Considered Opinions

When Dan Rather told Bill Moyers in “Buying the War” that he worried about management throwing him to the wolves if questioned the run up to the Iraq War, he had cause.

Opposition to the war could be costly to those who spoke. Pressure from political operatives, advertisers, right-wing organizations, the punditocracy, and – ultimately – bottom-line-oriented network managers was strong and — in at least one case — vengeful.

One woman told some home truths in early 2003. She said then much of what’s taken for granted today about the failure of US policy and journalism. By implication, she also addressed many of the issues in Moyers’ “Buying the War.” It cost her a career.

The case of Ashleigh Banfield exemplifies the dangers of speaking truth to government and the media at that time, and perhaps today.

Banfield, an AP-Award and Emmy-winning correspondent for MSNBC in the early 2000’s, showed great physical courage reporting from the site of the 9/11 disaster. Not only was she almost under the second tower when it fell, she’s probably responsible for saving at least one life that day, possibly two.

She went on to report as an “embed” in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and on her own program, “A Region in Conflict,” from throughout the Islamic world. Unlike most US journalists, she reported from both sides of conflicts – Israeli and Palestinian, US and Iraqi, from within Iran, and from Taliban prison camps. We may have learned more from her about our opponents than from any other public source.

Her philosophy was balance. Not he-said, she-said, but something better described as “all the information, viewed from all the angles.” As a result, she reported from places and covered issues that few if any other US journalists wrote about, often risking her safety in the process.

Until early 2003, she was headed for a remarkable career in TV news. She was named a “Fearless Female” by Cosmopolitan magazine. A snarky Fox spokesman called her “the Anna Kournikova of TV news.” Canada’s enRoute called her the news equivalent of “a midnight-rush bartender in a philosophers’ café, where the patrons are given big questions, if not the time to properly answer them.”

Despite a non-traditional, idiosyncratic style, in 20 years she might have been the next Peter Jennings. Certainly she shared Jennings will to cover the news on the ground and completely, especially overseas.

But her own reporting – and her inside view of cable news – disturbed her, and not just about Islamic issues and attitudes, but about America and its conduct and reputation, about the failure of cable news to inform, and its willingness to embrace “ideological entertainment” in order to fatten the bottom line.

She spoke about her concerns, and it cost her her job.

She was invited to give the 2003 Landon Lecture (transcript) at Kansas State University on April 24. As a result, an angry or fearful NBC management killed her show, demoted her, and eventually fired her in 2004. She now anchors in near anonymity on Court TV, a living illustration of journalistic potential wasted by the media business.

Here are some of the points she made that day. All the quotes below are from her ad libitum speech. She made far-sighted points that others should have made – points that so offended her management that NBC ended her career. But time after time, Banfield was right.

“So many voices were silent (before and) in this war. We all know what happened to Susan Sarandon and [to] her husband [Tim Robbins] for speaking out, and we all know that this is not the way Americans want to be. Free speech is a wonderful thing; it’s what we fight for, but the minute it’s unpalatable we fight against it for some reason.”

Today we bemoan the lack of opposition to the invasion, and the lack of the press’s investigation of the intelligence data used as our excuse. But the period after 9/11 was almost McCarthy-ite in its rejection of free speech. Banfield was right.

“We freed the Iraqi people, many of them by the way … are quite thankless about this. There’s got to be a reason for that.”

We are now confronting this thanklessness daily in the form of IEDs, car bombs, and suicide attacks. There is a reason for that, but the administration failed to look for it before it leapt into battle. Nor, even now, does it seem to understand why we are so reviled. Banfield was right.

“I’m not sure that (the Pentagon) was ready to deal with this many dissenters and this many supporters of an Islamic regime, like next door in Iran.”

Obviously they weren’t. General Eric Shinseki’s “several hundred thousand soldiers” never showed up, and Shinseki was shown the door for publicly disagreeing with the war’s proponents. Banfield was right.

“If we give them democracy they probably will ask us to get out, which is exactly what many of them want.”

As they are ‘asking’ now, violently. Banfield was right.

“As a journalist I’m often ostracized just for (carrying) these messages, just for going on television and saying, “Here’s what the leaders of Hezbullah are telling me and here’s what the Lebanese are telling me and here’s what the Syrians have said about Hezbullah. Here’s what they have to say about the Golan Heights.” Like it or lump it, don’t shoot the messenger, but invariably the messenger gets shot.”

Shot as Banfield was when NBC fired her for stating these views. To her detriment, Banfield was right.

