(Cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune and My Left Wing.)
Here’s a call to the media, more specifically newspapers, where I am more at home: forget the balancing act, forget the he said/she said approach, which takes up an entire story about OPO, Other People’s Opinions.
Tell me, dear saints in heaven, WHAT HAPPENED – HOW AND WHY. And, it follows, WHAT IT MEANS TO ME.
Now, you can’t do all that if you are toddling between the Democrats and the Republicans, or the liberal and the conservative think tanks. YOU are the one being paid to THINK.
Forgive me for shouting in CAPS; it appears that no one is listening, particularly the biggies, the heavyweights like The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, the large-city newspapers in the USA.
There’s more …
With all this he said/she said, it is YOU who are creating the cultural/political divide. YOU repeat it ad nauseum, just as you repeat the smears against the Democrats, ad nauseum. It is YOU who promulgate gossip from all your anonymous sources.
Just to let you know, WE, your readers are not dumb. We see right through you and the backlash is coming. The Washington Post is getting the flak right now from hundreds and hundreds of supporters and delighted readers of Dam Froomkin’s blog on the Post’s Web site. Now an editor, or was it the ombudsman, tossed out the label “liberal” and that was supposed to tell all?
HEY, Froomkin’s calls for accountability are NOT political, they are journalism. You remember that, don’t you?
I wonder if you do.
A little personal history:
I started out inflamed with a passion for newspapers in the late 50s, early 60s and my first reporting job was for an independent newspaper (where Ben Bagdikian had also worked). I thought these people were God’s Apostles: They spoke truth to power! They spoke FOR ordinary men and women – TO the government.
Through the years and a stint in J-grad-school in the 70s, I noticed the shift. No more fire; instead, social responsibility. The responsibility of the press – not the government – became the focus.
My intermittent career developed into my sole means of support after a divorce. I became a re-entry woman and found a job with a small community newspaper with fire, where I worked with passion (what else sustains you in the face of low salaries and overwork?)
The small newspaper with fire was bought by a businessman and eventually took on the sheen of corporate ownership, albeit on a small scale.
Disillusioned, disheartened and just plain sad, I retired.
Retirement gave me the time to read political blogs and what an education I received in 2003 – along with daily disappointment in the performance of the press. As we went to war, I mourned the death of the “free press” I once knew and loved.
What happened? I read a lot – books, online articles, blogs, magazines. But the real wrap-up, the one I had been longing for was found on Consortium News by Robert Parry:
“Rise of the `Patriotic Journalist'”
I urge everyone to read this history of media manipulation. It didn’t happen overnight with President George W. Bush. It’s a shameful history, and it only happens in the face of silence and accommodation.
This is my rant, my first diary. Robert Parry spelled it out, gave words to what I have felt intuitively. The courage, the imagination, the fire in my old text “The History of American Journalism” with a slight rebirth during Watergate, is not found in corporate newsrooms.
Well, they are all hearing from me these days. I don’t miss a chance to write an ombudsman, a letter to the editor, an e-mail to a reporter. Join me, please, and make your voices heard. And don’t let another Judith Miller get by you.
My next campaign is to petition the big three newspapers (plus Helen Thomas) to boycott the White House press briefings. There’s no news there, so why are they all cooperating in this Potemkin Village? Can you image the support of the American public if a newspaper conducted a running campaign, a box on its front page, refusing to attend the briefing until all its questions are answered (and published) to their satisfaction?
And, if I could have a fantasy come true, I’d found a J-school, where the operative word is “intrepid,” and the modus operandi is “look under your noses.” I wouldn’t even insist on a “nut graf.”
As an aside, on the Consortium News home page, a fund-raising appeal is posted. It doesn’t look good for the year’s end goal. If you can spare a Christmas gift to the needy (and deserving), check out the Web site and make a donation.
I am not a relative or acquaintance of Parry’s, and I have no ties to Consortium News. I just agree with his closing – a warning that the stakes are high — “will journalists decide that confronting the powerful with tough questions is the true patriotic test of a journalist?”
I agree but we may have to specify which truth we want. They always have too many versions to choose from, I guess.
I think a WH Press Corps boycott would be excellent. What do they have to lose access to?
much of a problem sifting “truths” on the Internet.
My point is that is you report what you see, hear with honesty and integrity, and that means telling all of it, and the basic truth of the matter will be laid out.
To report what McClellan says at a press briefing is stenography. Putting it into context is a reporter’s job. And if that context means that the briefing is a spin zone — say so. Spell it out. Dan Froomkin does that in his blog. It wasn’t always labeled opinion: the stenographers wanted it so.
The new order in journalism appears to be not objectivity (lack of personal opinions and prejudices) but cowering objectivity — bowing to all sides.
