The Truth About the Truth
    
By RAR
Have you ever wondered why those
mainstream media journalists, around in 1963 and thereafter (random examples of which
are shown above), have held fast to the idea that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone?
Because if the truth is otherwise, all of their careers have been a sham.
The quick acceptance of the leaders of the news media in 1963-64 to accept as
truth everything that came out of official Washington D.C. regarding the JFK
assassination was really the beginning of growing public distrust of television
journalists and the news media in general. People knew that the information they
were getting, especially through the omnipotent television news divisions, just
didn't square with their personal experiences with the way the country was
changing. In the 1960s, major urban newspapers were still vital, but television,
which brought 22 minutes of selected news into the living rooms of the nation
each night, felt important. People would be either Cronkite or Huntley-Brinkley
people, but either way they trusted that these elder paragons of virtue would
tell the truth if they knew it. Cronkite, the most trusted man in America at
that time, was particularly personal in the connection he made to his audience.
He was hugely responsible for defining the public perception of the Viet Nam War,
and turning the politics of war
against the direction that had been taken by administrations ranging from
Eisenhower to Ford. (continued below the following
graphic)
If You Thought Television Journalism Was in Steep Decline, What About the
Big Newspapers?
While 24-hour cable news and its broad and extended family, consisting of
every other freak expression of popular culture represented with your cable
provider's basic package of services, have reduced the role of the major network
news divisions to extant relics of another time, things look even worse in the
print journalism industry.
Writing in The Atlantic, in February 2012, Derek Thompson reviewed
data on the newspaper industry that showed a business sector in radical decline,
with earnings being halved every four years over the past decade. Only the
ultra-conservative, Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal seems to
have any wind at its back, which is probably revealing in itself. Political
branding and issue politics have played a significant role in the decline of
print journalism, with citizens getting free information from Websites and other
online sources. It could be easily argued that information consumers have more
leeway in selecting the type of information they want to read than at any other
time in history, making everyone their own editor. This switch, from seeking
access to information by knocking on the door of a gatekeeper's house to a
paradigm in which individuals simply stroll unimpeded into a myriad of
alternative information realities, has been defining element of the digital age.
It has turned all of the news world into mere "content providers" vying for an
ever-shrinking share of the audience attention.
(continued from before the graphics above)
Georgetown Professor Jonathan Ladd, in his book Why Americans Hate the
Media and Why it Matters, points out that "as recently as the early 1970s,
the news media was one of the most respected institutions in the United States.
Yet by the 1990s, this trust had all but evaporated. Why has confidence in the
press declined so dramatically over the past 40 years? And has this change
shaped the public's political behavior?"
Ladd argues that "in the 1950s, '60s, and early '70s, competition in American
party politics and the media industry reached historic lows. When competition
later intensified in both of these realms, the public's distrust of the
institutional media grew, leading the public to resist the mainstream press's
information about policy outcomes and turn toward alternative partisan media
outlets. As a result, public beliefs and voting behavior are now increasingly
shaped by partisan predispositions."
The truth was even broader than that, covering the full spectrum of paper
thin, press release-level reporting. The Brokaws of the world (who preferred to focus on
"the greatest generation") covered the Viet Nam War as if it was an organic
development. They were baffled by Watergate, couldn't fathom Oliver North and
Reagan's collusion with "terrorists", and accepted that a couple hi-jacked jets
took down the World Trade Center towers on 9-11 (only time in history that
steel-structure towers have collapsed in a pyroclastic cloud, other than through
thermite-controlled demolition). They accepted that attacking Iraq made sense
after 9-11, though there was no connection, and that WMD, dangerous to America,
was there in abundance. It wasn't. They accepted U.S. troops in Afghanistan even
after Bin Laden was dead. They promoted the Seal Team Six story; accepted the
quick disposal of the body. They allowed the financiers that destroyed the U.S.
economy during G.W. Bush to grow richer, even as life worsened for most
citizens.
Perhaps they have been afraid for their jobs and lives, fearful of
investigating truth. All of them rely on advertising dollars and the
sponsorships of entertainment divisions, and within that framework perhaps there
is no room for the Fourth Estate anymore. That, of course, means that the
journalists of today are nothing more than kabuki: anonymously-stylized actors
portraying storylines. That's
entertaining, which explains the present state of Cable News (Fox, MSNBC, CNN,
etc.), which is all polemics and very little news information, but it is not
news division worthy, imagining that such exists.
This abrogation of
journalistic integrity, or decreased sense of professional responsibility, has
contributed to the killing-off of mythological America: that idealized golden
city on a hill characterization, that hasn't survived comparison to reality in
2013. Along with it, it dashed the hopes and dreams
of its honest citizens, who grew up on this constant stream of babble about the
"exceptionalism" of America, which over time had been re-imagined as a magical
carpet ride of fair reward on which any hard-working, dues-paying citizen could
be transported to a personal kingdom of well-earned privilege.
In reality, the "fair reward" jargon has been leveraged to justify
astronomical rewards for a very few, and to justify very small rewards for the
vast majority. The result has been consolidation of power within a
cosseted 1 percent of the population, who control most of the nation's wealth.
Conspiracy buff language aside, the rapid development of this heavily-imbalanced
version of justice has created a new world order that has governed the media as
surely as it has every other line of work. Now it is very hard for news editors
and reporters, who the public counts on to use "information" and "courage" to right-and-protect systemic imbalance of
power, to even report "actual" truth. Hidden among the glare of the 24-hour news
channels, they have become almost unrecognizable; the honest man lost among the
crush of charlatans.
THE COLBERT REPORT
From October 17, 2005
|
