on listening to npr these days, I keep asking myself, “where the hell’s the news?” there’s all these puff stories about nothing that go on forever. detailed interviews with potential thai immigrants looking for work in california, or endless reviews of the latest breakthrough play being ignored by people in south africa. “..and the actor said to the playwright…” I just don’t fucking care.
and what’s the deal with all the reporters with speech impediments? I always wondered about that. it seems like npr has affirmative action for speech-impaired people who want to be reporters, or does being a radio personality have some sort of perverse magnetism for folks with speech impediments? one time I was trying to listen to a serious story from afghanistan, but I couldn’t keep from laughing out loud, because it appeared to be being delivered to me by daffy duck “..and thith ith daffy dthuck reporthing to you live from afghanishthan..”
but the worst of it is the obvious political shift. I no longer have any doubt that there’s influence being weilded. its like the supreme court, the ship shifts and drifts, one wrong decision at a time. and before you know it, you’re well off course and into uncharted waters. lets start with one of Rhenquist’s first decisions, that money = free speech. putting aside the corollary that folks with more money thus enjoy a greater freedom than the rest of us, in an era where information is conveyed by media that operate solely through the flow of money, over radio frequencies held in the public trust, but sold to the highest bidder, the poor whacko on the street corner shouting that the corporate media is ultimately corrupt and cannot be trusted is just “outside the mainstream” and that if you listen to the political “talking points” put out by the republican party and their many surreptitious partners in the opinion-for-hire industry, being “out of the mainstream” is apparently a sin in its own right. never mind that that is one essential characteristic of leadership, and that all human progress necessarily proceeds from exceptional men.
it seems like you can’t get the straight dope anywhere anymore. from time to time I used to think you’d get at least a fresh perspective from sources like npr, but looking back on the now commonplace apologia for the “runup to the war” I don’t think they had any different or more insightful, probing or questioning of the supposed “facts” than any of the other so-called mainstream news media outlets. there’s an awful sameness across the board, and that in itself makes me shudder.
the other day, I was watching the daily show, and they put on a piece where they had edited these talking heads, and not just a few, but perhaps as many as ten or twelve different folks on all these different media outlets, various shows on cnn, fox, nbc, cbs, abc. and all these different pundits not only had the same perspective, but used *exactly the same words* on several different subjects about kerry’s campaign being “out of the mainstream” and how edwards had “the most liberal record of any senator” and several other instances, as it turns out, words taken directly from the republican talking points for the week, which they had somehow acquired. why is it that you only see something like that on the comedy network, of all places? its even kind of subversive, when you think about it. you’d never see any media analysis of that kind on a “serious” news channel. never have. never will. ask yourself why.
that same episode of the daily show also had wolf blitzer being interviewed, and he gave the de rigeur apologia “we could have done a better job in the run up to the war” again almost rote from some sheet, like he was just another one of this sort of robot army they’ve sent out. they look like us, they talk like us, but they’re really in league with a mysterious secret force at work in our society.
in this interview blitzer says of tenet’s resignation, “we know about the failures, but we don’t know about the successes. they’re kept secret.” again, i’ve heard this same phrase in exactly the same words before. it got me thinking: ok, *we* don’t know about the successes, but do *you*? if so, does that mean you’re getting access to classified information? aside from the fact that if so, then a felony has been committed, don’t you think you’re being fed certain information and not getting the whole picture in order to be influenced? so then on reflection, how can you evaluate what percentage of the submerged iceberg of our ignorance could be considered successes, and what percentage considered failures? and of the so-called successes, what percent were directed by a misguided strategy which is also secret, and if made public would be one we would not support? and journalists don’t care about leaks, as long as they’re under control in some sense, because access to even some of this privileged information gives the journalists an edge over their competitors who are not so favored, and it gives the leakers leverage over whatever events it is they’re trying to control? and as a journalist don’t you think that being a conduit for such information and misinformation becomes a kind of addiction for you, and that by the time you begin to “play ball” with your “handler” in order to continue to curry his favor, and continue to get scoops, you have already become lost in the game? and isn’t your integrity ultimately compromised and at the end, don’t you think you have become his creature, and are no better than an operative, a tool to be exploited by the institution that feeds you, and multiplied over hundreds of creatures like yourself, or worse, don’t you see that by your own admission you have shown us exactly how our media is being manipulated, and that we have no more use for you?