If journalists bow, they are admitting to a power over their stories.
Yeah, this issue has been troubling me for a while now. The lack of truth leads to more mistrust. I know that sounds too simple but it’s happening when stories lack the normal amount of truth.
The shooting of Alpizar on the airliner in Miami is a good example. I heard Bill Maher tonight say it’s a good sign for our state of security. I used to spend a lot of time seeking out his comedy and insight but not anymore now.
The MSM has allowed an untrue story to develop that is more than the tragic shooting of an innocent man. They are actively avoiding crucial facts in the story to misrepresent the incident and the victim.
Accidents happen but when lies continue to manipulate a coverup, the deep mistrust of governmental authority grows.
Sometimes I think the Republicans, in their quest for dominance, have completely forgotten what democracy means, and are actually supporting this destruction of a meaningful media. They promote polarization and then love it when the public responds with “a pox on all your houses” when it comes to the parties. Last week I actually heard Bill Kristol supporting the work of the military in paying for stories in the Iraqi press.
This might sound off topic, but I feel it so strongly I’m going to say it here:
This is why I think it is SO wrong for the Democrats to work so hard at “positioning” themselves to try to win elections. When you loose touch with your democratic (small “d”) values in your quest for power (as the Republicans did a long time ago) our country is doomed.
If anyone has a chance, check out the interview on C-Span with Jackie Spinner from WaPo. It was live this morning but it should be available on that site sometime today or later. It’ll be rerun over the weekend, too.
I haven’t been following the news reports since, but while it was being “reported” “live” the day it happened, I was watching MSM news (whether MSNBC or CNN I don’t recall), and jotted down some notes, i.e. quotes, from the “news” “reporters”.
Among other things they were SPECULATING about whether this was a “police-assisted suicide.”
Police-assisted suicide? Gimme a break.
My point: there’s also a hell of a lot of “speculation” being “reported” on these “news” broadcasts. Your average American is not likely to be savvy enough to filter the speculations from the “facts”–they just hear this stuff–as in “police assisted suicide” (well, gee, since the same report described the guy as “troubled, disturbed, mentally imbalanced and disorderly”, maybe it was a “police-assisted suicide”–so the thinking might go).
Media speculations thus “plant” these ideas in the minds of their viewers, and the very possibility that this could be so prevents people from becoming outraged over an obvious injustice.
Police-assisted suicide? Well, gee, if that was the case (and the media is reporting that it might have been), well, there’s nothing for us to get upset about. That troubled, disturbed, mentally imbalanced, disorderly guy (who couldn’t afford his prescription medicine?) just wanted police assistance in committing suicide.
Right.
My point: these kinds of “speculations” also muddy the waters and leave the impression that there is no ultimate truth of the matter. Any matter. It could all be “speculation”–like maybe this administration is lying about cooked intelligence, maybe there is no connection between Iraq and 9/11.
Bullshit. They DID lie about cooked intelligence. There is NO connection between Iraq and 9/11. There’s no need for “speculation” about these matters. But the media’s “balanced” reporting of them leads the American public to believe there is.
God, are we ever going to wake up from this nightmare?
In addition to that, which I agree with, the manipulation of ‘facts’ from the time of an incident’s occurrence can be fraud. When private industry is so intertwined with the government, they’ll protect each other at our expense.
What if,….within the first minute of this happening, an attendant tells a marshall that she refused the carry-on bag that he claimed he had to carry because his medications were in it? What if airport delays caused him to miss a crucial dose?
Protecting business from liability is easier with state secrets.
privatizing out government work to contractors who are under no accountability to the public.
Yes! Trouble always results when opinion and speculation masquerade as fact and vice versa. And propaganda machines make very good use of this simple idea.
If you think things are bad now, they are only going to get worse.
So, like Texas liberals (yes, there are some), you might as well have some fun while you are attempting to change things.
By the way, out of fun, comes creativity.
out what we mean by MSM.
I hate TV, seldom watch it. No cable and only 2 networks available to me. This on top of old-school newspaperwoman’s distrust of broadcast news (except Bill Moyers).
NPR has been a source for me, but except for Diane Rehm’s show, I am hearing more and more inaccuracies and spin repetition.
It’s the press (newspapers) that vastly disappoints me. Purportedly, print allows for a bit more “think” time to write a story. But the future (and news Web sites) holds less and less time for such frivolities. What are speed and instant access to information going to do to our perspectives? What is it doing now?
“Instant news” and the parroting of rumor and hearsay: real problems. How do we as citizens change this? What tools do we have to reach the corporate media?
How do we change the climate of fear, encouraged by corporate media, that leads to statements such as Bill Maher’s — not to mention the shooting itself?
