<underfire> chaos, illusions & the 60's

[Loretta Napoleoni]

To reply to Allan,

 

I did no grow up in America, so perhaps this explains why our views on the
media are different. Perhaps I should not have used Dan Rather of CBS news
but European newspapers and journalists. Orianna Fallaci worked for
l'Europeo, a magazine which had extensive coverage of what American troops
where doing in Viet Nam. It was not a fringe magazine, but a mainstream one.
Today in Italy there are a couple of magazines which can be compared to
l'Europeo, one cannot cover its running cost and is funded by a
philanthropist the other barely manages to survive. None have any
substantial advertising, a key factor in paper media. L'Europeo was a flashy
magazine full of advertising, a bit like US Vanity Fair. I must add
L'Europeo was not a left wing magazine either, it was a sort of
investigative magazine where first class journalists worked.

 

Mainstream media coverage of 1968 uprising in Paris, Rome and many other
capitals in Europe was substantial. Thanks to that coverage the echoes of
the Cold War reached small towns and villages all over Europe. In the 1960s,
I must add, communications in Europe were very basic, the war had ended only
15 years earlier. Politicians did not travel to give speeches, without the
media coverage many Europeans would not even have knows that there was a war
in Viet Nam. Today the situation is very different, there is too much
information, most of it is pure propaganda, and breaking news reach
everybody in a very short time. Having said this I do not think that the
role of the media is political but editorial, the media should check what is
true and what is propaganda. If a news cannot be checked at the source then
it should not be reported, especially is the news comes from a politician or
anyone who wants to remain anonymous.  So the problem of fending the
propaganda is much bigger today than 40 years ago.

  

Loretta

  _____  

From: underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org
[mailto:underfire-bounces at underfire.eyebeam.org] On Behalf Of Allan Siegel
Sent: Wednesday, November 01, 2006 10:01 PM
To: underfire at underfire.eyebeam.org
Subject: <underfire> chaos, illusions & the 60's

 

It is useful to make comparisons between the political activism of the 60's
and the present. And, I am not just talking about the in the U.S. but
throughout Western Europe, the Third World and Asia. For better or worse the
gulf between theorizing and action - a political praxis - was less
'way-back-than' than it is today. In the 60's in the U.S. the theorizing was
mostly shallow and simplistic and reflected the rampant anti-intellectualism
in American society. Marcuse's notion of 'repressive tolerance' seems to be
quite accurate in describing how many left and counter-cultural ideas oozed
their way into the mainstream. I thought I once heard Richard Nixon use the
phrase "Power to the People." Oh, well. In Europe theory had more traction.
In the Third World there were some notable successes and some implosions.

 

However, Loretta's idea that:

The media played a major role in promoting the 1960s generation revolution
and in exposing the faults of the establishment. One could say that the
mainstream media was antiestablishment. Who can forget Dan Rather standing
in the Viet Nam jungle accusing the US army to use napalm against the viet
cong?

 

This statement is patently false. The 60's and 70's mainstream media tried
to catch a wave that was already cresting. They were little better than the
media today. They soaked up Pentagon numbers and lies just as they are doing
today. It is only when the war was collapsing that they jumped on the
anti-war bandwagon. The 60's revolution - it sounded good at the time - was
fueled by its own media with alternative papers in virtually every major
city and an alternative news service. This correlation was critical. (And,
even Mr. Michael Moore once worked on a San Francisco magazine called
Ramparts before he was sacked or quit or some combination of the two). 

 

The point is that today there is a disparity, rather an abyss, between
theoretical discourses entrenched within academic circles and the more
popular dialogues that shape public opinion. No matter how prescient the
discourse or the information it has little affect on the neo-liberal
corporate trajectory. One, because there are few if any political
institutions capable of altering the course of events and utilizing,
absorbing this analysis.. And, two, particularly in U.S., this extremely
knowledgeable academic elite has either become part of the spectacle
(Chomsky is a good example) or neutralized in some think tank. 

 

Please excuse the rather terse nature of the above.

 

a.s.

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