Bad Business

Last night, Rachel and I watched Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism. Much like Fahrenheit 9/11, Outfoxed left me enraged at their target, dissatisfied with their film-making, and stewing over what to do next. Both films suffered from heavy-handed elements bordering on manipulation (Fahrenheit more so than Outfoxed), but ultimately demonstrate that bullying and spin have replaced debate and investigation as our modern political discourse. And no media outlet embodies this trend better than Fox News.

In between clips of Bill O’Reilly’s blustering slander and Sean Hannity’s partisan lies, it finally sunk in how much Fox News has abused and redefined journalistic standards. They have become our capitalist Pravda, using a singular voice and brazen disregard for facts to turn policy into truth and opinion into information. I used to find Fox News an amusing diversion akin to reading the opponent’s playbook, but now I realize that this is all a bit more serious.

I tossed and turned all night, and awoke thinking about the similarities between our current media environment and George Orwell’s 1984. Big Brother uses the threat of an ongoing war to unite Oceania, while today we have a never-ending War on Terror. The enemy of Oceania shifts to suit the needs of the Inner-Party, while our current war with Iraq places us against weapons and soldiers propagated by decades of US foreign policy. O’Brien refuses to accept any truth beyond that which the party dictates, while George Bush and Fox News continually demonstrate their disregard for debate and contempt for dissent.

Just as I was poised to go further with this comparison, I found a similar piece published in 2002 on AlterNet and another website dedicated to modern comparisons. So while mine is not a uniquely original supposition, I do have two observations to add to the Orwell discussion.

I generally associate the misuse of innocuous words with the military, where terms like “collateral damage” and “neutralization” are tossed about to obfuscate negative concepts, and corporate marketing that refuses to acknowledge negativity. But the modern Republican demogoguery has taken modern newspeak to a new low. According to Fox News, someone who disagrees with the party line is not a “conscientious objector” but is “unpatriotic,” if not a “traitor” or “terrorist.” Thanks to Rush Limbaugh, the term “Liberal” has long since lost its progressive meaning, but in the O’Reilly vernacular it also means “fringe” and “radical.” This debasement of terminology inherently eliminates the vagaries of discussion and turns every issue into a black-and-white, us-versus-them affair. It may not qualify as a newspeak deconstruction, but the effect is the same — the language gets smaller, nuance is destroyed, and thinking is limited.

There is one gaping difference with our current society, however, in that the poverty and hardship of Orwell’s society has been supplanted by unmatched prosperity and consumption. Previous war efforts have had economic consequences, from the rationing of World War II to the inflationary ‘guns-and-butter’ period during Vietnam, but today’s economy seems preternaturally healthy coming in the midst of massive operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our conflict has destabilized oil prices through the roof, yet Hummers and Suburbans squash the sales of fuel-friendly alternatives. How can this be?

Like most American families, the Bush administration is financing a geopolitical lifestyle on credit. While billions of dollars are spent for off-budget military operations, George plays the tooth fairy and leaves tax cuts under our pillow at night. No matter who you are, when expenditures exceed income, the bill must come due. But since the timing of the piper is uncertain and the amount to be paid exists only on paper, the economic rose-colored glasses remain firmly in place. It’s genius, really. Instead of bludgeoning the proles into workaday submission, they get SUVs and McMansions bought cheap on long dollars to salve the pain of discontent. With so much pursuit of happiness around, nobody gets too bothered to ask the tough questions about life and liberty, especially for those who talk funny and don’t watch the Final Four.

While Fox News is the most obvious and aggressive manifestation of this debasement, they are simply the logical outgrowth of a system in which media conglomerates battle for the attention of the lowest common denominator. It’s hard to tell the difference between CNN and ESPN most days, except Outside the Lines occasionally hits harder issues than Larry King.

Orwell’s dystopia was a society of intent, but ours is a society of neglect. There’s no Big Brother who has tightened the noose, rather we have cut loose the reigns of media responsibility and let them entangle haphazardly around our democratic necks. The media conglomerates were supposed to keep an eye on the government for us, but you can bet that Rupert Murdoch’s not watching your back unless there’s a hundred dollar bill on it.

So, what to do about all this stewing? First, writing this piece helped get some of it out of my system. Second, I’m finally going to support NPR during their next pledge drive. I may get tired of the overly-humanistic profiles of everyday nothing, but at least they care put a premium on discussion over bombast. And third, I’m going to do more to call Fox News and their Republican sycophants on partisan bullshit posing as fact. It’s not becoming to tell them to shut up, but it would be doubleplusgood to see them forced to face reality every once in awhile.