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TechnoratiThe Creed of Objectivity Killed the News
Reporters who witness the worst of human suffering and return to newsrooms angry see their compassion washed out or severely muted by the layers of editors who stand between the reporter and the reader. The creed of objectivity and balance, formulated at the beginning of the 19th century by newspaper owners to generate greater profits from advertisers, disarms and cripples the press.
And the creed of objectivity becomes a convenient and profitable vehicle to avoid confronting unpleasant truths or angering a power structure on which news organizations depend for access and profits. This creed transforms reporters into neutral observers or voyeurs. It banishes empathy, passion and a quest for justice. Reporters are permitted to watch but not to feel or to speak in their own voices. They function as “professionals” and see themselves as dispassionate and disinterested social scientists. This vaunted lack of bias, enforced by bloodless hierarchies of bureaucrats, is the disease of American journalism.
“The very notion that on any given story all you have to do is report what both sides say and you’ve done a fine job of objective journalism debilitates the press,” the late columnist Molly Ivins once wrote. “There is no such thing as objectivity, and the truth, that slippery little bugger, has the oddest habit of being way to hell off on one side or the other: it seldom nestles neatly halfway between any two opposing points of view. The smug complacency of much of the press—I have heard many an editor say, ‘Well, we’re being attacked by both sides so we must be right’—stems from the curious notion that if you get a quote from both sides, preferably in an official position, you’ve done the job. In the first place, most stories aren’t two-sided, they’re 17-sided at least. In the second place, it’s of no help to either the readers or the truth to quote one side saying, ‘Cat,’ and the other side saying ‘Dog,’ while the truth is there’s an elephant crashing around out there in the bushes.”
Ivins went on to write that “the press’s most serious failures are not its sins of commission, but its sins of omission—the stories we miss, the stories we don’t see, the stories that don’t hold press conferences, the stories that don’t come from ‘reliable sources.’ ”
This abject moral failing has left the growing numbers of Americans shunted aside by our corporate state without a voice. It has also, with the rise of a ruthless American oligarchy, left the traditional press on the wrong side of our growing class divide. The elitism, distrust and lack of credibility of the press—and here I speak of the dwindling institutions that attempt to report news—come directly from this steady and willful disintegration of the media’s moral core.
This moral void has been effectively exploited by the 24-hour cable news shows and trash talk radio programs. The failure of the fact-based press to express empathy or outrage for our growing underclass has permitted the disastrous rise of “faith-based” reporting. The bloodless and soulless journalism of the traditional media has bolstered the popularity of partisan outlets that present a view of the world that often has no relation to the real, but responds very effectively to the emotional needs of viewers. Fox News is, in some sense, no more objective than The New York Times, but there is one crucial and vital difference. Fox News and most of the other cable outlets do not feel constrained by verifiable facts. Within the traditional news establishment, facts may have been self-selected or skillfully stage-managed by public relations specialists, but what was not verifiable was not publishable.
The cable news channels have cleverly seized on the creed of objectivity and redefined it in populist terms. They attack news based on verifiable fact for its liberal bias, for, in essence, failing to be objective, and promise a return to “genuine” objectivity. Fox’s Bill O’Reilly argues, “If Fox News is a conservative channel—and I’m going to use the word ‘if’—so what? … You’ve got 50 other media that are blatantly left. Now, I don’t think Fox is a conservative channel. I think it’s a traditional channel. There’s a difference. We are willing to hear points of view that you’ll never hear on ABC, CBS or NBC.”
O’Reilly is not wrong in suggesting that the objectivity of the traditional media has an inherent political bias. But it is a bias that caters to the power elite and it is a bias that is confined by fact. The traditional quest for “objectivity” is, as James Carey wrote, also based on an ethnocentric conceit: “It pretended to discover Universal Truth, to proclaim Universal Laws, and to describe a Universal Man. Upon inspection it appeared, however, that its Universal Man resembled a type found around Cambridge, Massachusetts, or Cambridge, England; its Universal Laws resembled those felt to be useful by Congress and Parliament; and its Universal Truth bore English and American accents.”
Objectivity creates the formula of quoting Establishment specialists or experts within the narrow confines of the power elite who debate policy nuance like medieval theologians. As long as one viewpoint is balanced by another, usually no more than what Sigmund Freud would term “the narcissism of minor difference,” the job of a reporter is deemed complete. But this is more often a way to obscure rather than expose truth.
