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CounterPunch
January
21, 2003
Soundstage Journalism
From the Streets
Into the Studios
by ROBERT JENSEN
On a blustery Sunday morning outside the CBS studio
in Washington, D.C., I shared a moment with veteran television
journalist Bob Schieffer that spoke volumes about the sad state
of democracy and journalism in the United States.
Schieffer was inside, behind the glass
wall. I was outside on the sidewalk with an antiwar contingent
organized by the women's peace group "Code
Pink" waiting to ask one of Schieffer's guests on "Face
the Nation" that morning -- Secretary of State Colin Powell
-- questions about U.S. plans to invade Iraq.
For a brief moment, Schieffer approached
the window to get a look at us. He smiled. I smiled back and
pointed to my sign, "From the streets into the studio."
I gestured to him to come outside to talk. "I'll explain
my sign," I said. He smiled, perhaps unable to hear me through
the thick glass wall. "C'mon out," I said, waving and
smiling to reassure him we weren't dangerous. "Let's talk."
Schieffer smiled again, waved, and walked
away. Shortly after that Powell arrived, ignoring our request
that he take a moment to talk with us. (At least Powell came
in through the front door. We had started the day at ABC, where
the guest for "This Week," Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld, entered the studio in a car through the garage to avoid
us.) About 15 minutes later, Schieffer began his interview with
Powell by saying:
"Yesterday we saw tens of thousands
of demonstrators converge on Washington. A fairly large crowd,
I would say, a very large crowd considering that the weather
was in the 20s. They say we should not go to war against Iraq.
I would just like to ask you this morning, what do you say those
people who say we shouldn't?"
I couldn't help but chuckle. Schieffer
was invoking the antiwar movement and its sizable protest the
day before, yet evidently he couldn't see a reason to take even
a few seconds that morning to talk with real live antiwar demonstrators
outside his door.
If Schieffer had come out, I would have
told him that the phrase on my sign was a condensed argument
for opening up the dialogue on public-affairs shows such as "Face
the Nation" to include more than just the voices from the
halls of power. No matter which network you tune to on Sunday
morning, these talk shows offer up a steady parade of government
officials, military officers, retired government officials, retired
military officers and the occasional academics or "experts"
who mostly parrot the official view.
The previous day (Jan. 18), those of
us on the sidewalk had been among the 200,000 protesters on the
Washington mall, with tens of thousands more in cities all over
the country, exercising our rights to assemble and speak. But
if Schieffer -- and the other journalists making choices about
whose voices get amplified on television -- were doing their
job responsibly, they would bring antiwar voices from the streets
into the studios. In addition to news stories about our demonstrations,
they would include such critical voices in their shows.
But, one might counter, can't journalists
-- who claim to function as watchdogs of power -- ask the tough
questions that opponents of the war might ask? Yes, they could,
but most often they don't. Throughout the interview, Schieffer
let Powell frame the issue and avoid difficult questions. Perhaps
the single
biggest failure of the interview was that Schieffer focused
entirely on inspections, which implicitly accepted the Bush administration
claim that a war against Iraq will be about the threat from weapons
of mass destruction. Schieffer never questioned Powell about
the desire of U.S. policymakers to consolidate control over the
flow of oil and oil profits in the Middle East. Might it not
be relevant to ask the secretary if the weapons issue could be
merely a pretext for an invasion to establish a U.S. client state
in Iraq? It's a question most of the world is asking.
At the antiwar rally on Saturday, that
analysis was explored in speeches from the stage and conversations
all over the mall. It was a grand display of democracy in action;
people engaged in spirited conversation about public policy.
But in a society where the majority of people get most of their
information from television, it is crucial that such a more expansive
debate make it on the air, that critics are not just tolerated
in the streets but invited into the studio.
Not surprisingly, Powell responded to
Schieffer's questions with the same pat answers that Bush administration
officials have been using for months as they try to explain why
we need a war that virtually the whole world opposes. And, also
not surprisingly, Schieffer never offered a serious challenge
to Powell.
What might have happened if Schieffer
had stepped outside to talk to us on the street? What might have
happened if he had allowed a representative of the antiwar movement
into the studio to challenge Powell?
From my vantage point as a former newspaper
journalist, a professor of journalism, and a citizen, I think
Schieffer would have been doing his job more responsibly. And
the American public would have learned more from such a show
than they did from Schieffer's polite, and mostly useless, interview
with Powell.
Journalists often are willing to cover
antiwar protests, and that's important. But, especially on television,
those stories almost never explore our evidence and arguments
in sufficient depth. Perhaps that is why much of America thinks
our analysis is about as deep as the slogans on a sign at a rally.
What if we were allowed routinely into
the television studios to speak for ourselves? Not only might
the public's view of protesters and the antiwar movement change,
but the debate over the war would be enriched and the American
people would be better informed.
My advice to Schieffer and his colleagues:
Next time you see a group of people willing to wait in the cold
outside your studio to make a political point, take a chance
and open the door. We don't bite, and we've got a lot to say.
Robert Jensen
is an associate professor of journalism at the University of
Texas at Austin, a member of the Nowar Collective, and author
of the book Writing
Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream
and the pamphlet "Citizens of the Empire."
He can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu.
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