Why are the media so gullible? Why are they towing the line for Bushs campaign for war?
The use of the passive voice in journalism excludes agency and obfuscates responsibility. The headlines: “People in Afghanistan were killed” “Lives were lost” “Children starved” are all passive constructions there’s no agency. The active voice is absolutely critical in writing journalism. You see mainstream newspapers replete with high, unnamed sources, high government officials back grounders that leak information to gullible journalists who in turn feel flattered that, say, the Secretary of State has given him a tip. The tradeoff is that the journalist won’t reveal the source, and this is the whole structure of seduction. Why is the press so credulous? Why are they so gullible in terms of reproducing the official story? I think that has to go with a system of indoctrination that induces self-censorship. So we don’t have a Nazi ministry of propaganda coming down and blue-lining newspaper copy. They don’t have to do that because the writers know the parameters they can operate within.
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