Amanda Gordon
Staff Writer
Pepperdine Professor John Q. Wilson chastised mass media in his address Sept. 26 at the Reagan Library, which was abuzz with students, supporters of the Reagan library, and officials from Pepperdine University, in his address titled “War and Mass Media.”
The gathering was introduced by staff of the Reagan Library as an “opportunity to send a strong signal to friend and foe alike…by aligning ourselves with Ronald Reagan.”
Wilson opened with public opinion statistics that reflect more than 50 percent of the public believe the war in Iraq was a great mistake. According to his statistics, immediately after the U.S. went to war, 51 percent of the coverage was negative, six months after, 77 percent of the coverage was negative, and in April 2006, 94 percent was negative.
This decline in media support is the most dramatic decline in support of a war so far, and Wilson credits this to a change in the media’s attitude. One factor may be competitiveness for viewers on television news and circulation for newspapers. However, and more importantly, he accused media of adopting an “If it bleeds, it leads” attitude.
Historically, the U.S. has supported its wars with far more success, but after the Vietnam War, because of misreporting, and miscalculation, the attitude of both media and the public changed, argued Wilson. After the change in reporting during the Vietnam War, there was a 2/3 decline of support among college students, but among blue collar workers, there was no change. Elite opinion changed, and subsequently, the attitude of America changed.
Wilson explained several reasons that are frequently used to explain this change in attitude: Vietnam was a new kind of war, and produced a new kind of journalism. New technology, like television, made it inevitable that Americans would see and react, and media had to keep up with television.
The war in Vietnam had no censorship, but “the problem was not censorship, the problem was the attitude of the media,” surmised Wilson. It is a sociological issue. Wilson asserted that the media is combative and hostile, and we cannot expect them to get along all the time.
However, in Wilson’s opinion, there is a clearer explanation. Politics have changed. The Vietnam war marked a change in the attitudes of our leaders. Fought under three different presidents, all were very tentative about war. JFK was so careful that he asked officials not to acknowledge a war. Lyndon Johnson stayed on the fence, trying to please both the “doves” by bombing halts and the “hawks” by resuming again. Nixon simply wanted to end the war. But none of them believed in it.
Political culture has changed. Journalists realized they couldn’t trust officials, who were protecting themselves, and the White House, which was deeply suspicious of criticism. There have always been significant peace parties in the U.S., it is a natural feature of politics. However, the 1960’s marked a “new left critique that said the U.S. was immoral and genocidal nation,” according to Wilson.
The organization of press changed. In the past the press has been primarily privately owned. Today the press by and large is not governed by owners but by stockholders. Therefore, the media puts out what the people want to hear, largely because “media is so competitive that there is a tendency to compete for marginal viewers to an already shrinking audience,” asserted Wilson.
Wilson also noted that there is an age gap—younger reporters are taking over the front pages, with well written, yet gruesome and competitive stories. They are competitive both with TV and each other. He said there is a conflict in media: at one time, you were an American first, and a reporter second, now you are a reporter first, American second.
The problem with this new attitude surfaced when asked by a member of the audience what the future holds for mass media and the U.S.
Because of the cutthroat nature of media, there is a tendency to compete for marginal viewers in an attempt to boost an already shrinking audience. He grouped viewers into two categories: regular viewers, who tend to be conservative, and marginal viewers, who tend to be liberal. The marginal viewers are in the majority, and therefore journalists try and appeal to the majority, creating programs and papers that make a profit and collect a larger, if less informed audience.
Thus, he reasoned, there is a classic dilemma of quantity over quantity.
Wilson’s conclusion was due to the change in political climate and media’s relationship with the government, our wars are “no longer fought on foreign soil…our wars will be won and lost on the streets of New York City.”
Reagan Library staff celebrated the success of joint programming between the Reagan library and Pepperdine University. The library and the university have a history with Ronald Reagan, who announced Pepperdine’s relocation to the Malibu campus from South Central Los Angeles in 1968. Both Ronald and Nancy Reagan hold honorary doctorates from Pepperdine.
John Wilson holds the title of Ronald Reagan Professor of Public Policy at Pepperdine, signifying his allegiance to what Reagan stood for. Wilson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award given to a citizen. He was also the Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard for 25 years, and the James Collins Professor of Management and Public Policy at UCLA for 10 years.
10-15-2006