Reporting, while it is presented to the public as neutral, objective and unbiased, is always highly interpretive. It is defined by rigid stylistic parameters. I have written, like most other reporters, hundreds of news stories. Reporters begin with a collection of facts, statements, positions and anecdotes and then select those that create the “balance” permitted by the formula of daily journalism. The closer reporters get to official sources, for example those covering Wall Street, Congress, the White House or the State Department, the more constraints they endure. When reporting depends heavily on access it becomes very difficult to challenge those who grant or deny that access. This craven desire for access has turned huge sections of the Washington press, along with most business reporters, into courtiers. The need to be included in press briefings and background interviews with government or business officials, as well as the desire for leaks and early access to official documents, obliterates journalistic autonomy.
“Record the fury of a Palestinian whose land has been taken from him by Israeli settlers—but always refer to Israel’s ‘security needs’ and its ‘war on terror,’ ” Robert Fisk writes. “If Americans are accused of ‘torture’, call it ‘abuse’. If Israel assassinates a Palestinian, call it a ‘targeted killing’. If Armenians lament their Holocaust of 1,500,000 souls in 1915, remind readers that Turkey denies this all too real and fully documented genocide. If Iraq has become a hell on earth for its people, recall how awful Saddam was. If a dictator is on our side, call him a ‘strongman’. If he’s our enemy, call him a tyrant, or part of the ‘axis of evil’. And above all else, use the word ‘terrorist.’ Terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror, terror. Seven days a week.”
“Ask ‘how’ and ‘who’—but not ‘why’,” Fisk adds. “Source everything to officials: ‘American officials’, ‘intelligence officials’, ‘official sources’, anonymous policemen or army officers. And if these institutions charged with our protection abuse their power, then remind readers and listeners and viewers of the dangerous age in which we now live, the age of terror—which means that we must live in the Age of the Warrior, someone whose business and profession and vocation and mere existence is to destroy our enemies.”
“In the classic example, a refugee from Nazi Germany who appears on television saying monstrous things are happening in his homeland must be followed by a Nazi spokesman saying Adolf Hitler is the greatest boon to humanity since pasteurized milk,” the former New York Times columnist Russell Baker wrote. “Real objectivity would require not only hard work by news people to determine which report was accurate, but also a willingness to put up with the abuse certain to follow publication of an objectively formed judgment. To escape the hard work or the abuse, if one man says Hitler is an ogre, we instantly give you another to say Hitler is a prince. A man says the rockets won’t work? We give you another who says they will. The public may not learn much about these fairly sensitive matters, but neither does it get another excuse to denounce the media for unfairness and lack of objectivity. In brief, society is teeming with people who become furious if told what the score is.”
Journalists, because of their training and distaste for shattering their own exalted notion of themselves, lack the inclination and vocabulary to discuss ethics. They will, when pressed, mumble something about telling the truth and serving the public. They prefer not to face the fact that my truth is not your truth. News is a signal, a “blip,” an alarm that something is happening beyond our small circle of existence, as Walter Lippmann noted in his book “Public Opinion.” Journalism does not point us toward truth since, as Lippmann understood, there is always a vast divide between truth and news. Ethical questions open journalism to the nebulous world of interpretation and philosophy, and for this reason journalists flee from ethical inquiry like a herd of frightened sheep.
Journalists, while they like to promote the image of themselves as fierce individualists, are in the end another species of corporate employees. They claim as their clients an amorphous public. They seek their moral justification in the service of this nameless, faceless mass and speak little about the vast influence of the power elite to shape and determine reporting. Does a public even exist in a society as fragmented and divided as ours? Or is the public, as Walter Lippmann wrote, now so deeply uninformed and divorced from the inner workings of power and diplomacy as to make it a clean slate on which our armies of skilled propagandists can, often through the press, leave a message?
The symbiotic relationship between the press and the power elite worked for nearly a century. It worked as long as our power elite, no matter how ruthless or insensitive, was competent. But once our power elite became incompetent and morally bankrupt, the press, along with the power elite, lost its final vestige of credibility. The press became, as seen in the Iraq war and the aftermath of the financial upheavals, a class of courtiers. The press, which has always written and spoken from presuppositions and principles that reflect the elite consensus, now peddles a consensus that is flagrantly artificial. Our elite oversaw the dismantling of the country’s manufacturing base and the betrayal of the working class with the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the press dutifully trumpeted this as a form of growth. Our elite deregulated the banking industry, leading to nationwide bank collapses, and the press extolled the value of the free market. Our elite corrupted the levers of power to advance the interests of corporations and the press naively conflated freedom with the free market. This reporting may have been “objective” and “impartial” but it defied common sense. The harsh reality of shuttered former steel-producing towns and growing human misery should have, in the hands of any good cop reporter, exposed the fantasies. But the press long ago stopped thinking and lost nearly all its moral autonomy.
