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Running Head: Wikileaks and the Censorship of News Media in the U.S

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Running Head: Wikileaks and the Censorship of News Media in the U.S RUNNING HEAD: WIKILEAKS AND THE CENSORSHIP OF NEWS MEDIA IN THE U.S. WikiLeaks and the Censorship of News Media in the U.S. Author: Asa Hilmersson Faculty Mentor: Professor Keeton Ramapo College of New Jersey WIKILEAKS AND THE CENSORSHIP OF NEWS MEDIA IN THE U.S. 1 “Censorship in free societies is infinitely more sophisticated and thorough than in dictatorships, because ‘unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for an official ban’.” – George Orwell Introduction Throughout history, media has been censored or obscured in different ways which seem to fit the dominant ideology or ruling regime. As William Powers (1995) from The Washington Post said; the Nazis were censored, Big Brother was a censor, and nightmare regimes such as China have censors. Though we are all aware of censorship around the world and in history, little do we look to ourselves because as Powers writes, “None of that [censorship] for us. This is America” (para. 3). People in America have long been led to believe that they live in a free world where every voice is heard. It is not until someone uses the opportunities of this right that we see that this freedom of speech might only be an illusion. The emergence of WikiLeaks in 2010 and the censorship exercised against this organization by the United States’ government exemplifies the major obstacles individuals can face when seeking to expose potential wrongdoing by public officials. Through questioning of media’s power as whistleblowers it is hinted that there are institutions which may carry more weight than the truth in making decisions that affect that public interest. These institutions directly and indirectly control mainstream media sources and therefore can also decide who the public sees in a positive and negative light. This will be examined in this paper by looking at how WikiLeaks has been portrayed in American mainstream media compared to alternative media sources and what accounts for differences in coverage. This paper will also distinguish if there are any similarities between the censorship of WikiLeaks to the censorship of “the nightmare regime” China. Background A discussion of censorship first requires a definition of the word. According to Powers (1995), the word censor originated from ancient Rome where two public officials had the responsibility to supervise the public census, behaviors, and morals. Powers wrote that it today means a government official, which can be either a civilian or military, edits or outlaws written and any other kinds of expressions (para. 8-9) . However, though some still hold strong that censorship is on a governmental or legal level, the definition of censorship seem to have loosened as Power cites the executive vice president of People of the American Way, Elliot Mincberg. Mincberg said, “censorship also occurs when ‘someone in position of power prevents’ people from ‘having access to information – music, whatever – based in part on the content of it” (para. 17 ). Mincberg’s definition of censorship opens up new possibilities; not only government officials have the opportunity to censor, but in theory anyone with some form of power can. If anyone with power over news reporting is able to censor, then we must question the growing power of major news corporations in media. Throughout the 1980s, first in the United States and then internationally, major news and other media corporations underwent a period of mergers and conglomeratization that allowed them to expand into new markets and increase revenue and profits. Robert W. McChesney (2001) referred to this process as neoliberalism and explained it in his article “Global Media, Neoliberalism and Imperialism,” as “a set of national and international policies that call for business domination of all social affairs with minimal WIKILEAKS AND THE CENSORSHIP OF NEWS MEDIA IN THE U.S. 2 countervailing force” (para. 2). He also referred to its goals as the deregulation of commercial media and communication markets. In short, what is happening today is the creation of a global oligopoly where the global media market is dominated by seven multicultural corporations: Disney, AOL-Time Warner, Sony, News Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, and Bertelsmann (para. 4-8) . Technology made this possible, but the driving force to concentrate media ownership is profit (para. 12) . According to McChesney, the strategy is to join international companies instead of competing with them, and he notes that many of the largest media firms either have the same major shareholders, own pieces of one another, or have interlocking boards of directors meaning that directors serve on several boards (para. 23 ). McChesney (2001) continued by saying that this system not only creates oligopoly but also plutocracy, since it creates media corporate giants which have a great deal of power in effecting economic behavior as well as political, such as the drafting of laws and regulations that will benefit their bottom lines (para. 24-25) . Two large and popular media corporations that will be examined in this paper are The New York Times and The Washington Post . According to mediaowners.com (2011) these two corporations are placed among the top 20 media owners in the United States, with revenue of $2.4 billion dollars in 2009 for The New York Times, and revenue of $3.3 billion dollars in 2004 for The Washington Post . These news media also own other papers and forms of news media around the country (http://www.mediaowners.com , 2011). Returning to McChesney’s (2001) claim that most of the biggest corporations in America are connected through their board of directors, when examining the directors of The New York Times and The Washington Post on their own websites it showed that most of their members also serve on at least one other board for another corporation (http://www.nytco.com & http://www.washpostco.com , 2011). This does not need to be negative since it gives them an inside view of how other corporations operate, but it could also influence their opinions in order to favor certain things which can benefit their own interests in other corporations. Realizing that there is relationship between newspapers and the corporate world makes it easier to see the ways media can be persuaded, but it does not stop there. The connection between corporations and ways they can influence government is explained by William Domhoff (2002) in his book Who Rules America? . He said that the connections between the corporate community and the policy planning network consist of foundations, think tanks and policy-discussion organizations. These organizations are linked together by their board of directors and many of them are also on boards of other corporations. These organizations have the experts and decide who is an expert within a certain field. The government turns to these institutions for new ideas and expertise, meaning that since these people can sit on multiple corporate boards, they can have an enormous impact on the government and its decisions (p. 70-72). The boards also have the ability to influence what will be covered and emphasized since many publishers and editors share class loyalty and perspectives. Through this perspective, news corporations can use this power in a self-serving way such as cementing their political influence and supporting an ideology which will best serve their own interests without the need to use a police state, or to face resistance. Media could in theory produce material to get people to keep supporting the dominant ideology which benefits these media giants (McChesney, 2001, para. 25 ). This discussion takes us back to the word censorship. McChesney (2001) cited George Orwell, saying that “censorship in free societies is infinitely more sophisticated and thorough than in dictatorships, because ‘unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for an official ban’” (para. 33). A common example of a country that exercises WIKILEAKS AND THE CENSORSHIP OF NEWS MEDIA IN THE U.S. 3 censorship, and against which the United States and many other countries have expressed great criticism, is China. The article “China and the Internet,” from the journal International Debates (2010), examined the limitations and restrictions of news in China. The article said the government of the People’s Republic of China places severe restrictions on domestic and foreign news, including censoring information that is considered sensitive or offensive to the Communist Party. Furthermore, the article explained that the Chinese media, which is all government run, chooses not to cover events that they feel are a threat the social stability of the country China and the Internet, (2010, para. 1). One way China censors is through the search engine results which filter and block phrases, such as “Taiwan independence.” To do this, China has one of the most advanced filtering systems in the world, but it also has 30,000 humans employed as “cyber-police,” whose jobs are to monitor the Internet. Yet more interesting is how the article explained the practice of self- censorship exercised by many reporters, writers, authorities, and internet users since there is no clear definition of “state secrets” and people want to avoid the risk of losing their job or facing criminal liability (China and the Internet, 2010, para. 26-31 ). According to Powers (1995), this does not happen in America, but according to McChesney (2001) all of the biggest media corporations have core operations in the United States as well as control most of the American commercial cable TV channels (para. 8) . With this in mind, and Mincberg’s claim that censorship can be pursued by anyone with power, it is naïve not to imagine some form of censorship to happen anywhere, even in the United States where the First Amendment of free speech is highly valued.
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