How free is the US media?

Following the violent fallout of the Newsweek story describing the toilet flushing of a Koran in Guantanamo Bay and the magazine's subsequent retraction, I suspected a "conspiracy" of Newsweek coming under intense pressure from either the administration or its right-wing surrogates. I felt validated after the Pentagon's own admission of Koran desecration at Guantanamo, including the ludicrous one of a soldier relieving himself near an air vent through which wind unintentionally blew urine on an inmate's Koran.

What is particularly disconcerting is how the mainstream US media either ignores or relegates damaging news to the back pages. The recent "memo-gate" scandal detailing the false grounds on which the US and UK built the Iraq war is a good case in point. While the memo, written by a British national security official, received front page coverage in England, the US press was reportedly slow to pick it up. The seriousness of the memo is best described by Nixon's former Counsel John Dean, who wrote that if Bush took the nation into war based on "bogus" information, it could be "a high crime" under the impeachment clause of the US constitution.

It is more likely, however, that a President will be impeached for an extra-marital affair than for willfully misleading and sending people to their deaths in today's America. A similar blase attitude is related in an essay by Jonathan Mermin, describing how Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Charles J. Hanley's story on Iraqis being tortured in American prisons, prior to the discovery of the photographs, was disregarded by major American newspapers.

Then there are the attacks on Bill Moyers, a previous reporter of the NOW show. According to Moyers, the show at one point was the only public affairs broadcast aired on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) with an increasing audience. Why? Because they reported on the Justice Department's expanding power of surveillance, on the rising Pentagon budget, on ill-equipped US troops fighting abroad, on over-pricing at Halliburton, on shredding of the Freedom of Information Act, and much more. As close to a quarter of PBS' budget comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and federal grants, the right wing charge decided to put pressure on these institutions. Influential Republican Senator Trent Lott protested that the CPB "has not seemed willing to deal with Bill Moyers," with a Bush appointed CPB Board member concurring. Moyers also mentioned hearing threats against PBS reauthorization unless he was dealt with.

Such attacks on public broadcasting are not new. Moyers describes how during President Nixon's era, a Woody Allen programme making fun of Henry Kissinger was cancelled and CPB funding for public affairs programming was cut. A White House memo even stated getting "the left-wing commentators who are cutting us up off public television at once."

The major difference between then and now, says Moyers, is that then there were Republicans who took principled stands against politicising public television. The then Republican chairman of the public station in Dallas led a nationwide effort against what he viewed as an assault on press freedom. The chair of the CPB, a former Republican congressman, resigned on the grounds of interference.

In contrast, Moyer argues that the current CPB Chair, Kenneth Tomlinson, is toeing the White House line. He builds his case, stating a number of events and reports including the hiring of someone for the CPB ombudsman's office who previously worked for Tomlinson, the New York Times report of Tomlinson's role in killing a proposal placing people with experience in local radio and television on the CPB board, and a book detailing how Tomlinson surrounded himself with right-wingers during his stint as Editor-in-Chief of Reader's Digest.

Even though Moyers retired over six months ago, the attacks have apparently not ceased. This is not surprising considering the level of antagonism towards any form of dissent in the US. Recall the malicious attacks on former Vice President Al Gore when he questioned the Iraq war argument in 2002. Or, the Washington Times' Tony Blankley suggesting that Seymour Hersh may have violated the Espionage Act 1917, a crime punishable by death or imprisonment, for his article in The New Yorker on the Bush administration's secret military operations.

This pathetic state of American journalism is sadly but aptly described by author Jason Leopold: "Unfortunately, neither the Washington Post nor any other mainstream newspaper or magazine in this country will ever be credited with exposing another Watergate. For one, mainstream reporters just don't have the guts to put their careers on the line to sniff around, ask tough questions, and, perhaps, find sources like W. Mark Felt. Not even Woodward has the muckraking qualities of what Woodward used to have.

Worse, editors at large papers don't encourage reporters to practice that kind of reporting anymore because they don't want to rock the boat or risk losing their jobs or be seen as liberal and therefore become the ire of the blogosphere."

Safi Khan is a development activist.