{"id":298380,"date":"2017-03-10T03:46:02","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T02:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/we-are-conditioned-by-mass-media-to-choose-up-sides-counterspin-interview-with-norman-solomon-on-trump-and-russia\/"},"modified":"2017-03-10T03:46:02","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T02:46:02","slug":"we-are-conditioned-by-mass-media-to-choose-up-sides-counterspin-interview-with-norman-solomon-on-trump-and-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/we-are-conditioned-by-mass-media-to-choose-up-sides-counterspin-interview-with-norman-solomon-on-trump-and-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018We Are Conditioned by Mass Media to Choose Up Sides\u2019 &#8211; CounterSpin interview with Norman Solomon on Trump and Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Janine Jackson interviewed Norman Solomon about Trump, Russia and the press for the <a href=\"http:\/\/fair.org\/home\/norman-solomon-on-trump-and-the-press-beverly-bell-on-berta-caceres-work\/\">March 3, 2017, episode<\/a> of <strong>CounterSpin<\/strong>. This is a lightly edited transcript.<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_5585606\" style=\"width: 611px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/NormanSolomon.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" wp-image-5585606\" src=\"http:\/\/fair.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/03\/NormanSolomon.jpg\" alt=\"Norman Solomon\" width=\"601\" height=\"338\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em>Norman Solomon: &#8220;When the Democratic and Republican party leadership in Washington have a certain frame of reference, the dominant corporate media stay within it.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"wrapperMI_0\" class=\"wrap-mjp  \" style=\"padding:5px 0px 40px 0px;margin:0px;width:100%\">\n<div class=\"Eabove-mjp\" id=\"Eabove-mjp_0\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"subwrap-MI\">\n<div class=\"jp-innerwrap\">\n<div class=\"innerx\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"innerleft\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"innerright\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"innertab\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"interface-mjp verdana-mjp\" style=\"height:71px\" id=\"interfaceMI_0\">\n<div class=\"MI-image Himg right-mjp\" id=\"MI_image_0\" style=\"width:auto;height:71px;overflow:hidden\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"T_mp3j_0\" class=\"player-track-title left-mjp norm-mjp plain-mjp childNorm-mjp childPlain-mjp\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"bars_holder\">\n<div class=\"loadMI_mp3j\" id=\"load_mp3j_0\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"poscolMI_mp3j\" id=\"poscol_mp3j_0\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"posbarMI_mp3j\" id=\"posbar_mp3j_0\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div id=\"P-Time-MI_0\" class=\"jp-play-time\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"T-Time-MI_0\" class=\"jp-total-time\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"statusMI_0\" class=\"statusMI\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"transport-MI\">\n<div class=\"play-mjp\" id=\"playpause_mp3j_0\">Play<\/div>\n<div class=\"stop-mjp\" id=\"stop_mp3j_0\">Stop<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"buttons-wrap-mjp\" id=\"buttons-wrap-mjp_0\">\n<div class=\"mp3j-popout-MI\" id=\"lpp_mp3j_0\">pop out<\/div>\n<div id=\"download_mp3j_0\" class=\"dloadmp3-MI\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"mjp-volwrap\">\n<div class=\"MIsliderVolume\" id=\"vol_mp3j_0\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"innerExt1\" id=\"innerExt1_0\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"innerExt2\" id=\"innerExt2_0\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"Ebetween-mjp\" id=\"Ebetween-mjp_0\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"listwrap_mp3j\" id=\"L_mp3j_0\">\n<div class=\"wrapper-mjp\">\n<div class=\"playlist-colour\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"wrapper-mjp\">\n<ul class=\"ul-mjp darken1-mjp verdana-mjp med-mjp childNorm-mjp childPlain-mjp left-mjp\" id=\"UL_mp3j_0\">\n<li><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<div id=\"mp3j_finfo_0\" class=\"mp3j-finfo\">\n<div class=\"mp3j-finfo-sleeve\">\n<div id=\"mp3j_finfo_gif_0\" class=\"mp3j-finfo-gif\"><\/div>\n<div id=\"mp3j_finfo_txt_0\" class=\"mp3j-finfo-txt\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"mp3j-finfo-close\" id=\"mp3j_finfo_close_0\">X<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"mp3j_dlf_0\" class=\"mp3j-dlframe\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"mp3j-nosolution\" id=\"mp3j_nosolution_0\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"Ebelow-mjp\" id=\"Ebelow-mjp_0\"><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>MP3jPLAYLISTS.MI_0 = [<br \/>\n\t{ name: &#8220;1. 