Real reporting, grounded in a commitment to justice and empathy, could have informed and empowered the public as we underwent a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion. It could have stimulated a radical debate about structures, laws, privilege, power and justice. But the traditional press, by clinging to an outdated etiquette designed to serve corrupt power structures, lost its social function. Corporations, which once made many of these news outlets very rich, have turned to more effective forms of advertising. Profits have plummeted. And yet these press courtiers, lost in the fantasy of their own righteousness and moral probity, cling to the hollow morality of “objectivity” with comic ferocity.
The world will not be a better place when these fact-based news organizations die. We will be propelled into a culture where facts and opinions will be interchangeable, where lies will become true, and where fantasy will be peddled as news. I will lament the loss of traditional news. It will unmoor us from reality. The tragedy is that the moral void of the news business contributed as much to its own annihilation as the protofascists who feed on its carcass.
87 Comments so far
Show AllJournalist report the news, they do not Create it. It is ok to show sympathy when Man bites Dog. But if Man bites Dog to create a story then it is wrong. I sorely miss unbiased News People. Instead I see too many Commentators who present a one sided view of a story and call it News. Look at the guy who made up a story about ACORN, proceeded to "film" it with his phone and then edited out anything that did not agree with his intent. He created a propaganda film and the Right used it as "News". Most "News" that is broadcast now, appears to be more propaganda than unbiased News. What is sad, is that a large segment of the American public does not know the difference.
The problem is that people believe objectivity exists in news. They should instead think of it as a myth and thus always try to determine just what a given person's bias is. If the reporter/writer is honest, they'll just state what their bias is to begin with. The dishonest ones pretend they're somehow being objective. The audience needs to learn that that is always a lie and that no one is actually objective.
With such an understanding, perhaps there's a greater chance they might figure out that having all the MSM owned by billionaires introduces a massive bias.
Hedges states
"Ethical questions open journalism to the nebulous world of interpretation and philosophy,
and for this reason journalists flee from ethical inquiry like a herd of frightened sheep."
SOLODUFF says it clearly here:
"Quite so, but the graver point is the death of compassion among the ordinary citizens of contemporary America, for each other but especially for the victims of empire.
You don't even have to pay them for their ruthlessness, which is as mindless as it is automatic."
What else can we expect after watching CNBC for a few hours a day for a couple decades now. It is not that people are just dumbed down by this inane greed provocation;
it is that minds as they influence our hearts have been hollowed out. There is no depth of compassion.
And they have been hollowed out by a force so strong that a vacuum is not really a vacuum but a hollowed space that can not be filled again by anything that begets Love and respect for all living things
You might call it Dead Space, but that implies that it once was alive. Better to think of it as 'No Space' that has ceased to exist.
But the problem still remains how to neutralize these places that still spew forth bomb after drowning bomb.
One can just turn off the off the boob tube, or at least change the station, or find a DVD that makes you smile with a full of life feeling.
Books are good if you can afford them. CD dominates a lot of my life these days.
Lucky us, and thanks for the inspiration as hollow spaces can
Do Flee when Truth is Spoken. A 'Truth Editor' is a Oxymoron:
and that is what the News Media has been engaged with for centuries. Now more than ever.
Already I miss Zinn's voice on the State of the Union speech and the proposed national budget. There are no voices heard in this summary who are prepared to take up his role, and the comments for the most part are irrelevant. One writer alone (Anteater Trojan) recognizes the jealousy and narrowness of the profession. One must step out of the mainstream media to get a view of Zinn's impact; it is there, not in the graduate seminars, that his voice will continue to be heard. Even at the University of Chicago, we were given a choice to get a history degree in Arts or Social Sciences (actually for the same coursework!), history defying the pigeon-hole of credits.
History is retrospective journalism, no more and no less than the "objectivity" of the media. Zinn was a star reporter in that limited company of clear observers.
There is no news in the US.
Only propaganda and disinformation.
I left the US in 1993, and when I returned 7 years later for 3 months to visit friends, I opened the NY Times and found less than half a page of "International News".
Then I turned on the t.v. in Los Alamos, NM and watched a lopp of the same tract house bunring. That loop was played as news for 48 hours.
No wonder everybody in the US is a zombie.
This is why both Michael Moore's argumentaries and Fox News' lies are so popular. Not to mention Jon Stewart. And why newspapers are going down the tubes.
People are sick of "on the one hand this and on the other hand that" journalism. They want to know what's going on. What's really going on. They're not necessarily getting that from Moore/Fox/Stewart, but it feels more like it.
People are also tired of coming to mainstream journalism either already knowing more than is contained in news reports, or knowing that there are perspectives that never ever get acknowledged, let along reported.
