Media doesn't encourage questioning, Hockenberry says

Roles changed with rise of corporate media conglomerations

By Rory Sa

While John Hockenberry was in high school in west Michigan, then-Congressman Gerald Ford visited his school. When Ford held a question and answer period, Hockenberry eagerly raised his hand. Ford selected him and young Hockenberry said, “I fail to see how bigger guns and shinier badges is going to address the problem of crime in America.

“ Until that moment, I was just kind of an anonymous new kid who moved in from the East Coast. After that question I became... something else,” he said.

“ The temperature behind my ears soared.”

It’s been years since his transition from would-be high school rabble-rouser to national journalist, a course that took him from majoring in harpsichord to news writing for National Public Radio. Hockenberry is currently a correspondent for Dateline NBC.

About 150 people skipped Frisbee night to hear Hockenberry speak at Fresno State in the Satellite Student Union Thursday night as part of the University Lecture Series.

Hockenberry thanked the audience for coming.

” You guys decide to listen to some pointy-head lecture about media consensus–come on, it’s like Frisbee night in Fresno!” he said.

Hockenberry addressed several topics ranging from media passiveness to the CIA.

“ We exist at a time now when the notion of a reporter’s responsibility [is] to ask tough questions, to really hold the government accountable,” he said. “That role is suspect, profoundly suspect.”

He said part of the reason for the changing role of reporters is the rise of massive media conglomerations. Hockenberry noted that all of the news organizations are owned by, or in NPR’s case receives funding from, large conglomerates.

“ Those of you who watch NBC news are getting your news from a defense contractor” he said, explaining that General Electric, the conglomerate that owns NBC, also owns companies that have contracts ranging from jet engine and weapon contracts for the Pentagon to a $600 million to provide power generation in Iraq.”

“ The idea that they would have no impact, or the idea that people don’t know about these relationships, that that is irrelevant to how we view our media is preposterous,” he said.

He said there was a passiveness in today’s media.

“ Whether there’s corporate ownership of the media or not, there’s a cultural sense in America right now that reporters really are inappropriate when they hold people accountable.”

Hockenberry was highly critical of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“ It’s important to remind ourselves of how much the CIA has gotten wrong,” he said. He said the CIA missed the 1948 revolution in Columbia, the 1950 entrance of China into the Korean War, the Soviet invasions of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979 and the fall of the Berlin wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union.

“ It all came back to those lines (Richard) Clarke stated at the 9-11 hearings, “your government failed you.” After practically three years from 9-11 one government official said your government failed you,” he said.

He was also critical of what he described as a lack of airspace security. “There was no defense for U.S. airspace,” Hockenberry said. He said it was a proposition beyond debate, yet it’s not part of the discussions before the 9-11 commission.

He said neither the Clinton nor Bush administrations changed anything about protocols for suspected hijacked planes or defensive airspace. “There’s only one country in the industrialized world that has an undefended airspace: the U.S.”

“ Insecurity about attacks from outside the U.S. should not be something that paralyzes in a democratic society,” Hockenberry said. He said the media may no longer be the institution capable of engaging viewers and encouraging them to ask political institutions to answer questions that need answered.

“ The consensus of no consensus,” he said. “The consensus that we’ve go half the nation believing he media is lib, and the other half believes the media is conservative.”