See You In The Funny Papers
Liberals have been screaming about the failure of our vaunted free press for more than twenty years. Once the corporately owned press had an excuse for slanting its coverage (provided handily by the conservatives who proclaimed the press hopelessly liberal) all bets were off when it came to actual fact-based coverage. That this country has suffered by the loss of a working press has become obvious. What has not been so clear has the effect this loss has had on the rest of the world.
Today, during my usual weekend jaunt to Watching America, I was startled to find an essay which detailed what the failure of our press has meant internationally. From Egypt's Al Ahram Weekly:
Only after 11 September, when armed with the justifications of homeland security, the war against terror, securing the sources of oil in the Gulf, controlling energy resources for Europe and Japan and even China, and ensuring Israeli security, did the Bush administration beat the warpath to Afghanistan and then to Iraq. Rumsfeld and Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton, were naturally very keen to come up with reasons for invading Iraq, but these reasons did not include nation building. Their reluctance on that score was demonstrated by the relatively few forces Rumsfeld sent over to begin with, and the lack of a plan -- or even conception -- for how to handle Iraq after toppling the existing regime. The conservatives went to war after disseminating (with the active complicity of the liberal press) a series of stupendous lies, none of the fabricators of which have been brought to account in spite of their having served as a cover for mounting a war of aggression, destroying a nation, and perpetrating countless crimes against humanity. ...
What is really disturbing about the lies manufacturing industry, whose produce is so easily and broadly disseminated by virtue of the US's domination over the media and entertainment business, is that exposure never prevents it from trying and, most often, succeeding again to dupe the public into believing a humanitarian guise for waging an imperialist war. ...
...What concerns us here is that the US's imperial "privilege" of being able to spread lies so easily by virtue of its domination over the means to shape tastes and control moods and to produce tears and create fears is still very much intact whatever one might say about the rising power of Russia and China. Here, in the industry of promoting cultures, fads and fictions, as well as in the industries of computers, advanced scientific research, military technology and the Internet, the mono-polar order still prevails and holds sway, even over the minds of opponents to the US. The world has never known an imperial regime that held such a totalitarian grip over the media. [Emphasis added]
Even though a majority of US citizens now readily admits that we were lied into the invasion of Iraq, most don't recognize the role the American press played in providing the drum-beat background for that push to war. Knowing this, the press merrily continues to forward the agenda, most recently in the 700 billion dollar give-away to the robber barons of Wall Street. One need look no further than the Washington Post and its headline this morning for evidence: "Bush Enacts Historic Financial Rescue".
The complicity of the press has done more than lead us into war and strip of us of our national treasure. It has enabled the current administration to trash the Constitution for purposes of domestic spying, to justify torture in contravention of international treaties we have signed, and to so weaken the system of checks-and-balances in national government that the White House is the source of all real power. And this is the face that our press presents to the world.
How exceptional.
Today, during my usual weekend jaunt to Watching America, I was startled to find an essay which detailed what the failure of our press has meant internationally. From Egypt's Al Ahram Weekly:
Only after 11 September, when armed with the justifications of homeland security, the war against terror, securing the sources of oil in the Gulf, controlling energy resources for Europe and Japan and even China, and ensuring Israeli security, did the Bush administration beat the warpath to Afghanistan and then to Iraq. Rumsfeld and Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton, were naturally very keen to come up with reasons for invading Iraq, but these reasons did not include nation building. Their reluctance on that score was demonstrated by the relatively few forces Rumsfeld sent over to begin with, and the lack of a plan -- or even conception -- for how to handle Iraq after toppling the existing regime. The conservatives went to war after disseminating (with the active complicity of the liberal press) a series of stupendous lies, none of the fabricators of which have been brought to account in spite of their having served as a cover for mounting a war of aggression, destroying a nation, and perpetrating countless crimes against humanity. ...
What is really disturbing about the lies manufacturing industry, whose produce is so easily and broadly disseminated by virtue of the US's domination over the media and entertainment business, is that exposure never prevents it from trying and, most often, succeeding again to dupe the public into believing a humanitarian guise for waging an imperialist war. ...
...What concerns us here is that the US's imperial "privilege" of being able to spread lies so easily by virtue of its domination over the means to shape tastes and control moods and to produce tears and create fears is still very much intact whatever one might say about the rising power of Russia and China. Here, in the industry of promoting cultures, fads and fictions, as well as in the industries of computers, advanced scientific research, military technology and the Internet, the mono-polar order still prevails and holds sway, even over the minds of opponents to the US. The world has never known an imperial regime that held such a totalitarian grip over the media. [Emphasis added]
Even though a majority of US citizens now readily admits that we were lied into the invasion of Iraq, most don't recognize the role the American press played in providing the drum-beat background for that push to war. Knowing this, the press merrily continues to forward the agenda, most recently in the 700 billion dollar give-away to the robber barons of Wall Street. One need look no further than the Washington Post and its headline this morning for evidence: "Bush Enacts Historic Financial Rescue".
The complicity of the press has done more than lead us into war and strip of us of our national treasure. It has enabled the current administration to trash the Constitution for purposes of domestic spying, to justify torture in contravention of international treaties we have signed, and to so weaken the system of checks-and-balances in national government that the White House is the source of all real power. And this is the face that our press presents to the world.
How exceptional.
Labels: Free Press
posted by Diane at 1:11 PM
1 Comments:
And who in the press is on the take from the cia? Hard to know for sure, since so much is classified and off-budget. The heads of pbs and npr are former voice of america heads; that pretty much says it all, n'est ce pas? At least in the former Soviet Union, the population was too educated/savvy/cynical to believe what they were told. Having an education system that specializes in tripe is part of the story; critical thinking is, after all, too troublesome.
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