of this came to pass.

A year Later Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and reporter Jeremy Scahill, who went on to write a groundbreaking book about the private military contractor Blackwater, provided a dramatic illustration of just how limited mainstream media’s commitment to truth-seeking and keeping watch over the government can be. The dust up occurred at the 1999 awards ceremony organized by the Overseas Press Club. Goodman and Scahill were on hand to receive honors for their documentary, “Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria’s Oil Dictatorship.”

Realizing that the event’s keynote speaker was UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, an architect of NATO’s recently declared intervention in Yugoslavia, the urge to ask him some questions was irresistible. But they were prevented from talking to him prior to the speech, and Scahill subsequently learned that a condition of Holbrooke’s appearance was no interviews. Undaunted, he waited until the ambassador finished speaking, then approached the podium and tried again.

At that point Master of Ceremonies Tom Brokaw intervened. But not to defend Scahill’s right to inquire. No, instead the anchorman told him to sit down. When Scahill declined he was dragged away by security guards.

None of the noted journalists in the room uttered a word of protest. At a time when bombs were falling in Europe they apparently felt that “decorum” was more vital than finding out why a war had started. The official story was that the government of Slobodan Milosevic had refused to negotiate on Kosovo and was engaged in a brutal campaign of "ethnic cleansing" that bordered on genocide. NATO was intervening to prevent a "humanitarian catastrophe," claimed official sources, and sought only to alleviate human suffering and defend the rights of Kosovo's Muslim Albanians. But a series of stubborn facts, largely ignored by the mainstream media, contradicted those comforting assertions.

In February 1999, when so-called peace talks began in France, Yugoslavia was given an ultimatum: Grant Kosovo autonomy and let NATO station 30,000 troops there for the next three years – or else. If anyone was refusing to negotiate, it was the US and NATO. But the relentless use of buzzwords like ethnic cleansing and genocide, plus the redefinition of Milosevic as the world's latest “Hitler," gave this unyielding stance the veneer of humanitarian concern. Entirely omitted was the inconvenient reality that the violence in Kosovo was a part of an ongoing struggle between the government and separatists, who had been waging civil war for years.

So, why intervene, and why against the Serbs? The likely hidden agenda was to break Yugoslavia into smaller pieces. The Balkans is a strategic region, a crossroads between Western Europe and the oil-rich Middle East and Caspian Basin. In the 1990s, the Western powers had gained effective control over the former Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Bosnia, and Macedonia, as well as Hungary and Albania. The main hold out was the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In short, it stood in the path of the New World Order.

Another year passed, and in 2000, Goodman and Scahill recounted their Press Club experience to enthusiastic applause at the annual Project Censored awards ceremony. Now they were being recognized for covering the story the Press Club had suppressed: NATO’s deliberate push for war with Yugoslavia. Despite the self-imposed ignorance of corporate media’s gatekeepers, at least some of the truth had been revealed. (Originally posted in 2010)

