J'Accuse

Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News often blogs about the future of journalism and the news media at his blog, Attytood. His perspective, as a journalist, is what the future holds for those who are in the news industry. Declining newspaper readership and alternative news sources (such as blogs) are some of the topics he covers.

I too sometimes write about the same issues, from the viewpoint of someone who is a recipient of the information that is communicated by journalists. My focus is the impact of the policies of the Bush Administration on journalism and the difficulties encountered by journalists due to these policies in disseminating information to the public. See e.g., If Only and Put down the steno pad.

In a recent post, Making the case: Journalists v. Bush, Bunch remarks:

With the nightmarish presidency of George W. Bush midway through its sixth year, I've come to realize that something more is going on here than just the usual push-pull between the media and the White House. A true journalist is not a partisan, but I also believe that journalists can -- in fact, must -- take a stand for certain broad and fundamental principles of freedom and democracy. That's because without such freedoms -- freedom of speech, to be sure, but also a government that is committed to things such as free elections and upholding the Constitution -- journalism itself has little meaning.

Today, I'm glad to report that the nation's journalism professors have reached some of the same conclusions.

Reporting that the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) passed a resolution on the Bush Administrations policies, Bunch states:

The key passage is: "The membership of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication urges the Bush administration to abandon its anti-press policies." The resolution identifies ten troubling practices involving secrecy, propaganda and the control of information. It recognizes that there is always tension between presidents and the press. "This tension is both unavoidable and generally salutary: When each side conducts its duties with honesty and integrity, both hold the power of the other in check."

I urge you the read the whole thing -- its indictment of Bush and Dick Cheney is well-documented, including excessive secrecy, warping Freedom of Information laws, staged town meetings, misleading "video news releases" and paying off friendly journalists while investigating hostile ones.

The resolution is the first time that the journalism professors targeted a specific U.S. administration since the Vietnam Era. There's also some other revealing history:

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press. However, American press history has been marked by periods in which press freedoms have retreated. The Alien and Sedition Acts of the 1790s represented one such period. Another was during the Civil War, in which journalists were jailed en masse because of dissent. The Espionage Act of 1917 paved the way for encroachments on press freedom (see Schenk v. United States). In each of these periods, politicians, judges, and scholars came to see, at least in hindsight, that anti-press policies in the name of national unity produced real harm to democracy itself. We believe that the Bush administration's anti-press policies and practices represent another major period.

Another blogger, Believing Impossible Things, summarized the practices listed in the resolution:

1. The Bush administration'’s response to press requests for information;
2. The Bush administration'’s use of staged town meetings;
3. The Bush administration'’s vision of the government as a private domain;
4. The Bush administration'’s practice of massive reclassification of documents;
5. The Bush administration'’s support of policies that weaken the multiplicity of voices on a local and national scale;
6. The Bush administration'’s policy of not allowing photographs of coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq to be released;
7. The Bush administration'’s use of propaganda, including video news releases;
8. The Bush administration'’s use of bribes and payments to columnists and other opinion makers;
9. The Bush administration'’s manipulation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; and
10. The Bush administration'’s using the courts to pressure journalists to give up their sources and to punish them for obtaining leaked information.

I think that pretty much sums things up.

Tags: Journalism, News and Media, Bush, Politics