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Thursday, September 25, 2008
Our Media Can't Face the Truth
Sometimes I wonder how journalists can remain so calm when biting their tongues. I’m sure that the pain would be excruciating, especially when you consider how many times the tongue biting occurs during a typical Washington day. Last month must have been a terrible ordeal for the reporters covering the daily Presidential press briefings at the White House. Time and time again, the President or his press secretary stated that Russia invaded Georgia for no apparent reason. What exactly is the protocol when a ridiculous fabrication is told to a large group that understands completely that they are being lied to and millions of people are watching? In the days before Bush, a reporter could actually expose the lie being told, but in these new days of living under the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the enhanced FISA law when one could conceivably have their phones tapped or their computers hacked and also the No Fly List, where does an aspiring journalist stop using their tongue for forming words and instead use it for “speech control” between the teeth?
When the administration reiterates that Iran should not, and will not acquire nuclear weapons, why don’t reporters mention that Israel possesses hundreds of warheads? Is that information supposed to be a “state secret”? When the government proposes that the taxpayer provide between six hundred billion and one trillion dollars to bail out investment banking firms and financial corporations that seem to be on the wrong end of a Ponzi scheme that went bad, why is it that nobody brings up the fact that while bailing out the firms that made the bad loans, the taxpayers that are providing the funds for this bailout, and they are losing their own homes and the government isn’t doing anything to help them? Why don’t the reporters in the briefings ask why, since the taxpayers now are in effect their new employers, don’t the CEO’s and upper management be paid in the same manner as other government employees?
The government isn’t the only entity that walks a thin line when it comes to the truth. Why it is that Senator Obama constantly derides “Washington insiders” even though his running mate has been in the Senate for over thirty years? When Senator McCain uses his imprisonment and torture by his jailers in Hanoi as a symbol of his patriotism, when is the media going to point out the fact that he voted for the torture of enemy combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan? When the government decries the so-called “invasion” of Georgia by Russia as a violation of international law, what then is their justification for incursions into Pakistan by the United States military?
The media has changed from being a stalwart defender of the public’s right to know the truth, into a timid, vacillating entity that for all intents and purposes, censors itself. A few months ago, the ACLU requested documents of meetings between former military officers that served as “military analysts” for the television networks, and briefings that were conducted at the Pentagon. The documents that were requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) revealed that the Pentagon had briefed these “analysts” and actually gave some of them scripts and talking points to use when working for the networks. The documents was handed over to the ACLU late Friday evening. The volume of paper that was presented to the ACLU entailed days of reading, yet when The New York Times discovered that the documents had been given to the group of lawyers, that Sunday, The NYT ran an eight page article about the Pentagon’s involvement in “framing” the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article appeared the very next day in the Sunday New York Times. How long did the paper know of this deception by the Pentagon? It hardly seems possible that an eight page article was written in less than twenty four hours and without the documents that were supplied to the ACLU. How long had the Times been sitting on the story?
The situation that came out of the investigation of torture at the Abu Graib prison also begs the question of why (besides the Army reservist Major General) only junior enlisted soldiers were charged and tried for the abuses that occurred there. What kind of Army is it when only a few specialists and a buck Sergeant were held responsible for what happened? Where were their Platoon Sergeants and their squad leaders while the abuse happened? What about the company commander, the First Sergeant and the battalion commander? Did the lower ranking enlisted people have free reign over the entire prison? The entire investigation was seriously flawed and an impossible scenario for anyone with an understanding of how the military operates, yet not a question was raised by the media.
I would like to illustrate how the media has been reduced from what it once was, exemplified by reporters like Woodward and Bernstein when they released the Pentagon Papers that illustrated how the government deceived the American people. The news media has morphed into something unrecognizable from what it once was. When Pope John died, the Vatican convened the College of Cardinals to choose a successor. The deliberations took place and the signal that a new Pope had been selected was white smoke coming from the building they were occupying. If the Cardinals had not reached a decision, black smoke would signal no selection. I was sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed occupied by my wife, recovering from a stroke. A few days passed without a decision and the black smoke would rise from the chimney. That afternoon, I remarked to my wife that the smoke was white and that meant they had selected a new Pope. The newscaster, to my surprise, stated that the smoke was black and there was no selection made. I changed the channel to see what was being said. When I looked at the smoke it was white, I thought that maybe I was mistaken, maybe the angle I was looking in may have made the smoke appear to be white. The announcer on a different network confirmed that the smoke was indeed black.
I watched for almost fifteen minutes, flipping through the channels. Even from different vantage points on different channels, to me, the smoke appeared to be white. My wife agreed with me, yet the newscasters all agreed that the smoke was black. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I saw white, the media saw black. After fifteen minutes, one of the announcers remarked that maybe the smoke wasn’t black after all. I distinctly saw white. I switched to another station and heard this announcer state that maybe the smoke wasn’t black at all; maybe a new Pope had been elected. I switched channels again and heard the newscaster reevaluate his observation. After about three or four minutes, they all agreed that the smoke was indeed white, a new Pope had been selected. I looked at my wife and told her that the news people were afraid to step away from the crowd and change their observation, even though they knew that the smoke was white. It wasn’t until almost twenty minutes later someone had the nerve to discern what was in plain sight, they were that afraid of being wrong, of having a different point of view. I believe that this little scene exemplified the entire media, and that they truly can’t tell black from white.
