Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Lawrence O'Donnell and the Denial of Impact

Last night, MSNBC contributor and political analyst Lawrence O'Donnell came and spoke to our torture class. here at Oxy Most of the material he covered was basic media studies knowledge: the media has a significant liberal bias, the 24-hour news cycle, investigative journalism is in decline and traditional news media sources are dying off. There were a couple interesting points. First, that Dick Cheney was trying to receive some kind of national support for torture by making it a partisan issue. In part he succeeded, as evidenced by the many Republican torture apologists in congress. Second, he did acknowledge that giving a platform to Cheney and other torture apologists for the sake of back-and-forth talk show confrontation does legitimize their position. This knee-jerk impulse to find two sides to every issue does create a serious moral quandary for the media by lending legitimacy to defenders of the most heinous crimes against humanity.

Though Mr. O'Donnell did a fantastic job of avoiding saying anything substantive or newsworthy, I did take umbrage at his assertion that media contributors like him don't make a significant impact in public perception of issues. While it is true that viewership for news shows has declined dramatically, televised media as a whole still plays an important role in establishing the national rhetoric surrounding political issues. Mr. O'Donnell complained both about the decline of investigative journalism and the rise of sensationalist media outlets, I wish he'd discussed the effect of their intersection. As has been widely studied in the discipline of media analysis, the decrease in editorial filtering and independent investigative journalism has created a media echo chamber of sorts. In this echo chamber, news stories and particularly soundbite-worthy statements ricochet around the various mass media outlets with little restraint. Mr. O'Donnell argues that his presence on a cable news outlet like MSNBC is fundamentally inconsequential because the viewers watching shows on cable networks "already have their minds made up". Be that as it may, outlets like MSNBC and FOX allow for the introduction of stories and frames into the newscycle that would not otherwise appear in mainstream media.

As exciting as it was to have Mr. O'Donnell join us here at Oxy, I was disappointed that he believed so strongly in the futility of his occupation. I sincerely hope that Mr. O'Donnell uses his powerful position to speak truth to power and establish progressive media narratives. Only in doing so can we counter the pervasive conservative torture apologism narrative that rears its ugly head in nearly every discussion of torture in the media.

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