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That bit of damage control came off elite media\u2019s startlingly generous, you might say, reception to Donald Trump\u2019s speech to Congress, in which the <b>New York Times<\/b> actually <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/02\/28\/us\/politics\/trump-speech.html\">credited<\/a> him for \u201cfollowing the written text on the teleprompters more closely than any major speech of his presidency.\u201d \u00a0\u201cTrump Advocated White Nationalism With an \u2018Indoor Voice,\u2019 and Pundits Loved It,\u201d was how Media Matters <a href=\"http:\/\/mediamatters.org\/blog\/2017\/03\/01\/trump-advocated-white-nationalism-indoor-voice-and-pundits-loved-it\/215509\">put it<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Well, this was just as some were thinking that the US press corps had accepted that their relationship with the Trump White House was going to be adversarial, and were maybe even looking like taking a less complacent stand, at least saying that they would call lies \u201clies.\u201d While corporate media tried to sort out what they stand for, the question for us is what do we need from journalism right now? What would truly independent media look like, and how could we use it to move forward?<\/p>\n<p>Norman Solomon is national coordinator of the online activist group <a href=\"http:\/\/rootsaction.org\/\">RootsAction.org<\/a> and executive director of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.accuracy.org\/\">Institute for Public Accuracy<\/a>. He\u2019s also a long-time FAIR associate who joins us now by phone from the Bay Area. Welcome back to <b>CounterSpin<\/b>, Norman Solomon.<\/p>\n<p><b>Norman Solomon:<\/b> Hey, thanks, Janine.<\/p>\n<p><b>JJ:<\/b> I think elite media\u2019s treatment of Trump\u2019s speech to Congress\u2014the centering of the performance of it rather than its content, the consecration with the term \u201cpresidential,\u201d an utterly reflexive exercise in which <i>media<\/i> say that <i>media <\/i>see something a certain way\u2026. It was all a clear sign, if that were needed, that, while they may do critical work, we can\u2019t rely on these media to &#8220;hold&#8221; our outrage and concern, to represent it, to represent <i>us<\/i>. And I think some folks may have started to get a different idea about that for a minute. There\u2019s too much to say, of course, but I did want to start with that open question: What are some of the kinds of reporting that a vital democratic media would be doing in the face of a Trump administration?<\/p>\n<p><b>NS:<\/b> Apparently independence is really hard to maintain. And while the principle, the axiom, of a free and independent press is something that journalists really embrace in theory, when it comes down to it, that sort of magnetic pull of power, whether out of the White House or Capitol Hill, it just seems often irresistible. And so there are so many euphemisms that kick in and, as you mentioned, Janine, the coverage of the Trump speech to the joint session of Congress just oozed praise for the high jump over very low standards of reading a teleprompter effectively and couching really pretty flagrant xenophobia and racism in more genteel terms.<\/p>\n<p><b>JJ:<\/b> We\u2019ve seen, just recently, outlets taking umbrage at being excluded from press briefings, and that sort of looks like the Fourth Estate remembering what it\u2019s there for. But at the same time, we\u2019ve seen journalists <a href=\"http:\/\/fair.org\/home\/north-dakotas-war-on-1st-amendment-goes-from-bad-to-worse\/\">arrested for reporting<\/a> around DAPL, for example, and the elite media <a href=\"http:\/\/fair.org\/home\/charges-dropped-against-amy-goodman-no-thanks-to-corporate-media\/\">didn\u2019t come to their defense<\/a>. And we see citizen journalists trying to <a href=\"http:\/\/fair.org\/home\/nypds-arrests-of-citizen-journalists-should-spark-outrage\/\">document police abuse<\/a>, it\u2019s a very cutting-edge issue, and we don\u2019t see the bastions of traditional media standing up for them. So it\u2019s almost like there\u2019s this press corps that we\u2019re meant to be defending, this First Amendment we\u2019re meant to be defending, but it\u2019s somewhat more theoretical than actual.<\/p>\n<p><b>NS:<\/b> Well, there\u2019s so much of the press, the independent media that are given short shrift or totally ignored by the dominant corporate media, which, contrary to myth, largely by the numbers dominate the internet and websites as well.