News Media Aren’t Sacred Cows. Stop Treating Them So.
Big Tech vs Media Houses: Why Discriminate?
It’s still too early for the world to forget the faces of the tech honchos cowering before the US lawmakers’ antitrust sub-committee, humming and hawing to affirm their firms’ ethical commitments. Bezos seemed stifling a laugh that, if it had came out, would’ve the ring of overflowing coffers. Google’s Pichai kept phrasing and rephrasing what essentially meant “Y’all luddites — you know nothing.” All along Zuckerberg had that boyish air of how-dare-you-ask-it. Apple’s Cook was uninspiring.
News channels the world over celebrated the grilling. So did all the papers. As if it was their holy duty to sensitize people of the sly intends of Silicon Valley’s buzzards in blazers. Nothing new there: Have mass media ever miss a chance to tell us how the Big Tech spies on us, steals our data and sells it, washes our brains in byte concoctions all vile and murky?
Pause a moment to look beyond these holier-than-thou reports toward those who report. Let’s call them what, the Big News? Why not: many of them have the same traits, proclivities and aberrations as the Big Pharma or the Big Tech. They are just as — if more in some cases — greedy, predatory, power-hungry, money-driven, self-serving and monopolizing. And yet, in the free world, blaming the media for what are and what they do amounts to some sort of democratic blasphemy.
Why, oh why?
At work here is, in part, an ancient archetype. Media enjoy the tacit dignity of the messenger, a role revered even in autocracies and medieval monarchies. For a reason. A messenger is just what the word is supposed to mean — a carrier of messages, a big benign man-shaped tongue and no more. Amid worst hostilities he was spared by the cruelest of kings, could move freely. It made no sense to harm him for the fault of their vile masters or senders.
With liberal democracy came the powered-up messenger. No so fast, though. Ancient Greece, despite being the the womb and cradle of people’s rule, was a far cry from the flavor of democracy we are now used to. Oligarchic elements were rife in Athenian city-states and the Roman Republic. Democracy, more than any other system, conforms to the mold contrived of the attributes defining the epoch — global and local economies, means of transportation, technological maturity, degree of peace, social norms. And so democracy had to wait for a millennium or two before it got the media as its “Fourth Pillar”.
Wave after transformational wave would wash over the three other pillars, organically scrubbing layers of slime and cleansing the pores and mending the bends, rendering them desirably unrecognizable from how they had started out. Even something as seemingly ossified and change-averse as judiciary would yield to the demands of time, to socio-cultural ethos and modernist-postmodernist reformatory pressures.
But the Forth Pillar kept bucking the trend subtly and smartly. It still does, playing witness and victim in turn, forever fence-sitting and desecrating its perch. None dares to deal with them. So the Pillar stands on, with all the ills and infestations.
Outwardly, mass media may seem to have undergone some of the starkest transfigurations, from newspaper to television to satellite channels. But what remained stunted or even regressed are ethics, accountability, and a responsible mindset undaunted by profit. Instead of acting as the corrective force as it should, the media outgrew in some cases its intended role into something of a super-government, all rights and no responsibility, enjoying the legal and moral protection reserved for the virtuous messenger.
Why unchecked media is more sinister than we think?
They influence lives directly, methodically
They know what they are doing. Media are fully cognizant of their power, their impact on society, their potential for overt manipulation at all levels. They know how they can maneuver public opinion for or against certain groups or individuals, how to make and mar political careers and how, in spite of social media, they still offer the only true platform where it is feasible to employ a systematic approach to the dissemination of information/misinformation. Those who are so organized and deliberate in their acts shouldn’t go unaccountable.
Their moral compass is imaginary
As we saw, the very concept of messenger has noble roots. Even now, there hasn’t been much changed in our expectations from the media but as expectations they remain. We hope media to be this righteous, fearless, objective guardians of truth, refiners of ideals and values, active catalysts of social change, the voice of the voiceless. We wish the Big News to be this self-organizing fairground of democratic ideas, where morality comes a priori. We grant the abstraction called ‘media’ a certain inherent ethical high-ground for which they have no real claim. We’ve grown so used to call a clutch of mucky spades diamonds.
Their role in a democracy is practically eternal
Democracy might evolve or devolve but its core values stay. Cultures come and go but the essential human nature holds out. Technology, even at its finest, will keep failing to rectify our basic cognitive fallacies, faulty choice-making, our vulnerabilities. This means that a correction may never come from the society and media might forever enjoy their ‘independence’’. But is it any good? Nature stipulates that if a system refuses to strive for improvement, it will degenerate into chaos. If there isn’t an external compulsion to improve, the madiascape will never transmute or evolve, and we wouldn’t even notice. You know, even a suicide vest can keep you warm and comfy.
Self regulation almost never works
Unchecked power breeds irresponsibility. History has shown us that self-regulation is too idealistic to be of much use; it’s a wistful arrangement as absurd as pushing the car from within to speed it up. Worse still, whatever nominal regulations there are keep getting lifted in deference to freedom of speech. Consider the now annulled “fairness doctrine” of the FCC — Federal Communication Commission, a news regulation agency under the US government. Fairness doctrine mandated the media to treat controversial and sensitive topics with honesty, equitability , and balance. Who would find fault with such a decree, evidently a formalization of basic civility, empathy and human dignity? And what does it tell us about the startling power of ‘press freedom’ that the doctrine had suffered so vehement a push-back as to be dispensed with?