Howard Zinn will be missed as his voice was the voice of reason and common sense. However, Molly Ivins and George Carlin cut through common sense and reason with a buzz saw of humor and wit. Bill Moyers supplies us with good and interesting information to sort through and digest, but the information provided by Amy Goodman, although good information, it is presented in the driest format ever invented. It is made so boring that it is difficult absorb. The internet provides limitless amounts of information, but it is a full time job to sort through many sources and wean out the facts from the opinions. I am grateful for all of the above resourses and feel that I am better informed now than ever before. However, it is a difficult job to seek the truth and it is no wonder so many are uninterested, uninformed or misinformed. It is a blitz of information and quite frankly mind boggling.
sierra7
You have your own answer as to why you feel so "ill-informed."
People are inherently narcissistic and lazy. Period.
And, that laziness is going to cost them their country.
The profound problem Chris Hedges identifies begins with a culture in which empathy has been widely destroyed. I am a psychotherapist, and virtually all my clients share one characteristic: They have been raised with little empathy and, having no support for their emotions as children, they learned to obscure their feelings from themselves. They cannot act spontaneously based on what they feel, so they are forced to try to be "objective" about how to behave. They try to use intellect to determine the "right" way to act. But there is no "right' way, just as there is no objective selection for the facts to include in a reporter's article. Garbage in, garbage out: If the logical processing of information does not rest on an empathic selection of the pertinent facts, the product is faulty. Our journalists are able to feed "objective" garbage to a susceptible public precisely because the public has little feeling for the underlying humanistic validity of the material. The problem endures in the public, and in the journalists supported by it, in part because those raised without empathic support cannot give empathic support to their children unless they acquire access to their own emotions, a process not fostered by an unfeeling culture. The modern world's increasing analysis of objective fact has spilled over into the world of emotions and value judgements where it does not belong. Sadly, until more of us somehow regain the depth of emotion we were born with, this problem will persist.
Sioux Rose
HAPPY: A very interesting post. Your name seems new as a poster. For quite some time I have been sharing a concept with the forum that takes into account the Jungian concept of archetypes; and I meld this understanding into its astrological equivalent. With that being said, I believe our society has become modeled after a warrior (Mars)/strong father figure (Saturn) hybrid; and this is essentially the model of the deity that's been worshipped by much of Western culture.
It's been said that the human brain owns two distinct hemispheres, one more amenable to logic and cold reasoning, and the other "side of sentience" more diffusive and empathy-oriented.
In mythology, the war god Mars has its Divine counterpart/partner in Venus, and she, like the Yin Moon (partner to the Yang sun) represents feelings. Our society is not truly open to the input of Venus or the moon. Women have had to adapt to the dominant culture and its attitudes, mores, and beliefs until relatively recently.
Up until just several decades ago women were allotted no power or representation in most societies. The idea of women having work outside the home, voting, owning property, or God forbid choosing a lover outside of marriage were all powerful taboos. Societies have formed their political models based on top-down, authoritarian father knows best structures, and women have largely been left out.
Those women that reach the top are usually well-adapted to the systems already in place much like the majority of minority candidates who also seem to forget the lessons of their pasts when they assume higher office.
Some of my women friends who have Ph.Ds routinely take anti-depressant drugs because they realize their feelings are not only not welcome on the job, but any expressions of these would likely lead to them getting fired.
Our entire entertainment media is largely modeled upon violence. Many movies involve a woman killed, beaten, raped, used and discarded, or emotionally abandoned. Men who identify with feelings are humiliated, and accused of being gay or sissies. The entire sporting arena conditions "fans" to see macho force as a good thing, sign of "a winner." Wars are begun on false evidence with again this issue of winning placed foremost in the minds of the "patriotic." The loss of human life on an increasingly mortifying scale is swept away as mere "collateral damage," the cost of doing business AS war profiteers understand most.
I could share many other examples and analogies but my main point is that to the extent a society champions Mars (war/winning/top dog/first is best) it denigrates Venus. The unfeeling culture is a direct result of authoritarian traditions that center on a punishing male father god. The absence of recognition for the Divine feminine leads to the dearth of compassion and caring that our present asymmetrical, wounded and wounding, and off-balanced Mars rules society reflects.
I appreciate your post, as its evidence to my "cosmic case."
P.S. I have worked with 2 psychologists and 2 psychiatrists, all of whom had the utmost respect for, and appreciation of my work. One of those psychiatrists, now retired, was head of the entire department of mental health in Puerto Rico. She recently paid me a great compliment in reading my book on this particular chapter in human evolution. From the astrologer's perspective, humanity has come to the end of a phase, or Age. In this transition, so many things taken for real are being exposed for the falacies that they are. The Final Phase of the Piscean Age calls for an exposure of the many illusions, delusions and deceptions that have held mankind back for centuries. Aquarius, the sign that exalts Truth, is next up... but as related in my book, "How does the dreamer come to recognize the awakened state"?
