another rant from Liberal Street Fighter
Billmon offers up that question in his latest piece about Jooody’s stint in the slam:
Left to their own devices, corporate journalists seem increasingly inclined to act as an arm of the government, not a watchdog of it. Which means the licence granted by the traditions of the profession — which in some ways extend even further than the legal rights guaranteed by the First Amendment — can and are being used against the public interest, not to protect it. We seem to have run into yet another variation on the old Roman question: Quid custodiet ipsos custodes? Who shall watch the watchers?
That’s too big a topic for me to tackle today.
The tendency to glorify our military, to obsessively cover violent car chases — and in Jooody’s case, eagerness to help a corrupt government SELL a war of aggression to a willing public — has to make any serious citizen ask just what we mean by a “free” press. Billmon declined to tackle it, so I’ll take a stab.
The increasing militarization of our society has been underway for quite some time. Too much sex and violence in video games, movies and music are to blame, insist some politicians. They tend, of course, to attack the creators of these materials, while turning a blind eye to the companies that profit from them. However, I would submit that the real celebration of violence comes from the corporate news complex. Car chases, shootouts and war coverage with splashy graphics … nothing gets people to tune in like some good violent news coverage. The great weight of violence we witness flickering across our TV screens is perpetrated by our government, with a cooperative media cheering them on.
Our police forces in many cities are paramilitary units, providing not law enforcement, but the constant threat/promise of overwhelming force. Most tragically, this resulted in the recent death of 19-month-old Susie Peña, a siege covered live on television:
The fatal sequence of events that has L.A.’s police chief lining up on one side, the little girl’s family, their attorney and a string of community activists on another side, with the mayor somewhere in the center striving to calm the waters, began on Sunday just after 3 p.m., when Raul Peña left his used-car dealership, located at 10420 S. Avalon Blvd., and went to the home of the baby’s mother, Lorena Lopez, a half-block away. There, according to Lopez and her sister, he picked up the couple’s plum-cheeked toddler, Susie, and brought the girl back to work with him. “When my dad was under stress, he’d be with the baby to relax,” says stepson Ronald. “Right now his business was going bad, and there were some debts. So that’s why he took the baby to work with him Sunday.”
Nonsense, say police, contending that a combustible situation had been building in the family all weekend, that at 2 p.m. the day of the shooting, Lorena Lopez made a “domestic-terror report” to the police about Peña. And that after the shooting, Peña’s 16-year-old stepdaughter told police that he was jacked up on alcohol and cocaine that day, and had threatened to kill her, and baby Susie, and the girls’ mother, Lopez.
Why did the situation escalate the way it did? Why was the army outside that autoparts store in such a hurry to end the situation. Could it be because the whole city was watching?
A tactical alert was called at 5:40 p.m. The number of officers had swelled to 80 or 100, maybe more. Police say they last talked to Peña on the phone at 5:30 p.m. but still used the PA system to urge him to surrender his weapons. In response, a witness reports hearing Peña shout over and over, as in a B movie, “I’m not going to jail! You’re not going to take me alive!”
Finally, a few minutes after 6 p.m., it all went bad. Police say that they saw Peña at the back of the property and that shots were exchanged, but then he disappeared inside the building. “Truthfully, we aren’t yet entirely sure what went on,” says Deputy Chief Paysinger. “You’d think we’d know it all by now, but we don’t. We will unravel all the facts, but it takes a while.”
Why the hurry? For that matter, why are agencies of our government so quick and willing to shoot first, ask questions later? Is our press truly acting as a fourth estate anymore, as called for in the Constitution, if they help the government sell its actions?
Indeed, who is watching the watchers, other than the American public, passively cheering on the death and destruction from the safety of their couches? As the system of checks and balances continues to fall apart under the weight of corporate money buying its way into power, perhaps we’re left only with lawyers and the courts to protect us from their continued irresponsible actions. Perhaps the system is already so badly broken that only drastic action by prosecutors and principled judges can divert a media so negligent in its duties.
Perhaps, but I know that Jooody rotting in a jail cell for the part she played as a propagandist for the Bush Administration is just fine with me.
very cool image lifted from La Galaxia de los Cómics