I go to print, Internet and films (go, Michael Moore, go) for information and entertainment. My life is nowhere near as harried as young families, working, raising children. And there’s no way those harried people are going to settle down with books and magazines, what I call “journalism by book,” to keep informed.
Not to mention that the “he said, she said”format of the news requires hardly any real investigatory or reportorial diligence on the part of the news organizations. Just get the duelling gasbags on their soapboxes on a split screen on the tube or in adjacent columns in print. Then the story becomes the “combat” between the two blowhards rather than what either one of them is saying and whether such utterances are true or not.
One more way in which “we the people” have been subjected to a rubric that inhibits rather than enhances our ability to get truthful and accurate news.
and I hit the “off” button.
Tuning out may be the best thing we can do.
For me now, it seems the fundamental utility I derive from perusing the mainstream corporate media output is that in doing so I can usually get a sense of which direction the neocons, the Grover Norquist-style looters and the evangelical fascists want to trick the public into following, and the memes around which their campaigns of deception will be organized.
Sadly, even being forewarned, (and hence for-armed), in this way rarely translates into empowering us to interrupt or otherwise derail the juggernaut the propagandists are relentlessly promoting with their falsehoods.
I stioll listen to some of the talking head shows and I still read some of the rightwing columnists, *but I am doing so less and less as they become morte predictable in their manipulative bullshit.
They stand the danger of losing access to the money stream that feeds their upper middle class lifestyles, is what they stand to lose.
“The MORTGAGE, Helen!!! What”l we do if I tell the truth!!!”
Look at what happened to Peter Arnett.
AG
was fired by the patriotic journalists (NBC) but was hired less than 24 hours later by a British newspaper.
Heh, heh, and what he said was oh so true: US war in Iraq is a failure.
Suggested the same walkout a few months ago, with results likely to be the same – none. Interesting to read that during the Watergate series on WaPo, Woodward and Bernstein were decidedly NOT part of the insiders. To be heard at all will require supporting those news outlets that present the full story, as opposed to slamming those that don’t.
They’re out there, and catching their writing and propagating it through any means necessary will eventually force change.
Most people don’t really want the truth. Average folks are happy to have the ‘news’ packaged in small bites and a happy ending to send everyone off with a smile.
In the case of the airliner shooting, most all of the MSM and even some alternative sources are ignoring pertinent facts. Newsweek had a mention that 7 witnesses (none to report otherwise) to the event reported the same account of hearing no claims of a bomb at all from the man who was killed. They all reported incorrectly other disputed facts.
Good example. TIME had the same basic story, both mags included the facts of the incident – including the differing stories of the passengers, the wife, and the government. The time between interviews and print was compressed, and I have no doubt in-depth articles will appear as more facts are nailed down.
If anyone has verifiable, sourced information, conflicting with that reported by the MSM, they should publish it, and/or send it to the authorities. To take the next step pronouncing judgement, is to move the information from the front page to the editorial page.
In this case they did their job.
The truth comes out eventually but more damage is created in the meantime.
Here’s a question. In the incident of the Jean Charles de Menezes shooting in the London Tubes, if charges of wrongful death and subsequent conspiracy to cover it up are filed, should the media be included in the conspiracy to deceive the public?
there goes freedom of the press.
It seems to me, that’s too hard to prove. But I have no knowledge of British law.
It wouldn’t happen realistically, but I think something like that would make the media more independant. Actually, Britain has laws fairly strict controlling media conserning state secrets. Trouble is, state secrets are whatever the govt claims.
Um, where – exactly – did you read about the de Menezes shooting? You’ve made my point.
How much truth do you find in American news that comes from America? We’re getting closer to the day when those laws will apply globally, but not yet.
Facts of an incident should not take on the level of state secrets simply to protect wrongdoing, liability or embarrasment.
I’ll give Time/Newsweek the benefit of the doubt but none of them are giving the conflicting witness reports much ,ore than a small mention. Most news sources were not including it plus giving apparently incorrect information.
Getting the truth out on the London shooting has been a tremendous struggle from the beginning.
THEY are not going to walk out on their keepers until we walk out on THEM.
Once again…NEWSTRIKE!!!
And
MEDIASTRIKE!! as well.
They are in business, the media.
Why would they bite the hand that really feeds them…the PermaGov…if they are making record profits by NOT biting it?
The single way to stop them, to turn this thing around, is to make it UNprofitable for them to continue on their present course of appeasement.
How?
Boycott them, and more importantly, boycott their advertisers.
They still live by advertising revenues.
Refuse to patronize ANY organization that advertises on the national media and make a lot of noise while doing it, and the results would be brutally plain.
It could be done in one month, if only enough of us were willing to actually DO it.