Part Two: Navigating uncertainty in post-modern times

Alternative Media: From Phoenix to Vanguard

The growth of local and regional newspapers was the leading alternative press development of the 1970s. By the end of the decade there were several statewide weeklies, strong city papers, and smaller weeklies that had outgrown their original campus audiences. 
      They varied widely in style and tone – from the soft features of the Chicago Reader to the rough investigative journalism of the Bay Guardian – but shared a preference for the local slant, occasionally reflecting the global in smaller forms.
      No paper exploited the new commercial-friendly formula with more success than the Boston Phoenix, which was reaching over 100,000 readers by the end of the decade with fat, multi-section, ad-packed editions. The paper’s story began back in 1965 with a former MIT student newspaper editor, Joe Hanlon, who had the idea for an art insert to the Harvard Business School’s paper. Within a year it became an independent publication called Boston After Dark. Partners came and went, and by 1969 it was owned by Stephen Mindich, a Boston U grad who had started by selling ads. After Dark built its circulation by giving away papers on campuses and selling them elsewhere.
      There was a brief challenge. Vietnam vet Jeffrey Tarter saw the chance to combine arts coverage with local muckraking and started The Cambridge Phoenix, tapping into the area’s deep talent pool. But he couldn’t make it viable and soon sold to two local entrepreneurs. They hired a professional, beefed up the paper editorially and financially, and got vendors to hawk it downtown. It didn’t take long for the Phoenix to outclass its predecessor.
      Mindich adjusted, adopting the competition’s design and edgy style, even hiring his own vendors. He also added local news. Both papers prospered, packed with free classifieds and youth culture “guides.” It was a perfect market, half a million young people in the metropolitan area, and they had captured it by keeping the content sharp – but not too radical. The object was to be both hip and mainstream.
      Ultimately, Mindich bought the competition and took the name. The Phoenix staff got word in a brief announcement from publisher Richard Missner, a wealthy Harvard Business School grad. They were all fired. No notice, no severance pay, nothing. It was therefore no surprise when former Phoenix staffers started a paper of their own, The Real Paper. Theirs would be a staff-owned business, operated by consensus, giving everyone a vote in major decisions. 
      The experiment lasted nine years, but in the end The Real Paper folded while the Boston Phoenix became Phoenix Media/Communications Group, a New England mini-chain with radio stations and similar papers in Providence and Portland.

Vanguard Press 1979      

By 1977 the Boston Phoenix was already a prime example of how hip design, youth-oriented content and ruthless determination could capture a market. The lesson wasn’t lost on Steve Brown, one of the former Vermont Cynic staffers who’d dreamed of starting their own paper. After finishing school he had worked for Mindich, absorbing the lessons and working out how to apply the Phoenix formula to Burlington and Vermont.
      The Eclipse, founded in Burlington by UVM grad Peter MacAusland earlier that same year, was a long-shot from the start. It had talent – especially ace reporter John “J.D.” Dillon and photographer Ron “RoMac” MacNeil – but not enough money to pay its staff, and nothing for promotion or decent management. That fall we nevertheless published a dozen strong issues, writing the first local investigative features the city had seen in years. 
      We exposed environmental threats and government corruption, watchdogged officials, and gave voice to the emerging progressive agenda. But MacAusland’s limited capital wasn’t enough to sustain it. The paper had been launched on faith, on the passionate belief that it needed to be done and would work out somehow. 
      It probably would have failed anyway. But two things hastened its demise – Steve Brown’s arrival and an unexplained fire in the production office.
      The fire hit especially hard. The previous year The Frayed Page, a bookstore I ran collectively with friends, had moved from its second floor walk up to a newly renovated building nearby. We had decided to co-locate with Bookstacks, a local independent bookstore. They handled new books, we bought and sold used editions — and had special sections on leftwing politics. The Eclipse eventually took over our old location. 
      It felt familiar attending meetings there. But by late November 1977 it was a charred ruin.
      Steve’s message was less devastating, but just as disorienting. He had enough money to launch a viable weekly, with decently paid staff and a sales strategy based on the Phoenix model. There would be both local news and a strong arts section. In fact, he already had some staff picked out. But there was room for more, especially in the editorial department.
     Why not throw in with The Eclipse? The question was asked, repeatedly. But Steve had a distinct vision and wanted to start fresh. No need for excess baggage, either image or people-wise. He also had a name in mind – The Vanguard.
      As it worked out, Steve couldn’t have the exact name he wanted. A handicapped access group already owned it. Instead he went with Vermont Vanguard Press. In the end, most people called it the Vanguard anyway. But he did get several Eclipse staffers — specifically, J.D., RoMac and me. In December The Eclipse released its last issue, with a full eclipse on its cover. A month later, in the middle of a brutal storm, the first issue of the Vanguard Press hit the street. 

Vanguard Press, 1980       

A decade later, in a book on Vermont’s progressive revolution, The People’s Republic, I looked back at it this way: “Editing the Vanguard Press was the job I had been waiting for all of my adult life. From the time I had landed in Vermont, a wide-eyed hippie, in 1968, to that snow-covered day in 1978 when we distributed the first copies, I’d been thinking about the potential of an “alternative” newspaper to change the consciousness of the state.”
      Becoming editor took almost a year, however, and didn’t come easily. Despite my “advanced” age – that is,  compared to most of the staff – and newspaper experience, Steve didn’t know me well or completely trust my intentions. His idea, he explained, was a hip paper that didn’t take sides. There would not even be an editorial page! Instead, he would showcase various columnists and feature writers, mixed with “straight” news. 
      The job on offer was staff reporter, which included writing a weekly column, contributing news items, and developing at least one cover feature a month. Aside from the pay it sounded perfect. 
      