<\/p>\n<p>I think that also is parallel to just the political scene. We have this classic dynamic. It\u2019s been true for decades, FAIR has pointed it out repeatedly since its founding in the mid-1980s: When the Democratic and Republican party leadership in Washington have a certain frame of reference, the dominant corporate media stay within it. And I think there\u2019s no clearer or more important example than the coverage of Russia, and the whole uproar over Trump and Russian contacts and all the rest of it, where the mindset, the worldview of the people in Congress and the White House, pretty much are the alpha and omega of where the mass media will go.<\/p>\n<p><b>JJ:<\/b> No one\u2019s saying perjury shouldn\u2019t be addressed, but it\u2019s so easy to lose sight of what this whole scandal about Russian involvement is grounded in. And it\u2019s as though Russia still is, for the media and for many people, a\u2014pun intended\u2014red flag that kind of shuts down thinking and starts up this machinery of response, which looks very old.<\/p>\n<p><b>NS:<\/b> Well, it\u2019s new wine in old bottles. And really what is not talked about is so often profoundly in plain sight, or should be in plain sight. For instance, it\u2019s very rare in all of this just tsunami of coverage, this massive coverage, to see any mention of the fact that each country, Russia and the US, has several thousand nuclear weapons basically pointed at each other, 4,000 in each country, under the military of each nation, at the ready to basically be able to incinerate, not just the two countries, but billions of people on the planet, with nuclear winter coming after. Neither party\u2014major party\u2014talks about that, rarely talked about in the news media.<\/p>\n<p>And then you get to, in all this coverage, with very rare exceptions, the nationalistic double standards, the failure to look at the agendas of outfits like the NSA and CIA to perpetuate and escalate hostility with Russia.<\/p>\n<p>We have the assumption that James Clapper, until very recently the director of national intelligence, is some sort of paragon of truthfulness, when he was caught <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techdirt.com\/articles\/20150508\/18041530944\/latest-explanation-james-clapper-lying-about-essential-nsa-spy-program-he-forgot-about-it.shtml\">flagrantly lying<\/a> to a Senate committee in early 2003 about surveillance, and we only know that, with documented facts, because the Snowden NSA revelations came three months later. You know, on and on, where basic independent journalism would ferret out and highlight these fundamental contradictions in the claims from people in power versus the realities.<\/p>\n<p><b>JJ:<\/b> And just in terms of, at a time where we\u2019re hearing all these competing interpretations and where\u2019s there such a hunger to hear information that feeds a certain perspective, I would think minimally we would look to the media for certain standards of evidence. So that when I see a news media article talking about, well, Trump &#8220;praised&#8221; Putin and, wink wink, we know what that means, it just feels like such a throwback in terms of really separating fact from feeling and evidence from rumor. That\u2019s the baseline, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n<p><b>NS:<\/b> Yes. I mean, that is a very McCarthyistic dynamic that the press and many Democrats on Capitol Hill have dragged us into, so that when a statement comes now from the Trump administration, or perhaps a commentator on the margins, to say that we need a modern equivalent of detente, that the US and Russia have a joint stake in, for instance, not blowing up the planet and better relations and stepping away from the tripwire of nuclear confrontation, where actually, in fact, as the Union of Concerned Scientists <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucsusa.org\/nuclear-weapons\/hair-trigger-alert#.WMHhOfJRIc4\">points out<\/a>, we have hair-trigger alert nuclear missiles ten minutes from launch-on-warning to be in the air. And yet there are aspersions cast\u2014and, you know, even a broken clock can be profoundly correct once in awhile\u2014aspersions cast on President Trump.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, at his <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2017\/02\/16\/politics\/donald-trump-news-conference-transcript\/\">news conference<\/a> on February 16\u2014I mean, yeah, a lot of it was barely coherent, if that. But Trump said some things about relations with Russia that make absolute sense for the survival of the planet, and here are a couple of quick quotes. He said about Russia: \u201cThey\u2019re a very powerful nuclear country and so are we. If we have a good relationship with Russia, believe me, that\u2019s a good thing, not a bad thing.