Turn your TVs totally away from the networks; stop buying the lying press, and DO NOT BUY PRODUCTS THAT ARE ADVERTISED THEREIN.
The left demographic is THE demographic most prized by the ad industry.
Educated, middle to upper middle class, mostly white…
Drop the fuck out of the system and see what happens.
It would be VERY interesting.
AG
How about we prosecute them for conspiracy to defraud the American public instead?
PROSECUTE them!!!???
In what honest court?
Ain’t no “prosecution”, rumi.
Just various levels of fixes.
Which THEMSELVES are largely “prosecuted” through the media.
The fix is in up and down.
INCLUDING the Plame case.
BET in it.
Y’gotta remember…SOME fixes have good results. (Clay/Liston I and II, just for starters. W/out them…no Ali, more than likely. W/out Ali…maybe the Vietnam War is never successfully opposed. Or another example. Watergate. ANOTHER fix. One that actually FIXED something.)
You want to fix what is wrong with the media?
Put a REAL fix in.
Fix ’em GOOD.
Take away their profits.
The ONLY way.
Just like the Islamic opposition in doing to the United States.
They know that they cannot win a shooting war with the U.S. That they will not be able to bring the U.S. and/or its leaders before an impartial court on charges of war crimes or criminal armed theft.
So they are fighting a war of attrition.
Financial attrition.
And it is working. (Look around if you doubt THAT.)
LEARN from your “enemies”.
Want to fix the media?
First you are going to have to break it.
THEN the real fix can start.
Until then, it’s just the same ongoing circle jerk.
Bet on it.
AG
As Diebold comes to a class action lawsuit for fraud and manipulation, in part through the SEC, why wouldn’t a media outlet be liable for misinformation that would further a conspiracy?
The same thing with Enron. Even these financial analysis shows that push stock information, speculation and decision-making could be considered actively conspiring to defraud stockholders of accurate information to protect corporate officers and/or as part of insider trading moves.
Those are just 2 quick examples.
Great.
Now give me two quick examples of an impartial court. One that cannot in some way be bought (PRE-bought, as in the Supreme Court that upheld the 2000 electoral coup d’état that installed Semi-President Butch and his minder Cardinal Cheneylieu.)
We cannot take the PermaGov up on charges within its own court system
Only internal strife WITHIN that PermaGov can lead to a successful conclusion regarding that sort of movement.
And only monetary pressure from without can push segments of that PermaGov in new directions.
Which is where a real and effective NEWSTRIKE!!! would come in.
In fact…FORGET about short term money. Can you imagine the panic in the ranks or our rulers if they thought that they were liable to lose the hypnotic stranglehold that they currently hold on the minds, bodies and souls of the American sleeple???
“FUCK Iraq, J.B.!!! They’re gonna stop buying PRODUCT if we’re not careful!!!”
BET on it.
AG
T^he factor that would doom a Nwsstrike is the same one that would lend credibility to a RICO type lawsuit.
Media Consolidation.
The holdings of the media conglomerates just shift profitability around and the MSM would simply be another loss-leader.
The manipulation of the FCC against an incredible grass roots movement which included some elected officials, is a good example of building the organized network capable of future fraud for profit.
As for a successful conclusion; there is none. The threat of litigation would have some effect.
A winning football team doesn’t have to complete every long pass but an occasional attempt can keep a defense honest.
All vectors that attempt to push this ship in a new and better direction are welcomed.
AG
…anything but continuing in circles would be good.
We could just sit back and wait a few years for the riots to break out.
if the riots didn’t break out after the theft of the election (and they didn’t, Americans went shopping instead), if they didn’t break out after the FEMA disaster in NOLA (and they didn’t), and they aren’t breaking out in light of NSAs spying on American citizens, I have no hope that they will ever break out.
We have become a country of complete and total Numb-bots. Are we paralyzed, pathological or just plain incompetent?
Maybe, if the 401K liberals ever get hit and hit hard (economically), maybe then….but by then, it will already be way too late: I actually think it is already way too late.
We missed our one last shot of “saving” democracy last November: there should have been riots. The Ukraine set an example that we were too lazy or stupid or just plain paralyzed to follow. And yes, the media was very complicit in that.
But there were tens of thousands of us here on the net who KNEW the truth, and we blew it.
We should have all gone to DC, set up tent city there and demanded that the media and the gov pay attention. The best we could do was to get Boxer to symbolically contest the results. We could not muster whatever it took to physically descend on Washington, and to stay PUT there until we got the results.
We decided to write diaries instead, and hope they make it on to the rec lists of the big liberal blogs. 15 nanoseconds of fame. I guess it was better than doing nothing, which is what most of the 59 million disenfranchised voters did. But did it do any good?
