Ottawa, Ontario
From the Planet Waves daily blog

Tuesday, June 20, 2006 | The Yellow and the Black

THE MORNING that I had selected astrologically to incorporate Planet Waves, I woke up early from a dream that gave me some clear directions for what else to do that day -- find a copy of The Powers That Be by David Halberstam. I knew what the book was about, but I had not read it: the story of how the major media outlets of its day (it was published around 1980) had come into being. These included The New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, Time and the Los Angeles Times.

I met up with Chelsea and we drove to Olympia, my one and only visit to the state capital, filled in our forms, wrote a check, and were given a fancy certificate signed by the secretary of state. A new 'person' had been born, Planet Waves, Inc., with the job of taking over as publisher of this Website, and becoming the container for our expansion into new projects.

Then we visited a local bookshop, but The Powers That Be was nowhere to be found. It took me a few weeks to track down a copy, and about six months to read it (I am a very slow reader) -- after which I had a clear picture: the great media institutions were not beamed down onto the Earth by extraterrestrials, or personally founded by Moses; they were created by people, built up a little bit at a time, one day at a time, with courage and hard work. Just like it's supposed to be in the United States of America.

Had I not had this dream the very morning I was incorporating Planet Waves, it might not mean so much to me, but the point was clear: don't worry about how small your organization is today, or how little influence you seem to have; just do the work.

From reading, I learned, among other things, that CBS was once a decrepit radio network purchased for something like $80,000 that Bill Paley's dad gave him. Slowly, with the help of ideas, creative people and the ability to understand where he stood in the history of media -- that is, at the dawn of television -- Paley built CBS into a massive national network whose news coverage was second to none. Most of the great news institutions covered in the book have stories similar to this -- and most seem to have forgotten the uncertainty with which they started, and the turning points where they chose to risk everything and earn the reputations on which they stand today.

This is why it's particularly disgusting to read about the Washington Post trashing Truthout.org writer Jason Leopold, and Truthout's coverage of the apparent indictment of Karl Rove last month. It is sad that the newspaper at which two young journalists went against all odds and both broke, then developed, the Watergate story using a confidential source would be attacking a Web page that is essentially doing the same thing. Before Watergate, the Post had a laughable reputation as a news organization. Its journalistic reputation rested entirely on its editorials. For many months through 1972 and then as Nixon won 49 states in the election that year, Watergate was simply not taken seriously by the journalism community; it was basically a local story, of doubtful consequence. Then at long last, the story was vindicated and Nixon quit. Then the newspaper was suddenly God's gift to history and the symbol of all that was right in America.

That was then.

Now, there is something called the Internet. The whole concept of the Internet is dodgy because any 15-year-old can currently purchase a domain and a year of hosting for about $100 -- and, if they are talented enough, get their message out to an extremely wide audience, as did Ava Lowery, creator of http://peacetakescourage.com/

While perhaps it's new for it to be possible for someone so young to reach so many people, without being controlled by an editor, the idea of populist media is not new. But if you listen to the criticism, you would think that the Internet and its traditions are some bizarre new hallucinogenic mushroom that appeared under a tree one day after it rained. Spreading information by pamphlet, booklet, mimeograph, photocopy, megaphone and bathroom wall has a long tradition in the world. While the bigshot press may chide Ava Lowery or Truthout.org for their judgment, taste or supposed inaccuracy, there would be no issue if they were ineffective. There would be no issue if they did not beat the big guys to the story, or touch upon the common, understated truth.

There would also be no issue whatsoever if the "real" media did its job. Instead, what we get is the usual yellow journalism phenomenon of major newspapers with sterling reputations (and CNN and Fox and their cousins) goading the country into war, letting a bunch of corporate fruitcakes steal two elections, and so on and on. We find out about their suppressing important stories before a major election with so much at stake (the NSA wiretapping story that the New York Times stuffed for a year), making up many articles, and wheeling and dealing with the masters of war.

Now we have them lashing out at people who publish a place where it's actually possible for readers to get a point of view not shaped by the corporate agenda of military giants (GE owns NBC and many other broadcast outlets, for example), or the "insider" views of papers like the Washington Post and the New York Times.

The problem with the Internet is not that it lacks credibility; the problem, for The Dinosaurs That Be, is precisely that it not only has credibility, but an audience that needs what it finds online, comes online to seek it out, and often gives it the benefit of the doubt. And where 15-year-olds and freelance investigative reporters and people with something to say can have some freedom speech.

The price of freedom, for its practitioners, is responsibility, and that is a learned skill. For readers, the price of having journalists and editors willing to dig out and publish controversial stories is that they may get them wrong, or we may not like what we read. And in a time of such rampant lying, getting at the truth is not exactly an easy job. What that price translates to in practical terms is the necessity for readers to practice discernment and actually use their minds, something that is apparently left at the front door when most people come home from work and flip on CNN. This is a very small price to pay, with a big return.