The Fourth Branch of Government: Corporate Media Complicity from Miami to Iraq
by Peter Gelderloos
Many people have stated that the Media are the "fourth branch of government." What we are supposed to infer from this sentiment is that the media's responsibility to inform the populace is essential to the healthy functioning of the democracy. However, the old adage takes on a new meaning in light of the corporate media's invisible role in facilitating police brutality against protestors in Miami, the war of conquest in Iraq, and other crimes committed by the government, or by the corporations the government serves.
In Miami, which was to host the hemisphere's fat cats for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA, or "NAFTA on steroids") summit, corporate news sources became the police department's de facto Public Relations office. For weeks in advance of the summit, and accompanying protest, corporate media in Miami uncritically broadcast police misrepresentations and fearmongering, lending a stage to threatening prophesies of hordes of "violent anarchists" who would descend on the city and cause millions of dollars in property damage. The police PR campaign was so successful that Miami police got $8.5 million from Washington, notably in Bush's $87 billion Iraq reconstruction bill, for extra security, and Police Chief Timoney got tacit permission to line the streets with 2,500 riot cops, some carrying submachine guns, and even bring out tank-like Armored Personnel Carriers.
Without all the media support, it would have been a pretty risky career move for Chief Timoney to prepare for a protest by amassing a veritable army and decking it out for battle. And the cops on the streets on November 20th and 21st had clearly been authorized to act with impunity. How else can we explain the multitude of baseless arrests, so frequent some officers were heard complaining about having to invent the charges? How can we explain the ubiquitous acts of brutality--peaceful and injured protestors being pepper sprayed in the eyes, people shot in the back with rubber bullets multiple times while dispersing, entire crowds beaten by mobs of cops, arrested activists tortured, injured, and sexually assaulted while in jail? The climate of police repression leveled against activists in Miami, suffered by nearly everyone in the streets that day, students and union organizers, teenagers and grandparents, was described by many as a "police state." International solidarity activists with experience in Palestine or Iraq compared Timoney's police state to the military occupations in those countries, and a crucial part in any police state is media complicity.
Iraq is an apt comparison in other respects. Even more dramatically than in Miami, the corporate media made government atrocities possible in Iraq. How much support would Bush have gotten for his invasion if the big corporate media channels in the US were all reporting what independent media and foreign presses were saying since January, 2003--that Iraq was not involved with Al Qaida, had no part in the September 11th attacks, had no WMDs; that all the reports saying they were building nuclear weapons were hoaxes or forgeries; and that while Hussein was guilty of many atrocities, most were committed with US support and in any case were not as numerous as the atrocities committed by US allies like Colombia or Saudi Arabia? Of course, the President and his neoconservative cabinet still had the power to carry out their war without popular approval, but it would have been a poor decision considering that even with the media lying for them, they faced some of the largest, most quickly organized anti-war protests this country has seen.
In Iraq, as elsewhere, the media represented the interests of their corporate masters, who profited immensely from the invasion. They devoted hours every day to repeating the lies justifying an invasion, and gave little or no airtime to critics exposing the fallacies in Bush's propaganda. They certainly did no objective investigating of their own, and when the invasion started, everyone from FOX to CNN to the New York Times did their best to make the war as colorful, exciting, entertaining, and antiseptic as possible. A few months later, tens of thousands of Iraqis, and hundreds of Americans, are dead, many more are injured, and a nation has been transferred from one kind of slavery to another; meanwhile its museums, archives, and infrastructure have been destroyed, and its natural resources have been given away to US corporations. Is it unreasonable to suggest that the media companies that made the invasion expedient and advantageous for the Bush administration should be held accountable for all the suffering that has resulted?
In the aftermath of the invasion, as the occupation drags on, the US body count rises, and some lies become too apparent to ignore, the corporate media (except for FOX) have largely abandoned the neoconservatives sinking ship, like rats. They have begun suggesting that the occupation of Iraq may not be in US interests (nevermind the Iraqis), again pretending to be the nation's honest conscience and the government's stern critic, when just half a year ago they had their tongues firmly lodged in Bush's large intestine. The media played the same game in Miami, airing a few criticisms after the fact, when it was too late, to sell the illusion that they were "fair and balanced."
The American mass media are indeed an essential part of the government, telling the lies and inciting the fear or apathy that are required to keep the population in line. Corporate media are more effective as propaganda agencies than officially state-run media, because they have the appearance of independence (when in actuality mass media companies are owned by the same people who own the politicians). We need to hold the media accountable. Whatever punishment is deemed fit for Chief Timoney, or Bush and Rumsfeld, should also be dealt on Tom Brokaw and Rupert Murdoch, for there is no atrocity the politicians have committed without in some way being aided by their able propagandists in the corporate media.
