The Possum Bistro

We will not walk in fear, one of another.

I have a soft spot for film noir, and though there's that voice at the back of my head lecturing about film noir being strictly classified as films with a protagonist-cum-narrator doing voice-overs in a subdued, chilly monotone as scenes of him/her are being played out, including the frequently employed dark-coloured, minimalist colour scheme as seen in Payback, I instinctively treat black-and-white films produced in the modern age as appealing as film noir.

With some spare time, while flipping through my DVDs I caught sight of Good Night and Good Luck and decided to give it a whirl. Someone in my class last semester had talked about watching it, and she seemed enthusiastic enough about it to give me a good vibe as to whether Clooney's attempt at portraying the momentous battle of ideas and words – between Edward R. Murrow at CBS and the junior Wisconsin senator, Joseph McCarthy – would be a worthwhile detour to make.

Since its cover hinted at mono-colour tones, it made the decision for me.

After watching the film, there were a few aspects that truly made me contemplate about the role of the media, the perpetual salience of ideas and their significance in shaping our perspectives of the world – hence, how we make sense of events around us and thus, react to them. In light of the enlightening virtues that this film sought to illuminate in its audience, I have decided to pen down a few of my musings and hopefully, explore the essence of what the film wanted to achieve.

A common refrain espoused by those in the media industry, especially those who fervently believe that the job of the media is to 'report the news, not make it'. Implicit in this simplistic belief is the underlying assumption that as humans, our subjectivities which are as inherent and real as those of charismatic galvanisers like Hitler, Stalin, Chiang Kai-Shek or Vaclav Havel, can somehow be magically insulated when we apply our intellect and analytical skills to our subject matter that we deal with each day. To borrow from the post-modernist school of thought, there is no such thing as objectivity, but rather a menagerie of subjectivities that compete with each other on a multitude of levels of meaning. The degree of subjectivity residing in our thoughts and ideas is not measured solely by its visibility, but also by the subtle inferences within the vernacular of which we use.

It does not mean that subjectivity as apparent as that expressed in Hitler's numerous speeches deserves more attention for correction and censorship than the multitudinous examples of subjectivities expressed by individuals as they write in the forums, columns and articles circulating in the media. In fact, the more surreptitious and innocuous-seeming the subjectivity, the greater the pernicious nature and the tougher to erase it from the minds of those it has embedded itself in.

Having said that, let us return to that refrain aforementioned – reporters and correspondents do the reporting on the field, and judging from the enormous risks that they face in volatile areas such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, their courage in venturing forth into unknown territory to gather information is commendable, and I take nothing away from them. Who else would do the reporting in their place? Though there may be lapses in their judgement in reporting facts – and there have been – enforcement of legal action against those whose integrity have been found questionable has proved effective.

However, editors of publications cannot entertain pretensions to the same claim: the crucial task of editing lies in their hands – what lands on the front page becomes the agenda of the day; how many pages it occupies determines to a significant extent as to its relative importance. In this world whereby globalisation has engineered the profusion of media coverage across territories, attention of the global community still focuses on what is most visible. Humanitarian crises in North Korea and Iran are given more coverage than those in Sudan and Africa, partly because media networks cannot get past government censors there. This analogy displays just how powerful editors are in determining the visibility, and by extension the prominence, of issues in civil society.

Edward R. Murrow's sheer bravery in challenging what McCarthy stood for exposes the crumbling edifice that is the mass media today: what happened to the Fourth Estate that the media was supposed to represent – an avenue which civil society could seek to utilise and channel its grievances to the government, to question the logic and necessity of policies and legislation, to foster and strengthen minds and perspectives against being lured into buying into the lazy, seductive logic of a dominant hegemonic discourse? How loyal is the media to civil society, or has it sold its morality to corporate and special interests within the state?

Murrow is right when he berates those who perceive the role of the media as simply to amuse, entertain and insulate – that will only result in the infantilisation of civil society, erode critical thinking and allow the festering of auto-regulatory practices among individuals such that they resort to self-censorship for fear of being prosecuted and blacklisted by those in power. Ideas are destroyed before they come to light, and the less frequent human capacities are flexed to generate them, the more degenerative the malaise becomes, till the greatest resource the state has at its disposal erodes to nothingness.

The importance of editorial integrity is a continuous theme throughout the film: to challenge the story if there is no corroborative evidence. Otherwise, facts and figures are merely pawns in a chess game where the editors are the kings and queens that determine what is fact and fiction. Murrow, despite knowing that his reputation would be attacked by McCarthy, and that sponsors would pull out for fear of being perceived as going against public opinion as engineered by McCarthy's witch-hunt, took on the junior senator and exposed him for attempting to exploit the fear existing in America with regard to Communism.

Propagandistic pronouncements against Communism served both internal and external purposes for McCarthy, and his success in generating support among Americans cannot mean simply that culpability belongs solely to him. As Murrow emphasised, he did not create fear, but opportunistically exploited it for his vested interests. Internally, perhaps McCarthy was making a power play in a bid to oust rivals – he was young, ambitious and possibly had high hopes for ascending the ranks of government. Externally, the US needed to be seen as actively combating Communism wherever it persisted or threatened to permeate into. Citizens chose to believe in McCarthy's scare-mongering tactics because it had always been easier to blame an 'Other' for societal ills, and for the pervasive, lingering sense of insecurity after the Soviet Union emerged as a potential counterweight to the mighty US.

