Coastal
Post Online
January
2002
"Geographical Correctness" Could Be A Jolt
By
Norman Solomon
And now, a news dispatch from the Media
Twilight Zone...
WASHINGTON --
There were unconfirmed reports yesterday that the United States is not the
center of the world.
The White
House had no immediate comment on the reports, which set off a firestorm of
controversy in the nation's capital.
Speaking on background, a high-ranking official at the State Department
discounted the possibility that the reports would turn out to be true. "If
that were the case," he said, "don't you think we would have known
about it a long time ago?"
On Capitol Hill, leaders of both parties were quick to rebut the
assertion. "That certain news organizations would run with such a poorly
sourced and obviously slanted story tells us that the liberal media are still
up to their old tricks, despite the current crisis," a GOP lawmaker fumed.
A prominent Democrat, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said that
classified briefings to congressional intelligence panels had disproved such
claims long ago.
Scholars at
leading think tanks were more restrained, and some said there was a certain
amount of literal truth to the essence of the reports. But they pointed out
that while it included factual accuracy in a narrow sense, the assertion was
out of context and had the potential to damage national unity at a time when
the United States could ill afford such a disruption.
The claim evidently originated with a
piece by a Lebanese journalist that appeared several days ago in a Beirut
magazine. It was then picked up by a pair of left-leaning daily newspapers in
London. From there, the story quickly made its way across the Atlantic via the
Internet.
"It just goes
to show how much we need seasoned, professional gatekeepers to separate the
journalistic wheat from the chaff before it gains wide attention,"
remarked the managing editor of one news program at a major US television
network. "This is the kind of stuff you see on ideologically driven websites,
but that hardly means it belongs on the evening news." A newsmagazine
editor agreed, calling the reports "the worst kind of geographical
correctness."
None of
the major cable networks devoted much air time to reporting the story. At one
outlet, a news executive's memo told staffers that any reference to the
controversy should include mention of the fact that the United States continues
to lead the globe in scientific discoveries. At a more conservative network,
anchors and correspondents reminded viewers that English is widely acknowledged
to be the international language -- and more people speak English in the US
than in any other nation.
While government officials voiced acute skepticism about the notion that
the United States is not the center of the world, they declined to speak for
attribution. "If lightning strikes and it turns out this report has real
substance to it," explained one policymaker at the State Department,
"we could look very bad, at least in the short run. Until it can be
clearly refuted, no one wants to take the chance of leading with their chin and
ending up with a hefty serving of Egg McMuffin on their face."
An informal survey of intellectuals with
ties to influential magazines of political opinion, running the gamut from The
Weekly Standard to The New Republic, indicated that the report was likely to
gain little currency in Washington's elite media forums.
"The problem with this kind of
shoddy impersonation of reporting is that it's hard to knock down because there
are grains of truth," one editor commented. "Sure, who doesn't know
that our country includes only small percentages of the planet's land mass and
population? But to draw an inference from those isolated facts that somehow the
United States of America is not central to the world and its future -- well,
that carries postmodernism to a nonsensical extreme."
Another well-known American journalist
speculated that the controversy will soon pass: "Moral relativism remains
a pernicious force in our society, but overall it holds less appeal than ever,
even on American campuses. It's not just that we're the only superpower -- we
happen to also be the light onto the nations and the key to the world's fate.
People who can't accept that reality are not going to have much
credibility."
____________________________________________________
Norman
Solomon writes a syndicated column on media and politics. His latest book is
"The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media."