When the administration reiterates that Iran should not, and will not acquire nuclear weapons, why don’t reporters mention that Israel possesses hundreds of warheads? Is that information supposed to be a “state secret”? When the government proposes that the taxpayer provide between six hundred billion and one trillion dollars to bail out investment banking firms and financial corporations that seem to be on the wrong end of a Ponzi scheme that went bad, why is it that nobody brings up the fact that while bailing out the firms that made the bad loans, the taxpayers that are providing the funds for this bailout, and they are losing their own homes and the government isn’t doing anything to help them? Why don’t the reporters in the briefings ask why, since the taxpayers now are in effect their new employers, don’t the CEO’s and upper management be paid in the same manner as other government employees?
The government isn’t the only entity that walks a thin line when it comes to the truth. Why it is that Senator Obama constantly derides “Washington insiders” even though his running mate has been in the Senate for over thirty years? When Senator McCain uses his imprisonment and torture by his jailers in Hanoi as a symbol of his patriotism, when is the media going to point out the fact that he voted for the torture of enemy combatants in Iraq and Afghanistan? When the government decries the so-called “invasion” of Georgia by Russia as a violation of international law, what then is their justification for incursions into Pakistan by the United States military?
The media has changed from being a stalwart defender of the public’s right to know the truth, into a timid, vacillating entity that for all intents and purposes, censors itself. A few months ago, the ACLU requested documents of meetings between former military officers that served as “military analysts” for the television networks, and briefings that were conducted at the Pentagon. The documents that were requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) revealed that the Pentagon had briefed these “analysts” and actually gave some of them scripts and talking points to use when working for the networks. The documents was handed over to the ACLU late Friday evening. The volume of paper that was presented to the ACLU entailed days of reading, yet when The New York Times discovered that the documents had been given to the group of lawyers, that Sunday, The NYT ran an eight page article about the Pentagon’s involvement in “framing” the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The article appeared the very next day in the Sunday New York Times. How long did the paper know of this deception by the Pentagon? It hardly seems possible that an eight page article was written in less than twenty four hours and without the documents that were supplied to the ACLU. How long had the Times been sitting on the story?
The situation that came out of the investigation of torture at the Abu Graib prison also begs the question of why (besides the Army reservist Major General) only junior enlisted soldiers were charged and tried for the abuses that occurred there. What kind of Army is it when only a few specialists and a buck Sergeant were held responsible for what happened? Where were their Platoon Sergeants and their squad leaders while the abuse happened? What about the company commander, the First Sergeant and the battalion commander? Did the lower ranking enlisted people have free reign over the entire prison? The entire investigation was seriously flawed and an impossible scenario for anyone with an understanding of how the military operates, yet not a question was raised by the media.
I would like to illustrate how the media has been reduced from what it once was, exemplified by reporters like Woodward and Bernstein when they released the Pentagon Papers that illustrated how the government deceived the American people. The news media has morphed into something unrecognizable from what it once was. When Pope John died, the Vatican convened the College of Cardinals to choose a successor. The deliberations took place and the signal that a new Pope had been selected was white smoke coming from the building they were occupying. If the Cardinals had not reached a decision, black smoke would signal no selection. I was sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed occupied by my wife, recovering from a stroke. A few days passed without a decision and the black smoke would rise from the chimney. That afternoon, I remarked to my wife that the smoke was white and that meant they had selected a new Pope. The newscaster, to my surprise, stated that the smoke was black and there was no selection made. I changed the channel to see what was being said. When I looked at the smoke it was white, I thought that maybe I was mistaken, maybe the angle I was looking in may have made the smoke appear to be white. The announcer on a different network confirmed that the smoke was indeed black.
I watched for almost fifteen minutes, flipping through the channels. Even from different vantage points on different channels, to me, the smoke appeared to be white. My wife agreed with me, yet the newscasters all agreed that the smoke was black. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I saw white, the media saw black. After fifteen minutes, one of the announcers remarked that maybe the smoke wasn’t black after all. I distinctly saw white. I switched to another station and heard this announcer state that maybe the smoke wasn’t black at all; maybe a new Pope had been elected. I switched channels again and heard the newscaster reevaluate his observation. After about three or four minutes, they all agreed that the smoke was indeed white, a new Pope had been selected. I looked at my wife and told her that the news people were afraid to step away from the crowd and change their observation, even though they knew that the smoke was white. It wasn’t until almost twenty minutes later someone had the nerve to discern what was in plain sight, they were that afraid of being wrong, of having a different point of view. I believe that this little scene exemplified the entire media, and that they truly can’t tell black from white.
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