How Extremist Media Radicalizes Our Military

Commanders Need to Change the Channel

The Hippocratic Oath is a vow made by medically certified physicians to uphold specific ethical standards developed primarily for the patient. Within the Oath is the commonly misquoted phrase, “I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.”

Popularly morphed into “First, do no harm,” there was once an analogous policy for media consumers that licensed broadcasters in the U.S. had to adhere to: The Fairness Doctrine.

The Fairness Doctrine required balanced coverage of controversial issues, in part by offering contrasting and diverse viewpoints on matters deemed of public importance. The Federal Communications Commission enforced the Fairness Doctrine from 1949 to 1987, when it was abolished by the FCC under the Reagan Administration.

The Fairness Doctrine was rooted in the “scarcity rationale.” Broadcast frequencies were (and still are) limited, so licensees had an obligation to act as trustees of the public airwaves and provide balanced coverage.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the doctrine in a 1969 case regarding personal attacks, Red Lion Broadcasting Co., Inc. vs. FCC. In the following years, this case was used by activists across the political spectrum to challenge biased or one-sided programming, including racist broadcasts and misleading advertisements. The Fairness Doctrine was also used as a political cudgel to harass opponents on the radio, especially in rural areas.

While the Doctrine itself was abolished in 1987 (more on that later), the Red Lion Supreme Court decision has never been overruled and stands for the principle that the public’s right to accurate information outweighs broadcasters’ rights to unregulated speech.

Events over the past decade – since Donald J. Trump first descended down the escalator at his namesake tower in New York City – have turbocharged and corrupted the “fairness crisis” across the media and throughout our society, affecting the views of all citizens, including our service members. Sadly, a fair, balanced exposure to all views has pretty much disappeared from the public areas our military and veterans frequent on base and in VA facilities today.

But how did we get here?

The Pendulum Swings in the 60s

The 1960s were a tumultuous time for our country. The struggle for Civil Rights, the deep political disillusionment over the Vietnam War, the rise of a powerful counterculture, and a profound generational rift all contributed to the turbulence roiling through our society during the 60s.

Television evolved from what had been a primarily entertainment-focused medium into a dominant information source that influenced public opinion, documented historical events such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and Apollo 11, and challenged social norms.

TV brought powerful images of racial injustice into the living rooms of ordinary citizens’ homes, so they could not look away or plead ignorance of what was going on. Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and The Ed Sullivan Show likewise brought the hippie counterculture into those same homes on a weekly basis.

The media played a definitive role in the plummeting of public support for the war in Vietnam. Americans felt betrayed when the government withheld and manipulated information about the war.

This betrayal of trust shifted the public’s reliance on government sources such as press conferences, official news releases and reports of official proceedings for their news, to the down-and-dirty “New Journalism”-influenced approach of reporters doing their own research, conducting in-depth interviews, writing their own analysis pieces, and undertaking a “boots-on-the-ground” approach to reporting from the front lines – in Vietnam, on the streets of America, and in the power corridors of government at every level.

In short, the American public trusted the reporters – not the government – to tell them the truth as the turbulence of the 60s roiled our society. The media played a substantial role in the polarization of American opinion, especially regarding the Vietnam War.

The accepted narrative, intentional or not, that evolved pitted more liberal Doves such as Eugene McCarthy – who claimed the war was well-intended to stop the spread of communism but a disastrous mistake – against Hawks personified by William F. Buckley – who claimed the war would have been winnable had it not been for the media’s one-sided criticism that drove the decline of public support.

Nixon Wages War Against the Media

When Richard M. Nixon won the Presidency and took office in 1969, he began to sharply curtail the media’s access to information about Vietnam – both on the ground in Southeast Asia and through his Administration’s offices.

Members of his Administration discussed ways to use the Executive Branch to coerce TV networks and newspapers into taking a more docile approach – from IRS audits to antitrust lawsuits filed by the Department of Justice, to encouraging the FCC to take legal action against what they viewed as monopolistic and unfair business practices.