I don’t see that it did.
Great. Here we sit, royally screwed, and a lot of us are STILL trying to put some rosey kind of spin on it.
Don’t worry be happy.
Yeah right.
It still has to get worse before it gets better, evidently. Let the market crash to wake people up. Wait until those filled with hate for terrorists lose all of their money and possibly their home. That will get ugly.
I agree with all you said though.
Sometime between the media destroying Howard Dean and the spin of the debates-Bush wired up- I came to the conclusion that Bush had to have a second term for us to go through the necessary changes.
Nothing will change until left and right are united in their position of holding our government accountable. The best thing we could do is collectively shut up. Removing an argument participant would leave the right to fend for themselves as they discover what’s wrong. Like a couple of kids, they won’t admit it if we are saying it.
Hmmm.
I really haven’t been “the same” since the theft of the election and the refusal or inability of the American people to respond in any way to that obvious crime. It was obvious, even without the evidence, it was obvious.
We collected the evidence, then the people refused to look at it.
Again and again, it comes down to a few simple FACTS about the American people, facts we continue to deny because they are so horrifically ugly…but they are the facts:
THOSE, imo, are truly the fundamental problems that are at the root of 90% of the ills we are seeking to correct. And utterly true to form, we continue to chip away at the “symptoms” without going to the heart of the matter to figure out how we can “cure” ourselves of these two basic national character flaws which keep us spinning in circles and destroying not only the rest of the world, but increasingly ourselves.
It’s very sad. Very hard to watch, be a part of, and have not a clue as to how to stop the madness.
It would be foolish, imo, to think that “after Bush” everything is going to turn around: it won’t. It can’t. Because part of the BushCo strategy is to bring everyone so close to the brink of poverty, so close to the brink of bankruptcy and inevitable homelessness that no one will risk anything because so much will be at stake–to express dissent will imply to risk total ruin, homelessness, poverty, bankruptcy.
As someone (AG?) already said upthread–this dynamic is already at work and a highly effective strategy for suppressing truth. Telling the truth implies the risk of losing everything (am I paraphrasing Rather here? I think so.).
So maybe, maybe after enough people have lost their middle or middle to upper class lifestyle, they might be more WILLING to get active and protest in real ways, but by then I think they will be powerless to do so, because they will be poverty-stricken and just as powerless as the poor are today.
since I don’t watch TV.
I’ve seen your comment before. Great idea, but how to get enough people to DO it, for it to be effective?
Perhaps our range of liberal blogs, growing daily, is the force.
Great diary Caneel. I agree full and well with your opinion. I stopped buying the San Diego Union/Tribune here. Sounds like we need more young journalists that have the “fire and passion” you had to come out swinging. Can we recruit them to the blogs or start our own “print” newspaper? Millions have been raised on the Internet for other causes why not a ne national paper? Your thoughts?
“They” are ALREADY on the blogs.
More than likely, blogs are the only place where you can find honest journalism in America today.
And THEY are under attack, both from without and, increasingly, from within.
Like the pharmacological/medical industry, the news industry has become so rotten now that anyone with any sense whatsoever drops out of it before they finish school if they have the slightest shred of integrity plus a good reporter’s nose for the truth of the matter.
Too bad…but true nonethless.
Working for the NY Times is like working for a Mafia PR guy only bigger and more profitable.
Bet on it.
Sad but true.
NEWSTRIKE!!!, goddamn it.
Turn ’em off, off, OFF!!!
AG
Yes, you will get more accurate and truthful news on the blogs and there is so much talent out there. The problem is that there are millions of people out there that do not even know what a blog is let alone own a computer.
If we could put together a print version of the blogs through great cooperation and keep corporate money out of it we could turn it around. Start shaming these lazy ass journalists. Call them out constantly on the BS they print. Media Matter and Crooks and Liars do a great job of this but again we need to get it out there in print.
the wiring of communities to provide internet access. That’s a biggie. And the corporateers have got to be stopped from preventing this.
I don’t think a new national newspaper is the answer.
Newspapers are a dying breed.
The last person to talk about a national newspaper was Al Neuhart and we got USA Today, which didn’t earn a cent for at least five years and was supported by Gannett and all its little newspapers (including the one I worked for)in the meantime.
The Internet really is our revolution. We need to stop carping and start doing.
One year ago, maybe a tad longer, you would not have seen mention of the blogs in the newspapers. Now the Washington Post runs links to blogs beside news stories.
I can’t tell you how excited I was to see the citizen journalism project that developed on the “orange site” as an outcropping of questions about Jeff Gannon, and the development of E Pluribus Media.
Influential blogs/news sites, not discourse at the level of Moonbats vs. Wingnuts.
