News, News: Read all about it

Daniel Warner July 26, 2010

The news business is going through difficult times. Advertising revenues are way down, with little clear understanding of the relationship between blogs and the internet to paper media. For the moment, print is the big loser. But, whatever your media preference – I do assume people are still interested in getting the news, especially readers who are looking at this article – two recent stories show how valuable the media can be in checking the government while informing the public.

First, the Washington Post has published a three-part series on the exponential growth of the security industry in the United States. Reporters spent two years investigating the U.S. post-September 11, 2001 to reveal that 854,000 people hold top-security clearance, with 1,300 government organizations and 2,000 private companies dealing with counter-terrorism, homeland security and intelligence. The bureaucratic overkill is indeed impressive, with little coordination, as might be expected. There are no good guys or bad guys here. Bureaucratic growth, as Max Weber explained long ago, is a neutral phenomenon that is hard to stop, by anyone, even the President. Once the security phobia was unleashed, the growth seemed inevitable. Its description, nonetheless, is gripping and not neutral. Clearly the series is a warning about waste and inefficiency.

Second, Wikileaks has released 92,000 documents related to military reports from Afghanistan and Pakistan for the period 2004-2009 which were accompanied by analytical articles from the NY Times, Guardian and Der Spiegel. Although much of the material was classified secret, nothing was revealed that put people’s lives in danger. What damage was done was to the general impression of the success of the Afghan War, with clear indications that the Pakistani security forces were often helping the insurgent Taliban. As the death tolls continue to rise, and following the McChrystal Rolling Stone fiasco, the leaks and analyses further cloud optimistic forecasts by the U.S. government on the progress of the longest war in U.S. history. Clearly, the description of chaos in the field and duplicity behind the scenes will have an impact on future policies. The public’s scepticism has been reinforced.

The Washington Post took a gamble by freeing reporters for two years to investigate the security industry. Wikileaks took a gamble by publishing the material, with the three media outlets risking some attempted form of government sanction a la Pentagon Papers. So, with all the negative bites on the media and especially print, here are two examples of positive roles the media can play, making its demise that much more worrisome for democracy.

Dr. Daniel Warner is a political scientist based in Geneva, Switzerland