Past Year's Media World: Prologue to 2007

In an annual ritual, some editorial cartoonists draw the old year as a battered elder who's limping off into the sunset while the new year arrives as an innocent newborn. The metaphor is compelling, but misleading.

For an individual, or a country, or the world, the past doesn't expire. And rest assured — or, more precisely, unrest assured — the key negative dynamics that brought large-scale violence to 2006 will carry over into 2007.

History rarely turns on a dime, unlike real-time media coverage that can swivel and shift with remarkable speed. During the second week of November, in the aftermath of the midterm election, the news media briefly seemed to reach the plausible conclusion that the U.S. war effort in Iraq no longer had enough American public support to make it viable. Yet by the middle of December, the pro-war spin from inside the Beltway had prevailed; U.S. troop levels in Iraq were likely to rise, not fall, in the months ahead.

Comparable to open-field running, the effective twists and turns of media management are eluding challengers and reaching the goal — more war. In the dominant media, a level playing field does not exist. As a practical matter, despite electoral setbacks, the commander in chief retains the high ground of capacity to determine American military actions.

For more than five years, the continuity of U.S. warfare has been matched by the capacity of major media to function as a brake on anti-militarism in our society. The citizens of the United States — the most powerful military power in the history of the world — are entangled in a steely chain of attitudes and institutions. That twisted chain enables the president to prevail even when his zeal for war is opposed by the vast majority of the population at home.

A week before Christmas — while President Bush was signaling plans to increase U.S. troop totals in Iraq — CNN released the results of a new nationwide poll that showed the commander-in-chief was thumbing his nose at public opinion.

"Only 11 percent of those polled backed calls to send more American troops to Iraq," CNN reported.

In contrast, a majority of those polled said they wanted U.S. troops out of Iraq before the end of 2007. Twenty-one percent favored immediate withdrawal, and another 33 percent wanted U.S. troops to leave Iraq within a year.

The new year gets underway with an extreme disconnect between American public opinion and key institutions — most notably, big media outlets and the federal Executive Branch. Along with shattering the lives of combatants and civilians in Iraq, the war that started with the invasion has seriously fractured the democratic expectations of our society.

Among the most injurious factors are the failures of U.S. journalism to fulfill its responsibilities under the First Amendment. Rarely has so much weight been freighted with so few words; fundamental tenets of democracy flow from the constitutional prohibition against any law "abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." But today, legal restrictions are far less pivotal than the craven conformity that is rife in capital-intensive media industries. Overall, those industries are far more responsive to financial pressures than democratic imperatives.

News media remain central to the circulation of ideas and information. Meanwhile, the current huge gaps between public outlooks and presidential actions — dramatized by the apparently imminent step toward further U.S. military intervention in Iraq — strongly indicate that the American political system has slipped some fundamental gears. At such times, journalism should fearlessly step into the breach. Instead, what we're getting is a media baseline that maintains a synthetic deference to a president who has forfeited any presumption of credibility.

Will the courage quotient of America's mainline journalism be significantly higher in 2007 than in 2006? Will the most predominant media institutions rise to the occasion at a time when perpetual war shadows the horizon? Don't hold your breath. Speak up. If oxygen is going to revive the First Amendment, it will have to come from us.

Norman Solomon's latest book, "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," is now available in paperback. To find out more about Norman Solomon and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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