You have several good comments I wanted to reply to but I landed on this one last. I think your assessments of the industry are accurate and although newsprint is changed forever, I don’t think it’s done yet.
It would be great to get some diversity in ownership on the media markets and work back to a more competitive market. It will probably never happen but it would be productive.
It’s similar to the other monopolies like Ma Bell that was split up and then naturally rebuilt.
It all goes in cycles.
Even publishers know the print newspaper business is dying. paper costs rise; advertising is down. Subscriptions don’t even come near meeting costs — it’s advertising. So newspapers develop Web sites, offering their news product for free in return for the advertising.
They may eventually charge for the news on the Web. After all, that is their product. I think New York Times Select for op-ed columns is a trial run.
And all this doesn’t factor in the cost and maintainence of the presses and, the biggie, delivery.
And young adults do not read newspapers.
So I am going to post a comment on my OWN comment.
I have written a number of things on this blog (and many more on dKos before being offed there) regarding the media. I believe that the fixed media are the number ONE problem we have today in America. In an “Information Age”, control of information is ALL.
I wrote a diary here a couple of weeks ago that absolutely passed through the BT digestive system without a burp or a burble. NO comments except one of my own. Now a number of people have been paying attention to what I have been writing here recently, and since I think this one really sketches out one single example of how helplessly mired the media is in this swamp of disinfo (And how hopelessly we are almost ALL mired in our own habitual and totally unconscious suspension of disbelief), I present it to you all once again for your (I hope…) reasoned perusal.
The NY Times. Through The Looking Glass Press
THIS is how it works.
Here is a teaser from this diary.
It is about a NY Times article decrying the “news” that the U.S. has been paying (!!!) to put propaganda articles in Iraqi newspapers.
It quotes the Times article and then goes on.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
OOOOOOoooooo, those bad, BAD Lincoln Group people!! Subverting freedom of the press like that!!!
This “…appears to violate fundamental principles of Western journalism.”
Why…MONEY has even changed hands!!!
Come ON here, fellas!!!
This is the same newspaper, owned and administrated by the same people, that kept Judith Miller busy churning out a high level version of the same boilerplate pap regarding the invasion of Iraq for three years. Do you think it possible that money…or its journalistic career equivalent in power, access and prestige…did not change hands in THAT effort? Hell, once Ms. Miller had been thoroughly exposed as an administration plant and had to be dumped for public relations reasons, her golden parachute ALONE (An undisclosed amount, but…hey, this IS the big leagues, right???) would probably be sufficient to keep me and my descendants in the clover for a couple of generations if properly administered.
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
Read this diary and then tell me that a system like this can somehow be “reformed”.
No way.
It can only be “forced”.
And power…force… comes not from the barrel of a gun, but from barrels of money.
Given or withheld as punishment or reward.
Dig it.
And then…DO it!!!
NEWSTRIKE!!!, goddamnit.
AG
AG
I hear you screaming for attention–as if the fact that your diaries don’t get responses somehow indicates that the rest of us are either unaware of the problem with the media or don’t believe it’s a major issue.
I agree with you 100% that this is one very central issue (and have actually considered this a major part of the problem since, oh, about 1984, when I left the country in protest of this and many other signs of fascism which, at the time, was “creeping up.”)
Anyone with any knowledge of the way the propaganda machinery worked in the Nazi era is fully conscious of the danger involved when a fascist regime has the kind of sophisticated means for disseminating propaganda at its disposal as is now available to our fascist “friends” in the gov and their “fellow travelers” in the corporate media.
Yeah, it’s a huge problem. But the greater issue is attempting to get the American public (the liberal left included) to ACT on these issues, and that problem is even bigger. Call it what you will: indifference, apathy, despondency or sheer ineptitude–it’s the bigger problem.
I keep sitting here looking out at this world of “America” (and increasingly, find it hard to consider myself a part of it) and wondering: how can it be that 59 million people (give or take a few) can be so inept at changing the things they know need changing?
What the fuck is our problem? (I get this question over and over from friends in Europe: they keep asking me, “why the fuck can’t you people get your society under control?”).
I don’t know either, and I have no answers. Why can’t we get a grip on our own society? Because it’s too big? Because we’ve grown too comfortable and let it spiral so far out of control that any attempt just seems overwhelming at this point? Are we morally depraved–like do we just not give a flying fuck about anyone or anything until it hits our own back pocket (or takes one of our children away, causes us to lose our job?) Dunno. But the rest of the world is looking at us like we are the most politically incompetent fucking nitwits the world has ever seen.
At this point, it is so hard to even make a dent with things like boycotts and, as you are calling for, a Media strike, partly because so few are willing to participate and because for every one person who boycotts there will be two who continue to buy.
