[ExI] the myth of the US "liberal media"

[Samantha Atkins]

One possible take home from this is that government funding of broadcast 
media opens the way for political culling of content.   Not a big 
surprise.  This happens in research grants as well.  At the best a lot 
of enshrining of pre-established viewpoints inevitably occurs.

- s


On 07/08/2011 09:51 AM, Damien Broderick wrote:
> The Strange Silencing of Liberal America
>
> JOHN PILGER - New Statesman
>
> <http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2011/07/pilger-foundation-obama-film> 
>
>
> Obama's greatest achievement is having seduced, co-opted and silenced 
> much of liberal opinion in the US.
>
>
> How does political censorship work in liberal societies? When my film 
> Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia was banned in the United 
> States in 1980, the broadcaster PBS cut all contact. Negotiations were 
> ended abruptly; phone calls were not returned. Something had happened. 
> But what? Year Zero had already alerted much of the world to Pol Pot's 
> horrors, but it also investigated the critical role of the Nixon 
> administration in the tyrant's rise to power and the devastation of 
> Cambodia.
>
> Six months later, a PBS official told me: "This wasn't censorship. 
> We're into difficult political days in Washington. Your film would 
> have given us problems with the Reagan administration. Sorry."
>
> In Britain, the long war in Northern Ireland spawned a similar, 
> deniable censorship. The journalist Liz Curtis compiled a list of more 
> than 50 television films that were never shown or indefinitely 
> delayed. The word "ban" was rarely used, and those responsible would 
> invariably insist they believed in free speech.
>
> The Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, believes in free 
> speech. The foundation's website says it is "dedicated to cultural 
> freedom, diversity and creativity". Authors, film-makers and poets 
> make their way to a sanctum of liberalism bankrolled by the 
> billionaire Patrick Lannan in the tradition of Rockefeller and Ford.
>
> The foundation also awards "grants" to America's liberal media, such 
> as Free Speech TV, the Foundation for National Progress (publisher of 
> the magazine Mother Jones), the Nation Institute and the TV and radio 
> programme Democracy Now!. In Britain, it has been a supporter of the 
> Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, of which I am one of the judges. 
> In 2008, Patrick Lannan backed Barack Obama's presidential campaign. 
> According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, he is "devoted" to Obama.
>
> World of not-knowing
>
> On 15 June, I was due in Santa Fe, having been invited to share a 
> platform with the distinguished American journalist David Barsamian. 
> The foundation was also to host the US premiere of my new film, The 
> War You Don't See, which investigates the false image-making of 
> warmakers, especially Obama.
>
> I was about to leave for Santa Fe when I received an email from the 
> Lannan Foundation official organising my visit. The tone was 
> incredulous. "Something has come up," she wrote. Patrick Lannan had 
> called her and ordered all my events to be cancelled. "I have no idea 
> what this is all about," she wrote.
>
> Baffled, I asked that the premiere of my film be allowed to go ahead, 
> as the US distribution largely depended on it. She repeated that "all" 
> my events were cancelled, "and this includes the screening of your 
> film". On the Lannan Foundation website, "cancelled" appeared across a 
> picture of me. There was no explanation. None of my phone calls was 
> returned, nor subsequent emails answered. A Kafka world of not-knowing 
> descended.
>
> The silence lasted a week until, under pressure from local media, the 
> foundation put out a terse statement that too few tickets had been 
> sold to make my visit "viable", and that "the Foundation regrets that 
> the reason for the cancellation was not explained to Mr Pilger or to 
> the public at the time the decision was made". Doubts were cast by a 
> robust editorial in the Santa Fe New Mexican. The paper, which has 
> long played a prominent role in promoting Lannan Foundation events, 
> disclosed that my visit had been cancelled before the main advertising 
> and previews were published. A full-page interview with me had to be 
> pulled hurriedly. "Pilger and Barsamian could have expected closer to 
> a packed 820-seat Lensic [arts centre]."
>
> The manager of The Screen, the Santa Fe cinema that had been rented 
> for the premiere, was called late at night and told to kill all his 
> online promotion for my film. He was given no explanation, but took it 
> on himself to reschedule the film for 23 June. It was a sell-out, with 
> many people turned away. The idea that there was no public interest 
> was demonstrably not true.
>
> Symptom of suppression
>
> Theories? There are many, but nothing is proven. For me, it is all 
> reminiscent of long shadows cast during the cold war. "Something is 
> going to surface," said Barsamian. "They can't keep the lid on this."
>
> My 15 June talk was to have been about the collusion of American 
> liberalism in a permanent state of war and in the demise of cherished 
> freedoms, such as the right to call governments to account. In the US, 
> as in Britain, serious dissent -- free speech -- has been 
> substantially criminalised. Obama the black liberal, the PC exemplar, 
> the marketing dream, is as much a warmonger as George W Bush. His 
> score is six wars. Never in US presidential history has the White 
> House prosecuted so many whistleblowers, yet this truth-telling, this 
> exercise of true citizenship, is at the heart of America's 
> constitutional First Amendment. Obama's greatest achievement is having 
> seduced, co-opted and silenced much of liberal opinion in the US, 
> including the anti-war movement.
>
> The reaction to the cancellation has been illuminating. The brave, 
> such as the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, were appalled and 
> said so. Similarly, many ordinary Americans called in to radio 
> stations and have written to me, recognising a symptom of far greater 
> suppression. But some exalted liberal voices have been affronted that 
> I dared whisper the word censorship about such a beacon of "cultural 
> freedom". The embarrassment of those who wish to point both ways is 
> palpable. Others have pulled down the shutters and said nothing. Given 
> their patron's ruthless show of power, it is understandable. For them, 
> the Russian dissident poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko once wrote: "When truth 
> is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie."
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