“We hired somebody on MSNBC recently named Michael Savage. He was taken aback by my daring to speak with Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade about why they do what they do, why they’re prepared to sacrifice themselves for what they call a freedom fight and we call terrorism. He was so taken aback that he chose to label me as a slut… as a porn star…as an accomplice to the murder of Jewish children. These are the ramifications of simply being the messenger. How can you discuss, how can you solve anything when attacks from a mere radio flak is what America hears on a regular basis, let alone at the government level?”

And, in fact, the media today still retain venomous talking heads like Savage and others who appeal to a certain demographic – as opposed to investing in reporting, broad coverage, and the creation of an informed electorate. Banfield was right.

“When was the last time you saw a story about Afghanistan? (As of April 2003) it’s only been a year, you know. Only since the major combat ended, you were still in Operation Anaconda not much more than 11 or 12 months ago, and here we are not touching Afghanistan at all on cable news.”

Afghanistan is still a festering sore in 2007, and the stories there are still rarely covered despite a resurgent Taliban. On cable, runaway brides get more coverage than the fate of nations. Banfield was right.

“There was just a memorandum that came through saying we’re closing the Kabul bureau. (As of April 2003) the Kabul bureau has been staffed by only one person for the last several months…”

Aside from the obvious failure to cover Afghanistan in the midst of an ongoing war, this closure was anything but rare. Foreign coverage is too costly for today’s profit-driven media corporations, and as a result, Americans are losing touch with the realities of the rest of the world. Banfield was right.

“And I am very concerned that the same thing is about to happen with Iraq, because we’re going to have another Gary Condit, and we’re going to have another Chandra Levy and we’re going to have another Jon Benet, and we’re going to have another Elizabeth Smart, and here we are in Laci Peterson, and these stories will dominate. They’re easy to cover, they’re cheap, they’re fast, you don’t have to send somebody overseas, you don’t have to put them up in a hotel that’s expensive overseas, and you don’t have to set up satellite time overseas. Very cheap to cover domestic news. Domestic news is music to news directors’ ears.”

Banfield was right about short attention spans, junk news, and the cost issue; bureaus are expensive, talking heads are cheap. The nets went with cheap. Everything she feared came to pass. Only the bloodshed in Iraq and the political turmoil surrounding the war keep it on the air.

“We haven’t been back to the West Bank since Operation Defensive Shield last year (2002). It’s been a good solid year since we gave you wall-to-wall coverage on what’s been going on in the West Bank and Gaza. Hell, (Israel) just raided Rafa again. I mean, the Israelis had an incredible raid in Rafa, one of the deadliest in years, but it barely made headlines here.”

Then as now, foreign news simply is not given the coverage it deserves. Overseas bureaus are expensive; unfortunately a national lack of understanding of foreign affairs is costlier. Banfield was right.

“It’s important that we continue to want to know what happens overseas… It’s important to demand coverage of these things. It’s important because your safety and your future and your world and your children will depend on this.”

This is simply obvious and undeniable, and someone should remind media management. Banfield was right.

“The Fox effect is very concerning to me. I’m a journalist and I like to be able to tell the story as I see it, and I hate it when someone tells me I’m one-sided. It’s the worst I can hear. Fox has taken so many viewers away from CNN and MSNBC because of their agenda, and because of their targeting … cable news viewership, that I’m afraid there’s not a really big place in cable for news. Cable is for entertainment, as it’s turning out, but not news.”

The emperor really is naked. Banfield was right; cable news is mostly entertainment.

“I’m hoping that I will have a future in cable news, but not the way some cable news operators wrap themselves in the American flag and patriotism and go after a certain target demographic, which is very lucrative. You can already see the effects, you can already see the big … right wing hires to chase after this effect.”

As it developed, she did not have a future in cable news, but given the sort of cable news we have, she may be rather happy about that. One hopes so. One also hopes that the time may be coming when she might return.

What does all this prove? It shows that bravery, talent, and truth telling are no defense against the profit motive or ideologically driven suppression of speech.

Would Banfield have been fired if she had had the reputation of a Rather or Jennings – neither of whom spoke out as she did? Probably not. A bigfoot journalist has to make a very serious mistake (like Rather) to get the chop. Banfield, unfortunately, was not then the household word she might have become.

One wonders how our lives might have differed if Banfield were ten years older and had developed her own constituency by 2000. She might have covered the run-up to war very differently than her colleagues. At least we would have gotten “all the information, viewed from all the angles” and some of our post-9/11 decisions might have been different indeed.