Guest Column: Gary Trauner

Trauner: Information is Power in a Democracy

By Gary Trauner, 6-13-07

In a previous column, I wrote about what role government should play in America.  I’d like to take some time today to discuss the role of an equally important institution in our society today – the media.

The role of the media, or the press, was viewed as critical from the earliest stages of our country’s new democracy.  Thomas Jefferson was savaged by the press during his Presidency, yet he remained a staunch believer in the necessity of a free and critical press.  In 1787, he wrote: “The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.” Later in his life, in 1816 and after taking a beating from newspapers, he still wrote, “The functionaries of every government have propensities to command at will the liberty and property of their constituents. There is no safe deposit for these but with the people themselves, nor can they be safe with them without information. Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.”

Jefferson knew that democracy is hard work.  It requires people to pay attention and to be informed in order to make sometimes difficult decisions about the government that it elects to run our country.  He also knew that all governments tend to hoard information, because information is what allows them to control ordinary people.

The lessons still hold to this day.  What Jefferson was really saying is without an analytical media, without a skeptical and critical press that digs deep for truth and facts, the ability of our citizens to have the information they need to make smart and informed decisions is severely compromised.  And that, perhaps more than anything else, can put everything we’ve built over the past 230 years at risk.

There’s an old saying in politics – don’t pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.  So I want to be clear that this column is not meant to point fingers in any way.  And it’s not sour grapes – there’s no attempt to place blame for the eventual outcome of my race (I came to grips with that a long time ago). However, if I took away one overriding lesson from that campaign, it is the importance, and current shortcomings, of the media in Wyoming and our society.

Running for federal office last year was truly a learning experience in many ways.  And while I knew that it would be a challenge to get our message out in the media, frankly, I was not prepared for some of the difficulties we encountered.  Perhaps one personal example will help:  There can be no doubt that our country’s financial foundation has become less sound over the past 10 years, with huge spending increases, higher deficits, and irresponsible borrowing against our future; no one would call the “fiscal conservatism.” As someone who knows what it takes to run a successful business enterprise, I know this is wrong and must be changed at our peril.  My opponent last year talked tough, yet the simple truth, the fact, is she has repeatedly voted for the bills that allowed this to happen.  And yet, when I asked a national reporter who wrote an article why she wrote that my opponent is a “fiscal conservative,” her reply was telling.  The reporter answered, “Because that’s what she calls herself – isn’t it true?” That is just one of many disturbing encounters.

I didn’t ask for much from the members of the media who covered my race – only that they treat me fairly and with a critical eye – and do the same for my opponent as well.  And make sure that their readers, viewers or listeners get the information they need to make an informed decision.

We are at a delicate time in our history.  While there are still those who strive to get it right, both here in Wyoming and elsewhere, all across the country we are besieged by certain media – TV, radio, internet, newspapers – which has a specific pre-determined agenda instead of a desire to critically, factually and analytically inform.  We cannot let this stand.  Information is power, and in the grand experiment we call American Democracy, power should rest with the people.

Gary Trauner is a family man, businessman and entrepreneur who moved to Wyoming 18 years ago and lives in Wilson with his wife Terry and their two young boys.  He ran for Wyoming’s lone seat in Congress in 2006, narrowly losing to a 6-term incumbent. Gary writes a regular guest column here on NewWest.Net. You can read archives of his column at www.newwest.net/garytrauner.

[End of article]