They by design own the best propaganda framework out there
The autonomy of media is this strange instance of means masquerading end, the form roleplaying the content. The term ‘medium’ has long lost its original essence, ceasing to mean an observer, a chronicler, a herald, a mirror, all of which now confine to the names of veteran news houses. It’s one thing that the ruling elite misusing media to smuggle in their agenda, what looks far worse is that the whole news industry regressing into a collection of self-serving bands, each flaunting swaths of snooping networks and a well-oiled, tried and true propaganda machinery. Like the hundred-armed Hecatoncheires of the legend, any one of their tentacles can seize the right tool at the right time, dial it round to the aptest mode, and get to work to further their interest. If a shouting march on the television won’t make the cut, the next morning’s paper can contrive the desired narrative with a solemn- sounding five-column piece dashed off by a paid conniver with enough repute. It’s a game of endless possibilities, sly symbiosis, and incessant rhetorical enrichment.
Their reach and accessibility can’t be matched
In a world getting increasingly paranoid of privacy, there’s this quite paradoxical prevalence, even a progressive exaltation, of media’s right to spy, snoop and gatecrash. Often they have a blanket entry into places where even the law-enforcement doesn’t. In once sense, so it must be. Nobody is forgetting here the brave, selfless, resolute reporters at tragic sites through minefields. But we shouldn’t fall for the fallacy of slothful generatlization here. Paparazzi and Goebbelsian cronies don’t deserve the same honor and credit as the most value-driven of the lot simply because they all belong to the same broad category, carry similar-seeming cameras and notepads and mics. A money-minded and morally reprehensible pressman is no more sacred than a money-minded and morally reprehensible lawyer or doctor or cop. Is it hard to see?
Society should shed its duplicity also on matters of privacy. Medical researchers scramble in vain for enough data to tame a pandemic while the paparazzo prowls with a free-ticket to the life of the person she has sworn to destroy.
Their affiliations are flexible
Perhaps here’s where we should start: Learn to distinguish between independence and alliances of convenience. Like any business, a news house thrives on getting the system work for them. Of late, one could even discern definite patterns in forging such affiliations. If you happen to be in an autocracy or the regime is totalitarian, you suck up to the state (Also goes for democracies where the ruling party enjoying a disproportionately massive mandate). In an even democracy, you almost always ally with the government’s critics, not exactly to put its policies to rights but to ensure the political atmosphere to be tumultuous enough to ceaselessly generate engrossing news and controversies.
That’s not to say every news medium is unprincipled. Only, the bad players are let off at all times. They escape any action whatsoever,flaunting their messenger tags and blazoning their right to freedom of speech and independence.
Causes
- In today’s world freedom is also about responsibility, fairness, intention, welfare and sensibilities — unless you are media. In media’s case, we are still stuck with the pre-modern messenger-archetype.
- We as a society generally agree that freedom has limitations at all levels, that freedom may not be an end in itself but a means to alleviate suffering, to ensure fairness and balance, enhance quality of life. Media somehow seem to fall outside this territory of responsible independence.
- Press-freedom has come to mean irresponsible reportage. There is too much tolerance for overtly mala fide campaigns, paid news, post truths and peddling of misinformation.
- For media, no tangible goals are to be set and pursued. They live one day at a time — an hour at a time, rather. That brings with it an evil variety of flexibility, adjustable to their immediate interests, no questions asked. This flexibility feeds on a credulous public and its transient memory.
- Media responsibility is never fully defined, and is too amorphous to be bound by the law of the land.
- There will never be a single case where a bad reporting be universally criticized. When exposed, or caught misbehaving, media have this tactic of throwing tantrums until a section of society rush to their side. Now the fight will be between two groups or political parties, for and against the offended media.
- Most media houses have become toxic amalgams of political foxiness and corporate greed, minus fear and accountability, the sort of aspects even the most powerful groups and persons cannot quite evade. Even Trump or the tech-CEO’s know their powers are not absolute. Media know the power needn’t be absolute — it only needs to be undefined. Boundless is better than absolute, any time.
- Media has a universality not just as a concept but in its manifestation as well. This, again, makes it different from other influential entities, including the government. Media behave fairly uniformly across the world, and so there’s a tacit internationalism run among them, uniting them. An action against any one of them, or a step towards censorship or governance in any country, would be taken up and fought ferociously by this powerful brotherhood.
- Media is faceless, amorphous. None of the reporters, news anchors or directors would quite represent the broadcaster or newspaper as a whole. You can’t summon the editor of Fox News as easily as you do that of Facebook.
- Due to their international reach and the solidarity they enjoy, they have protection even in several non-democracies. This shows how they have a special legal shield not quite aligned to rule books and constitutions. Actions and penalties against them, if there were any, were always nominal.
- They get away with pretty much anything in a democracy because politicians fear them, but not for good reasons. Here it’s a need-driven fear. Politicians want to look good, and for that they want prettifying mirrors. The last they want to touch are those who can taint and destroy their prospects overnight.
Mitigation
This is a classic case of privileging the unworthy. Here’s an industry that enjoys an eternal supply of goodwill and protection bred out of some inherited, vapid reverence. Needn’t it stop? Why aggrandize a section of the rich and the influential and let them so brazenly engineer our worldview, often in sheer bad faith? News media, as much as any who belong to the unscrupulous camp in a market economy, thrive on competition fueled by money and self-interest: it’s that simple. It isn’t just in China that the press play lackies to their shadowy masters — the government, corporations, ruling elite. From the US to India, the intellectual and moral independence of the media, to be benevolent with words, are shoddy and arbitrary.
As for mitigating it, though, one is forced to take a less than optimistic view since the core issues we discussed are implicit in the democratic ‘messenger’ concept. Self regulation is all we have as a sustainable option, but collective responsibility might be a little better. Media councils need to be emboldened, legalized, made answerable. The gradations in the media spectrum should be sharper so that, if the civil society is too powerless to act on bad actors, at least it can incentivize the honest ones.
