Abstract
Not since Jimmy Carter claimed to have been attacked by a giant bunny has a presidential remark received as much satiric commentary as George Bush's explanation of why he need not read newspapers or watch news on television: “The best way to get the news is from objective sources … and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world.”
Bush's none-of-the-news-that's-fit-to-print plan is brilliant, and the administration is taking every step possible for the rest of us to inhabit the same sort of protective bubble–one in which we can be safe from any actual knowledge that might contradict the carefully balanced diet of fear and hope the administration wants us to swallow.
On the fear side, the Bushies have things pretty well covered. On the homefront, we have competing Ministers of Fear–Vice President Dick Cheney needs new material for maximum effect, but he's got the deadpan delivery down pat. The mere appearance of Attorney General John Ashcroft in front of a microphone sends pulses racing–perhaps his is more a Ministry of Dread. The Department of Homeland Security can always tinker with its brightly colored terroralert levels.
On the other hand, there is a danger that too much bad news could make Johnny consider voting Democratic. The administration's own fear now is that they are not meting out enough good news, not ladling enough hope, into the bubble.
They feel they have carelessly let the media report the stories journalists find newsworthy, particularly about Iraq. L. Paul Bremer, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, explains: It is “a structural deformation of the news [when] bad news is what makes news.”
Late fall and early winter 2003 saw massive attempts to correct the too-negative-news problem. Not all bad news can be denied outright, but some can be hidden under wraps. The administration forebade coverage of the return of U.S. servicemen's and women's remains, made it difficult to report on the injured with a string of rules limiting access, and even barred journalists from attending burials in Arlington National Cemetery, lest a report from the graveside fail to hit just the right note of gritty patriotic determination.
The biggest effort looks to be Bremer's, though. In a story broken by the New York Observer's Joe Hagan, in mid-November the public learned that part of the massive $87 billion budget for saving Iraq is to be spent on the Provisional Authority's own straight-to-Stateside television network, which will report directly from Iraq to the American people without any troublesome editors or reporters or fact-checkers getting in the way.
Here at the Bulletin, we've got the fear side pretty well covered, too. But we try, not always successfully, to distinguish between serious threats worth biting fingernails over, and the littler–if not little–things not worth sweating about. We'll be doing a lot of that in the coming year. In this issue, we remind those who've forgotten just how big and bad is the big nuclear bomb that neither rogues nor freelancers are able to brandish (see Lynn Eden's “City on Fire,” page 32). Also, don't sweat (too much) the dirty bomb, but do take a look at how the Ministry of Dread is treating the alleged would-be bomber (page 59).