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Debate: War as Reality TV? - Part 5 Dwayne's Last Word
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Dwayne Winseck
Debate: War as Reality TV?
Hosted by the Media Awareness Network
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Hi Bill,
Just a quick response to your comments on my original post.
Bill, I realize fully that you're under enormous constraints of time and pressure to write something compelling within the space of two hours. That reality, in fact, is crucial to what I was saying. Without being presumptuous and trying to know your job better than you do, let me suggest some of the following things, using your story as a spring board to broader issues that are relevant to the relationship between media, war, politics and people in general.
First, the idea that you are working under incredible time constraints also means that you need to use crutches that help you tell a story quickly and comprehensibly. In this sense, the idea of conventions that Lippman introduced serves not only as a way of simplifying the understanding of news but also its production. This, I'd argue, has become more important with the 'acceleration of information flows' and as parent corporations like the one heading the Sun newspaper that you work for, Quebecor, divert resources from producing news to financing the massive debts they've accumulated after an ill-advised buying spree over the last couple of years.
As Quebecor's presence across the Canadian mediascape ballooned, numerous colleagues of yours got their pink slips and I'm sure that you did what was necessary to keep a job: crank the stuff out in whatever time the company gave you. You want it in two hours, sure, no problem. The use of 'conventions as crutches' fits precisely into this logic and it is one that I'm suggesting does not only a disservice to enhancing understanding; it simultaneously generates an 'industrial model of news production', where media professionals have as much investment in the 'calling' of media work as my brother does in the production of cars at Fords where he works.
Just to finish this point: Your experience is not atypical here, and I'm not casting doubt on your integrity one bit, but only calling attention to the broader 'economic context' in which you must do what you do. I've been told by people from Reuters that they are now required to have a headline filed within 10 minutes of any news briefing they've been assigned to and a story within an hour or two of that. When we look at things in this way, I think, the problem is significant, working across both the reception of news as well as its production and, furthermore, up, down and across the entire media world, from the local Ottawa Sun to the globe straddling operations of Reuters.
Let's return to some of the other points that you raise. A key one I think is your point that this war is unlike anything previous. Yes, this is what I was saying in the original post, where I highlighted the difference between this war and the Vietnam War. You're right on to say that opposition to the Vietnam War only emerged over time, but what was vital was that media coverage changed only after the differences within both elite and public opinion became so glaring that it was impossible to ignore. Only then did the media open up more space for opposition and dissent. In short, the media followed public opinion, but did not lead it, contrary to prevailing views.
Today, in contrast, opposition to the war began even before the war started and this is currently reflected in unprecedented levels of distrust for those prosecuting the war or outright opposition to it. Thus, in contrast to the Vietnam War where opposition only developed over a long period of time, the current reality is that opposition already exists and is pretty well informed. The flip side of that, though, is that the extent of opposition is a problem for those who, as presidential mouthpiece Ari Fleisher put it today, need to 'manage public expectations' while simultaneously spilling over into and becoming a pretty prominent feature of popular culture.
The problem is not only that the news out of Iraq is bad, but also that it was a key part of the Oscars last night. This is a nightmare scenario for those whose job it is to manage public opinion and manage it specifically in support of 'official state policy.' What I was saying was not that things like the Oscars were a diversion from the war, but that the amazing thing is that the Oscars, the Oprah Winfrey show and rock concerts are now woven into the politics of war. The attempts to keep the war well with the contained boundaries of 'official politics' where the media operate as the echo chambers for official statements has already been breached and inserted into ebb and tide of popular culture, whereas this took nearly half a decade during the Vietnam War.
It is irrelevant whether Jack Valenti followed Michael Moore by design or by accident or whether his rebuke was explicitly stated or stoically kept under wraps. The two—the radical documentarian side by side with Hollywood's rep to Washington as the latter bestowed an Oscar for the 'conventional documentary' category (to the documentary on 9/11)—revealed a large slice of the American political universe and that it had invaded a slice of life that has so painstakingly avoided being political.
So, yes, this war is incredibly different than Vietnam, as the media's role is already quickly sliding from the pretense that it can stand on the sidelines and dispassionately convey 'objective news' during the nightly newscast to becoming a central actor in the events. Today, the mainstream media and media professionals can no longer plausibly lay claim to being impartial purveyors of objective news and are being forced to either aid and abet the government in 'managing expectations,' to conceal dissensus and a public opinion which is fragmented and highly qualified at best, or to amplify the tensions that already exist in societies across the world where the boundaries between the media, politics and culture are dissolving and not easily contained.
My point, Bill, is that relying too easily on conventions conceals these choices and is no longer tenable. So, what d'ya gonna do?
Cheers,
Dwayne
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