Information Freedom and the Media

“Every time a newspaper dies, even a bad one, the country moves a little closer to authoritarianism”

-Richard Kluger

            Impartiality in journalism is a surprisingly recent innovation, manifesting itself in mainstream media only in the last half-century.  Since then, it has become a critical check on governmental power, with freedom of the press becoming an internationally recognized indicator of legitimate democracy. Yet now, after barely a generation, the impartial news media may be breathing its last breaths; its funding has been slowly strangled by the popularization of competing mediums. The last decade has seen a revival of opinion-based news; media that have changed their business models to appeal to a customer base rather than striving for non-biased reporting. Impartial media has proved largely unable to compete with commercialized news.

            Yet the news media provides one of the most essential checks on government power, acting as an impartial conduit and regulator of information between the government and the public. In order for voters to make informed decisions, it is critical that they remain aware of the decisions made by their elected officials, and the consequence thereof. In this regard, the impartiality of media is essential. Deceptive media taints the ability of voters to make informed decisions about their representatives. Without accurate reporting on domestic and international affairs, most voters have no hope of making an informed decision in determining the future of their country.

            One seeking to analyze news media’s power as a tool for manipulating public opinion and a check on governmental power will find no clearer example than in the authoritarian regimes in which free press is prohibited. Nations like Zimbabwe, Iran, Burma, and countless others operate rigidly state-regulated newspapers, in order to engineer a favorable image of a repressive government. The determination with which these nations come down upon free press movements is a testament to just how dangerous information freedom is to authoritarianism. Repressive governments often stay in power by limiting the public awareness of their actions, preventing organized discontent by fostering widespread uncertainty. The corruption of the media acts as the ultimate tool for this end. In filling the information void with pro-government propaganda, authoritarian regimes are able to subjugate vast populations not through violence or military power, but through strict regulation of information. It is for this reason that free, impartial press is so essential to functioning democracy. Information freedom puts the power of decision-making back in the hands of the population at large.

            At no time in American history was the tremendous power of journalism demonstrated than in the 1890s, during a bitter business rivalry between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, both prominent media moguls, in the years prior to the Spanish-American war.  Both fought savagely to increase the circulation of their respective newspapers, leading Hearst to pioneer what is now known as “Yellow Journalism.” Hearst believed that by vastly sensationalizing the tensions between America and Spain over their Cuban colony, he could easily out-circulate Pulitzer, whether the stories he printed were true or not. When the U.S.S. Maine, a U.S. Navy Battleship deployed to Cuban waters exploded under mysterious circumstances, Hearst’s New York Journal ran with it, pioneering the catchphrase “Remember the Maine.” The consequences were twofold. First, Hearst’s newspaper sales skyrocketed. Frightened or outraged readers rushed to the newsstands to read of the exploding tensions between America and Spain. Second, and far more important, his reporting worked, for better or worse. His campaign to manipulate public opinion was so staggeringly effective that in April of 1898, the United States declared war on Spain to enormous popular approval, in what would be named the Spanish-American War. Hearst’s Yellow Journalism, while in many ways a Dark Age for journalistic integrity, was a brilliant demonstration of the potential power that news media can exercise over a population, showing on just how large a scale public opinion can be manipulated, and how harmful it can be when press is corrupted.

            Yet, easy as it may be to extol the virtues of free, unbiased press, the practical application is far more problematic. The core problem, and the one that is most difficult to resolve is the acquisition of funding. Media funding is inextricably tied to the interests behind the money. Media funding models vary substantially, depending on the whether the media is viewed as a private enterprise or a public service. Yet each funding model shares a similar set of problems revolving around the very basic problem: that journalism is expensive. In order to cover the lofty costs of domestic and international reporting, as well as newspaper circulation, media organizations are often force to capitulate to special interests in order to sustain precious funding.

Media funding models can vary widely, but most can be divided into three distinct categories: commercially funded, public funded, and government funded. Commercial media derives its funding from consumers, and is directly proportionate to newspaper circulation. As the circulation increases, so too do revenues gained from newspaper subscriptions and advertising fees. Publicly funded news media relies entirely on private and public donations, relying entirely on the generosity of its consumers and independent organizations. Public media is unique in that, beyond the exposure that is granted by self promotion, their circulation or viewership statistics are not directly proportionate to the amount of profit earned. Lastly, government funded media is a funding model by which choice by the private sector is taken out of the equation, and news media is funded by government grants or directly by state-run newspapers.

