The following resolution was passed Friday, August 4 by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC)
which is the leading professional body for academics in journalism and
media studies. (I am a member.) It was brought to the floor of the
annual convention by David Mindich of St. Michael’s College, author of Tuned Out: Why Americans Under 40 Don’t Follow the News (Oxford, 2005).
Resolution of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication
Moved by Dr. David T.Z. Mindich, St. Michael’s College
Passed: Aug. 4, 2006
AEJMC convention, San Francisco
Preamble
The relationship between the presidency and press has always been
uneasy. This tension is both unavoidable and generally salutary: When
each side conducts its duties with honesty and integrity, both hold the
power of the other in check. It is difficult to find a period in
American history in which this mutual opposition did not exist.
However, it has come to pass that the current administration has
engaged in a number of practices and has enacted a series of severe and
extraordinary policies that attack the press specifically and by
extension, democracy itself.
A working democracy requires a free press that is muscular in its
reporting. It requires a press that holds leaders accountable for their
actions. It requires a press that contrasts leaders’ words with their
actions. It requires a press that uncovers errors and wrongdoing by
employing named and unnamed sources. We believe the actions of the
current administration compromise these press functions.
The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the
press. However, American press history has been marked by periods in
which press freedoms have retreated. The Alien and Sedition Acts of the
1790s represented one such period. Another was during the Civil War, in
which journalists were jailed en masse because of dissent. The
Espionage Act of 1917 paved the way for encroachments on press freedom
(see Schenk v. United States). In each of these periods, politicians,
judges, and scholars came to see, at least in hindsight, that
anti-press policies in the name of national unity produced real harm to
democracy itself. We believe that the Bush administration’s anti-press
policies and practices represent another major period.
Whereas the Association for Education in Journalism
and Mass Communication’s membership is troubled by the following
policies and practices:
1. The Bush administration’s response to press requests for information.
While we do not take sides on the issue of whether “enemy combatants”
should be detained without charges by the United States government, we
are troubled by the administration’s failure to provide names and other
vital information. When a democratically elected government holds
people indefinitely without charges, it is the press’s role to shine
light on the practice so that citizens and their elected
representatives can debate that policy and decide its merits. Until the
AP won a FOIA request in March 2006, names and other vital information
about Guantanamo detainees were withheld by the Bush administration.
Around the time the AP won its FOIA request, other news organizations
were reporting on an even more secretive prison run by the United
States, in Bagram, Afghanistan.
2. The Bush administration’s use of staged town meetings.
One of the most important responsibilities of the nonpartisan press is
that it should include a wide range of political opinions so that the
views of political leaders can be held up to scrutiny. That way,
citizens can debate the merits of these views and choose one over
others or develop policy based on a combination of ideas. Part of this
process involves an open exchange between citizens and their elected
representatives. While every administration since the birth of the 20th
century has sought to manage the photo opportunities of its leaders’
interactions with citizens, a practice that increased markedly in the
presidencies of the TV era, the current administration has taken this
practice to an unprecedented level. During the 2004 presidential
campaign, for example, the Bush campaign frequently excluded
non-supporters from campaign events. This practice continued through
Bush’s trips to promote his Social Security agenda. Even “informal”
discussions with soldiers have been staged.
3. The Bush administration’s vision of the government as a private domain.
From the start of the administration’s tenure, when Dick Cheney’s
office refused to reveal industry leaders who attended a meeting about
energy policy, the administration maintained a practiced silence about
many aspects of government. In March 2006, the Associated Press
reported that many FOIA requests are unanswered or needlessly delayed.
4. The Bush administration’s practice of massive reclassification of documents.
A February 2006 article in the New York Times outlines a secret plan to
reclassify documents, many of which had been declassified and publicly
available for years. While national security dictates that some
documents be secret, the wholesale reclassification of documents makes
it more difficult to understand and evaluate the workings of government.
5. The Bush administration’s support of policies that weaken the multiplicity of voices on a local and national scale.
The administration, through its appointees at the FCC, has sought new
rules that allow large corporations to consolidate local media outlets
under one corporate umbrella. We call on the administration to support
FCC rules that preserve local ownership and competition.
6. The Bush administration’s policy of not allowing photographs of coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq to be released. An
essential part of a public’s deliberation of the worth of any war is
the consideration of the human costs involved. Denying the images
essentially denies the humanity of the U.S. servicemen and servicewomen
who made the ultimate sacrifice. Their lives should be part of the
public debate.
