Media events and news culture concepts; to be considered and included in the essay
While the integral role of media is to inform and enlighten the public about what is happening around, ensuring complete veracity of each fact reported, is highly important. However, more than once, the integrity of media persons in reporting true facts had been questioned, as often various media channels start getting influenced by the ideological perception of “right” and “wrong” and end up distorting facts and even falsifying evidence to shape up a piece of news as it suits them. This creative project has intended to address a crucial issue in today’s world- the challenge of unbiased reporting in a world of distorted reality, where the media has portrayed Edward Snowden as a traitor of the nation, nothing short of a “whistle-blower”. The loyalty of the media to the US administration has compelled the media persons sketch the character of Snowden in a way that he received maximum public censure for being a “hacker”. However, the media ensured that the Obama led government that had been violating privacy laws for recording phone logs of tens of millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, of Americans, who have no links to terrorism whatsoever, have been spared the censure. The creative project has thus highlighted the role media has played in reporting the case of Snowden and how his actions have been distorted in a way that he was being defamed and feared, rather than being praised for his bravado and integrity.
The case of Edward Snowden has clearly established the fact that media freedom to publish and communicate anything is a myth. As far as governmental information is concerned, the government does influence the media decision as to which information pertaining to the government will be made “public” and which sensitive information should be withheld from disclosure.
As per the Espionage Act of 1917 the information pertaining to national defense and some provisions within the Act apply “only to government employees or others who have authorized access to sensitive government information” and thus the revelation of such information in public is highly a condemnable issue. This, I believe is an important reason why the media persons have stayed away from highlighting the sensitive data disclosed by Snowden and has chosen to focus on Snowden’s treachery.
As a result, The Guardian reports (Brook 2017):
Further, it is indeed a pity that the then President of Venezuela had appreciated the effort of Snowden, and not many news papers reported him quoting “We think this young person has done something very important for humanity…has spoken great truths to deconstruct a world…controlled by an imperialist American elite” .
Freedom of Press and Media: Is it a Myth?
Greenwald’s interview with the Washington Post clearly shows how the media has been making desperate efforts to highlight Snowden’s treachery to US government, while taking away all the attention from the substance of disclosure (Wimple 2017):
Often the media persons have been found questioning the intention of Snowden in hacking and disclosing the US government confidential information in public and making the nation even more vulnerable to the hostile nations. However, while researching the story of Snowden, I have come across his personal interview with the media, where he has time and again, stated that his “sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.” This man was disenchanted with the surveillance of government crossing its limits, and hence thought of communicating the issue to the public. However, I would like to share how I was myself surprised to discover the way the media reported the incident. The popular UK newspaper The Daily Mail focused on the personal life of Snowden, such as his occupation and personal life, rather than glorifying Snowden’s efforts to help the nation and protect the privacy rights of every individual. The Daily Mail, although has not directly censured the action of Snowden, it has indeed highlighted how Snowden shall receive punishment for sudden disclosure of sensitive governmental data in public:
Source: (Mail Online 2017)
As seen from the above picture, The Daily Mail was indirectly supportive of Obama administration, and by merely using words like “leaking”, the newspaper has tried to influence the public opinion of Snowden in a negative way.
Again, The Sun is another popular UK newspaper that has been found to favor the US government’s right of surveillance and has vilified the action of Snowden, portraying him as a traitor to the government. The newspaper has in fact used words like “spy whistleblower” for reporting about Snowden. In fact, while going through one of the articles published by The Sun, I came across the sentences that clearly explain how media companies choose to place Snowden in derogatory light (Webb 2017):
In this connection, I also noticed an important issue- the media also largely decide which incident will be reported and who exactly will be quoted in the published articles. They end up publishing exactly what serves their interest. Whether it is the closeness of The Sun to the UK government or its helpless situation in a state-controlled domain, the biased reporting of the paper clearly characterized Snowden as a “traitor”. Edward Snowden was not only referred to as the “Russian spy” but was also made the object of public defamation, as the paper chose to quote Trump:
Hero or Traitor?
Source: (Schrodt 2017).
However, although Edward Snowden has being portrayed as a traitor in public, my extensive research showed how helplessly Snowden has tried to justify his actions time and again, stating :
“Privacy is the right to a free mind,” Snowden said. “Without privacy, you can’t have anything for yourself. Saying you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” (Schrodt 2017).