I disagree. I find the majority of Americans I meet to be highly empathetic. What I see are institutions and societal barriers being erected that block different perspectives. Modern American journalism is a fine example of such an institution. We don't need a savior Barack Obama, we need a Toto to pull back the curtain.
Hedges underestimates the enemy. This isn't some blatant Orwellian thing. The right in this country will often have their facts right. The problem is, they will only give you half a story. It is all about perspectives and the media in America has a very narrow focus. By blocking perspectives, it is easy to create the Becks, Limbaughs and O'Reillys. It isn't so much a cat, dog, elephant thing. It is that straight on view of the apple and the inability to walk around that apple and see the rotten, worm infested backside.
Haiti is a prime example of this. Few people in this country realize the poverty and misery these people lived in prior to the earthquake. Toss in a earthquake, and the press is all over neerdowells pounding their chests about how they will help. The Government gets to showcase its humanitarian military side, Bill Clinton gets a feel good moment. There seems to be very little coverage about this economic system that creates Haitis all over the world. It's OK to die a slow and grueling death of starvation and misery. Should a building collapse on you from an earthquake, that's a whole different matter. To top it off, you can rest assured the IMF and global capitalists are salivating at the prospects of moving in on Haiti. What will these people have in six months? More mud pies for breakfast and some nice IMF debt for good measure.
And the censorship doesn't stop at the mainstream media. Even leftist publications in this country are refusing to publish communiques out of the Niger Delta from our brothers and sisters battling the corporate fascists in their own backyard. One Vanity Fair article highlighted their plight and then it was promptly ignored into oblivion. Too much angst for the average American filling up at the Shell station?
I don't think Hedges is doing us any service with this article. Couching the right as nothing more than a pack of lies is a dangerous attitude to have. It allows you to get your head handed to you in any debate with said psychopaths. These right wing sociopaths are far more crafty and nimble on their feet than Hedges is making them out to be. Worse yet, there seems to be an institutionalized left in this country that is creating manufactured dissent and giving people a false sense of comfort. Perhaps Hedges should look in the mirror?
factory worker in haitian tax free zones
makes $5 per day; this fact slipped out
accidentally in a pbs before and after quake
factory story. BUT the context of this fact
certainly was not discussed. 12 hours per day?
6 days per week? certainly ZERO benefits.
cost of housing? cost of food for family?
cost of medical care? ALL CONSPICUOUSLY
absent from any reportage on THE CRISIS
sierra7
Couple Chris's article with Chomsky's "Necessary Illusions" and you should "get the picture."
Read: "Killing Hope" by William Blum for a good snapshot of our foreign policies that have crushed the hope of the downtrodden of the world. (And, we continue)
Good article....keep writing, Chris!
Meanwhile, the polar ice caps continue to melt away and there's the real possibility that someone born this very moment will end up having to answer the call, "Will the last one out please turn off the lights." Yet here we are rehashing what many of us have known for most of our lives. that the system's rigged so that the rich always get richer, the poor, poorer. And of course MSM does its utmost to convince us that however bad things may be, this is just the way it is, nothing one can do about it, so get used to it cause there is no alternative. Except MSM isn't convincing many of us because there's a restlessness in the land, which includes but is not limited to the health care for all, anti-war, global warming and teabaggers movements. What's more pensioner's could very well rise up any time now because 2010 has been designated by President Obama as the year of reckoning for the so-called entitlements, meaning Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Add in all the folks who are slready or soon to be hurting and what have we got? The makings of a mass popular uprising, that's what. Impossible, madness? Contrariwise, madness is our persisting in doing the same things (ie. electoral politics, emailing President Obama or one's congressperson) over and over again and each time expecting a different outcome. And besides, there is no alternative
My memory is that Walter did not cry. He had dark-rimmed glasses he used to read the AP or UPI report, choked up slightly toward the end of his announcement that President Kennedy was dead, took off his glasses and probably teared up.
Meanwhile, whatever one thinks about "objectivity" as a journalistic goal, the fact is that old people like me got into the business because it seemed romantic and challenging and gave purpose to the self. In my youth it was a confirmation of my existence to be able to open up the paper the next morning and see my byline! And back then, at least where I worked, there was a constant back and forth between reporter and editor about how to treat a story. It was a process and we all learned from it.