7. The Bush administration’s use of propaganda, including video news releases.
We support the language of Boston University’s Journalism Department’s
2005 resolution “condemning fraudulent use of video news releases”:
“[We] condemn the use of ‘phony’ reporters hired by the government to
perform in VNRs where their affiliation with government is unstated,
and urge the Administration to translate the President’s words into
action by ceasing this practice at once.” [see Appendix]
8.The Bush administration’s use of bribes and payments to columnists and other opinion makers,
both in the United States and abroad. We believe, as the nonpartisan
General Accounting Office found in October 2005, that the payments to
columnists, including a reported $400,000 to Armstrong Williams,
violated laws against “covert propaganda.” The White House even
credentialed James Dale Guckert, a phony reporter, under a pseudonym,
Jeff Gannon. The fake journalist, granted extraordinary access by the
White House, in turn asked softball questions of the administration,
including, “How are you going to work with people [the Democrats] who
seem to have divorced themselves from reality?”Recent reports have
shown that the administration has also bribed journalists in Iraq and
has planted fake news stories there. The administration claims that the
war is being fought in part to promote democracy in the Middle East,
but these practices are antithetical to that aim. We believe that the
Bush administration’s policy of bribing reporters and using fake
journalism is a threat to democracy.
9. The Bush administration’s manipulation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
When the Bush administration appointed a new chairman of the CPB and
supported his efforts to correct the “slant” of the broadcasts, what it
was engaging in was essentially a putsch of responsible journalism.
Responsible journalism of the left, right, and center seeks to
interrogate power and hold the ideas of the various political parties
up to scrutiny. When powerful interests seek to neuter responsible
journalism, democracy itself suffers.
10. The Bush administration’s using the courts to pressure
journalists to give up their sources and to punish them for obtaining
leaked information. According to a March 2006 article in the
Washington Post, recent actions by the Bush administration have
included “several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA
and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be
prosecuted under espionage laws.” We believe that attacking journalists
in this way can upset the power relationship between the government and
the press, and could eventually turn reporters from watchdogs to
lapdogs.
Therefore, be it resolved:
1. That the membership of the Association for Education in
Journalism and Mass Communication urges the Bush administration to
abandon its anti-press policies, and urges people who value
journalism’s role in our democracy to take notice and take action.
Specifically, we urge journalism and mass communication departments to
consider actions of their own including, perhaps, an endorsement of
this document, and
2. That the president of the AEJMC be directed to disseminate this resolution to:
a. President George W. Bush
b. Vice President Richard B. Cheney
c. The membership of the AEJMC
d. The College Media Advisers Association
e. The general news media and trade press, and
f. Any and all such other organizations that relate to Freedom of the Press and the First Amendment.
Postscript: For more information about this document, contact
David T. Z. Mindich, Saint Michael’s College. The author thanks
Mitchell Stephens, New York University, for substantive comments.
Appendix
Unanimous Resolution of the Boston University Journalism Faculty
Condemning Fraudulent Use of Video News Releases
March 22, 2005
As educators of the next generation of American
journalists, we the journalism faculty at the College of Communication,
Boston University:Recognize the need of citizens in a democracy for information that
is accurate, unbiased and independently gathered and presented;Recognize the vital need of government to communicate with its
citizens and the useful role print and video news releases (VNRs) can
play in this process;Recognize the obligation of news organizations to identify clearly
the origin of any editorial material provided by government, business,
interest group or any source other than their own news gathering or
that of affiliated news organizations;Recognize the obligation of government to avoid using VNRs for purposes of political advocacy or propaganda;
Recognize the need to avoid presenting the material in a way that invites public confusion as to its source;
Note the President’s recent statement that acknowledges the need to
maintain a clear line of distinction between journalists and members of
the government or Administration;Condemn the use of “phony” reporters hired by the government to
perform in VNRs where their affiliation with government is unstated,
and urge the Administration to translate the President’s words into
action by ceasing this practice at once;Urge the Administration to identify and cease other practices with
respect to VNRs that run a substantial risk of misleading the public;Condemn the deliberate use by television news outlets of material
knowingly obtained from the Administration without clear identification
of its origin, and urge all members of the media to cease this
deceptive practice at once.
We invite colleagues at other journalism schools and departments to endorse the Boston University Resolution.