Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

Independent Student Newspaper Since 1969

The Badger Herald

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American media is in need of reform

Oct. 29 of last year, when the atmosphere was heating up with the election rhetoric, Osama bin Laden contributed what every one expected of him: A campaign speech. The American media, particularly the major news networks, rushed to analyze the speech and provide commentary on its content while broadcasting short excerpts.

It is rather ironic that some of these networks placed enough importance on this speech to actually have teams of commentators at hand awaiting the tape’s anticipated release on Al-Jazeera, yet none of these networks provided their audience with full transcript of the speech: not on TV, nor on their website.

Translation of the speech, which was posted in full, in Arabic and in English on Al-Jazeera’s websites within the day, did not appear on the websites of these networks until after the elections, and rather abbreviated transcripts.

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It is curious then that most American voters went to the polls four days later without being able to verify what seemed like a media consensus that bin Laden’s central message was: Vote for Kerry. This implicit association of Kerry and bin Laden had a devastating effect on his support. This is not to endorse Kerry by any means, or to say that it was the only reason he failed.

Bin Laden’s speech focused on announcing that he was rather perplexed that in the fourth year after the Sept. 11 events, most Americans did not understand the real reason behind the attacks. “Thinking people, when disaster strikes, make it their priority to look for its causes, in order to prevent it happening again. But I am amazed at you.” He said, accusing President George Bush of engaging in distortion and deception.

Citing the often traded reasoning of “because they hate our freedom,” bin Laden wondered why the attacks didn’t take place in Sweden, for example. He presents his version of the reasoning, which, regardless of whether true or not, should be common knowledge to every thinking person who wants to prevent the reoccurrence of a disaster.

Understanding the motive that drove the attackers, or at least bin Laden’s reasoning, would have made the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and their cost, in material, human life and civil liberties very unpopular with the American public, so the government’s interest lays in filtering out the truth, or at least the other story. Governments often do that; it is not their job per se to report on their own deficiencies. However, it is the duty of the free press to do so, but for the most part American media agreed with the government’s presentation of the story and often accepted pre-packaged news stories from government agencies and published them with little-to-no scrutiny.

Unfortunately, this is only one case to point out. Over time, the media has been guilty of neglecting many truths in order not to disturb their business contributors or come under any pressure from political organizations. Given the number of events that take place every day, news that gets reported has to go through a highly selective screening process, and instead of prioritizing news by their significance, story choice is heavily influenced by the preferences of these businesses and organizations. (An interesting test would be to compare top-stories on the sites of CNN and BBC simultaneously.)

The vacuum caused by leaving out significant stories, or significant aspects of stories, allows for the most dangerous trends in modern journalism: news editorials and the blurring of lines between news coverage and opinion commentary.

Increasingly and at an alarming rate, news anchors and reporters contribute their own views on the stories they are reporting. Editorials, cleverly and in some cases blatantly, are mixed with news, having a brain-washing effect on a rather large segment of the population, who naively accepts the coverage of one or few akin news sources and do not make the extra effort to receive unbiased coverage.

The media needs to understand we are adults, respect our intellectual capacity, recognize our emotional strength and our ability to make a decision. It needs to stop reporting sound bytes and filling our airtime with its intellectually insulting commentaries. Until then, we must exercise our intellect and freedom, by seeking news from alternative sources, be it independent or foreign, for multiple views are necessary to inform us, helping to form our own.

Fayyad Sbaihat ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in chemical engineering.

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