It is interesting to see our local press/media “thought leaders” complain that the Philippine press is not free and, yet, run to the United States as the shining beacon for press freedom.
The gold standard if a nation has a free press is the annual report of the Reporters Without Borders. It would be nice to believe that at this international level there would be objectivity and unbiased reporting. No chance. For the US—ranked 48 out of 180—their conclusion is “Unprecedented violence targets journalists.” The only example is “A gunman entered the Capital Gazette newsroom in Maryland, killing four journalists and one other staffer in a targeted attack on the local newspaper.”
No mention is made that the perpetrator, Jarrod Ramos, had been the subject of a crime article seven years before about being put on probation for social-media harassment, had sued the paper for defamation and lost, and is alleged to have sent threatening letters to the newspaper for years. Also not mentioned was that the newspaper never reported these threats to police nor took any legal action.
But this event “proves” that “Press freedom has continued to decline.” Likewise, the headline is “Holding the line against Duterte’s attacks” without mentioning that the Philippine ranking—although in dire need of improvement—was higher in 2017 and 2018 than in 2013 and 2014.
Nonetheless, while no US journalist was killed in the line of duty, the idea that the US is the shining city on the hill of press freedom has been a useful myth since the early 20th— not 21st—century.
The US press was free and vibrant in the early 20th century with even medium size cities having three or more daily newspapers that offered a wide diversity of opinion and bias. That is until the rise of broadcasting and government control of the airwaves in the 1920s.
Increasingly, powerful radio and television under stringent government control blocked competition, rewarded the “cooperative” and stifled dissent, which killed the genuine free press.
The Republican President Herbert Hoover began to use the political power of the press, but it was Franklin D. Roosevelt that turned the press into a government institution. From 1933 through his death in 1945, pro-war and pro-welfare program commentators and outlets prospered. Opposition did not.
Walt Disney Studios were occupied by federal troops one day after Pearl Harbor. The editor of the most widely read magazine—The Saturday Evening Post—was quickly replaced with one more in step with government wartime policies. Journalist for the New Republic magazine John T. Flynn, known for his opposition to Roosevelt entering World War II, was specifically targeted for censorship by Democrat President Roosevelt.
By 1937, the Roosevelt White House had three federal agencies investigating radio personality Boake Carter who lost his microphone at radio station WCAU, silencing the last anti-war radio voice. But, apparently, President Donald J. Trump invented the war on the press.
While “press freedom” is guaranteed, access to the mass media of radio and television is controlled with an iron grip in every nation.
From a “small few” to “most”—depending on the place and time—the press/media has been partners in destroying genuine press freedom. Practitioners and their organizations have to put food on the table also and government ultimately holds the purse strings. Sometimes being the “opposition” pays better and sometimes it is the other way around.
I sound like a long-haired hippie radical from the 1960s. Maybe I still am. But the “1 percent” is not the rich; it is the government and the “Establishment.” The “99 percent” is always “The People.”
E-mail me at mangun@gmail.com. Visit my web site at www.mangunonmarkets.com. Follow me on Twitter @mangunonmarkets. PSE stock-market information and technical analysis tools provided by the COL Financial Group Inc.