Today is National Press Day (16th November). I had sent an article for publication in Press Council Of India National Press Day Souvenir 2014. I dont know so far whether it has been carried or not ? I am reproducing it for Facebook friends on this occasion. On this occasion Bihar Working Journalists Union (BWJU) Patna (affiliated to Indian Journalists Union) has organised a talk at Patna Pustak Mela today @ 3 pm. Transparency in Public Affairs: Myth & Reality By Arun Kumar This time (2014) on National Press Day i.e. November 16, the Press Council of India has decided to held a nationwide discussion on the topic “Transparency in Public Affairs: The Role of the Press” - an issue close to their heart of not only India, but all the democracy loving people across the Globe. On the issue of the transparency in government and public affairs, Noam Chomsky – a public intellectual as well as a noted linguist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) fame, is worth reading. In his response to a question of an interviewer, Jeff Jetton, in course of his interview for an American web-site is interesting to go through as this throws much light on this topic. Excerpts: Jeff Jetton: How do you feel about Julian Assange of Wiki leaks? Noam Chomsky: Basically, I think it’s a public service. I mean, why should – if you believe in democracy, why shouldn’t you know what the government is doing? Jeff Jetton: So there should be complete transparency in government? Noam Chomsky: You can give an argument for keeping secrets. Take, say, the Pentagon Papers. Actually I was involved in distributing them before they really surfaced, and he kept one volume from the public. I had it. A couple friends had it, but we didn’t talk about it. It was the negotiations volume. The idea was that maybe ongoing negotiations would be hampered if this was released. I didn’t agree but it’s a plausible conception. Maybe you can say that about some of the Wiki leaks, but the point is the burden of proof is on the government. They have to show that there’s a reason to keep something secret. Other than that it should be open. I’ve spent a lot of time working on declassified documents – and they do get declassified after decades – you look at the record of declassified documents, and they are mostly concerned with keeping what the government does secret from its own population. It’s mostly defence of the power system from its own population. Very little is authentic security. Like when you keep secret the fact that – say take Egypt for example. There are by now declassified documents from the 1950s that tells you a lot about what’s going on in Egypt and we should have known it then. It’s about exactly what’s happening, how we can disregard public opinion as long as the dictators we support are capable of suppressing their populations. So to hell with public opinion. That’s all right there in the 1950’s. That’s not security. That’s not security of the government. That’s, if anything, security from its own population. And there’s a lot of that. I think that’s true of Wiki leaks, too. Take the parts that barely get reported and some of them are very much like that. So for example there are leaks from the Embassy in Honduras. There was a coup in 2009. Obama broke with most of Latin America and even Europe and supported the military coup still does. The ambassador in Honduras sent back a detailed analysis saying the coup was military, illegal, unconstitutional, and that the legitimate president was thrown out. Okay, we now know that Washington was perfectly aware of that and decided to support the military coup anyway. We should have known that at the time. The government has no right to keep that information secret. “ If an Australian social scientist Alex Carrey is to be believed the 20th century has been characterized by three developments i.e. (1) the growth of democracy, (2) the growth of the corporate power and (3) the growth of corporate propaganda. The corporate propaganda has been evolved as a potent weapon to be just used in defence of the corporate power against a vibrant democracy. Historically talking, it is interesting to know that the “first modern propaganda agency was the British Ministry of Information a century ago, which secretly defined its task as “to direct the thought of most of the world” — primarily progressive American intellectuals, who had to be mobilized to come to the aid of Britain during World War I. (Quoted from Chomsky’s article Destroying the Commons in Tom Dispatch) Thought control in democratic societies is a major issue to be mulled over in the contemporary world. Chomsky in his book “From Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies” aptly says “The major media-particularly, the elite media that set the agenda that others generally follow-are corporations “selling” privileged audiences to other businesses. It would hardly come as a surprise if the picture of the world they present were to reflect the perspectives and interests of the sellers, the buyers, and the product. Concentration of ownership of the media is high and increasing. Furthermore, those who occupy managerial positions in the media, or gain status within them as commentators, belong to the same privileged elites, and might be expected to share the perceptions, aspirations, and attitudes of their associates, reflecting their own class interests as well. Journalists entering the system are unlikely to make their way unless they conform to these ideological pressures, generally by internalizing the values; it is not easy to say one thing and believe another, and those who fail to conform will tend to be weeded out by familiar mechanisms. Furthermore, “the Control of thought is more important for governments that are free and popular than for despotic and military states. The logic is straightforward: a despotic state can control its domestic enemies by force, but as the state loses this weapon, other devices are required to prevent the ignorant masses from interfering with public affairs, which are none of their business…the public are to be observers, not participants, consumers of ideology as well as products. (Excerpts from an article “Force and Opinion by Noam Chomsky in Z Magazine). Glenn Greenwald, a 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner journalist famous for his breaking the famous story of NSA surveillance while he was working with THE GUARDIAN, US using the documents given to him by a former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in his interview with Indian newsmagazine Frontline this year (February 16, 2014) narrated experience of practice of killing stories by not less than a so-called mainstream media giant New York Times. In response to a question of the Frontline interviewer Gleenwald said that Snowden readied to work with him influenced by his views