The Readerly News

[McCamy Taylor]

For almost a hundred years, writers or fiction and poetry have been extolling us to read their texts with open minds. Wallace Stevens wrote a great deal about the process of experiencing/creating art as if the two were one in the same. Years later, Roland Barthe would make much the same point in "S/Z". "The goal of literary work (of literature as work) is to make the reader no longer a consumer, but a producer of the text." (Barthe) The result for the reader is a "giant ever changing, living in change" (Stevens, "A Primitive Like an Orb") to replace a stale, dead old tale moldering on the shelf.

In recent years, the social sciences have begun to embrace the same philosophy. About a year ago, a guest lecturer at my graduate school discussed theories of medical anthropology which could have come straight from Stevens, except that the ideas were developed many years after the poet's death.

If all meaning, including the so called "real" meaning of cultural identity is no different than the layered meanings of fiction, then the reading techniques of Roland Barthe should be applicable to the fiction which loves to pretend that it is NOT fiction---the news. Therefore I am going to suggest that accepting a news story "at face value" or reading it "out of context" can be as bad (and in the case of propaganda worse than) not reading it at all. "The meaning of the text," writes Barthe " lies not in this or that interpretation but in the diagrammatic totality of its readings, in their plural system. Some will say...'The text and nothing but the text': this proposition has little meaning except intimidation....The meaning of a text can be nothing but the plurality of its systems...from the outset, as it is created, the text is multilingual; there is no entrance language or exit language for the textual dictionary, since it is not the dictionary's (closed) definitional power that the text possesses, but its infinite structure."

As an example, go to this story about Exxon's recent annual board meeting at http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/business/14714837.htm The title is "Chairman admits high gas prices 'a problem'". This is basically how the story appeared at the front top of the newspaper's business section on June 1, with the photo prominently placed. The first thing the eye notices is that the new Chairman of Exxon looks like Robert Preston in "The Music Man" except much more sinister and dangerous. Then note the irony of the quotations around the phrase "a problem.". However, if you read the story, the text is basically benign. The new chairman is not portrayed as a snake oil salesman. His company is shown as making very slight progress into the 21st century. Why the inflammatory picture and headline?

A reader who is doing his or her job will note that this article is in the Fort Worth paper, as opposed to say the Houston paper. Fort Worth is home to Dallas Forth Worth Airport as well as being a big hub for rail and road transportation. All travel and transport industries have been devastated by the continued high prices of oil. The Fort Worth paper has come down hard against what it perceives as unnaturally high oil prices. Therefore, the picture of Exxon's new Chairman looking like Satan with the word "Exxon" behind his head in red letters is no accident.

In contrast, during the Monica Lewinsky hearings, the same newspaper dutifully reported the Ken Starr Grand Jury leaks like everyone else, BUT each article was accompanied by a photo of Bill Clinton looking pensive with his head turned slightly to the right and looking down with the presidential seal framing his head. His aspect and facial expression were exactly like those of Jesus on the cross. The sight of this photo day after day was reassuring to me. It indicated that to the average American editor Bill Clinton was getting a bum rap. The meaning behind this photo would be lost on one who was not aware that Christianity is the dominant religion in this part of the country or that there is an image of Jesus crucified that is very popular here.

Now, the chairman of Exxon is not a hornless snake oil selling devil and Bill Clinton was not nailed to a cross. However, through the skillful use of photojournalism, newspapers can create this impression. Journalists can do a lot of other things too. They can juxtapose two stories to make it look as if their is an "epidemic" (of crime by a certain racial group for instance). They can publicize one news story in order to obscure another news story, as we saw done when the Armstrong Williams case stole the media spotlight from the Ohio Election Theft story in December 2004. They can make their subject look like Mother Theresa or like Genghis Khan or tell us that we have always been at war with Oceania--all the while claiming journalistic objectivity.

This all sounds like common sense, however it is easy to be swayed by the show which the mainstream media puts on for the American public. Moving as one, they will pounce upon an issue, and occasionally that issue will be important or even damaging to the current administration. That is when you have to remember that even the news story is "readerly" (Barthe's word). For the news story is not really the News. The News is the sum of everything that is actually going on in front of and behind the scenes. The news story, in this age of propaganda and corporate owned media empires is more often than not an attempt to change the News by changing our perceptions of what is happening or changing the direction we are looking. The content of the story may mean nothing in itself. The context of the story may be the real story. Who wrote it, when, how was it published, how was it disseminated, how was the opposition framed? And, if it is a story that appears to be somewhat damaging to the correct administration or to the Republican Party or to some other powerful interest but will have no significant long term consequences, is there another story, one that is potentially much more damaging that is going unnoticed?

If you pay attention to the drivel that passes for news stories in this country, you will eventually begin to detect patterns. You will notice which journalists always defend the administration, and which ones sometimes pretend to criticize them but then come through in a pinch when they really, truly need a carefully timed lie. You will learn which media outlets do the same. You will learn which types of manufactured slightly damaging stories signal that there is a real damaging story out there that is not getting covered. You will be able to spot the created trends and epidemics almost before they happen. It is just another language, after all, with its own vocabulary and dictionary, and the players are not clever enough individually to alter their habits to avoid detection. Study them like you would a bunch of chimps in a research project. And for heaven's sake, whatever you do, never make the mistake of thinking that because they claim that it is the news it must be true. It only SOUNDS true, because it has the "ring of truth", and fairy tales all have the ring of truth, too.

The good news is that there is a lot to be learned from treating the body of the news as a readerly text. I have been able to predict the outcomes of all the recent elections (including, unfortunately, the election fraud activity and its results) by keeping my eyes and ears open. I have no doubt that stock market analysts do this all the time. They are in a business where they have to know what is going to happen---money is on the line. Well, I think our democracy is more important than money. I think that our Democratic leadership should start paying more attention to what is really going on and taking proactive measures. Actually, from what I have seen, I think that Howard Dean is doing just that. Maybe it is because he is a family doc (like me) so he likes to diagnosis stuff. Keith Olberman's Countdown is a real jewel, because he and his guests walk the viewer through each story analyzing the source, motives, ramifications in a realistic way. Get your kids to watch Countdown, and they will become used to thinking about what they are told instead of just gobbling it up like junk food.