Is there a need to enact a reporter’s Bill of Rights to accompany the First Amendment in the American Constitution and every such provision in the other constitutions? Or is it that the right of an editor is so absolute he or she can order a reporter to say anything they want them to say or dismiss them if they refuse to say it? To answer these questions I must reach back fifty years to a lesson I started to learn then and have continued to learn until recently.
Nine or ten years ago I found myself sitting with a number of grumpy men, some older than me and some younger. We were watching the Sunday morning talking heads on television when, out of the blue, came the answer to a question I had brooded over forty years earlier as I sat quietly and listened to men and women discuss a subject that was way over my head at the time. I was then in my teen years hoping to land a permanent job at the television network that had just started in Egypt and so I volunteered to work with anyone who could use what talent I had. And the people I was sitting with on that day long ago were professionals with radio and film experience who normally wrestled with questions of adaptation from one medium to another but were discussing something else on that unforgettable day.
They were discussing a remark that was made by an American journalist on behalf of his publication which, I believe, was the New York Times or something of this caliber. The remark was to the effect that after many years of giving Egypt bad publicity, the publication had finally carried an article so favorable to President Nasser he would have had to spend a million dollars on advertising to get as good a coverage. And the point that the professionals were dancing around boiled down to these questions: Who or what should a publication serve or hurt? Is it the audience by giving it the truth no matter what the truth looks like? Or is it the subject matter that the publication is covering by hiding its warts or highlighting its qualities or what?
I do not remember how the discussion ended fifty years ago but I know I never got an answer to any of those questions until the men I sat with on a Sunday morning a decade ago rekindled my curiosity about the subject and provided me with possible answers. What happened ten years ago was that an older man shouted a profanity at the television set at which point a younger man told him he was not supposed to talk like that in this age of political correctness. The rebuke did not sit well with the first man who snapped back: “F… political correctness, this guy is a fruitcake.” He actually used another word but I am using fruitcake instead. The man went on to explain that the talking head on television was advocating the rape of a child by holding him in America because to return him to his father in Cuba would make Fidel Castro look good. And this is when I realized I may have been given answers to the questions I carried in my head all these years. The apparent answers were to the effect that the media are supposed to serve their audiences but most of the time they serve themselves and would go as far as rape a child or the audience or both to do the self-serving.
As the discussion progressed among the now very grumpy men, one of them remarked that the media were screwing (f…ing) the audience in the head so as to keep the public happy and quiet all the time. Another man agreed and said that the media are the modern opium of the masses, and he ventured to paint the world we live in like this: Some people believe they have a computer chip planted in their buttock and that they are being watched by the government which sees them everywhere they go and hears everything they say. But this is not possible or necessary, said he tongue in cheek, because the truth is that we all have a dick transplanted inside our skulls which keeps us f…ed up permanently and quiet all the time.
From the discussion of that day I developed the notion that the people in the media show their self serving habits when they promote their own interest as individuals or the interest of the publication to which they are linked. They are seen to do so when they take up the point of view of a third party or attack that of their opponent. And what this means at the end of the day is that the truth which the media people are supposed to purvey with honesty becomes irrelevant except in the sense that the telling of the truth becomes a commodity in their hand which they shape and reshape, and then sell to the highest bidder along with their soul.
And the flimsy reason that the talking head gave ten years ago to deprive a child of the love and care that only a father can give in the absence of a mother that died in a drowning accident, is given again and again as flimsy as ever in the same form or a slightly different one to keep the truth from the audience. Some people call this behavior the telling of a small lie to serve the interest of a greater truth. But in the interest of fairness, it must be said that not all those who engage in such activities do it on their own accord. In fact, most of the time such lies are told because the editor, the publisher or the producer forces the reporter to lie about the facts or to voice an opinion that he or she does not support. I was provided with streams of information to this effect after I sued a prestigious publication for trying to force me to do just that. I received a great deal of gossip and of revelations regarding what was going on inside a number of prestigious print and audio-visual publications. Some of the stories painted a situation of near mutiny where reporters or anchors were ordered to tell the opposite of what everyone knew was the truth or pack up and go. Voices were raised, desks were pounded and compromises were reached which probably meant to marry half a truth with half a lie and call that a balanced view.
An incident I heard about from several sources was that of a veteran Canadian reporter and anchor who later died of cancer. He was threatened with death before he knew he had cancer, and his murder was supposed to have happened at the hands of Israeli operatives if he did not read an item on the air glorifying Israel and condemning the Arabs by reversing the facts of a story that were known to everyone. I do not know how this confrontation ended but I was told it was a violent confrontation. Whether it was this reporter or someone else who called for the enactment of a Bill of Rights to protect the reporters is not clear to me but it was then that such a call was first made. And this brings us to the story of the murder that took place in Dubai not long ago.
All available information is to the effect that the murdered Palestinian man had killed two Israeli soldiers of occupation. This is what an army of resistance does whereby the killing is recognized as legitimate, and those who do the killing are called freedom fighters. And when a state sends killers to murder someone beyond its borders, such a state is recognized as being a terrorist state and it is treated as such. This is what Israel did, therefore it must be called the terrorist state that it is and it must be treated accordingly. Anyone that says otherwise is in the business of aiding and abating terrorism.
Parallel to this story was the fact that Israel used forged passports replicating those of actual citizens from one Continental European country and a number of English speaking ones. Still, the media in those countries were not harsh enough in their condemnation of Israel by any stretch of the imagination but they, at least, refrained from justifying that country’s action which is a good start but no more than that. By contrast, what happened in the North American English media -- countries whose passports were not forged this time around – is that the press gave a platform to the Israeli propaganda machine allowing it to spew the kind of justification for a murder that will most certainly boomerang and hit us in the face one of these days. The net result has been that the Israeli mouthpieces used the platform they were given to label the murdered Palestinian a terrorist, yet not once did they label Israel a terrorist state or even hinted at that. And they spoke in this fashion even though they knew that Israel has been nothing but a terrorist entity before it was recognized as a state and has been a terrorist state ever since.
As I red the stories relating to the murder in Dubai and watched them on North American television, it was obvious to me as it would have been to any observer, that on a number of occasions the writers or interviewers appeared to be uncomfortable doing what they were asked to do. They reminded me of the stories that triggered the calls to enact a reporter’s Bill of Rights. Had a law to this effect been passed ten years ago, those uncomfortable writers and interviewers would have said no to the editor, the publisher or the producer that gave them the insane task of helping to justify a murder which Israel was bragging about yet “ambiguously” denied it and did not deny it both in the same breath.
And it is precisely this manner of communicating that is recognized both as being vintage Talmudic and being the quintessential method by which to screw an audience in the head. It is done in America and done for the glory of Israel supposedly to hurt the Arabs who, most certainly, do not know what the hell is being done to the American people, and could not care less if they did. No wonder, say the people who examine this sort of phenomena that the superpower which America used to be is now on the verge of being declared a failed state. If AIPAC can do this with the media while everyone is watching, imagine what AIPAC can do with a congress of legislators when no one is watching.
A law to protect the reporters was never enacted, and we must recognize that such a move is now overdue. Having this law on the books will restore the credibility of the media in the English speaking countries, something we desperately need to do because the way things stand now, our media could not make it as breakfast for dogs.
We deserve better than that and it is in our hand to give us this gift. Let’s do it.