Mainstream media journalism is more mysterious than blogs – and consequently more opaque. And by feigning objectivity, the mainstream is often more potent at propaganda – or at least tries to be. An interesting example is Wednesday’s Washington Post article Iran Requests Direct Talks on Nuclear Program. It doesn’t take a great deconstructionist to understand that the authors – Karl Vick and Dafna Linzer – are writing with a specific intent: to promote US direct negotiation with Iran. Numerous quotes, anonymous (como siempre) and attributed, are sprinkled throughout the article to create that effect while delicately preserving the illusion of objectivity. Unfortunately, they give the game away by ending the article thusly: “We have not had any relations for so many years, and Iran was always accused of being unwilling to talk,” Masood Mohammadi, 23, said as he left Friday prayers last week. “Now Iran has taken the first step, and I hope the U.S. president replies in kind.”
Now who is Masood Mohammadi and why should he stand in for all Iranian public opinion? No reason is given other than, perhaps, the number 23 – the implication being that he is (or stands for) Iranian youth. Of course that’s not possible for any single person (in a country of 70 million!). The Washington Post writers are fiddling in the nether regions of propaganda here. But no matter. It is not exceptional. This is how journalism is practiced on a daily basis and, to a great extent, taught. Most readers of this blog know to beware of it, but I will go a bit further (following my earlier reference to deconstruction).
The writers of this article, although they may think they are subtly supporting an argument, are also sabotaging those beliefs. Today’s more sophisticated reader is increasingly educated in and put off by this style of writing. Using myself as an example, I do not have a fixed opinion on whether we should negotiate with Iran. I simply do not know enough. But when I read an article like this, I become immediately suspicious. Who is writing this and why, I want to know. What clandestine operative is whispering in what reporter’s ear? Cui bono? My back is up… I am being manipulated. My stance toward negotiating with Iran shifts to the negative.
Do the reporters realize they are doing this? Probably not… but possibly yes (somewhere in their subconscious) . They have a different, deeper intention unknowable even to them. In a time when the liberals are conservative and the conservatives liberal, who are we any longer to say?
UPDATE: Brother Michael has less patience for these clods than I do.
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11 Comments
1. Kevin Peters:Roger:
May 24, 2006 - 11:33 pm 2. The Cranky Insomniac:The left has one answer for everything. Negotiate. No matter what. No matter that Iran has been negotiating for the last year or so with the big three and has thrown everything back in their faces. Ditto the IAEA. No matter that Iran has been hid their program for 20 years. No matter that almost every public statement coming from Iran states that they will never give up the right to develop the bomb. No matter that they have been lying about the program and continue to lie when even the U.N. and Europe were forced to admit the obvious. No matter that the 18 page letter was a rambling delusional collection of Islamo Fascist bilge. “Oh look, they sound willing, it must have been the multi lateral style of negotiation that was the problem, let’s go unilateral diplomacy, that is the best method.Until that fails and then we go back to multilateral talks.” Death to America, Death to Israel, western democracy is evil and will be dominated by Mohhammed, all Muslims must be allowed to live under sharia law no matter where they live(or even if they don’t want to), women must hide their bodies and submit to a 12th century form of slavery, we will kill your writers if we think they have insulted our God. Now, let’s sit down and talk. Tea, or coffee?
I wrote a piece awhile back that deconstructed a front page WaPo article on United 93. Written in the form of a lesson on how to write opinion pieces as though they were straight news pieces, my last lesson was:
The important thing to remember here is that you must close with a quote that takes your side. If you forget everything else I’ve taught you, do not forget this. Anything before this quote doesn’t matter. In fact, the best thing to do here is allow the other side to make a short point, then quickly shift into “some people say” mode and wrap it up.
Sounds like Vick and Linzer have it down pat.
(My full piece is here if anyone’s interested.)
May 24, 2006 - 11:55 pm 3. Barry Meislin:Iran has been talking for years now, telling anyone who will listen what they’re planning to do. And what they’re doing.
Clearly, people are going out of their way not to get the message.
May 25, 2006 - 5:25 am 4. AlanC:The one thing I would like to do to these “negotiate everything” people and the similar “violence never solves anything” people is this…
I would like to go up to them and demand that they give me their wallets…When they say no I would forcibly take it from them…then demand that they negotiate.