After Nixon resigned in disgrace, one study suggested there was “considerable evidence to suggest that the development of television journalism contributed to the undermining of governmental authority.” Many scholars still accept and uphold this perspective. With the emergence in the 21^st Century of social media and online news outlets, this adversarial relationship between government and the media continues to hold, for better or worse.

Demise of the Doctrine

1987 was the year the Fairness Doctrine met its ultimate demise.

CNN had been a cable TV staple since 1980. FOX News wouldn’t launch for another nine years. Ronald Reagan, in his second Presidential term, made it clear that he wanted to do away with the Fairness Doctrine. Three of the four sitting commissioners had been named to the FCC by Reagan; the fourth commissioner was a holdover from Nixon’s term. The deck was stacked.

In late June of 1987, Congress tried to codify The Fairness Doctrine, but Reagan vetoed the legislation. The prevailing opinion of the Executive Branch was that the Doctrine infringed on Americans’ First Amendment rights of free speech.

In August 1987, the FCC abolished the Fairness Doctrine as unconstitutional, stating that the scarcity rationale no longer applied because of the many and varied voices in the marketplace. In 1991, legislators in Congress again took a shot at reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, but that effort ended when President George H.W. Bush threatened another veto.

Inside the Wire

Then, in 1992 – the Presidential Election Year known as “The Year of the Woman” – Rush Limbaugh’s show was syndicated nationally on 650 radio stations and also simulcast on C-SPAN. Eventually, The Rush Limbaugh Show would be broadcast worldwide to U.S. service members and their families through Armed Forces Radio Network.

From the very beginning, Limbaugh trafficked in conspiracy theories, divisiveness, name-calling, and outright viciousness. He called himself an “entertainer,” but his fans – known as “dittoheads” – hung on his every word.

This was the beginning of the right wing getting inside the wire with our military forces. Then, on October 7, 1996, FOX News was born.

Like many service members and their families, I was thrust into this increasingly polarizing media maelstrom as a young Airman, where I worked in two specialties heavily dominated by alpha males who adored Rush and FOX News: aircraft maintenance and aircrew.

I was first introduced to The Rush Limbaugh Show by coworkers at my permanent duty stations and quickly became a dittohead.

When FOX News launched, I ate it up. Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Fox & Friends – when I was TDY, they were everywhere, on the televisions on every base. It could be two in the morning in Ramstein, Germany and there was FOX News playing in the 24-hour chow hall. Same in the billeting office, barracks, flight ops, the clinic, the hospital, the bowling alley, the gym – it seemed every TV was tuned to FOX News.

Even if the volume wasn’t always turned up, that barrage of ticker tape headlines across the bottom of the screen was a constant reinforcement of the neoconservative movement then emerging across the nation.

At the time, it didn’t even feel strange to me. Right-wing chatter was a part of military life for me almost from day one in the service. Never mind that my family wasn’t right-wing or even all that conservative: I was in the middle of a rebellious phase and these ideas seemed new, exotic – not to mention, correct – in my young, impressionable mind.

The indoctrination continued when we were off duty in the NCO Club or dorms playing cards, as we reinforced each others’ opinions – views molded in our young minds by the 24/7/365 relentless exposure to right wing media.

It all seemed to blend so well – the military mantra of work hard/play hard; the camaraderie; the idea we had “inside information” since we were “on the front lines;” the accepted wisdom that the general public just didn’t get it like we, the true warfighters, did.

Does any of this sound familiar? I’ll bet it does. Rush may be dead, but ultraconservative content creators like Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Jordan Peterson and others are filling his legacy over the air and even more importantly in the 21^st Century digital world.

This isn’t just a macho thing, either. Female influencers such as Isabel Brown, Brett Cooper, Tomi Lahren, Laura Loomer and the MAGA matriarch herself, Ann Coulter – they all paint a feminine face on right-wing extremism.

