Manipulating the News

By Roy D. Follendore III

March 1, 2002

I was in the military and served my country during our Vietnam undeclared war. The thing about that war was that the news organizations were producing documentary images directly from the battles. It was a mess, but war is a mess even undeclared wars. That is the nature of war. The thing is that the United States did not have a decisive idea of what we wanted to do within that war even though we were trying to do the good things. In a way, the undeclared war in Vietnam became a democratic process. The vote did not take place with a ballot box. It took place in the media, the streets, and on the University campus. Of course, it also took place in the marketplaces, homes, and battlefields of Vietnam. In an oblique way, the people of Vietnam voted and the American citizens voted through their perceptions and their actions. The difference was that Vietnam is the home of the Vietnamese, not the home of Americans. When a people decide what kind of life they want, then they are responsible for it. Americans left Vietnam shattered by the fact that we did not make a difference. But we were wrong.

People make decisions but they can also change their minds. Vietnam is still a communist country but it is also a country that is changing. The thing that Americans did not understand in the 1960's and 70's was the fact that America had become so powerful because of our diversified ability to translate data and information from anywhere on our planet into knowledge. The news organizations were instrumental in changing the public opinion of Americans about our involvement in Vietnam. The American news organizations were in fact changing the landscape of the world by replaying what Americans were becoming in the face of what we were doing overseas. The news acts as a mirror for society.

By the 1980's this fact was changing and none of us knew it. If we had known it, we certainly would not have truly understood it. Cable CNN was a revolution, coming to the elite families that could afford the 24-7 access to news. This was the first major fracture of the news media since radio and then television encroached upon the domain of the newspaper giants. The thing that made cable news different was not just that it was being directed at the most influential members of the American society, but that it was absolutely relentless. Every news worthy event became a crusade with follow-ups lasting for days and even weeks. CNN simply had a lot of time to fill and to do that required not only constantly repeating stories but telling the tell in slightly different ways. The influence of CNN was soon far out of proportion to their ability to gather news and it took years for them to catch up.

While CNN was doing this, a new splinter to the news media was silently taking place. The Internet had been growing. What was once a military network, was quickly adopted by the computer geeks who had previously been connecting to telephone bulletin boards. It was on these computer boards that the technical elite were communicating not only about technology but also about news, weather, politics and just about everything that was being published in the commercial news media. The computer boards had been silently following a parallel path and the Internet opened up all kinds of new possibilities. Through the Internet, it was suddenly now possible to get thousands of channels of information about anything. More importantly, it was now possible for the individual to get the news on their own private terms. If you did not like the news in one place, then you could go somewhere else. If you did not like the news in the United States then you could go to the BBC and read what they were saying. Over time, this capability became more and more powerful.

This is the media history of my generation. I am from the first Television generation. There has been no previous generation with this much change, and it is uncertain if technology can change as dramatically as it has during these years. It is through my observations as a member of Generation TV that I now offer you the following reaction to the current political events of this Administration.

The present administration must be out of their minds if they think that they can manipulate news the way that it was done in World War II. Who ever thought of the idea of an "Office of Strategic Influence" must have been not only ignorant of the history of media, but also a dangerous lunatic. It is crazy to assume that the general populations in other countries are so limited as to be unwitting of the fact that the Internet exists. It is dangerous for us Americans to accept the idea that access to knowledge is not a right of Americans. Freedom of speech is about the freedom to hear truthful data, information, and knowledge. It is not about the right to create sound waves with your mouth. Even the CIA has this motto emblazoned within the entryway, "Ye shall know the truth and it shall set you free." It is therefore ludicrous for any administration to evoke content censorship on the media, to prevent or inhibit journalists from communicating the truth. And perhaps even most of all, it is dangerous for the Federal Government to influence the production of that truth. The question of whether any Government has the right to all data, information, and knowledge at any time is without a doubt constitutionally and morally questionable. The question of whether any Government then has the right to alter the production of truth by the media stabs at the heart of Constitutional freedoms.

Beyond all of this, I don't think that any entity has the capability to prevent knowledge from emerging. There are simply too many sources. Truth always seems to seep between the lines somewhere.

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