One of my role-models back then was Edward R Murrow and I doubt that it is by accident that Keith Olbermann signs off with "Good night, and good luck."
Back in the Olden Days one didn't go to journalism school to become a reporter. You apprenticed into the business, and the Press was highly decentralized and often eclectic. I suspect that the God of Objectivity that Hedges critiques here grew with the creation of 'schools of journalism" in Academia, which promoted a homogeneity of "acceptable standards." These journalism schools became dominant in the 1960s, and, they are by FOX standards, "liberal." They are also dreadfully uninspiring and nearly ahistoric.
Meanwhile, drosera writes, earlier:
"I've always wondered, flipping from ABC to NBC to CBS to PBS--and even BBC--why they all feature the same news stories. Not only that, but the emphasis is the same. The same stories get first billing, and second. Now how could that be? If there are separate news gathering departments, how do they almost always come up with the same stories?"
I've noticed the same thing and it is maddening to me. Thing is, they don't have "separate news gathering departments" any more; they're all reading from the same script. Saves money, and creates that "manufactured consent."
A huge issue now and in the near future (due to the rise of the Internet and the collapse of the print media) is the question of "authoritativeness" of the news (just ask Katie Couric!). The only reason those acronyms seem authoritative is that they all say the same thing, so it must be true. That's why it's called an Echo Chamber. Their problem is that more and more people are sensing that they are being lied to even as they are not quite capable of "objectifying" that sense.
That's why we have Hedges!
-30-
As the old saying goes "objectivity is in the eye of the beholder." That would make it harder to define what is objective.
Others have noted that Hedges sounds almost Chomskian in this article. Where Hedges differs from Chomsky in that he emphasizes the moral questions in their relationship to truth. Far from being subjective, moral questions provide the schema by which we are able to understand events. If we want to learn more about terrorism, we need to ask philosophical questions. What is terrorism? How does America define terrorism? Whose interest does the war on terrorism serve? These and other questions will have an important tools for understanding the phenomena that accompany our ideas of terrorism. You couldn't define the cold war without really examining the ideas of capitalism and communism.
In the absence of philosophical and moral questioning, the stuff of journalism either becomes trivial or propaganda that furthers the unwritten, unexamined philosophical agenda of the elite. I think we see evidence of both.
Sioux Rose
SP08: Using the analogy "food for thought," just as many "restaurants" cater to instant gratification/appetite response, the media prefers easy-to-digest sound bites as opposed to the deep, philosophical inquiry process that more refined minds know to be important. The dumbing down begins with the educational system that makes the test result more important than the process of thinking. We see it in the diet fed to America through an inordinate number of denatured, processed (for "shelf life") foods, and in what the media feeds to minds in the form of its watered down/instant offerings. Strong parallels exist between these seemingly distinct spheres of commerce.
sierra7
You mean you really want us to "think"?
That would take us away from our intellectually vacuous existence and energy from our daily shopping for useless merchandise in order to bolster the wealth of those who create the "Necessary Illusions" (Chomsky) for the "Manufacturing of Consent" (again, Chomsky) and throw us into the meat grinder of "support for democratic values."
This country needs a revolution. But, now the country is concerned with it's endless, mindless economic self-indulgence to spend any time changing anything......
Asking philosophical questions is beyond the pale of "American Idol."
We do not need news, we need a daddy figure to make us feel safe. This was the euphonic function of Walter. An effective reporter is authoritarian enough to instill belief, gentle enough to quiet fear, and ruggedly unhandsome enough to nestle in our conscience as a father. Didn't he cry when he announced John Kennedy's assassination? I was a Walter fan after that and a growing skeptic ever since. Not because I thought he was faking but because I grew older. Exaggerated falsification is a way of network captivation. Post Walter there is Glen Beck; a group sop.
Convenient morality, and conceivable truth, as an incorrigible figment of nitwit convention, we long for hope and change, pledging our troth to a deliverer.
*(aside)soloduff is a professional writer or should be.
Objectively speaking, objectivity is subject to subjectivity.
Most reporters I know, and I know a great many since I was one until I joined the unemployment line, just want a front page "story" because it usually means a raise during their "performance review."
Also, I only have a slightly better opinion of the NYT than of Fox News because the NYT is only more subtle in how it packages the news.
" ... the NYT is only more subtle in how it packages the news." That would be, presents its propaganda.
We discussed this issue of objectivity just a few days ago. Objectivity in the USan political sphere puts the host (the people) and the parasite (the elites) on the two measuring scale pans and seeks to balance the two.
MANY USans will support that idea wholeheartedly, by action, such as in the voting booth, while declaring in polls their principled bias toward the people.