I wonder how long it would be until they out sourced their violence and called the cops?
These people are naive fools who have lived in the safety of the US and are secure in the delusion of their own platitudes. They need to be slapped upside the head by reality. I’m even willing to negotiate which implement is used.
May 25, 2006 - 6:01 am 5. Grumpy Old Man:I happen to believe that we should engage Iran seriously and make a public case for rapprochement. If it happens, fine. If, as is more likely, it doesn’t, we will have tried.
But your criticism of the story, with its unnamed sources and its “random” interview with a shill-on-the-street, is spot on. The article is advocacy cloaked in the weeds of objectivity.
One gets tired. So tired.
May 25, 2006 - 6:06 am 6. photoncourier.blogspot.com:“out sourced their violence and called the cops?”…reminds me of something Arthur Koestler wrote, I believe in 1943:
“Indeed, the ideal for a well-functioning democratic state is like the ideal for a gentleman’s well-cut suit- it is not noticed. For the common people of Britain, Gestapo and concentration camps have approximately the same degree of reality as the monster of Loch Ness. Atrocity propaganda is helpless against this healthy lack of imagination.”
I don’t think I’d agree with the “healty” part, but lack of imagination definitely plays a part in the unwillingness of many “progressives” to understand reality.
May 25, 2006 - 7:45 am 7. AlanC:GOM,
“I happen to believe that we should engage Iran seriously and make a public case for rapprochement. If it happens, fine. If, as is more likely, it doesn’t, we will have tried.”
Public case with what public?
Doesn’t the EUs (and IAEAs) 3 year soft power effort count as trying?
AND …”we will have tried.”; then what?
May 25, 2006 - 8:35 am 8. popcontest:One of the best blog posts I’ve read..
“But when I read an article like this, I become immediately suspicious” is the key line..
Possibly related question:
May 25, 2006 - 9:26 am 9. Kevin Peters:Do you think Soros funding US left-wing groups is actually helping the cause of the left? Why does he fund pro-freedom foundations in developing nations and fund proponents of dead 20th century socialist/left ideas here?
GOC:
The whole world has been trying. For years. That is the problem with the way we deal with rogue regimes. There is rarely consequences when they drag their feet and at the last minute walk away.
Before the the letter arrived what was happening. Even the U.N. and the E.U. 3 had come to the end of their extremely long rope. There was finally some movement towards , at the minimum, some form of U.N sanction. I doubt it would have done a damn thing but at least we could have said, we negotiated, we went with multilateral negotiations,remember this is what the Bush administration is always told by the world community that he must do, and that Iran had flipped the world off. This nutter writes a letter that can be just as easily be seen as a declaration of war rather then a serious call for talks and the entire press goes “look, look, they want to talk.” The U.N., the IAEA, and the E.U. three now have an excuse to stall any action.
This is the diplomatic equivalent of the dog ate my homework excuse. Only a fool would buy this con but the left is so eager to go back to talks that produce no results that they swallow it whole.Anything to avoid the extremely hard choices. “I’ll gladly pay you later if you give me a hamburger today.” The Mullahs are laughing so hard that their turbans are falling off their head at how naive the west is. They are getting the bomb. They have no intention of stopping.They never had any intention of stopping. And the west is going to let them have it.
Alan, the “then what” will always be a new form of negotiation until the bomb is finished.
May 25, 2006 - 9:39 am 10. AlanC:Kevin, I knew that. I’d just like someone to admit it. 8^(
My belief in fences has been growing by leaps and bounds. I’d like to build one around the entire middle east (except Israel) and allow nothing out OR in. No news, no people, no trade, nada, zip, zero, zilch. In a hundred years take a look in and see if there’s been any change.
And yep, that’s frustration talking.
May 25, 2006 - 10:41 am 11. Sissy Willis:They know. As an environmental reporter at The Boston Globe, Dianne Dumanoski, was quoted as saying way back in 1990, “There is no such thing as objective reporting . . . I’ve become even more crafty about finding the voices to say the things I think are true. That’s my subversive mission.”
Soylent green
May 25, 2006 - 11:08 am