Chapter 16 of Prelude to a Revolution, from Dangerous Words. Photo above: In the first Vanguard Press office are original staff members, from left, Jeffrey Polman, Arts Editor; John Dillon, Associate Editor (seated); Ron MacNeil, Photo Editor; and Carlo Wolff, first Editor-in-Chief.

Next: Spooks, Nukes, and Counterterror

Cyber Threats: System Failures & Living in Denial

By Greg Guma

In August 2010, when Foreign Policy posted an article citing credible research and directly warned oil companies worldwide that their offshore oil rigs were highly vulnerable to hacking, few people took notice.

     “Computer commands can derail a train or cause a gas pipeline to burst,” warned former Bush administration counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke a few years later in Cyber War, his book on the topic. The reaction: mainly silence. Until recently, such scenarios seemed more like movie plots than foreign policy concerns, and the threat looked more domestic than foreign. 

     In early 2009, for instance, a 28-year-old contractor in California was charged in federal court with almost disabling an offshore rig. Prosecutors said the contractor, who was allegedly angry about not being hired full time, had hacked into the computerized network of an oil-rig off the coast, specifically the controls that detect leaks. He caused damage, but fortunately not a leak.

     After the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico the Christian Science Monitor reported that at least three US oil companies had been targets in a series of cyber attacks. The culprit was most likely someone or some group in China, and the incidents, largely un-reported for several years, had involved Marathon Oil, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips. But the companies apparently didn’t realize how serious their problem was until the FBI alerted them.

     At the time, federal officials said that proprietary information – email passwords, messages, and information linked to executives – had been flowing out to computers overseas. Chinese government involvement could not be confirmed, but some data did end up on a computer in China. One oil company security staffer privately coined the term “China virus.”
     Still, the companies generally preferred not to comment, or even admit that the attacks had happened. But the Monitor persisted, interviewing insiders, officials and cyber attack experts, and ultimately confirmed the details. Their overall conclusion was that cyber-burglars, using spyware that is almost undetectable, pose a serious and potentially dangerous threat to private industry.
     According to Clarke, many nations conduct Internet espionage and sometimes even cyber attacks. China has been aggressive at times, but so have Russia and North Korea. Spying on defense agencies and diplomats has been one major focus; strategically important businesses and even national governments have also been targeted.