These people are quite conflicted. Their "god" decrees expression of their compassion, while their elite masters convey with grunts, smirks and head-shakes that they better take that other, pragmatic choice, if they want to "be a contender".
USans consent to their master's wishes, surrender their self-determination, and then take their rewards, petro-opiates, from Sugar Daddy, and seek the "big time" for their own personal selves. At this point, their compassion is dust. So much for objectivity.
Instead of objectivity, the people should recognize the goal of universal equity/justice, that benefits us all, maximally. A subjective bias toward people, and against concentrated power, is growing today and the ghost of Ayn Rand can't stop it.
I've always wondered, flipping from ABC to NBC to CBS to PBS--and even BBC--why they all feature the same news stories. Not only that, but the emphasis is the same. The same stories get first billing, and second. Now how could that be? If there are separate news gathering departments, how do they almost always come up with the same stories?
That is precisely what Putin noted in his interview with CNN after Georgia's attempted invasion of South Ossetia--the power, discipline and ubiquity of Western Propaganda.
All that Mr. Hedges is saying is well and good, but it is too late now.
This is almost all old stuff, said earlier and better by such as Chomsky, Orwell, and Ambrose Bierce; but the main thesis--"The ruling ideas of any age are those of the ruling class (Marx)"--always bears repeating in these United States of Amnesia. Hedges is also correct in observing that the degeneracy of discourse has deepened in our lifetimes and that this is a barometer of the decadence of the capitalist order, now spawning "protofascists". Where Hedges misses the mark is the narrow scope of his complaint to the effect that the doctrine of "objectivity" requires that reporters have their "compassion washed out or severely muted". --Quite so, but the graver point is the death of compassion among the ordinary citizens of contemporary America, for each other but especially for the victims of empire. You don't even have to pay them for their ruthlessness, which is as mindless as it is automatic.
It's 18 years old, but an excellent read on how newspapers got this way is the book "Read All About It" by James D. Squires. Squires is a former editor and journalist whose journalistic career went from 1962-92. He describes how greed for excess profits led many local family-owned newspapers to sell out to chain owners. Once the chains got the publications they did what group radio and TV owners did to their stations-gut staff, outsource labor, and render any editorial content mostly advertiser friendly.
Poet
Great piece. This might make a nice reading for what Chomsky has called "a class in intellectual self-defense."
But, um, Mr. Hedges? When was the US government competent?
I don't suppose you'd care to defend the Vietnam era guys. Are we talking about FD Roosevelt, blustering at Japan with all his ducks in a row in Pearl Harbor?
The Lusitania and the oh-so-suspicious letter from the Kaiser to Mexico.
Polk's forged false fire event by the border of the Rio Bravo in or near Texas?
I dunno. Seems like kind of thing you'd want to support before you laid it out there.
So what's new.
John Swinton, former Chief of Staff of the New York Times, in a toast before the New York Press Club in 1953 had this to say.
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press …… I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with …… and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job ……the business of the journalist is to destroy the truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread …… what folly is this toasting an independent press?”
That's a great quote--could you tell me from where you got it? Just curious.
Poet
Hi Poet--Place this--John Swinton New York Press Club 1953--into the google search box and you'll get all sorts of answers.
I enjoy reading Hedges as his articles at least are interesting, but I like Karlof1 did not think this was one of his better pieces. It's hard to lament the demise of the traditional press and "objective" TV newscasts (is Walter Cronkite the model?)
In any case, Chomsky takes apart these "objective" "filtered" outlets much more thoroughly with a magnifying glass - column by column inch - when analyzing the New York Times reportage.
sierra7
I would like to add, Edward Herman who collaborated with lots of Chomsky/Herman writing....
I was amazed at their style when I discovered their books about Vietnam (I'm 80 yrs old)..way back "in the day"...and the absolute infinite detail in their sourcing....since then, reading hundreds and hundreds of books, I find the "sources" and bibliographies as interesting, if not more than the book(s) itself....
Most Americans do not want to be burdened by "detail" in a story...hence, no philosophical discussions on the "why's, wherefores, etc" on such as "roots of terrorism." Just facts, just the facts...like just meat, but no potatoes, veggies or bread and butter....no dessert.....
And, lest we forget that the average attention span for the average consumer of news is measured in half-minutes.......
That will only change if the people themselves lift themselves out of their intellectual doldrums...but, I don't see that happening anytime soon.....
No one tells it like Molly Ivins could tell it.
Objectivity is not having different personalities available to present both sides of an argument and then shouting at each other. How many arguments are simply two sided rather than multi-sided anyway.
Objectivity is having a reporter who is an outside observer and is not subjectively involved in the story she reports. This is difficult in most print media which now exist to promote the subjective viewpoint of the owner.
