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On the borderlands of the Fourth Estate

On 24 January, the New York Times published an article about the resurfacing of former American Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld. Quoting a story in the Air Force Times, the article discussed Rumsfeld’s speech at Network Centric Warfare 2008, where he called for a reincarnation of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) - which was used to spread the message of “a nation that was carved from the wilderness and conceived in freedom [the United States]” during the Cold War - as “an information offensive against Muslim extremists.”

Wired’s Sharon Weinberger, who was present at the conference, asked Rumsfeld what his new agency might entail.

“We need someone in the United States government, some entity, not like the old USIA . . . I think this agency, a new agency, has to be something that would take advantage of the wonderful opportunities that exist today. There are multiple channels for information . . . The Internet is there, pods are there, talk radio is there, e-mails are there. There are all kinds of opportunities.”

Rumsfeld also said, in his response to Miss Weinberger, that such an agency wouldn’t…

”…have to infringe on the role of the free press, they can go do what they do, and that’s fine…Well, it’s not fine, but it’s what it is, let’s put it that way.”

What does the former Secretary contend by, “Well, it’s not fine…?”

And by what mechanism does he hope such pro-administration media, aimed at the Muslim world, can coexist with fact-oriented journalism?

In a recent perusal of Newsvine, I found a posting of the NYT article above that referred to Rumsfeld’s plan as the creation of a “Ministry of Truth,” a reference, yet again, to George Orwell’s 1984; the same book has recently made appearances in two of my articles for the EJC Magazine, here and here.

It was never my intention to mention Orwell while writing either article. On both occasions, he entered via osmosis from other sources, the first in a Salon.com article and the second in an academic resource about Walter Lippman. In fact, Orwell is making a lot of appearances in the press of late, especially in relation to the presidency of George W. Bush and his cadre of neoconservatives, including Rumsfeld.  Don’t believe me?  Scan a small selection of articles from The Seattle Times, The Washington Post, Alternet, Wired Magazine, ABC News and Harpers Magazine.

One could dismiss this trend as an inability of the press to conjure new and interesting metaphors. But there’s another possibility. Orwell’s vision has always served as our “What if?”

But what if it’s becoming our What is? The profusion of nods to Orwell might simply be a symptom of that.

Except it’s not quite Orwell, is it? He envisioned a kind of total information control, never a private or even unscripted moment. Rather, what we seem to be facing is total information subjectivity, the loss of meaning within the sheer crush coming from the media, the government, the business sector and the international community, all of whom seem to have radically differing perspectives. How is that dangerous?

The amount of information, itself, is not. The subtle insertion of false or misleading information is. Not only can no one keep up with the mass of information generated by the digital revolution, but neither can we seem to refute irrational, fallacious or malicious information before more of the same shifts the public’s attention from the previous.

Rumsfeld’s offhand remark, “…it’s not fine…” is a reminder of his overall disdain for press coverage during his tenure, typified by his “snowflake memos” with quips on how to deal with that coverage. This disdain is one shared by many in America these days; a vision where the free press, long essential to American democracy, has been demoted to just another type of furtive, decidedly “leftist” propaganda; another bit of noise alongside a resurrected USIA.

It’s a broad trend: instances of infotainment on CNN and Fox News; the patriotic deference of the press in justifying the invasion of Iraq; the campaign of misinformation the Bush administration used to start the Iraq War; the Administration’s programs, which I’ve mentioned before, to distribute fake news, to establish Free Speech Zones, to control the audience in public speaking engagements, distributing anti-protestor manuals and faking or coercing news conferences, like the recent FEMA debacle; the staging of a videoconference between Bush and American soldiers; the destruction of emails sought by US Congressional Committee and then the recent destruction of CIA interrogation tapes.

Journalists in both new and traditional media are predisposed by the necessity to report and analyze the truth, tasks which governments, purveyors of infotainment, and politicos of all shades often seem unconcerned with. Many have been instilled with the incorrect notion that, in order to report the truth, one must defer to every perspective in an argument, no matter how absurd or undemocratic or hostile to the press these perspectives might be. Nonsense.

Not all ideas are created equal. The very foundations of liberal democracy are simply ideas given weight by the institutions that grew up around them and the credence we lend them. When we accept the arguments of a Rumsfeld as equal to those foundations - that subterfuge and secrecy are on par with a free press and an open government - we elevate the institution above the idea. Western societies are biased in favour of government wherein free speech is protected and an independent press is responsible to the citizenry.

Orwell would be the first to agree.

Tags: donald rumsfeld, george orwell, government, new york times, nyt, u.s. information agency, united states, us, usia,

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