Gary is being too polite by far. AM radio is full of right-wingnut spewings from Rush, Sean, Mikey Reagan, Mikey Wiener Savage, BillO, etc. Their loyal listeners are grossly ill- and mis-informed, many believing Cheney's allegations that Saddam was linked to 9-11 and that there were WMDs in Iraq.
It goes further. Look at the media concentration in this country, with branches here in Wyoming. The consolidation of media ownership doesn't manifest itself in explicit editorial directives from on high, but a creeping self-censorship among news directors, editors and reporters who hesitate to make certain links between politicians and corporations explicit, who hesitate to connect certain dots because it would prompt angry phone calls to station owners and publishers with little or no grounding in journalism, but plenty in advertising and getting along with their country club buddies.
The Federal Communications Commission, under the chairmanship of Michael Powell, has radically accelerated media concentration in this country, to the detriment of the nation.
Here's the Big Ten companies (http://www.thenation.com/special/bigten.html) and the Who Owns What report (http://www.cjr.org/resources/index.php) from the Columbia Journalism Review.
Lee Enterprises, which owns the dominant newspapers in Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota, owns the following dailies:
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Arizona Daily Star
Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital Times (Madison)
Daily Citizen (Beaver Dam, WI)
Portage Daily Register (WI)
Baraboo News Republic (WI)
North County Times (CA)
The Times (Munster, IN)
Lincoln Journal Star (NE)
Columbus Telegram (NE)
Fremont Tribune (NE)
Beatrice Daily Sun (NE)
Quad-City Times (IA)
Muscatine Journal (IA)
The Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL)
Billings Gazette (MT)
The Courier (Waterloo, IA)
Sioux City Journal (IA)
Herald & Review (Decatur, IL)
Journal Gazette (Mattoon, IL)
Times-Courier (Charleston, IL)
The Post-Star (Glen Falls, NY)
La Crosse Tribune (WI)
Winona Daily News (MN)
The Daily Herald (Provo, UT)
Casper Star-Tribune (WY)
Missoulian (MT)
Ravalli Republic (Hamilton, MT)
Rapid City Journal (SD)
The Journal Times (Racine, WI)
The Southern Illinoisan (Carbondale, IL)
The Bismarck Tribune (ND)
The Times-News (Twin Falls, ID)
South Idaho Press (Burley, ID)
Elko Daily Press (NV)
The Daily News (Longview, CA)
Santa Maria Times (CA)
The Lompoc Record (CA)
Globe Gazette (Mason City, IA)
Napa Valley Register (CA)
The Times and Democrat (Orangeburg, SC)
Democrat-Herald (Albany, OR)
Corvallis Gazette Times (OR)
The Sentinel (Carlisle, PA)
Independent Record (Helena, MT)
Montana Standard (Butte, MT)
The Sentinel (Hanford, CA)
The World (Coos Bay, OR)
The Citizen (Auburn, NY)
Arizona Daily Sun (Flagstaff, AZ)
Daily Chronicle (DeKalb, IL)
The Garden Island (Lihue, HI)
The Ledger Independent (Maysville, KY)
The Chippewa Herald (WI)
Shawano Leader (WI)
The Daily News (Rhinelander, WI)
And yet Lee is small compared to bigger and avowedly conservative chains.
Any time you hear a conservative sound off about the liberal media, don't buy it. Liberal compared to what? Fox? The Rev. Moon-owned Washington Times?
The only reason we're not hip-deep in a theocratic, fascist police state right now, is that good journalism does get done despite media concentration, and the Internet blogs and entities like NewWest are becoming competitive enough to keep the main-stream media relatively honest, or at least apply some tentative brakes on advise to emulate Fox.
What we need, ladies and gentlemen, is another Teddy Roosevelt, a trust buster who'll dismantle K Street and break up all the Biggies -- Big Oil, Big Media, Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Whatever.
It isn't just media consolidation that threatens liberty and freedom -- it is corporate consolidation that is creating a monied aristocracy that keeps us stirred up and divided over hot button issues, while they secure power and we steadily lose it.
Fascism -- yes, it can happen here.

Gary,

Excellent, excellent points about the complicit, lapdog press here. Have you ever read Banditti of the Plains?

Check it out, it'll make the hair on the back of your neck rise and might help to explain what's probably been really going on in the "Equality State" between the power of the powerful and the spinelessness of the press for a very, very long time.

And this also explains why secrecy is like gold to the Bush administration or any other nondemocratic government.

Vis a vis:
Emails Reveal Top Rove Aides’ Involvement In Attorney Scandal

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/17360352.htm?source=rss&channel=krwashington_nation

Thank you for repeating Jefferson's inspiring words.

When I was still teaching, I had a Chinese exchange student in my high school journalism class one year. In what seemed to me an unintended indictment of her own government, she asked me why American newspapers devoted so much space to advertising. I might have told her, "State-controlled, state-produced propaganda doesn't require advertising dollars to stay afloat. Our independent press does." She then might have asked if and how advertising dollars influence content. Hmmm. Or how powerful media conglomerates, with their own political agendas and now in control of so many media outlets, determine not only how a news item gets reported, but even IF it gets reported. Hmmm. The answer suddenly doesn't seem so clear cut!

While I agree, totally, that information is power, it is only powerful if wielded by citizens who care, who understand what's at stake. Certainly we are doomed if ordinary citizens were required to initiate ponderous FOIA requests every time we wanted information, but if and when investigative, analytical information IS put out there (it still happens, doesn't it?) and it is ignored by a distracted, complacent citizenry, then aren't we as a people complicit in creating our own blissful ignorance (and powerlessness) and undeserving of Democracy?

Since freedom is accompanied by responsibility, maybe your next installment will examine the responsibility of the citizens to live up to Jefferson's ideal. Maybe we'll give it a moment's thought in-between "Survivor" and "Nancy Grace." Or maybe not, but would you pass the soma, please?

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