     In 2011, when I first published an article on the problem, Google claimed that it had evidence of at least 20 companies that had been infiltrated by Chinese hackers. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, logic bombs were being infiltrated into the US electric power grid. If so, they could operate like time bombs. Now it looks likely that Russia was the actual culprit, or had the same idea.
     On oil rigs, the advent of robot-controlled platforms has made a cyber attack possible with a computer anywhere in the world. Control of a rig could be accomplished by hacking into the "integrated operations" that link onshore computer networks to offshore ones. Until 2018 few experts would speculate publicly that this may already have happened. But there has been confirmation of computer viruses causing personnel injuries and production losses on North Sea platforms for several years.
     One problem is that even though newer rigs have cutting-edge robotics technology, the software that controls their basic functions can still be old school. Many rely on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software, which was created in an era when "open source" was more important than security.
     "It's underappreciated how vulnerable some of these systems are," warned Jeff Vail, a former counterterrorism and intelligence analyst with the US Interior Department who talked with Greg Grant, author of the Foreign Policy article. "It is possible, if you really understood them, to cause catastrophic damage by causing safety systems to fail."
     The name of the article, by the way, was “The New Threat to Oil Supplies – Hackers.” It sounds a lot like “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the US.”
     To be fair, the US government’s failure to address private-sector vulnerability to cyber attacks goes back decades. Until recently, however, Congress and various administrations hesitated to challenge the status quo. Given the vulnerability of crucial infrastructure and much of the private sector, surprisingly little was done to prepare for what sounds inevitable.
     The US Cyber Command has attempted to protect federal infrastructure, while various branches of the military have developed their own offensive capabilities. But not even the Department of Homeland Security is officially responsible for protecting the private sector.  Legal and privacy issues get in the way of having the government directly monitor the Internet or business operations for evidence of potential cyber attacks. As you might expect, many businesses are wary of the regulations that might accompany government help.
     Though cyber attacks have clearly happened, many leave no obvious trace. As Clarke explained, corporations tend to believe that the “millions of dollars they have spent on computer security systems means they have successfully protected their company’s secrets.” Unfortunately, they are wrong. Intrusion detection and prevention systems sometimes fail.
     As it stands, no single federal agency is responsible for defending the banking system, power grids and oil rigs from attacks. The prevailing logic is that businesses should handle their own security. Yet their experts readily admit that they wouldn’t know what to do if an attack came from another nation, and assume that defense in such a case would be the government’s job.That’s capitalist thinking for you, private interests but socialized costs.
     In 2011, a US Senate bill sponsored by Democrat Jay Rockefeller and Republican Olympia Snowe sought to change that, but became another victim of DC gridlock. It would have required the president to work with the private sector on a comprehensive national cybersecurity strategy, created a joint public-private advisory board, and led to a Senate-confirmed national security adviser position. Rockefeller said the goal was “unprecedented information sharing between government and the private sector.”
     James Fallows has argued that the US suffers from “a conspiracy of secrecy about the scale of cyber risk.” His point was that many companies simply won’t admit how easily they can be infiltrated. As a result, changes in the law, the regulatory environment, or personal habits that could increase safety are not seriously discussed.  
      But sooner or later, Fallows concluded, “the cyber equivalent of 9/11 will occur.” That prediction is bad enough. But then he adds, “if the real 9/11 is a model, we will understandably, but destructively, overreact.” 
      So we’ve also got that to look forward to.

Fake News Is Focus of UVM Talk and New Book

BURLINGTON —  On March 15, Vermont-based author and activist Greg Guma will discuss “Journalism In the Era of Fake News” at the UVM Alumni House, presented by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. The presentation will cover many of the themes in his new book, which was released in February. 

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This is Guma’s tenth book. Fake News: Journalism in the Age of Deceptions is brief, but takes on a large and timely topic — the challenges confronting journalism in a post-modern era characterized by fraud and scandal, questionable elections, corrupt leaders, and phony news. It argues that sophisticated tools have been used for years by governments and private interests to promote false or misleading stories, messages and narratives. But when people repeatedly exposed to lies are confronted with the truth, too many double down and believe the lies even more. 

Topics in the book and upcoming talk include the recent weaponizing of the term “fake news”; hoaxes, fabricated stories and false flag operations throughout history; the use of perception management strategies by governments and private interests; election manipulation and post-truth problems; the dangers of polarization and how people can avoid living in a bubble. One of the incidents revisited in the book is a 1978 disinformation campaign in Vermont.

A previous book by Guma, The People’s Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution, was cited in coverage of Bernie Sanders during the 2016 election. The author was a frequently quoted source, learning first-hand how national journalists develop and shape narratives. In 2015 he was a candidate for Burlington mayor. Guma’s background in journalism dates back to work as a daily newspaper reporter and photographer in the late 1960s, and ranges from editing periodicals like the Vermont Vanguard Press, Toward Freedom and Vermont Guardian to managing the national Pacifica radio network.  

In 2003, the University of Vermont received initial funding from the Bernard Osher foundation to establish lifelong learning institutes that provide courses and programs for Vermonters age 50 and over. Three years later, the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute was permanently established at UVM. Other Institutes offer non-credit courses and programs at affordable prices in nine Vermont communities.

To attend “Journalism in the Era of Fake News,” visit OLLI’s website at http://learn.uvm.edu/olli,  or contact Lora Phillips at 802-656-2085 or uvmolli@uvm.edu. Guma will speak at 5:30 p.m. in the Pavilion of the university’s Alumni House at 61 Summit Street. Enrollment and seating are limited.