These media-savvy and educated influencers are convincing and erudite, taking aim at a target-rich environment of the teens and young adults just starting out in our military branches.

People join the military for many reasons, not least of which is a desire to serve their country. High-quality training and help with college are other popular reasons. There are many very good reasons to join the military.

But the pull of extremism can be irresistible for any impressionable young person who doesn’t yet know his or her own mind and heart and just wants to fit in. A large majority of new military recruits are some of the most vulnerable to this extremist messaging.

For society writ large, there will probably never be a return to or modification of the Fairness Doctrine that served us so well for so long – at least in the near term. Media literacy should be a required subject in our schools, as other countries like Finland now teach, but that won’t happen anytime soon either.

I was incredulous to discover that the United States has never had a law on the books directly mandating factual accuracy in news coverage. It’s stunning that, compared to the United States, many countries have a stronger ethics structure surrounding news coverage.

Sure, there are slander and libel laws to protect against personal injury. And the FCC has a policy against “news distortion”, but that only applies to deliberate deception, errors and mistakes, or expressions of opinion – something that is open to interpretation. The culture of self-regulation through ethics codes adopted by some news outlets and professional associations are not even legally enforceable under the First Amendment.

Today, the news media (or anyone else, for that matter) can say anything they want in this country and espouse it as “their” truth or, on the flipside, “not the truth.” In a world of alternative facts and fake news, with artificial intelligence tools writing everything from commentary to editorials to outright news reports…this laissez-faire lack of a basic ethical journalistic code is outright media malpractice. And this malpractice places the worst offenders down in the sewer with outlets we used to laugh at, like the National Enquirer.

Only it isn’t funny.

Commanders, Change the Channel

I retired just prior to 9/11, so my access to operational areas since then as a dependent has been limited. But I have been encouraged by some quiet changes I’ve seen in more publicly accessible areas at my local base: televisions tuned to HGTV, Discovery, or the Food Network channels.

My local Veterans Administration clinic, however, is the exact opposite. On my last visit to the VA clinic, FOX News was playing on every single television in public view. When I asked if the channel could be changed, the look of alarm in the employee’s eyes was enough for me to drop it…for now. There has been so much chain-sawing at VA hospitals and clinics that I didn’t want one more employee to be at risk of losing their job because they changed the channel.

Most Americans are completely unaware of the extremist right-wing media’s impact on the military. Unfortunately, green recruits are unprepared for the ideological indoctrination they are almost certain to encounter from extremist right wing news sources almost from the day they swear an oath to the Constitution.

Our newest recruits face an overwhelming media landscape that many are ill-prepared to navigate. Military bases, both here at home and abroad, should be islands of neutrality in this increasingly polarized world that we live – and serve – in.

Our military commanders need to change the channel. They need to do everything possible to ensure our force remains unbiased. It is more critical than ever that our military is held to a higher standard with regards to neutrality in all things political.

Our oath, which never expires, is to the Constitution. Not to Donald Trump, or Joe Biden for that matter. Not to political parties. Not to influencers on any digital or broadcast wavelength of the ideological spectrum.

Our military deserves better.

Our veterans deserve better.

And our country deserves better.

Sources

• National Library of Medicine, PMC PubMed Central – The Physician’s Oath: Historical Perspectives

• Britannica – Fairness Doctrine, United States Policy [1949-1987]

• Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University – Scarcity Rationale

• Britannica – Reincarnations of the New Journalism

• The New Yorker – Reflections: The Presidency and the Press

• The University of Chicago Press Journals – The Media, the War in Vietnam, and Political Support: A Critique of the Thesis of an Oppositional Media

• Rolling Stone – Rush Limbaugh Did His Best to Ruin America

• D+C: Development and Cooperation – Media Literacy: How Finland Is Preparing Its Citizens for a World Swamped by Fake News