(In the case of the media, I also don’t know whether it’s a good idea to just ‘leave them on their own’ either–I mean, someone’s got to keep tabs on the bullshit and you can hardly do that if you completely ignore it).
The media is one problem among many–and we, the people, seem as incapable of fixing this one as we are of fixing all of them (including the rigged elections, including rampant criminality at all levels of gov, etc.).
So I hear your frustration, but I think it’s slightly off-base for you to assume that just because your diaries aren’t getting the attention you wish they were that the rest of us are clueless.
On the media issue: there is one publication I think is still doing its job–and of course I could be wrong about this–but that publication would be Harpers’.
I sent a minimum of 10 gift subscriptions to Harpers’ as Xmas gifts this year and am still busy ordering–so I guess I’m going the opposite route, that is, rewarding the ones I think are still worth rewarding rather than punishing the ones who deserve punishment b/c I seriously don’t believe MSNBC is going to so much as notice if I decide to “tune out.”
Yeah.
Well…
Keep screaming.
Hard to sleep when someone is making enough noise.
AG
My experience has been that the American public, the American media and the American government has NO PROBLEM whatsoever sleeping through any degree of noise: I spent ten years abroad screaming at the top of my lungs, along with hundreds of thousands of Europeans. Screaming, not only about this problem, but the rest of the problems America has persisted in creating for the rest of the world, especially in the past 50 yrs (see also Harold Pinter, Nobel Prize speech).
There seems to be some sort of sound barrier or something keeping people in this country from listening to anything that does not confirm their love of themselves and their illusions about being caring, compassionate and responsible citizens of the world.
Don’t know what it’s going to take to break that barrier–personally, I’ve run out of ideas.
once a year, and I am overwhelmed by the consumerism. Oh, I do my share on St. Thomas but we do not have the stores and the choices available (Kmart, Home Depot are the only biggies)
Corporate media treats citizens as consumers and the people respond. Mix that with the politics of fear and you’ve got lemmings.
Oh, and can’t fail to mention: education.
I do think we have riots in our future. But Bush has thought of that. Bring in the military, bring in … guess what … private security contractors.
Here’s somethings that needs circulation: the contracting out of supervisory functions of such as the US Marshal’s Service, which now does the background checks for the gov’t, instead of the FBI.
Look up Alkan.
And, bingo, that was the US Marshal’s Service involved in the airline shooting in Fla.
The privatization of government activities/services combined with the ‘revolving door policy’ of govt-business migration is probably the greatest threat.
Chertoff, FEMA and DHS are ready and willing to fill up those detention camps they’ve been getting ready.
That’s AKAL. And take a look at the Web site — “in God we trust” at the top of the page.
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We, as taxpayers, invest in training qualified people to serve in our military. After the short mandatory term of service agreed to, many now are leaving to pursue higher pay in the private sector. Doing what? Guarding and managing our military bases and installations at a much higher price due to privatization.
I’m not sure what to make of what I’m finding. Did you already know all about these folks?
I hadn’t seen that article, but back when I checked on AKAL I may have seen something about the Sikh connection.
It wasn’t that which was bothersome. Because of a phone call I received concerning a background check on a former employee, I checked the US Marshal’s Service site to verify the name of the caller.
It was then I found out that he was no longer employed by the US gov’t but had gone on to AKAL and was now supervising the branch he had once worked in.
Now it means that AKAL is controlling the US Marshal’s Service, and that scares me.
The US gov’t is contracting security services to do work which was once under US gov’t regulations and the Constitution.
Forget Posse Comitatus. Bush doesn’t need to send in the military on US soil. He just needs to send in the private security contractors.
Some trivia here that I’m finding.
the Justice Dept. is so fond of AKAL.
Interesting, but needs a lot more research. The Free Republic page is full of inaccuracies and misinformation about Sikhs and Arabs and Middle Easterners.
One comment stood out:
“According to the various articles, Siddiqy is Moslem.
The security firm is operated by Sikhs, who have lived in NM for decades. I remember them from 20 years ago when I lived there.
Generally speaking, Sikhs and Moslems do NOT get along. Most of the killing during the partition of India was by Sikhs of Moslems and by Moslems of Sikhs.
I think you need a closer connection than the fact that they are from the same part of the world. So are over a billion other people.”
*
I’d like to find out more about “Teg.” Media never seem to investigate these private contractors.
I’m sure it’s just another coincidence.
Interesting, but needs a lot more research. The Free Republic page is full of inaccuracies and misinformation about Sikhs and Arabs and Middle Easterners.
Generally speaking, Sikhs and Moslems do NOT get along. Most of the killing during the partition of India was by Sikhs of Moslems and by Moslems of Sikhs.
