2008 Woodie Awards
PROVOCATIVE SPEAKERS SERIES: Robert Scheer: The War on Free Press
Seda Terzyan
Issue date: 3/22/06 Section: News
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Free Speech is an unalienable right that was enshrined on America hundreds of years ago. The Founding Fathers established the first amendment and a new nation in a time of fear, when only one-third of the population supported them. Robert Scheer sees a society that is losing sight of that ideology.
"We betrayed the vision of the founders by surrendering our freedoms at the first sign of fear and hardship," said Scheer, a nationally syndicated columnist who has been involved with almost 200 newspapers, co-host of KCRW's "Left, Right and Center" and founder/editor of the new online news magazine, Truthdig. "They knew terror, they knew horror, they knew instability, they founded a new nation."
Scheer spoke to more than 130 people at the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center last Wednesday as the second of four guest speakers for the Center's Provocative Speakers Series. Scheer spoke about what he thinks is wrong with the media today.
"The performance of the media during this period has been abysmal, actually worse than anything I've seen in my lifetime," said Scheer.
Scheer thinks that America is going through a time of media impudence worse than the Hitler, Stalin and the Cold War eras.
"We accept a media which is embedded, that can't actually cover a war the way other wars have been covered," Scheer said that major newspapers and media sites worry more about losing viewers by presenting unpopular viewpoints then about presenting truth. Before entering Iraq, President Bush was able to convince 90 percent of America that Saddam Hussein was another Hitler. He convinced a nation that a dictator of a fragmented country like Iraq had nuclear capabilities and was a direct threat.
Scheer said that this view became popular because America was fed patriotism, a technique for propaganda that has been used by many world leaders. "9/11 changed everything, caused us to surrender our freedoms."
"How do you have a free press at a time when the press is a huge corporate entity?" he asked, saying that the press can no longer be free if it has corporate influences, mergers with media giants and political pressures. "If the media isn't free, the society can't be free. This is a denial of the basic assumption of our society, which is that freedom makes a good society possible, that freedom is what prevents error, freedom allows people to get better."
"We betrayed the vision of the founders by surrendering our freedoms at the first sign of fear and hardship," said Scheer, a nationally syndicated columnist who has been involved with almost 200 newspapers, co-host of KCRW's "Left, Right and Center" and founder/editor of the new online news magazine, Truthdig. "They knew terror, they knew horror, they knew instability, they founded a new nation."
Scheer spoke to more than 130 people at the Valley Cities Jewish Community Center last Wednesday as the second of four guest speakers for the Center's Provocative Speakers Series. Scheer spoke about what he thinks is wrong with the media today.
"The performance of the media during this period has been abysmal, actually worse than anything I've seen in my lifetime," said Scheer.
Scheer thinks that America is going through a time of media impudence worse than the Hitler, Stalin and the Cold War eras.
"We accept a media which is embedded, that can't actually cover a war the way other wars have been covered," Scheer said that major newspapers and media sites worry more about losing viewers by presenting unpopular viewpoints then about presenting truth. Before entering Iraq, President Bush was able to convince 90 percent of America that Saddam Hussein was another Hitler. He convinced a nation that a dictator of a fragmented country like Iraq had nuclear capabilities and was a direct threat.
Scheer said that this view became popular because America was fed patriotism, a technique for propaganda that has been used by many world leaders. "9/11 changed everything, caused us to surrender our freedoms."
"How do you have a free press at a time when the press is a huge corporate entity?" he asked, saying that the press can no longer be free if it has corporate influences, mergers with media giants and political pressures. "If the media isn't free, the society can't be free. This is a denial of the basic assumption of our society, which is that freedom makes a good society possible, that freedom is what prevents error, freedom allows people to get better."
