In the news business...upsetting the government or the public makes no sense for the bottom line and should be avoided.... Not only is there no reason to change the status quo, there are actually good reasons to move more towards entertainment in every possible way because the more entertaining the program, the more audience it attracts.
A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/01/int05002.html
Kristina Borjesson is an investigative reporter--almost an oxymoron, these days. She's also a news producer with a long line of credits from CNN, CBS, PBS and Pacifica Radio. She garnered an Emmy and a Murrow Award, among others. She gained particular fame and notoriety for her reports on the mysterious "disintegration" of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island on July 17, 1996. Recently she has edited a revised, expanded volume of essays, Into the BuzzSaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press, which we proudly offer as a BuzzFlash premium.
"Into the buzzsaw" is journalistic lingo for where "sensitive" stories go (i.e., stories that the powers-that-be choose to shred). They are censored, altered, or marginalized as "conspiracy theory" rather than being allowed to present the unvarnished facts and unsettling investigative findings. Only the most intrepid journalists take on the powers that be, because their challenging stories, their very vulnerable careers (think Dan Rather and the Bush National Guard story), and their high salaries will suffer the wrath of government and conglomerate ownership (General Electric, owner of NBC; Viacom, owner of CBS; Disney, owner of ABC; Time Warner, owner of CNN; or Rupert Murdoch, owner of FOX NEWS). The same forces affect news writers for papers like the Washington Post and The New York Times, who have yet to do one serious long-term investigative piece on the chronic lying of the Bush Administration between them. Basically, nearly the entire American mainstream media has gone into the buzzsaw.
BuzzFlash interviews Kristina Borjesson--courageous investigative journalist and herself a survivor of the buzzsaw.
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BuzzFlash: In journalism, how is going into the buzzsaw different from just "spiking" a story?
Kristina Borjesson: They are two different terms. "Spiking" a story means to kill it, to not run or air it. "Into the buzzsaw" is an expression that applies to both journalists and sensitive stories. With respect to journalists, it describes a series of traumatic and destructive experiences that those who have reported, or are reporting on sensitive stories can go through: the loss of one's job or career, long legal entanglements, financial ruin, being widely and falsely discredited in public, being attacked by one's colleagues, death threats, etc. With respect to sensitive stories, the buzzsaw is a sophisticated system consisting of myriad elements, including self-censoring journalists, reporters who pander to powerful people and institutions, major media conglomerates with specific business and political agendas, propaganda machines both inside and outside of government, etc., which ensure that the American public remains virtually ignorant about how this nation's--and the world's--arenas of power really function. The buzzsaw system ensures that stories lifting the veil on what powerful institutions and people really do, and how their activities affect the nation and its citizens, never hit the mass public consciousness.
BuzzFlash: Why do you think there is such gullible acceptance of government explanations and policies among the mainstream press? As you point out in your essay within the book, many of the government's explanations of dramatic events amount to conspiracy theories themselves. Just look at the Bush propaganda campaign before the invasion of Iraq and how Saddam Hussein was allegedly associated with everything from Al Qaeda to 9/11 to WMD that were supposed to be on the verge of being launched against us. But the mainstream media didn't question THAT conspiracy theory, did they?
Kristina Borjesson: The press' acceptance of the government's explanations had nothing to do with the mainstream press being gullible. Post 9/11, news executives got the message from the American public that it was time to rally around the president and that asking tough questions about 9/11 or the decision to go into Iraq would not play well and would result in lower ratings. Lower ratings mean lost revenue. It's nothing personal; it's just business. Most journalists will tell you that a reporter's job is to tell people what they need to know, not what they want to hear, or what the government wants them to hear. In the news business, however, upsetting the government or the public makes no sense for the bottom line and should be avoided. Don't expect to be well informed if you rely on mainstream media alone. As some of the stories in Buzzsaw clearly illustrate, mainstream media's limitations are extensive. There's no point in getting upset at the mainstream media. It's better to just move on to better news sources--and there are lots of them.
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---------------------------------------------- "The Press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people." -- Justice Hugo L. Black - (1886-1971) US Supreme Court Justice - Source: New York Times v. Unites States (Pentagon Papers) 1971