Consumer based news organizations, who are constantly subject to savage competition for a limited number of customers, undergo enormous pressure to slant their reporting towards a specific customer demographic, in order to raise their appeal beyond that of unbiased news. Commercial news revenues are directly proportionate to circulation, and therefore Yellow Journalism, like that of Hearst becomes very tempting. Often, sensationalism sells better than rationality, particularly reporting aimed towards a particular political spectrum, like the notoriously liberal Huffington Post or the notoriously conservative NewsCorp. In a commercial media climate, impartial news often has difficulty competing with fringe elements like these. Yet the popularization of the internet has brought on this problem in greater force. Aspiring journalists no longer need the backing of major papers to publish themselves in an internationally viewable format, drawing more and more from the fringe away from mainstream news and towards reporting more carefully tailored towards their own viewpoints. Thus far, traditional media has been largely unable to compete with this inundation of information sources, and the consumer has been able to take an entirely new approach to news: one that allows them to select the mode of reporting that they choose to believe.

Publicly funded media undergoes similar pressure. Organizations like National Public Radio that rely entirely on public and corporate donations, are under pressure to capitulate to the interests of their listening demographic and corporate supporters, in order to ensure a steady stream of funding. In the case of government funded media, a similar problem arises as to the partiality inherent in funding.

In the case of newspapers funded by the government, government agencies would be forced to select which papers receive funding, and how much. If the model is based on circulation, that is, if all newspapers are given a flat grant per paper circulated, than the problem becomes the same as the first example: newspapers are under pressure to slant their reporting to achieve the maximum circulation, and therefore the maximum profit. If certain newspapers are selected by the government to receive grant money, than the impartiality of the government comes into play: the government is more inclined to support newspapers that are slanted towards their interests, rather than away. This funding model would give governmental agencies direct control over one of the most critical checks on government power, allowing them to hamstring the largest obstacle to abuse of power.

So what solutions are there? The slow decay of the mainstream media is one of many modern quandaries with no clear resolution. As the internet grows older and online reporting becomes more and more popularized, we are likely to see, for better or worse, a major revolution in how media behaves in the Unites States. While commercial media will inevitably persist, even if in a smaller role, we as a country may be moving away from the conception of traditional impartial media, and towards something new and unfamiliar.

The Pacifist's Case For Nuclear Weapons

            Nuclear weapons have always been a bittersweet innovation. The atomic bombings of Japan at the conclusion of World War II were a glorious triumph for American military superiority, elevating the United State to the position of undisputed world superpower. The destructive potential of the atom bomb earned the technology almost divine reverence amongst much of the world, who had only begun to understand the destructive power of the atom. But nuclear weapons technology inevitably spread to other militarily ambitious nations. The proliferation of such technology suddenly introduced the terrifying prospect of large scale nuclear conflict between nations, a mode of warfare that almost assured mutual annihilation for both parties. As nuclear arsenals quickly expanded, and small devices like those dropped on Japan were replaced with hydrogen bombs, atomic war and global catastrophe became synonymous. Yet in many ways, the promise of mutual assured destruction from nuclear conflict has rendered conventional war, and all the horrors associated with it, obsolete. Have nuclear weapons made the world a safer place?

            The answer is an undeniably complex one, and to understand the problem, one must look back six decades, to the end of the Second World War. World War II is often marked by historians as the birthplace of modern warfare. Unprecedented advances in military tactics and technology made it the largest and most destructive conflict in human history. World War II saw a number of major military advances, including widespread use of armored vehicles and automatic weapons as well as large scale aerial combat. Greatly improved abilities to inflict damage on civilian populations, coupled with total war tactics employed widely throughout the war made World War II the most destructive conflict in human history, in both civilian and military tolls. Yet all of these advances in destructive potential were dwarfed in comparison to the introduction of nuclear weapons; weapons with the potential to easily dwarf the annihilation unleashed by World War II.