This is more about the business connections than much of any cultural details, as far as I’m concerned with this.
Terrorism has deeper roots in business than religion.
One of the biggest problems we have about truth, one of the primary reasons it’s so often so hard to find in the media, is that there are a huge number of people out there who simply don’t want the truth. There are 10’s of millions of people just here in America who not only don’t especially regard truth as all that important, but who are quite content to simply believe what they want to believe, regardless of the facts.
The conditioning of the public psyche to this end has been going on for many decades, but really accelerated and became institutionalized during the Reagan regime.
And now, with the rise of the neocons and the entire criminal enterprise of the Bush regime, the failure of the MSM to do it’s duty is the proximate cause for the level of the weaponized ignorance of the public mind being higher than it’s ever been before.
“weaponized ignorance”–I like that sbj. Thanks, it’s a keeper! š
I’ve been pushing to get that concept into the current lexicon for a couple of years. I hope you’ll use it freely and often.
to the current administration.
It was better for the public when the media conglomerates still had limited holdings and the competition for advertisers and competition between each other’s corporations caused them to rat out each other’s invisible partners.
Last year, following a reference to a reference, I read Wilhelm Reich’s “Mass Psychology of Fascism.” Vivid dissection of why they don’t want the truth.
Written decades ago … and here we are again.
Amazing serendipity!
I’ve been rereading “Mass Psychology of Fascism” incrementallyover the last 8 months or so after a 30 year hiatus.
Also reread Reich’s “Listen Little Man”, his cathartic rant against those who were persecuting him in the professional world.
His portrayal’s of the “Little Man” in this short book is perhaps the best perspective ever delivered on the small-minded and fear riddled nature of the inhabitants of the rightwing world.
to get that phrase out into national discourse:
“Listen, Little Man”
How poetic! Haven’t read that one yet, but every time I mention Reich, up pops that title.
Let’s give this one to Harry Reid.
“Listen Little Man” is a short, “stream of consciousness” type read which provides a visceral expression about all the issues so brilliantly examined in “Mass Psychology of Fascism”.
It is perhaps Reich’s most elemental description of the essence of what he describes as the “Emotional Plague”, a central theme in his analytical work.
For the past year and a half, I have been sitting here translating from the German original archival documents from the Nazi regime (yes, the “big boys” and the “real thing”–so for example, had Goebbels on my desk this ayem, yesterday’s fare was Hitler, day before that, Heidegger, the list goes on and on, Rosenberg, Krieck, Schmitt, Göring, the gang’s all here!).
And people wonder why I’m going batshit loopy: the rhetoric and the tone is so very familiar. And the frightening part, when translating even the “lesser” Nazis, i.e. people who didn’t necessarily define themselves as such, seeing the way the language and thought structures still bleed through–then looking out at the “real world” in which we live and seeing the EXACT same phenomena, only much, much worse because
with the internet and instant dissemination of (dis)information, the stuff spreads much more quickly and much more internationally.
This shit is everywhere–fascism always “trickles down”, very insidiously. Anyone who doubts that we are currently experiencing a worldwide, full-blown revival of fascism–well, they ought to take a look at the now 2,000 or so pages of fascism in its purest, most indisputable form that I have had the “pleasure” of dissecting in minutest detail over the past year and a half–and compare that to what we see at all levels of politics internationally, and what is now even clearly in evidence in so-called “left-wing” “liberal” communities.
And that last point is frankly my biggest concern because no one wants to see it. Every time I bring it up, the reaction is the same: who you calling a fascist?
(Well, I’m not calling you a fascist, I’m just saying that the shit is insidiously creeping up on you without you even noticing. Wake up.)
And with that, better get the hell out of here before the shit hits the fan again….
I’ve seen on this topic is to take the argument out of the testy realm by using the word “tyranny.”
Even analysis of fascism seems to create a furor. But if more people would research it, as you do, eyes would open.
If the left uses the word, the right spits it back. Better to lift the dialogue to the revolutionary fervor of fighting tyranny. For the latter is what we have.
I am reminded of how hard it is to teach people about institutionalized racism. Without that understanding, the reaction is an immediate, “I’m not racist.”
has said at various times, and paraphrasing Edward R. Murrow, “In today’s media, we seem to bring on the liars in order to balance the truth.”
Murrow, the great radio and later TV reporter/journalis, put it more like this, “You don’t bring a liar onto a program to balance the truth.”
These days? Oh yes we do.
a sentence from a Bill Moyers speech at a Society of Professional Journalists conference on Sept. 11, 2004:
“Our job remains essentially the same: to gather, weigh, organize, analyze and present information people need to know in order to make sense of the world.”
Notice the “weigh, organize, analyze.”
The full speech is on AlterNet
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