NORTH COAST TIMES E A G L E , JULY 2001
well as the Oregon Supreme Court — interpretation of campaign
donations as 'free speech'.)
Technology, in particular satellites, fiberoptics and
computers, has enabled the immense growth of communications
conglomerates that are instantaneous and global. Multinational
corporations, which might be considered private governments
that influence and often dominate public governments, are able
to transmit and receive data to/from subsidiaries everywhere on
earth They are also able to control and manipulate information
pertinent to their activities, which gives them powers unantici
pated by the framers of the Constitution whose concerns were
limited to the powers of reigning government
The basic idea of communication in the vast centralized
societies of the current era is to profit from the self-interested
reflexes of couchpotato masses and to stimulate world markets.
Rarely is education or libertarian stimulation given priority or air
time.
Information presented to the American public is in
the form of events which is called 'news'. Ideas and opinions
in mainstream media are subdivided into editorial sections of
newspapers or as commentary segments of radio/TV newscasts.
Most women and men in the newsgathering business do not think
of themselves as propagandists or ideologues. On the contrary,
most of them earnestly attempt the improbability of objective and
unbiased recording of events, incidents, facts, and sometimes
account for ideas through opinion polls and random surveys.
They try to treat the news, in the words of Gene Fowler, as
history shot on the wing. But of course they reflect the
contemporary and cultural biases of their society and ultimately
of the industry they serve —The Media, an intertangled mafia of
smoke and mirrors to which truth is ephemeral, chimerical and
expendable, an item of profit and loss. The insidious aspect of
the pursuit of objectivity as the cornerstone of modem journalism
is that inevitably the form is used to disguise and project very
partisan ideas and perspectives by those who manage and rule
society and own the major media.
The corporations "sitting on the windpipe of the 1st
Amendment," as Jeff Cohen of FAIRE calls them, project the
nurtured myth of a "left/liberal" media, which has a purpose
of intimidating working journalists (most of whom are, after all,
corporate employees) to avoid liberalism as a professional
plague. If indeed there is a left/liberal media in the USA it would
critically examine bloated Pentagon budgets, Star Wars, oil
drilling in natural preserves, 'laissez fairy tales' (Norman
Solomon's phrase) aid to dependent corporations.
The real purpose of the press/media is little understood,
which is as much its own fault as it is from public skepticism
and distrust. The people expect event and spectacle, which are
ardently chronicled, and the infotainment mediacrity provides
instant celebrity and fashion (as well as scandal) as instantly
recycled and refashioned. But the central function of the media is
to act as the public conscience and critical watchdog of authority
— the cry of alarm when authority is exceeded or corrupt. It must
act as a forum and instrument of public dialogue and debate,
presenting differing views, even as U. S. Supreme Court Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "expressions of opinion that we
loathe and believe to be fraught with death."
The Media in all its hydra forms does an inadequate job.
It is probably impossible to examine, publish and broadcast the
billions of bits of data generated every day. There is too much to
write about, to televise and report, to think about, to debate and
discuss; and it moves too quickly, changes too rapidly to pin
down well enough or process adequately.
In response to the impossible glut of information, a
significant trend in media traffic is paradoxically toward specific,
or more ominously, specialized audiences. Mainstreaming more
often seems to mean segmenting into selective user groups that
become hermetically sealed by appropriate media.
WILLIAM MICHAEL SCHUSTER ('CAROL')
Consolidation and distortion of a free press have
continually given rise to small newspapers and magazines,
and to independent radio stations such as Astoria’s KMUN-FM
and Portland's KBOO, whose only allegiance is to the 1st
Amendment. (National Public Broadcasting, highly praised
and severely criticized, is buffeted by corporate aspirations
and political sabotage.) The independent media, which has
few pretensions toward objectivity and fewer illusions about its
probability, provides an insistent and vital forum that megamedia
ignores for the exchange, analysis, understanding and argument
of issues that are at the base of every culture and society. Its
lineage reaches back to the rough and prickly press that gave
birth to the 1st Amendment, and though it seldom reflects popular
opinion and operates on the cultural edge where megamedia
fears to go, independent micromedia is powered by the belief that
if it does not remain free nothing soon afterward will be free.
No one should ever be surprised that a government does
not encourage liberty or independent opinion among its subjects.
Democracies are elaborate power balances between diverse
parties that constantly seek advantage over the others. A
most important assumption of a democracy is that the flow
of information should not be tampered with nor be restricted if
democracy is to survive the incessant tugs of war between its
parties. But of course interfering with and manipulating
information is among the highest priorities of political power
which accurately assumes the general populace will not give
much thought to mind control efforts most of the time.
People who listen to independent radio stations like
KMUN wish for more than babble shrieking from their radios
and viewers of public broadcasting search for more than the
drivel and schlock beamed to the masses by commercial
networks. Yet intimidation by the FCC, the gestating ministry
of truth Orwell predicted would rise to be the temple of the state,
SHOULD THE TIMES EAGLE EXIST?
BY ROBERT STANLEY NEED
It has really been an exciting week, again, at the
Times Eagle building in Wheeler. Last Friday it was necessary
to relinquish our telephone communications because we just
couldn't pay for them. At the same time, we had to relinquish
the services of the most expert Editor in our brief, tempestuous
history — Terry Blevins. The same reason applied to the
departure of Blevins that applied to the telephone, we couldn't
afford to keep him alive. Long-suffering but tough Ken O'Toole,
features and Tillamook County news for over 18 months, has
given notice that this is his last issue. Bill Mullock, the darling
of Cannon Beach and Seaside, has found the only way to get
closer to food is to get a job in a restaurant.