Fake News: Journalism in the Age of Deceptons can be sampled or purchased for any electronic device. An illustrated paperback edition was released on Feb. 27. 

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Humanity at the Turning Point

Part 33 of Prisoners of the Real

For a century, humanity has been in the early stages of a great transformation, perhaps the greatest it has ever faced. As revealed in the dissolution of the "superpower" known as the Soviet Union, it is not merely a matter of one economic and social system prevailing over another. All systems are under severe stress. Alliances crumble, ethnic and religious upheavals shake the world, class and racial conflict flares across the US, the planet itself shudders under the threat of environmental Armageddon.

Martin Buber recognized the stakes when he wrote, "What is in question, therefore, is nothing less than man’s whole existence in the world."

During the various stages of human evolution, the central dynamic has consistently been the relationship between human beings and the rest of the natural world. But over the last five hundred years the tempo of our crusade to assert power over nature has increased dramatically, and with devastating effect. As crises pile upon one another, we have slowly begun to see just how fragile our "triumph" has been. In quickly repressed moments of intuition we sense that the high road of progress is actually a high-speed ride along the narrow ledge of an abyss. What we desperately need is conscious, responsible knowledge, and flowing from it, truly heroic deeds.

But taking account of the journey ahead will not be enough. In order to act effectively we will need to acknowledge where the journey began. Human beings first emerged from nature by banding together –to protect themselves, hunt, gather food and work. Yet, from the very start, we faced each other as independent entities. A "social" world was created by beings both mutually dependent and fiercely independent. No group of animals had ever constructed such a society before.

Apes use tools, but don't "produce" them for one another. Insect societies have division of labor, but it governs them completely; they don't improvise, strike out independently, or develop one-to-one relationships. It is precisely this unique quality of humanity – the complex and dynamic tension between autonomy and unity – that has brought us to our turning point.

Communities form, reform and evolve on the basis of the twin principles of growing personal independence and collaboration. In every group, in one form or another, division of labor emerges, each person utilizing special capacities in a renewing, shifting association. This is the first step in the evolution of any human organization. The second is the development of relations between groups – in other words, some agreement to combine effort in the pursuit of an external objective. In doing both, we acknowledge differences in nature and function. No matter what the particular shape or customs of a human society, a balance between functional autonomy and mutual aid must be struck both within groups and in relations between them.

Power centers come and go – cities, states and bureaucracies that boldly guarantee order and security. Yet at the root, what counts is the organic and enduring human community in which we live and work, where we compete with and support one another. And within each community and group, asserting independence while simultaneously fulfilling responsibilities to fellow human beings, is the individual – autonomous and yet profoundly social.

How tragic, then, that these fundamental aspects of human development have been so distorted by centralistic and absolutist institutions. The problem isn't merely that the State has weakened and in many respects destroyed free associations – although it has also done that. The true tragedy is that the centralist impulse has become embedded in all forms of social interaction. It has changed the inherent structure of groups, the family, institutions, and societies, as well as the inner life of humanity. Modern industrial development has meanwhile accelerated society's subsumption within the State.

Struggles between States have become struggles between whole societies. And societies, perceiving threats both from outside and within their very nature, have often submitted further to centralized power as a result. The pattern has replayed itself in varied political systems, from the most brutally totalitarian to the proudest democratic.

As the importance of power, the interests of the State and the marketing of mass culture have saturated societies, the inner development of the individual has become confused and disfigured. The family, work group and community no longer provide a source of reassurance. Individuals cling increasingly to the great collectivities, abdicating individual freedom and responsibility. In the process, a key component in social life – mutual support between human beings – has been severely undermined. In many places and situations, autonomous relationships have become meaningless. As Buber put it, "The personal human being ceases to be the living member of a social body and becomes a cog in the 'collective' machine."

Just at the moment when, in some societies at least, there is finally time to improve community life, it has been hollowed into an empty shell.

Next: Narcissism & Grand Delusions

To read other chapters, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey