The Empty Piety of the American Press
A pointed and cogent media smackdown from Chris Hedges at Truthdig:
The criminals on Wall Street, including the heads of financial firms such as Goldman Sachs, are treated with reverence. Free trade is equated with freedom.
Democratic politicians such as Barack Obama—who assaulted civil liberties, transferred trillions of dollars upward to reigning oligarchs, expanded the drone wars to include targeted assassinations of American citizens, and used the Espionage Act to silence investigative journalism—are hailed as champions of democracy.
The real news blackout:
The most astute critics of empire, including Andrew Bacevich, are banished, as are critics of corporate power, including Ralph Nader and Chomsky. Those who decry the waste within the military, such as MIT Professor Emeritus Ted Postol, who has exposed the useless $13 billion anti-ballistic missile program, are unheard. Advocates of universal health care, such as Dr. Margaret Flowers, are locked out of national health care debates. There is a long list of the censored. The acceptable range of opinion is so narrow it is almost nonexistent.
So what's the problem?
The press, ostensibly seeking a more polished brand to improve the public presentation of empire and corporate capitalism, is in fact further empowering the lunatics who will dominate the political landscape.
“America is ceasing to be a nation,” reporter and author Matt Taibbi writes in his book “Insane Clown President: Dispatches From the 2016 Circus,” “and turning into a giant television show.”
Media reform may be more unlikely than reforming the Democratic party:
“Trump found the flaw in the American Death Star,” Taibbi writes. “It doesn’t know how to turn the cameras off, even when it’s filming its own demise.”
If the press sided with citizens and exposed the corporate systems of power that hold them captive, its advertising income would dwindle and it would be treated as an enemy of the state. Since corporations own the airwaves and declining city newspapers, this will not happen. Journalism will remain burlesque. The Public Broadcasting System, along with National Public Radio dependent on corporate money, including the Koch brothers, is as loath to take on the corporate establishment as its for-profit competitors. Dissenters and critics exist only on the margins of the internet, and the abolition of net neutrality will see them silenced.
Hedges points out that this could be a fatal flaw that destroys journalism and American democracy:
The press, like the Democratic Party, is playing a very dangerous game.
. . .
The gossip, trivia and invective masquerading as news are not only irrelevant to most of the electorate but reinforce the image of liberal elites being out of touch with the pain and rage rippling across the nation.
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/empty-piety-american-press/
Comments
Thanks for writing about this
There is so much news out in cyberspace it's hard to keep up with it. I'm glad to see someone saying this about how the press treats Trump.
The way he is treated by the press is beyond disgusting. Yeah he is someone who people don't like and he is so far over his head being president, but that is no excuse for what the press and others are doing. They are helping set the negative tone for the country. Rudeness is now the new fashionable way to treat people. Hostility has become acceptable.
I don't remember how Monica was treated by them, but the way they are treating Stormy is unprofessional and they are doing this because they are showing no respect for him.
Corporate coup and inverted totalitarianism needs to be talked about more. This is what has been happening in this country since before Reagan's tenure, but it got much worse during the Bush and Obama administrations and now it's fully exposed. During IT power and money is taken from Unpeople and given to the People. Us unpeople don't matter to them. This means people here and in countries where they happen to live over the resources others want.
Money. Just how much of it is enough?
The message echoes from Gaza back to the US. “Starving people is fine.”
In high school we were encouraged to read Orwell.
At that age, the conflicts and drama of 1984 seemed like basic science fiction, although there were certain inroads where similarities could be found with our society. And certainly we were told there were societies in other countries that suffered this kind of oppression — Russia, for example. Nonetheless, I felt certain that in the future I was living in, there were many ways to expose the evils of oppression. My young self believed that television was the antidote to totalitarianism, probably because I assumed that television — all the stations all over the country with all their cameras — was on the side of all the regular people. The people were the audience, after all. I even had a theory that if television existed during the Hitler years, World War II could never happen. George Orwell wrote 1984 in the technology wilderness of 1949 and then promptly died, I thought, so what did he know about socially disruptive technologies like television?
It didn't occur to me until some years later that "Big Brother" was television. Well, who could have possibly imagined that television (the media) would be allowed to form monopolies? I mean, it defied credible belief that a nation would do such a thing, since everyone knows what the outcome would be. Unless... what if the People had all suffered some sort of targeted brain damage? At that point, I turned the television(s) off for many years and lived a life filled with extraordinary things and entirely devoid of politics. I turned it back on once, but they were talking about some president's penis. I was shocked and disgusted with the nation, so off it went again, for more years of excellent experiences.
(That should be an intro for an essay that wants to be written. But I am merely describing the divided and ambivalent perspective that I carry about this and other political topics. Inside, I'm actually my very own talkshow. With guests. As for the topic at hand, I am moved by the way Chris Hedges is able to synthesize trends and reality into deep meaning, as excerpted in this informative essay.)
I watch Chris Hedges' television show weekly. And on that note, if you do have a television and want to see some of the top American political and philosophical thinkers on their regularly-scheduled television shows, then you must and should watch RT. (Using a Smart TV, you can review all their past shows, too.) It's an excellent experience around the clock, where celebrated American journalists and talented up-and-comers are able to speak freely and interview anyone they please on broadcast television. It's a godsend for critical thinkers and it's also very entertaining, even playing in the background. Thanks RT for providing the only place where Americans can hear truth and new ideas via broadcast television.
(Hence the Neocon attack on RT, in case you were wondering.)
The money line
Its exactly like the D's who are totally incognizant that they themselves
are on the verge of becoming extinct as they evolve into R's
I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish
"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"
Heard from Margaret Kimberley