If McCarthy had succeeded in his multiple attempts at convicting and persecuting individuals in the name of anti-Communism, he might have very easily been lured to utilise the momentum of public opinion to start targeting his political opponents and skeptics. Witch-hunts start out on a limited agenda, but almost always widen by embracing an ever-expanding definition of the 'Other' that serves its ever-narrowing objectives – it inspires a race to the bottom in the sense that each faction has no idea when exactly other factions may start accusing it of defecting to the enemy, and thus has every incentive to be ever-ready to point the finger at someone else in the absence of substantial evidence.

Need more evidence? Look no further than the turbulent events leading up to the independence of Singapore, where the People's Action Party had engaged in horse-trading with the British colonial authorities and the Tunku of Malaya then in the 1960s to carry out a witch-hunt against Communists. The PAP had no qualms about accusing its fiercest political rivals of being Communist front-men and sympathisers, persecuting them despite having absolutely no concrete evidence to back up their claims. Till this day, the legacy of anti-Communism still hangs over the heads of political opponents to the PAP like a Sword of Damocles, though in different forms as Communism has lost its ideological potency as an 'Other' in the modern era.

Ironically, McCarthyism and the tactics involved resembled the Soviet-inspired witch hunts against enemies of Communism throughout Eastern Europe, in the form of show trials.

The diffusion of power of the government – to employ the media for purposes that are aligned with the agenda of the day – was a problem then, and has persisted to this day. A junior senator from Wisconsin was able to intimidate the press and institutionalise within civil society a stifling atmosphere of fear, paranoia and auto-regulation. Galvanised by a seemingly apathetic public, the witch-hunt advocates of McCarthyism managed to create a regime of fear, establishing norms of social behaviour that would inevitably result in the alienation and individuation of individuals. It may not have been inaccurate or reckless to speculate that the US might possibly have been at risk of descending into fascism, besieged by such scare-mongering in the Cold War period, with regard to the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities and the frightening success with which Communism still retained its intellectual legitimacy and seductive logic across the Atlantic during that time. Of course, it would be discredited as the century played itself out, but we have the advantage of retrospective analysis, while the majority of Americans did not in the 1950s.

Murrow's statement regarding the invidious intentions of the senator deserve repeating here: "If none of us ever read a book that was 'dangerous,' nor had a friend who was 'different,' or never joined an organization that advocated 'change,' we would all be just the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants."

The obligations of the media are even more disparate in the current age of turbulence. James Rosenau's post-internationalism provides an effective paradigm through which we may seek to understand the complexity of actorness and interests that shape the choices made in the mass media industry. Therein lies a clash of interests between shareholders, sponsors and the public. Though at times, their interests may coincide on several issues, more often than not the editors are the individuals that are torn between obligations to separate parties. Does the truth count for more than the bottom line?

When public apathy is assumed, politicians tend to believe that politics should be left solely to those in power/government. Thus, McCarthy thought he could win this contest of competitive credibility against Murrow because his logic of anti-Communism exploited the urgency of which the public was so eager for, to address the prevailing situation of less-than-reassuring security. However, when Murrow led CBS in its defiant stance against McCarthyism, it represented the tipping point for the public as they began to act upon their nagging doubts about the truth behind McCarthy's tirades. He gave the people a voice, and he understood that public opinion was essential to winning this contest of credibility. More importantly, he utilised the media as the platform from which he could keep the issue on the agenda even when newspapers and publications across the country would not dare to do the same, and even when Alcoa pulled out its funding.

When individuals come into contact with ideas and information, and are receptive to it, that is an act of empowerment. Murrow taught me, and hopefully us, of the importance of ideas that shape our perspectives. It is our ambitions, fears and prejudices that imbue meaning into ideas – if we allow others to define what we should believe in, if we allow them to dull our senses and propensities, then ideas become nothing more than empty vessels that ring hollow, tools of intellectual oppression exploited to manipulate and dictate our thoughts, delineate the limits of action and speech and ultimately consign us as blind followers of a flawed ideology. It is easier to conform than to challenge, but which matters more – your integrity or your reputation?

I do not pretend to know how difficult it must be for editors of publications anywhere in the world to constantly balance between retaining sponsorship as the proliferation of media burgeons and competition intensifies intermestically and still maintaining a considerable degree of integrity and obligation as the Fourth Estate, but as consumers of the media, don't we have the agency and collective power to demand that publishers and corporate interests listen to us instead of the other way round?

Gidden's structuration theory proposes that agents affect and are affected by the structures they operate in – thus, our actions are shaped by the norms and principles of our environment, but as we act upon our prejudices and predilections we reinforce, alter or reject those norms and principles. A duality exists in that we are not merely passive receptacles waiting to be spoonfed by the media – we can change it. A more pluralistic form of media needs to be promoted and reinforced, but that does not merely mean more alternatives, since consumers may mistake substitutes for substance. Is there a way to render media less beholden and susceptible to blackmail and retaliatory tactics by corporate interests and sponsors?

If we could trust government intervention, then perhaps governments can provide incentives to reward those in the media industry who advocate and practise diversification of sponsorship, promising to intervene to fund should any sponsor threaten to withdraw. In conditions of perfect competition, as soon as one sponsor withdraws, another should fill its place. In reality, this is not the case as CBS found out as soon as Alcoa pulled out. NGOs, armed with resources that can be harnessed beyond territorial borders, are empowered with the capabilities of promoting the idea of the media as the Fourth Estate by garnering funding for such companies in the event of a pull-out, thereby preventing corporate and special interests from having an effective veto over agenda-setting by the media for the public.

These are just some suggestions that I've come up with, but obviously there is much more material to be explored with regard to media, integrity and special interests. And so I shall delve deeper into these subjects and hopefully obtain a clearer perspective of such matters.

A quote of Murrow's is in order:

To those who say people wouldn't look; they wouldn't be interested; they're too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter's opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost. This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.

Good night, and good luck.