\u201d And yet, to the extent those sorts of words from Trump are cited by US journalists, it\u2019s almost invariably to supposedly corroborate that he\u2019s some kind of stool pigeon or flunky for the Kremlin.<\/p>\n<p>And by no means is this a right-wing meme, particularly. As a matter of fact, it\u2019s most prevalent from outlets like <b>MSNBC<\/b>, from liberal commentators. For instance, the <b>New York Times<\/b> columnist Paul Krugman, four weeks after Trump became president, he wrote, and I\u2019m quoting here from Krugman in his <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/02\/17\/opinion\/the-silence-of-the-hacks.html\">column<\/a> in the <b>New York Times<\/b>, \u201cNothing he has done since the inauguration allays fears that he is in effect a Putin puppet.\u201d And then the column ends with a matter-of-fact reference to the \u201cTrump\/Putin axis.\u201d Well, if that\u2019s the attitude of so many commentators, especially liberal, pro\u2013Democratic Party commentators, that getting along with Russia and wanting to build bridges towards the Kremlin is some kind of danger to the republic and perhaps treason, we are in a very dangerous situation.<\/p>\n<p><b>JJ:<\/b> I think what it underscores for me, Norman, is the importance of separating ideas from people, which is a very difficult thing, I think, for all of us. But I just feel that if you find yourself nodding along to George W. Bush, you ought to know it\u2019s time for a paradigm shift. We can say racism is bad, as George W. Bush <a href=\"http:\/\/people.com\/politics\/george-w-bush-on-trump-presidency\/\">said<\/a>\u2014\u201cI don\u2019t like the racism,\u201d\u2014and we can also say that we don\u2019t really credit George W. Bush as the bringer of that message, you know?<\/p>\n<p><b>NS:<\/b> Right.<\/p>\n<p><b>JJ:<\/b> And so what I\u2019m trying to say is, \u201cWhoever is against Trump is good\u201d just doesn\u2019t seem like a winning idea. And what I\u2019m looking for from the press, or what I would hope for, is this separation from ideas and their source. You can support a good idea when a jerk says it, and you can be against a bad idea even when the source is someone that you may have supported. I mean, that\u2019s what it\u2019s about, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n<p><b>NS:<\/b> Yeah, rather than being knee-jerk and failing to be independent, what we need is, really, a willingness to report independently in terms of the press, and to assess and analyze and think independently. And it\u2019s very hard to do in the polarized environment where it\u2019s an either\/or sort of binary, \u201cwhich side are you on.\u201d I think a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/yes-trumps-against-free-trade-that-doesnt-mean-hes-for-good-jobs\/\">editorial<\/a> in <b>The Nation<\/b> magazine made the point well when it said, just because Donald Trump is against the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it doesn\u2019t mean that therefore we should say, well, after all, we\u2019re for it.<\/p>\n<p><b>JJ:<\/b> Uh-huh.<\/p>\n<p><b>NS:<\/b> And the same would go for better relations with Russia, but so many of us\u2014and it\u2019s really hard not to get in this mode\u2014we are conditioned, certainly by the mass media, to choose up sides, and to say that anything advocated by someone who we deplore must therefore be suspect or worse. And that\u2019s just a prescription for disaster, in terms of political thought and for journalism.<\/p>\n<p><b>JJ:<\/b> We\u2019ve been speaking with Norman Solomon from <a href=\"http:\/\/rootsaction.org\/\">RootsAction.org<\/a>. Thank you so much, Norman, for joining us this week on <b>CounterSpin<\/b>.<\/p>\n<p><b>NS:<\/b> Thank you, Janine.<\/p>\n<p>This piece was reprinted by <a href=\"http:\/\/rinf.com\">RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission from <a href=\"http:\/\/fair.org\/home\/we-are-conditioned-by-mass-media-to-choose-up-sides\/\">FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Janine Jackson interviewed Norman Solomon about Trump, Russia and the press for the March 3, 2017, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript. Norman Solomon: &#8220;When the Democratic and Republican party leadership in Washington have a certain frame of reference, the dominant corporate media stay within it.&#8221; Play Stop pop out X MP3jPLAYLISTS.MI_0 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2521,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-298380","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298380\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}