In an interview, Edward Snowden clearly established his innocence which however was not taken into consideration by the media reporters, while referring to him as a “traitor”(BBC News 2014):
As a controversial NSA subcontractor, Snowden clearly explained his position, and it becomes clearly evident that all that he wished to do was to protect the privacy of the US citizens. Why is then Snowden not portrayed as a hero, who sacrificed a peaceful, stable life just to ensure healthy democracy in US? I believe the answer lies with the state control the government of any state has on the media whereby the media was compelled to present Snowden’s story in a way that we all were forced to interpret his heroic and even patriotic action as nothing more than an act of disobedience.
The reason why Edward Snowden has been chosen by me is that I wished to show and explain how media distorts the public image of a person, just because he opposes the ideology of the administration governing the nation. While completing the creative project, I came across multiple newspaper articles where I discovered how Snowden has been portrayed as a whistle-blower and hacker, leading to public panic and censure towards him.
In order to complete the project, I required possessing an in-depth knowledge about the way newspapers and media reports are presenting the story of Snowden. Hence, I chose content analysis as a method of research, as it allowed me to critically analyze large bodies of media texts, for evaluating the situation. This is a highly effective and inexpensive way whereby I could collect and analyze media content over a period of time. As a method of data collection necessary for writing the project, I chose to review and analyze newspapers like Guardian, The Sun and Washington Post, and the articles chosen were published between June 5, 2013 to October 1, 2013. For the purpose of this research, I have also carefully considered the media coverage of Edward Snowden to begin on June 5, 2013. One of the main challenges that I encountered while completing the project was that often I would encounter articles that are opinion editorials, which could not be deemed fit to put in use for the research purpose. Hence, I deliberately chose to omit the opinion editorials, letters to the editors and reader feedback and comments from the research source list. Once the newspaper articles were being chosen, I had to analyze the content in order to find out the way Snowden was being portrayed before the public. For this reason, I had to conduct a close analysis of the content of the media reports and label the words (especially the adjectives and the verbs) as “positive”, “neutral” and “negative”. This was a very tiring and time-consuming process as I was required to ascertain the most frequently occurring word as well as the different ways the word was being put to use (such as a negative word “leaker” which includes “leaking”, “leaked”, and “leaks”).
The aim with which I started the creative project is to point out how media often fails to communicate information transparently to the audience and often influences the opinion of the public against someone like Edward Snowden whose sole aim has been nothing more than serving humanity. In order to show how Snowden was being portrayed as a traitor, hacker and betrayer by the media, I referred to the media articles that led to the spread of panic amongst the people.
Reference List:
BBC News. 2014. Edward Snowden: Leaks that exposed US spy programme – BBC News. [online] Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-23123964 [Accessed 22 Aug. 2017].
Brook, B. 2017. Shopping centres are “in fear” of Amazon’s arrival. [online] NewsComAu. Available at: https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/amazons-impending-arrival-means-australian-shopping-centres-have-to-shape-up-or-risk-shutting-down/news-story/66ecd48160d3e9c47c8e684409241513 [Accessed 16 Aug. 2017].
Greenwald, G., MacAskill, E. and Poitras, L. (2017). Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance [Accessed 22 Aug. 2017].
Mail Onlinr 2017. Russia ‘considering returning Edward Snowden’ to US as ‘gift’ to Trump. [online] Mail Online. Available at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4213826/Russia-considering-returning-Edward-Snowden-US.html [Accessed 22 Aug. 2017].
Schrodt, P. 2017. Edward Snowden just made an impassioned argument for why privacy is the most important right. [online] Business Insider. Available at: https://www.businessinsider.in/Edward-Snowden-just-made-an-impassioned-argument-for-why-privacy-is-the-most-important-right/articleshow/54352377.cms [Accessed 22 Aug. 2017].
Webb, S. 2017. Putin ‘thinking of handing CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden to US as a gift to Donald Trump’. [online] The Sun. Available at: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/2839637/putin-thinking-of-handing-cia-whistleblower-edward-snowden-to-us-as-a-gift-to-donald-trump/ [Accessed 22 Aug. 2017].
Wimple, E. 2017. NBC News’s Brian Williams interviews Snowden, Greenwald. [online] Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2014/05/22/nbc-newss-brian-williams-interviews-snowden-greenwald/ [Accessed 22 Aug. 2017].
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