ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE NEWS MEDIA ...

Excerpted from: ENN DAILY INTELLIGENCE REPORT-ERRI Risk Assessment Services-Thursday, June 26, 1997 Vol. 3 - 177

AMSTERDAM (ENN) - On 19 June, a reporter working for the Dutch television company, the Storms Factory, said he was able to smuggle the components for making a bomb past guards at the European Union (EU) summit earlier in the week. The reporter filmed his actions at the summit, in which security had been previously described as "intense."

The reporter said that he used the internet to obtain a false identity and to learn how to make a bomb. The components that were smuggled past the guards in a bag with camera equipment were: batteries, tape and a crude ignition device. The bag was carried past a secuity checkpoint into a conference room of the Dutch central bank. Police said that the items that were carried by the reporter were "okay" and did not pose a threat. Security analysts say that in light of this report, security procedures should be reevaluated because, despite what Dutch police said, they were not just "okay."

ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE NEWS MEDIA ...
IN THREE MINUTES
By: Frank G. McGuire
Editor/Publisher, Security Intelligence Sourcebook
Former Instructor in News Media at FBI Academy
CBS News Consultant on Terrorism and Air Disasters

Once again, journalists found holes in security at a high-profile venue, this one at a meeting in Amsterdam. (See the above ENN report.)

It's not the last time this will happen, and it has officials often reaching for antacids.

The very announcement that "security will be tightened" seems to trigger a media challenge to anyone responsible for protecting lives and property.

The same principal applies to any action by any organization. Once an announcement is made that things have "improved," the improvement is fair game for testing.

The most frequent cry of outrage I hear is that "the liberal media" want to destroy our society.

Why do journalists do it?

There are basically two reasons: one commercial and the other philosophical.

Journalists, like most others outside the security community, do not understand the nature of security as it relates to reality any more than the public understands why fire apparatus is positioned as it is on a fireground.

News media take an announcement of tightened security as a declaration that security -- once almost-perfect -- has now been perfected.

News media then decide to test that thesis, which is not valid in the first place.

A theoretical or actual vulnerability is not necessarily a threat. Vulnerabilities exist everywhere, but that is not the same as saying a perpetrator will know of the vulnerability, then attack it, or even want to attack it.

News media may -- if motivated -- "attack" any vulnerability they can identify. Their "weapons" are notebooks, cameras and recorders to document "holes in security."

But what is their "motivation"?

Here is an endless-loop list I created to use at the FBI Academy, and I still use it during seminars and workshops on security, disaster planning, leadership and other topics. It does not cover every case, but it applies to most.

Commercial news media are corporations.

Corporations run on money.

Money is generated by advertising.

Advertising is priced by the size of the audience.

Audiences are attracted by drama (often a code word for violence) and sex.

Audience-size is measured by ratings.

Competition for ratings tells top editors where to send reporters & what to cover.

Senior editors are management, reporters are not.

Management has the job of making a corporation profitable.

Profits keep a corporation in existence.

Corporations are responsible to their profit-oriented stockholders.

Stockholders buy stock in corporations, not in any ideology.

Go to the top of the list and start over.

That list explains one motivation and a great many other things about the news media, but it's only one side of the coin.

At the moment, there is a major fight between media moguls Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch. They are not fighting over ideology or constitutional abstractions. They are fighting over power and money. Media corporations are huge conglomerates.

Policy decisions are not made at media conglomerates by the reporter whose face is on the screen or whose byline is on the page. That reporter might well be a liberal, but he/she has no more decisionmaking authority than a police officer has over departmental policy.

Policy decisions are made by people who are on the financial side of the corporation, not the editorial side. The financial side runs the show.

If sex and violence make money, that's what will be in the news.

If a reporter's work consistently clashes with corporate policy, one phone call from an annoyed corporate executive puts the reporter out of work.

Decisionmaking executives at media conglomerates are unlikely to be knee-jerk liberals. If they are liberals at all, they still must operate under the list above.

Rupert Murdoch is known as an extreme conservative, yet he owns the most blatant of British tabloids which often has a topless woman on the cover and which features sex and violence on nearly every page.

Why does he violate his own moral beliefs? Go back to the list.

This is true of almost all media corporations. There are exceptions, of course, where the corporation itself is owned by liberals, such as the Washington Post, but "profit" is the key word in understanding much that the corporate news media cover.

The other side of the coin, however, is the philosophic aspect of why the media do what they do. The commercial and philosophic aspects are inseparable.

Journalists will always probe things like security arrangements because that's what journalists do. It sounds simplistic, but that's the way it is.

It is important to remember -- no matter how much it galls anyone in authority -- that democratic governments almost always consist of checks and balances. One of the major checks on governmental authority is an often-confrontational media.

President John F. Kennedy once privately remarked that when the government and the media are in bed together, the public is probably getting screwed. He had his share of clashes with the media, but at least he understood why it must be that way.

It is no accident that freedom of the press is in the very first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Much debate at the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787 preceded the decision to put freedom of the press in the top drawer of Constitutional rights. The founding fathers knew what they were doing.

A journalist who always obeys the rules is an obedient journalist, but that's not what journalists are for.

Clip this analysis and keep it handy. You'll need it next time you reach for an antacid.

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