From the Streets Into the Studios
by Robert Jensen
Dissident Voice
January 25, 2003
On a blustery Sunday
morning outside the CBS studio in Washington, D.C., I shared a moment with
veteran television journalist Bob Schieffer that spoke volumes about the sad
state of democracy and journalism in the United States.
Schieffer was
inside, behind the glass wall. I was outside on the sidewalk with an antiwar
contingent organized by the women's peace group "Code Pink" waiting to ask
one of Schieffer's guests on "Face the Nation" that morning --
Secretary of State Colin Powell -- questions about U.S. plans to invade Iraq.
For a brief
moment, Schieffer approached the window to get a look at us. He smiled. I
smiled back and pointed to my sign, "From the streets into the
studio." I gestured to him to come outside to talk. "I'll explain my
sign," I said. He smiled, perhaps unable to hear me through the thick
glass wall. "C'mon out," I said, waving and smiling to reassure him
we weren't dangerous. "Let's talk."
Schieffer smiled
again, waved, and walked away. Shortly after that Powell arrived, ignoring our
request that he take a moment to talk with us. (At least Powell came in through
the front door. We had started the day at ABC, where the guest for "This
Week," Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, entered the studio in a car
through the garage to avoid us.) About 15 minutes later, Schieffer began his
interview with Powell by saying:
"Yesterday
we saw tens of thousands of demonstrators converge on Washington. A fairly
large crowd, I would say, a very large crowd considering that the weather was
in the 20s. They say we should not go to war against Iraq. I would just like to
ask you this morning, what do you say those people who say we shouldn't?"
I couldn't help
but chuckle. Schieffer was invoking the antiwar movement and its sizable
protest the day before, yet evidently he couldn't see a reason to take even a
few seconds that morning to talk with real live antiwar demonstrators outside
his door.
If Schieffer had
come out, I would have told him that the phrase on my sign was a condensed
argument for opening up the dialogue on public-affairs shows such as "Face
the Nation" to include more than just the voices from the halls of power.
No matter which network you tune to on Sunday morning, these talk shows offer
up a steady parade of government officials, military officers, retired
government officials, retired military officers and the occasional academics or
"experts" who mostly parrot the official view.
The previous day
(Jan. 18), those of us on the sidewalk had been among the 200,000 protesters on
the Washington mall, with tens of thousands more in cities all over the
country, exercising our rights to assemble and speak. But if Schieffer -- and
the other journalists making choices about whose voices get amplified on
television -- were doing their job responsibly, they would bring antiwar voices
from the streets into the studios. In addition to news stories about our
demonstrations, they would include such critical voices in their shows.
But, one might
counter, can't journalists -- who claim to function as watchdogs of power --
ask the tough questions that opponents of the war might ask? Yes, they could,
but most often they don't. Throughout the
interview, Schieffer let Powell frame the issue and avoid difficult
questions. Perhaps the single biggest failure of the interview was that
Schieffer focused entirely on inspections, which implicitly accepted the Bush
administration claim that a war against Iraq will be about the threat from
weapons of mass destruction. Schieffer never questioned Powell about the desire
of U.S. policymakers to consolidate control over the flow of oil and oil
profits in the Middle East. Might it not be relevant to ask the secretary if
the weapons issue could be merely a pretext for an invasion to establish a U.S.
client state in Iraq? It's a question most of the world is asking.
At the antiwar
rally on Saturday, that analysis was explored in speeches from the stage and
conversations all over the mall. It was a grand display of democracy in action;
people engaged in spirited conversation about public policy. But in a society
where the majority of people get most of their information from television, it
is crucial that such a more expansive debate make it on the air, that critics
are not just tolerated in the streets but invited into the studio.
Not
surprisingly, Powell responded to Schieffer's questions with the same pat answers
that Bush administration officials have been using for months as they try to
explain why we need a war that virtually the whole world opposes. And, also not
surprisingly, Schieffer never offered a serious challenge to Powell.
What might have
happened if Schieffer had stepped outside to talk to us on the street? What
might have happened if he had allowed a representative of the antiwar movement
into the studio to challenge Powell?
From my vantage
point as a former newspaper journalist, a professor of journalism, and a
citizen, I think Schieffer would have been doing his job more responsibly. And
the American public would have learned more from such a show than they did from
Schieffer's polite, and mostly useless, interview with Powell.
Journalists
often are willing to cover antiwar protests, and that's important. But,
especially on television, those stories almost never explore our evidence and
arguments in sufficient depth. Perhaps that is why much of America thinks our
analysis is about as deep as the slogans on a sign at a rally.
What if we were
allowed routinely into the television studios to speak for ourselves? Not only
might the public's view of protesters and the antiwar movement change, but the
debate over the war would be enriched and the American people would be better
informed.
My advice to Schieffer and his colleagues: Next time you see a group of people willing to wait in the cold outside your studio to make a political point, take a chance and open the door. We don't bite, and we've got a lot to say.
Robert Jensen, an associate
professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of Writing
Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream and a
member of the Nowar Collective. Email: rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu. Other articles are available at his website: http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/home.htm.