The bitterness that can and does attack journalists is
.. more than understandable among the profession universally,
but underscored to an inestimable degree when you are actually
sacrificing your life and means of livelihood to build a totally
"independent" newspaper Summed up, the events of the past
week graphically pose the question: the Times Eagle — should
it survive?
The answer, of course, is 'No'. The Times Eagle may
gracefully suspend when it has fulfilled some form of reward to
all of the 80 persons of all ages who have given to the very of
their stamina to create and keep the paper alive.
The answer, of course, is 'No' The Times Eagle can
cease publication when it has effectively established a com
munications forum among the coastal communities, its citizens
and those who love the Oregon coast from afar, that assures
forever the proper use and maintenance of its lands and
resources. When intelligence and love, consideration of others
and preservation of life-sustaining processes, rather than self-
service, commercial greed, and the putrescence of political
manipulation, are the accepted and normal criteria of coastal
life, then there is no need for the North Coast Times Eagle
The answer, of course, is 'No' There is no need for
a Times Eagle when the other members of the coastal media
reestablish priorities and face head-on the acute and dangerous
problems in their own communities that are, in truth, contamin
ating the community next door, forming festers that affect the
state, and in the end poison the whole fabric of American
society When publishers are respected for their truth and
courage instead of their presence at the Elks Club, when they
are brave enough to warn subscribers about unsafe and danger
ous commercial products instead of grovel at the feet of national
PAGE 13
and local vendors, when the balance of public thought is more
important than the balances at the bank, then there will be no
need for the North Coast Times Eagle
The answer, of course, is 'No'. There is no necessity
for continued publication when the Times Eagle has achieved its
holiest goal, that being its repeated obsession to find means to
divert community thinking and endeavor back to what it con
siders the most important of the Declaration of Independence's
inalienable rights, 'The pursuit of happiness."
Since none of these goals have been obtained, there is
no other recourse than to fight on and on. It wuld be so much
easier to give our subscription records to another newspaper to
fulfill these outstanding contracts.
But to thousands of incredibly faithful readers, the
normal standards of publication conduct do not apply. At
the top of every front page of every newspaper is its "flag,"
that often decorative name, volume number, and date of the
publication. Because of constant usage of the term, it has
lost a great deal of its significance among newspaper people
in general A few weeks ago, a reader said that the Times
Eagle building in Wheeler should be "known as besieged Fort
Wheeler."
If so, then we are flattered by the simile and accept it.
"Forth Wheeler" still stands, cut off from the communications
of a modern world, its casualties continuing to mount, its
remaining defenders starved for proper composing, layout and
photographic supplies and equipment, and, in truth, for even
the means to sustain adequate physical living.
But "Fort Wheeler" still stands today Its flag is firmly
nailed to the flagstaff, its motto To Serve All People remaining
a tattered but still valiant bright spot against the dark storm
clouds of a saddened society
We seriously considered and fought over going into
total suspension this week But someone climbed the flagpole
and came back down grumbling, "Oh hell, the damn thing’s
stuck up there forever." So be it.
rhiiun 1Q7A\
Robert Stanley Need was the founding Father of the
North Coast Times Eagle, vtfiich he first began publishing
30 years ago, in May 1971 The original Times Eagle folded
5 years later, in 1976, and was resurrected three years later
This issue is the 22nd anniversary of the newspaper's revival
suppresses creativity and controversy. Risk taking, essential
to creativity and independence, shrivels to mumbles of
acquiescence. We should remember Orwell: He invented a
language, Newspeak, which was based on erasing unwanted
ideas in the pretense ol simplifying the public dialogue. He
warned that what is removed from language is forgotten in the
individual and collective mind.
Orwell was wrong, though, when he suggested that a
propaganda system depended upon violent coercion. Instead,
in a post-Orwelliar. world we suffer the benign control of a
powerful system of indoctrination and propaganda that needs
little coercion to set an agenda for what people will think about.
Policing public morality, claiming of course that it is
only being reflected, is usually an indecently popular and
effective method of intruding control over what we read in our
newspapers, listen to on our radios and view on our televisions,
and are ultimately persuaded to accept as truth and reality when
in reality our vision has been distorted, our perception atrophied,
as are our personal values and liberties. There is no single right
or truth, nor is there a single wrong or deceit. Shades fog every
issue, denying absolutes no matter how insistently projected.
A free and open flow of information regardless of
ideology or opinion, despite the strenuous labor of separating
truth from fiction, deceit, gossip and obscenity — information
from disinformation — is quite truthfully the only method of
preserving what remains of our freedoms and the only chance
to enlarge them in a turbulent world that is still recoiling from the
collapse of a morbidly tyrannical and static empire that claimed
to be a dictatorship of the people.
The 1st Amendment is unequivocal: nothing shall
abridge freedom of speech, therefore freedom of thought. It
is our distinguishing ideal, unfortunately more in theory than
actuality. Not our wealth or world power nor our system of
acquisition and consumption is as important as the inspired
attempt to reverse history and make it possible for people to
be equal and independent under laws of their own choice.
Judge Learned Hand should have the last wrd:
"Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies
there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it."