Press freedoms compared

loading...

As of May 4, the last day of my spring venture in Afghanistan, Kabul could boast of 96 news publications. About 90 of these were less than two months old. A new press law, promulgated in March, had authorized the post-Taliban process. Government and press were wrestling with issues of freedom of expression vs. patriotic responsibility. After years of being gagged by Islamism, opinions were vigorous.

On the same day, only two newspapers were printed in Washington, D.C. And yet freedom of the press has been guaranteed by our Constitution since 1787. What to make of this odd disparity in the press structure of two capital cities?

Perhaps not much. The Post and the Times are both mature newspapers, far beyond anything ever published in Afghanistan. And multiplicity of media doesn’t necessarily translate into variety of ideas. Even so – as The Anniversary looms with its self-congratulatory temptations – let’s use Afghanistan to check our own media … and to check ourselves as media consumers. What do we Americans know of the world since 9/11/01, and how do we know it?

First a bit more from Kabul. The media argument in Afghanistan – freedom vs. responsibility – springs from two different perspectives and enlists two distinct groups. On one side, the Free Press Now throng consists of Western-trained Afghans, Western NGOs (non-governmental organizations), and expatriate journalists who believe the country needs a Fourth Estate jihad. Without a free press, they argue, there can be no democracy in Afghanistan. This crowd has youthful energy and all the best slogans.

Then there’s the Other Things First bunch, mostly older and grayer, who emphasize the primacy of national consensus. Committed to an eventual free press, they focus now on even more basic national issues such as physical security and economic recovery. “Responsibility,” they say, should be the media’s immediate motto.

Graying myself, I’m on the side of Responsibility. How dull! It’s much more fun to bark slogans. But what (supposedly) works in America is pre-mature for Afghanistan, especially outside Kabul. “Free Press Now” in the countryside means War Lord Radio.

With literacy rates woefully low and TV confined to scant hours in few cities, Afghans get their news from radio, mostly short and medium wave. Favorite station for decades: BBC. Voice of America and Radio Tehran (Iran) also have wide, if somewhat skeptical audiences. Interestingly, these two signals – what Bush would doubtless label the Voices of Good and Evil – agree in support of Hamid Karzai and opposition to the Taliban. Be it noted that Radio Tehran was the first, by several years, to oppose Mullah Omar and his al-Qaia henchmen.

Afghan domestic radio has a history of government control: dull and tame. Afghans use it mainly as a source of local and national information. Regime management has always meant lack of credibility, and Afghans hope for the day when independent stations will offer competing opinions. But for now Afghanistan needs a more empowered central regime. Without it, there’ll be only bad news.

Hence the worry about “independent” stations currently on the air from several provincial capitals. While professing loyalty to Karzai in Kabul, they feature the exploits of their respective, autonomous warlords. The warlords’ main aim: To maximize their autonomy.

Now to American media, for which the Afghan situation provides a flip-flop mirror. We already have an empowered central government. (Indeed, its executive branch has gotten too strong in recent decades, threatening our vital system of checks and balances.) We also have constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press, a luxury still impractical in countries like Afghanistan whose new constitution has yet to be written.

We also have, regrettably, a pattern of increased media consolidation. Result: a narrowed spectrum of opinion. Time was when big cities had a handful (not two) daily papers and when broadcast media thrived on fragmentation of ownership. These have fallen prey to economy of scale, entrepreneurial rapacity, and developments in communications technology management.

Out the other end has come CNN. Now enfolded within AOL Time Warner, Ted Turner’s brainchild symbolizes the best and worst of current media dynamics.

Give Ted his due. CNN is great at getting us there, instantaneously, as things happen. Go to CNN for breaking news.

But beware of CNN in the aftermath. When it comes to opinion – as distinct from concrete events – the sheer power of CNN is scary. Power should be questioned. In the aftermath of 9-11, has CNN done America more good or harm?

If you think of America as weak, like Afghanistan, CNN has done much good with its endless efforts to create consensus and bolster the executive branch. If you think of America as strong, CNN has weakened it by simplifying complexity and by emotionalizing what should be rational discourse.

Consider the recent two-part series “America Remembers,” a year-later retrospective on 9/11/01. Main commercial aim: To build audience interest in anticipation of 9/11/02. Part One ended with an unpaid, unofficial Bush info-mercial: the president’s best camera angle moments (omitting some not-so-good ones) during that awful day. Part Two, we were then told, would tell how America responded.

Part Two played on Sunday, Aug. 25. It was preceded by a sort of debate on Iraq between Senators James Inhofe, R-Okla,) and Bill Nelson, D-Fla. Inhofe allowed as how the president is our leader and we should do what he says. “It’s not a matter,” he said, “of a town meeting.” (So much for New England’s greatest institution.)

Nelson: “It’s a matter of constitutional principles.”

Later we were treated to Caspar Weinberger on an analogous situation: “We went into Vietnam without the will to win. And that’s the trouble.”

Were I to meet the former SecDef, a man whose career most certainly eclipses mine by all conventional standards, I would sit at his feet and say to him with utmost respect, “Sir, the trouble with Vietnam is that we went in.”

Then CNN delivered Part Two of “America Remembers.” It featured some new shots of the now familiar 9-11 horrors. You can’t see this stuff without being horrified. There was, we were reminded by way of setting the tone, no middle ground at ground zero. “Either you were OK, or you were dead.”

It also featured talking heads, set against black backgrounds for dramatic effect. First Wolf Blitzer proclaimed that Bush was “very forceful, clearly in charge.” Cut to W’s “Dead or Alive” contract on Osama.

Then came Jeff Greenfield, formerly a journalist whose special pride was in objectively covering journalism, on W’s pronouncement “Either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.”

“It was a perfect speech,” said Greenfield. Perfect for what purpose? Constructive discourse in a strong country? Or jingoistic smoke-blowing in an America suddenly reduced to the pathetic uncertainties of Afghanistan.

Finally CNN’s star, Christiane Amanpour, who correctly claimed that by year’s end (calendar 2001) Afghanistan was “incredibly and immeasurably better.” Absolutely true … as of Dec. 31. And then, conveniently for feel-good purposes, CNN stopped there.

Trouble is, events didn’t. Since the start of 2002, things in Afghanistan have turned south … toward the Pushtun homeland which protects al-Qaida remnants, and against the US. Afghanistan is still better off than under the Taliban … but no longer “incredible and immeasurably” better off. And now we hear that al-Qaida is re-organizing and re-arming in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas. As this piece is filed (Sept. 5), there’s bad news from Kabul (10 dead in the worst capital city bomb explosion thus far) and Kandahar (assassination attempt on Karzai).

From the CNN retrospective, you’d never guess such things possible. And Rena Golden, CNN International’s general manager, recently issued this broader admission: “Anyone who claims the U.S. media didn’t censor itself [post 9-11 attacks] is kidding you. It wasn’t a matter of government pressure but a reluctance to criticize anything in a war that was obviously supported by the vast majority of the people.”

But who shaped the support of this “vast majority”? Are we by nature so jingoistic? Or have CNN and others (check Fox News) furthered the process? Come 9/11/02, will our press confirm stereotypes or question assumptions?

And again these Watergate-style questions, first phrased nearly three decades ago by a Republican (Howard Baker) who put principle before partisanship: First, what do we know of the world since September 11, 2001? Second, how do we know it?

Real questions. Principle before partisanship. Remember that?

Dr. Whitney Azoy, a cultural anthropologist and former U.S. diplomat in Kabul, has worked for 30 years with Afghanistan and the Muslim world. He was last in Afghanistan in May on a U.S. government contract.