institutes servicing their manpower and technology needs.
With the Horowitz case we are
back to this super-selectivity: it is an ad that challenges a position
supportive of black people by some of their spokespersons, and it is a refusal
to publish this ad that the media latch on to. The ad is offered by a rightwing
creep who is funded by the same wealthy reactionaries, foundations, and
corporations who have underwritten Dinesh D’Souza, Lynne Cheney, Christina Hoff
Sommers, and the Thernstroms. Just as these individuals have great access to the
media, so now does Horowitz, in contrast with his earlier years of non-access
and invisibility when he was not so funded and offered less welcome views.
A case similar to that of
Horowitz occurred back in 1991- 1992, when Holocaust denier Bradley Smith
offered an ad to many college newspapers in order to "stimulate discussion" on
the claims of a holocaust. His ad was widely rejected by college newspapers, but
the case never made the front page of the New York Times, and the Times not only
gave Smith modest attention, it made it very clear that "it is not a first
amendment issue" (ed., Jan. 15, 1992). In the Times and elsewhere in the
mainstream media Bradley Smith’s historical errors and insults to the heirs of
the victims completely overpowered any thought that editors rejecting the ad
were suffering from the "political correctness" sickness. This was an ad that
could be rejected on some higher principle, perhaps related to the political
muscle of those who would be upset by it.
The March-April 2001 issue of
Utne Reader has an article by Karen Olson entitled "Palestine Exhibition
Denied," describing the problems faced by Dan Walsh in trying to get exhibitions
of his large collection of Palestinian solidarity posters. Walsh has found that
on rare occasions such posters can be exhibited, if "balanced" by an exhibit of
Israeli posters, but they are never considered for exhibit on their own in this
country. But this constraint on free expression has been discussed only in the
Utne Reader, as the same forces that preclude such an exhibit also rule out the
media’s considering this a free speech issue.
Similarly, when an
America-Jewish journalist with the Kansas City Jewish Chronicle was fired in
January 2001, immediately after publishing "Quest for Justice," an article by
Judith Stone critical of Israeli policy, this fact flowed through e-mail
networks but was not a free speech issue in the mainstream media. Neither is the
incessant pressure that the pro-Israel lobby and activists exert on the media,
that make the press in Israel itself notably more open and critical of Israeli
policy than the U.S. media. Neither was the firing of Michael Lopez-Calderon
from his job as an elementary school teacher at the Rabbi Alexander S. Gross
Hebrew School in Miami Beach, Florida in February 2001, which resulted from
outside complaints about his writings critical of Israel, despite the absence of
any claim of less than satisfactory teaching performance.
The idea of ad rejection on
political grounds being a newsworthy "free speech" matter is actually comical.
Papers and TV stations regularly and systematically reject ads they find
objectionable, often because they would offend advertisers, but also because
they object to the content of messages from peace groups, labor unions, and
others. Adbusters has been trying for years to get its "Advocacy Uncommercials"
on the TV networks, but without success. When the New York Times ran three major
advertorials in 1993 lauding the North American Free Trade Agreement, it refused
to accept critical ads that would disturb the hugely political message. A full
account of such politically- tainted or advertiser-protective ad rejections
would run to thousands of pages.
Consider also a major
violation of freedom of expression such as the exclusion of Ralph Nader from the
national political debate during the last presidential election. This was
immensely important, with national political significance, but the New York
Times found it perfectly OK on the ground that the differences between Bush and
Gore were substantial, and adequate, in the opinion of the editors (editorial, "Mr.Nader’s
Misguided Candidacy," June 30, 2000)! This big time free speech violation was
also perfectly acceptable to the rest of the mainstream media, so that all their
musings and reflections on Horowitz’s gambit stand exposed as hypocritical
horseshit.
At a deeper level, reflection
on the virtually complete exclusion of Noam Chomsky, the late Herb Schiller,
Walden Bello, Stephen Steinberg (author of Turning Back), and Samuel Epstein
(author of The Politics of Cancer), among many others, from debates on public
policy issues, and the media’s sourcing and accommodation to corporate and state
interests and policy on many key issues, suggests that the problem of "freedom
of speech" in this country is structural and deeply rooted. This is why a
"propaganda model" can explain why the Horowitz gambit becomes a "free
expression" issue, but not the exclusion of Ralph Nader from the presidential
debates.