Watching what has gone on over the Edward Snowden affair, makes me realize the depressing state, to which, American journalism has sunk and the not unexpected lack of interest exhibited by the American public in that, which in actuality, governs their lives and fate.
The other day I did my own private survey. I asked two dozen people if they know who Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and Julien Assange were. Out of those 24 people only one, actually knew who all three were and had some frame of reference for them. A couple thought one or two names were familiar but the vast majority were completely ignorant of the names of three men who are fighting to help them retain the last vestiges of their right of privacy.
I admit, that I was remiss in not asking those same people who JZ, Brittany Spears or Kim Kardashian were but just the idea that they would know those names was too depressing to deal with.
Now maybe the result of my survey is because people are just too dumb or shallow to be interested in what’s going on in the world or maybe it’s because the corporate media feeds them nothing but inconsequential pap. I’m hoping it’s the later, but what’s wrong with the corporate media?
I see a guy like Andrew Ross Sorkin, who some people actually read, actively rooting for the government to grab Snowden and using the word “we” rather then “they” as a frame of reference thereby inserting himself on one side of the battle.
Now don’t get me wrong, I have never thought that journalists had to be 100% neutral and I have always felt that any sentient human must have an opinion on any important subject, at least if he has taken the time to write about it. Being 100% neutral is a sign of listless un-involvement and anyone who isn’t involved in that which rules their lives deserves to lose their freedom. On the other hand, openly rooting for one side, or the other, tends to call one’s journalistic integrity into question.
It seems that since the faded advocacy of the Vietnam War and the civil rights eruptions of the same period, there has been less than sufficient advocacy in our mainstream journalism and close to none on TV. This is, of course, not true of radio, which on the flip side, seems to be nothing but advocacy, often in the most strident tones.
Radio seems to have lost all its gravitas, if it ever had any, mainly because all those open mouths seem to always be preaching to a choir. TV has taken the other road, its commentators and talking heads rarely, with a couple of glaring exceptions, ever step into the fray.
Newspapers, have fallen all over the place in this discussion. Some like the NY Post and Wall Street Journal are strictly advocacy spread sheets, expressing a clear and very definite point of view, and in obeisance to their corporate sponsors, making no bones about their loyalty. Others like the NY Times and Washington Post to a lesser decree, covering all news but making sure not to give too much emphasis to stories that might upset corporate sponsorship or political power groups.
A perfect example of what I’m speaking about is the coverage, The Times has given to the Bradley Manning case. I’m not speaking about column inches here, although considering the importance of the case there should be far more and far better placed coverage; what I’m talking about is the point of view that the paper has imposed on the whole affair, a government point of view.
This is a military trial about whether or not Bradley Manning stole government secrets that could leave our nation vulnerable to horrendous harm, or at least that’s what the military would like us to think, but that’s surely not what makes it newsworthy. The news story, if not the trial, is really about the rights of a whistleblower and the American public’s right to know about how their government is doing its job. You would never know that by reading the Times.
A month or so back we were treated to a 3 week long rant by the AP about how the government had interfered with its phone system and how the government was crushing freedom of the press. This got huge headlines and multiple hours of TV time. For weeks the Sunday morning talking heads could speak of nothing but the AP and their battle for freedom of the press. Well, guys, Manning, Snowden and Assange are doing the same thing but because they aren’t part of the press establishment they just don’t get the headlines or the benefit of the doubt. They don’t even get responsible coverage.
If the government hadn’t stuck its finger in its own eye by letting the Snowden case become an international manhunt, maybe none of this coverage would exist today. Someone, it may have been the President but possibly not, said this weekend that the reason that Mosi had been deposed as President of Egypt was that he recognized the people’s right to vote but not their wants and needs.
That is exactly the case here. Neither Manning, Snowden nor Assange have sold any information to any foreign nation nor entered into any contract or association with anyone outside the U.S., nor has their leaked information been responsible for any physical harm being done to anyone associated with the United States. What they have done is enlighten the American people as to what is being done in their name by a government that has no intention of allowing any enlightenment or transparency whatsoever. That’s the story and no one in the mass media has picked up on it, mainly because it will reflect badly on our government and often on the media’s sponsors.
When David Gregory suggested on his show that Glen Greenwald might be subject to arrest for helping Snowden escape, he was not acting as the neutral host that he normally portrays on, Meet the Press. He was acting as the paid thug of the establishment.
I single Gregory out here, not because I think that expressing his opinion was wrong but because what he did was such an anomaly that it was made wrong by its contrast against his normal reactions to guests.
It’s interesting to note that, whereas, Gregory probably thinks of himself as a journalist, he in fact isn’t. At best he can be considered a commentator, in reality a moderator of talking heads. I have often watched Gregory listen as an advocate for this or that cause, lies through his teeth to the millions in his audience without calling him on the lie. I am not speaking about aberrant points of view. I am speaking about flat out lies that anyone with even minimal involvement in the political scene would immediately identify as lies. It’s a cute technique that allows the show to appear to remain neutral while making sure that Gregory’s point of view doesn’t offend any of the shows conservative corporate sponsors, almost all of whom seem to run to oil companies, insurance companies and Wall Street firms.
The greatest piece of investigative journalism in the history of the medium, the Watergate story would never have succeeded in today’s journalistic world. This isn’t just because journalism has been bowing to its corporate sponsors for the last two decades. It’s also because of the technological change in the landscape. Woodward and Bernstein’s reportage was a slow, painful journey through the twisted organs of government, the White House and the FBI. It took months to blossom. Now-a-days it ‘s first details would be picked up on Facebook and Twitter and the rulers of the Post would step in and most probably twist the thrust of the story to exclude the office of the president and make the story about a bunch of bumbling crooks breaking into the wrong office.
That’s how the corporate media would portray it. But there is another media and it works for both sides. One division is the aforementioned talk radio along with certain segments of cable news, which more often than not is the home of right-wing crazies. It is inhabited by such as Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingrahan, Mark Levine, Sean Hannity and Michael Savage on the radio side and Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Elisabeth Hasselbeck on the TV screen.
It’s a noisy, harassing mess; a mixture of real hate, serious bigotry and factual inaccuracy that would boggle the mind if we weren’t already exposed to the same garbage coming out of the mouths of the Republican members of congress, but it, at least tells a story that is just not available to those whose only entre to what is happening in the world is the corporate media.
This is also true about the other side of cable news and Internet print media. This leans more to the left and includes TV hosts such as Rachael Maddow, Stephan Colbert, Jon Stewart, Keith Olbermann, Lawrence O’Donnell, Bill Maher, Ed Schultz and Chris Matthews on the TV side and The Huffington Post, Slate, Politico, Salon, Reader Supported news, Nation of Change and The Daily Beast on the Internet. They are also sometimes noisy and self-serving but tend to be more truthful than their opponents and more locked into relevant concepts. Unfortunately neither side of the equation has the numbers of followers to make a significant impact on the consciousness of a majority of the citizenry, and so the current question among those who care about a truly enlightened America, is how do we get, either the corporate media to take a serious look at subjects from the people’s rather than the sponsor’s point of view, or how do we brace up the independent media and expose them to people who seriously need a dose of real information about what is going on in America.
It’s the stuff of which Democracy is made. An uninformed public is the vapid tool of the demigod.