The Laughing Wolf

Do They Want Us To Lose? (Yes) Part I

As I said yesterday, if memory serves, that question was raised by Blackfive, among others recently, in regards a number of stories and headlines even before the so-called torture stories came out. These questions, and more, have been raised in disgust by many in regards the actions of the traditional mass media, best thought of as the Old Media.

The sad fact is, there are strong reasons for the questions. The bias in the Old Media is quite readily apparent to anyone outside, and even to a few inside. The picture presented by the coverage is incomplete, insincere, and extremely misleading.

The sad fact also is, there are good and strong reasons for this, all of which result in the answer that, yes, they do want us to lose. The fact is, they need us to lose in Iraq and in Afghanistan, for reasons that involve money, power, and politics. The three are, as always, interconnected but I will attempt to address them over the next several days (or longer) as I have the time and the energy.

As always, background and history are needed to provide context and content to the discussion. To set the stage for the coverage of the three areas and how they combine, there are key points that need to be placed as a foundation of sorts.

First, it pays to remember that currently the U.S. is one of the few places where freedom of the press is enshrined as a part of the popular mythos. The original idea for such came from extremely radical French politics, the politics of the revolution. Indeed, the phrase “The Fourth Estate” comes from that period of fervor, and what led to that was also a heavy influence on our own Founding Fathers. The idea is basically good and sound: a free and independent press will allow many different ideas and sides to be presented to a literate and educated public, who will then make up their mind on issues.

The idea of a free press is one rooted in technology: the press. The media was never considered separately, because it for all practical purposes it did not exist. What existed were presses, owned by publishers, who needed business in order to pay for said press and keep a roof over their heads. The same press might print broadsides, the newspapers of the day, for Tories, Whigs, and even Democrat-Republicans all things being equal. This was required because the presses of the day were huge, expensive, and slow. The net result was that few could afford them, and in Europe that meant that many (or in some cases all) were owned or controlled by the government. Where there was not outright ownership, licensing was required so that the government had control over what was printed.

The Founding Fathers wanted to avoid this trap, and advances in technology assisted their effort. Newer press technology meant that price and size were down to a point where at least one person in every fair sized town or city could afford one. That publisher often did many types of printing: books, broadsheets, declarations, official documents, and more. This struck the Founding Fathers as a good thing, and the idea of Freedom of the Press meant just that: presses and publishers were to have few limits placed on them in terms of what they were allowed to publish. The burden was on the people or organizations who hired the press.

It is important to note that Freedom of the Press did not require a publisher to print anything for anyone at any time. Indeed, the Constitution does not cover that area at all. What it says is simply that the Government will place no limit. That said, if someone knowingly wrote and had printed known falsehoods, or writings that fell under treason or sedition, that person or group would then be held legally accountable. They were and are free to print, but that does not mean freedom from consequences.

The American idea of a free press has never been fully embraced by most of the world. Even in England, a source of much original U.S. common law, the press faces restrictions under the Official Secrets Act that would have the average American reporter screaming “Nazis!” at the top of their lungs. Many or most media outlets, print or broadcast, were or are government organs. The members of the media were either direct government employees, or defacto employees under government control and restrictions. Even today it is very common for members of non-U.S. media to work two jobs – reporter and spy.

This is often deliberately ignored by most of the Old Media in the U.S., with a wink and a nudge. The fiction is put forward that since modern journalistic rules that have been put in place since the 1960s require that the U.S. not use journalists as spies (and that no reputable journalist would do so according to the decree of the Media Elite), then everyone does so. Except that it is well known that this is a lie, but the fiction is maintained for a number of reasons. One is the bigotry of “encouraging the wogs” to a higher standard. Another is that it allows U.S. media organizations to use those tainted resources to obtain information and to do stories in ways that they would not otherwise be able to do within the rules.

Technology and changing technology are the common denominator that link the power, money, and politics discussed above. It is changing technology that is the crux of why the Old Media needs so desperately for the U.S. to lose in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is changing technology that offers both hope for winning the War on Terror, and for breaking the power of the Old Media.

-30-

Part II