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February 22, 2005
Over at Foucauldian Reflections Ali says that:
"Questioning and permanent questioning is the most important facet of Foucauldian politics. Those who are ruled are entitled to ask how they are being ruled, what are the implications of particular policies for their freedom, well being etc."
In the light of those remarks have a read of Mark Danner's response to Hacker and Cohen's replies to his earlier article How Bush Really Won in The New York Review of Books. It offers an insight into how the media was managed by the Republican campaign team in a presidential campaign. Danner says:
"As so often in journalism, the source offered the reporter access and the scoop; in exchange, the reporter in effect granted the source---in this case, the Bush strategist—the power to shape the storyline. The reporter thus publishes a supposed "inside story" about "scrambling" within the campaign that is in effect a kind of "false bottom" constructed by the campaign itself and intended to "fan the flames" of what is in fact a largely bogus story."
The example mentioned is controversy over the Bush campaign's first television ads, which offered a glimpse of a dead fireman being carried out of the World Trade Center site. In the article the New York Times reporters revealed that the campaign was "scrambling to counter criticism that his first television commercials crassly politicized the tragedy of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks."
Danner adds that:
"The Bush campaign's "shocking stumble" was, in Daniel Boorstin's term, a "pseudo-event"; indeed, our political campaigns are built largely of such pseudo-events and rely fundamentally on the press and the commentariat to play their necessary part in constructing them and conveying them to the public."
It is also an insight how the media is managed by governments in power so they stay in power. The source offers the journalist access and the scoop and the journalist becomes part of the political campaign.
If we come back to Ali's account of Foucault's understanding of questioning, we find Foucault arguing that he does not question modern institutions and practices because he has some definitive alternative. Foucault questions our political institutions and practices including the state because he thinks we are entitled to ask questions about things that affect our freedom from those who rule us in the name of freedom.
Foucault makes a distinction that is very useful in terms of the media management by governments. He distinquishes between the free speech of those who govern and the free speech of those who are governed. He says that those who are governed are entitled, and they can and must question those who govern them. We can question what those who govern do, of the meaning of their actions, of the decisions they have taken; and we can do so in the name of knowledge, the experience we have by virtue of our being citizens.
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