on journalism and on the proper role of the media vis-à-vis the state. He said that Snowden in the beginning spoke a lot about examples where large media outlets such as The New York Times had sat on big stories that were in the public interest, including the famous case in 2004, where executive editor, Bill Keller decided to suppress the story from Jim Risen and Erich Lichtablu about NSA snooping because the White House asked them to do so. Ardent Critics of the Media’s assertive role in protecting Transparency in Public Affairs in US plead: “Hey Guys remember 9/11, remember the 3,000 that died? What you’re doing is you’re tying our hands behind our back; that as much as you think you’re doing good to protect the privacy rights of Americans, the other side of that equation is the security of Americans, and what you’re doing there is damaging it ? In a befitting reply to such a critics Gleenwald said that so much of the spying that Snowden revealed has nothing to do with terrorism but it was more on spying on Oil Companies in Brazil, such as Petrobras, or spying on economic summits where governments negotiate economic agreements, or spying on law firms representing Indonesia in trade talks, or directing the spying system at hundreds of millions or billions of people indiscriminately. He referred that “Terrorism” is an alibi used to justify the system which is not a reality as the actual purpose as was evidenced by the huge amount of spying the US did and is still doing, has not much to do with TERRORISM. In India too much is being discussed about the issue of media credibility and the role of media. Be it by the Press Council (Paid News), the TRAI (Issues on Media Ownership) and the Parliamentary Sub-Committee (on Paid News and Cross-Media Ownership). The credibility of Indian media is at the moment “all time low” following media misdemeanours like infamous RADIA TAPE SCANDAL involving bigwigs of Indian media as well as of the corporate sector, the alleged Tejpal rape case and so on and so forth. The TRAI report hovers around the idea that threat to media objectivity is directly related to media owners, their business ownership interests (ownership) as well as their political party affiliations. All this concern revolves around the belief that “Fourth Estate” is a pillar of the present day DEMOCRACY. Similar is the case with Paid News concern of the Press Council Of India. This concern becomes more serious because a corrupt media could not be relied upon as Watch Dog of the Society. In India there is also yet another problem of HYPOCRISY. Without naming a particular media house it would be worth mentioning that once when a news paper magnet was trapped in Enforcement Directorate net the same newspaper house immediately set up a “human rights cell” as a facade to help its head of the family, to cover their real intent appointed an OMBUDSMAN (ostensibly to address issues related to neutrality and misreporting), issued model code of conduct and ethics for its employees. All this not to be followed in its “letter and spirit” - but only for public consumption. It is a common knowledge that editorial autonomy in the Indian media houses has now become a chapter of the history and this autonomy has been compelled to give way to business interests and political pressure. Internal “Self-Censorship” is quite rampant in the Indian media house editorial room, is a known fact now a days. This self-censorship tantamount prohibiting citizenry to participate in governance as it holds the citizens’ access to important information. Talking about the cunning/ deceptive behaviour of the world media houses Noam Chomsky in his lecture titled “Media, Knowledge and Objectivity (June 16, 1993) said “If the media were honest, they would say, look, here are the interests we represent and this is the framework within which we look at things. This is our set of beliefs and commitments, that’s what they would say, very much as their critics say. For example, I don’t try to hide my commitments, and the Washington Post and New York Times shouldn’t do it either. However, they must do it, because this mask of balance and objectivity is a crucial part of the propaganda function. In fact they actually go beyond that. They try to present themselves as adversarial to power, as subversive, digging away at powerful institutions and undermining them. The academic profession pays along with this game.” But it is never done. Be it in US, in India or any other part of the world. He has noted “You don’t have any other society where the educated classes are so effectively indoctrinated and controlled by a subtle propaganda system including media (Reference: Language and Politics). We as a country as well as entire world citizens of the democratic societies are faced to the real danger of thought control through media and are left to defend themselves from this real threat of manipulation and control by way of “intellectual self defence” if they really like to lay the foundation of a real and meaningful democracy they want to live. Transparency in Public Affairs is sine qua non for a meaningful democracy and it should be preserved at any cost. As the issue of Transparency in Public Affairs – which happens to be the core of a vibrant democracy, was involved in the disclosures of the Wiki leaks papers by Gleen Gleenwald 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded to The Washington Post and The Guardian US for their coverage of the disclosures about surveillance by US National Security Agency (NSA) through their columnist Gleen Glenwald. Edward Snowden – the NSA former contractor who had leaked the NSA snooping documents to the two newspapers through their columnist Gleen Glenwald who is facing charges and court case in Military Court in US in his comment on the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service 2014 to the two newspapers said the award was “vindication for everyone who believes that the public has a role in government.” It is worth mentioning that on June 14, 2013 the US Federal prosecutors had filed a criminal case against Snowden charging him of theft of government property and violation of US’ 1917 Espionage Act by way of unauthorised communication of national defence information and “wilful communication of classified communication intelligence information to an unauthorised person. Each of the three charges carries a maximum possible prison term of ten years. But in the eyes of Pulitzer Prize Committee this act of revelation was in the interest of a just society and a meaningful democracy as it involved an important issue of Transparency in Public Life and The Role of the Press. [The Writer is a former member of Press Council Of India (XIth Term)]
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 02:09:59 +0000
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