For four short years following the end of the war, the United States was the sole nuclear capable nation. Potential nuclear strikes were restricted to targets of strategic significance. With no possibility of retaliation, the weapons were largely a blessing for the United States. With Europe and Russia utterly devastated in the war’s aftermath, the united States were elevated to the position of undisputed world superpower, able to use their nuclear arsenal to strong-arm nations into submission.

All this changed in 1949, when the Soviet Union conducted their first nuclear weapons test, and the threat of nuclear conflict suddenly became a very real one, beginning the first chapter of the nuclear era of the Cold War. Cold War nuclear tactics revolved around the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction’s function as a deterrent; that neither nation would initiate a nuclear war if they felt that the retaliation would be unacceptable. The Soviet Union and the United States both relied heavily on the belief that the promise of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) was an adequate deterrence against nuclear attack. Discussing MAD in an interview, Defense Secretary under John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara said:

“Mutual Assured Destruction is the foundation of deterrence. Today it's a derogative term, but those that denigrate it don't understand deterrence. If you want a stable nuclear world … it requires that each side be confident that it can deter the other.” He continued “And that requires that there be a balance and the balance is the understanding that if either side initiates the use of nuclear weapons, the other side will respond with sufficient power to inflict unacceptable damage. Mutual Assured Destruction. So Mutual Assured Destruction is the foundation of stable deterrence in a nuclear world. It's not mad, it's logical.”

McNamara’s tenure as secretary of defense in the Kennedy and later Johnson administrations saw a period of vast nuclear expansion for the United States. For much of the Cold War’s duration, the United States and Soviet policies of deterrence revolved around both “first strike” and “second strike” capabilities. A first strike would target civilian centers, conventional military targets, as well as nuclear silos and airstrips from which bombers could launch. The first strike was intended to utterly devastate the civilian population and military capabilities of the target nation, as well as reducing their nuclear capability as much as possible.

But the most important part of Cold War nuclear deterrence was the second strike. “Second strike” capability was the capability to respond to an aggressor nation in the event of a devastating first strike. The deterrent power of the second strike lay in its potential to retaliate to a crippling nuclear attack with equivalent or greater force. This was accomplished through nuclear submarines, widely dispersed and hidden bomber and missile sites, and keeping a certain number of nuclear armed bombers in flight at all times. The mutual annihilation guaranteed by any initiation of nuclear: Mutual Assured Destruction was the guiding principal behind Cold War militarism. The development of adequate Second Strike created the inevitable stalemate that was the Cold War; based on the promise that any nuclear aggression would be met with as McNamara said, “unacceptable damage.”

            So how could the promise of MAD, which fueled a 50 year stalemate of nuclear tension, have made the world a safer place? Since the revelation of the Atomic Bomb in Japan in 1945, there has never been a major ground war that has been fought between industrialized nations. Conventional armies, armies that would have been formidable before the bomb, were rendered utterly ineffective in the face of such superior weaponry. The Soviet Tank regiment, numbering tens of thousands of vehicles was perhaps the most substantial ground force in the world during the 1960s, causing the United States much concern. But this enormous achievement of conventional military might was rendered utterly unusable with the United States development of the Neutron Bomb, a nuclear bomb-variant that allowed the U.S. to prevent any potential invasion of Western Europe.

Nuclear weapons permanently locked conventional armies out of combat, setting off a cascade that prevented any major hostile action from occurring between the feuding nations, under pain of utter annihilation. This created an unbreakable stalemate of unending tensions without the option of war. Tactical warheads rendered any ground army obsolete, and strategic warheads rendered any nuclear conflict suicidal. In these two essential advances, the bomb became the ultimate peacemaker. Nuclear rivalry has forced feuding nations away from destructive wars. Tensions between nations like India and Pakistan, or the United States and Russia would almost inevitably have culminated in conflict were it not for the overshadowing threat of nuclear destruction that such a conflict threatens. The nuclear bomb has served to raise the consequences of war, and in doing so, it has achieved the extraordinary feat of forcing leaders to seek alternatives. The relative peace enjoyed during the 2^nd half of the 20^th century, particularly in the so-recently divided Europe is owed directly to the military advancements that created this anti-military instrument.