(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The documentary The Newspaperman: The Life and Times of Ben Bradlee (HBO Nordic) is about Washington Post's chief editor (1968 – 1991) and newspaper owner Katherine Graham's fight for a free press. Also Steven Spielberg's The Post, with its premiere this month, tackles these two main characters, played here by Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep. While Spielberg's film adheres to the unveiling of The Pentagon Papers (the Vietnam War), the extensive documentary also includes the subsequent Watergate case that eventually killed President Nixon. Both films use original Nixon telephone recordings from the 70 (public after Watergate), where he scolds the Washington Post and the editor, while the press spokesman accuses the newspaper of shoddy journalism – "fake news". The president made unusual use of the law and stopped the New York Times itself – which was the first to reveal the disclosures – from publishing more of the 7000 stolen pages about the government's Vietnam secrets, "for the sake of national security." Still, Bradlee / Graham of the Washington Post dared to go ahead with the publication, with the risk of both ending up in jail for contempt of court. However, the Supreme Court acquitted the newspaper on the basis of the First Amendment of the Constitution – on freedom of expression.
Today, President Trump's crackdown on the press and President Obama's eager pursuit of whistleblowers have clear parallels to the above issues. But what is at stake? What consequences do the disclosures have? As Bradlee once said: “The truth is never as dangerous as a long-standing lie. I really believe the truth sets us free. ”
Secretary of Defense (1961 – 68) Robert McNamara chose to investigate the US involvement in Vietnam, which documented that the administration early realized both that the war could not be won and that communists on the other side of the globe could not be defeated. For Daniel Ellsberg, who worked on the Pentagon report for McNamara, it was simply too many lies; the truth had to emerge. The former Vietnam soldier first addressed the situation internally – as Edward Snowden did decades later – but received no reactions. That's why he went to the press.
The Pentagon papers showed that the United States internal government allowed the freedom of the South Vietnamese to only 10 percent; then 20 percent was about preventing Chinese influence, while 70 percent (!) was about avoiding being humiliated. On this basis, the Vietnam War continued – where nearly two million people perished. Lyndon B. Johnson (President 1963 – 68) continued to send soldiers, even though he had promised the opposite in his presidential campaign in 1964. Knowing that the war was a disaster, he extended the slaughter to Laos. Nixon (President 1969 – 74) also incorporated Cambodia into the war, with the United States killing around 100 000 people. The two presidents also supported the decision to allow a full 66 million liters agent orange (toxic dioxin) is released over the area. According to Vietnamese figures, the entire 400 000 people were killed or destroyed by the poison, and even more children were later born with defects. The entire 58 200 American soldiers had to make a living, and a huge number of soldiers were severely traumatized. Many of the latter have ended up taking their lives. All to prevent the US superpower from losing face.
The protests against the war of the elected officials in Vietnam were numerous. The Washington Post led the criticism of power to expose Nixon – and then came the Watergate scandal in June 1972, before the new presidential election. Republican Nixon was accused of allegedly abusing both the CIA, the FBI and his own administration for sending five spies into the Democrats' headquarters. Still, he was re-elected as popular president. Bradlee and his buddies first managed to trap Nixon in 1974 – a president who, like today's Trump, operated with pronounced secrecy and personal control of the United States. Power criticism can have consequences, although Nixon is so far the only president who has been forced to step down.
The point is that a press that incites the population with incident-oriented war journalism and fear of terrorism, has a shared responsibility for state abuse. Unfortunately, we see that radical criticism of power is often hit by the ridicule of the mass media and social media. Yes, there is both false news and propaganda in circulation – but still: A number of actors find it opportune to use rhetorical devices such as "guilt by association" and induction (generalization) when attacking critics of power. The latter is put in a booth, associated with something extreme – or one finds one weak point, and lets everything the person has stated and argued for, be colored and generalized into this picture. Or called "In fact completely untrue", as the rhetoric of the mass media's new protector, Faktisk.no, likes to do. One is branded an idiot and expelled from good company with labels such as "paranoid" (Assange), "anti-Semitic" (Galtung) or a spreader of "fake news" and "extreme conspiracy theory" (Klassekampen / Ny Tid). And heads that do not bother to get to grips with the matter, just nod mumbling along. The tendency is to stare at whether what you are presenting is 100 percent correct, rather than that it is relevant and important. The debate becomes uncritical and either-or – rather nuanced. And if you lack arguments, you take the man before the ball, often accompanied by moralizing. No wonder that parts of the Norwegian media rather frolic in the abdomen of politicians rather than in the international power struggles that really affect others.
I The Newspaperman we see the Washington Post fall from its height to the second-rate provincial newspaper it was before Bradlee took the editorial chair in 1968: The editor had hired African-American Janet Cooke, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1981 for what later turned out to be a factory article on an eight-year-old heroin addict. Bradlee countered the criticism of lack of credibility and the ridicule that followed by publishing a comprehensive analysis of the disaster that had hit them – and insisted on it.
The whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg risked 115 years in prison, but was released. At 86 years old, he still fights for whistleblowers and a transparent state apparatus. He has stated: "One lesson from the Pentagon papers and Snowden's leaks is simply that secrecy corrupts people, just as power does."
The lesson must never be to criticize hidden abuse of power. Today, this is especially true of the exploitation of the endless war by the state and the new control society – the so-called "war on terror".