And even when an issue IS two-sided (I'm thinking of Evolution vs Creationism, and War vs Peace) as hedges very astutely pointed out the "objective" viewpoint is not making the reasoning fallacy of the Middle Ground (AKA Golden Mean Fallacy, Fallacy of Moderation):
1. Position A and B are two extreme positions.
2. C is a position that rests in the middle between A and B.
3. Therefore C is the correct position.
(see http://www.opifexphoenix.com/reasoning/fallacies/index.htm )
Gary
"An expert is a person who avoids the small errors while sweeping on to the grand fallacy."
-- Steven Weinberg
I wonder what prompted Hedges to waste his time writing this, for him, rather poor essay. Especially his dancing around the word objective. I wrote an essay 12 years ago about how the historian must follow the Quest for Objectivity no matter where it leads, for Objectivity is equivalent to Truth. Hedges fancies himself as a historian, yet the quest for Truth is absent in his thesis.
Do tell karlof1. To what Truth do you refer and absent in your comment?
The task of the historian and journalist is the same--description of event(s), the how and why of the event and, for the historian, its historical importance, or for the journalist, its relevence to current events, which I describe as Truth, which is the same as the philosopher's Truth. Failure to seek the Truth renders the would-be-historian or journalist into a polemicist or propagandist. For example, the Truth of what caused the recent economic collapse is being studiously ignored by the media and government, not because there aren't any facts, witnesses, or Truth seeking investigators writing about it, but because their agenda has no use for the Truth of the cause; thus, we will certainly revisit again what just occured, albeit in somewhat different fashion. And, unfortunately, there are all too many other examples I can cite.
Sioux Rose
KARLOF: Well-said.
Last night I watched the film, "The Emperor's Club," in which Kevin Kline plays the history teacher at the type of prep school that our nation's "politically bound" attend. It's an excellent film, and reflects somewhat on the themes germane to this thread. There are those with a USE for truth, and those who prefer to get away with what they can. We can call them the pragmatists or otherwise Machiavellians. This film does the sort justice within a compelling context. It asks what role history is to play in the present, given how modern powerbrokers own a penchant for abuse of same.
You say, "for Objectivity is equivalent to Truth....yet the quest for Truth is absent in his thesis." He seems to me to be very objective in pointing out that cable-news objectivity is missing. How are cable-news journalists (CNJs) "objective" when they continue to allow the questioning of Obama's birth certificate, allow the continuation of Obama being attacked as both a communist and a fascist at the same time? Would the CNJs allow a mathematician to call a circle a square and a triangle at the same time without question? Where was the objectivity prior to the Iraq war? Where was the objectivity when America was and is being held for ransom unless we do what the banks say?
I believe he's trying to say that the news is overflowing with sterile facts but there are no social standards being used to give social value to the opposing views. For instance, should the tea-bagger's birth certificate issue be given any standing at all when compared to other more important issues that we face?
How do we determine which issues are important? Let me suggest that CNJs should simply ask, what might the average citizen want and if the CNJ isn't sure then take a quick poll of the population at large and use that as a "social base" for further comments by that reporter. That way the reporter brings society into the discussion and does not relegate us to being just passive observers.
I don't think I made my critique as clear as I should. I didn't mean that Hedges should ignore the media's lack of objectivity, several examples of which you supply. Rather, he should have attacked the clear trend of media to distort, to actively propagandize, to make it seem to be objective when in reality it's lying through its teeth, as with Georgia's attack on Ossetia, and to connect all these dots chronologicly while including the many examples of Objectitity seekers being marginalized by media over the past 100+ years. Indeed, I initially thought this essay would try to build on the Manufacturing of Consent, but was I ever disappointed, which is why I deemed this effort by Hedges as substandard.
In the classroom, failure to connect class content with the student's real world is a recipe for disaster--the student performs poorly on assessment, doesn't learn, and--what's worse--doesn't think learning's important . The same is true with news reporting. The failure in the classromm results in a dumbed-down person, while the failure of media results in an inept citizenry--this is especially true when dumbed-down students are fed dumbed-down news. However, I would posit that's exactly what the "deciders" desire; and when you look around, it seems they've acheived that outcome.
After reading your reply I believe we are in agreement concerning propaganda and objectivity.
I don't know if you caught my earliest post but again I was really struck by Molly Ivins observation that truth..."it seldom nestles neatly halfway between any two opposing points of view." But the ordinary citizen who watches the news might think that truth spends equal amounts of time on both sides of almost all issues. At least those issues that are politically important to the right-wing. In my opinion Hedges was saying that it is non-objective (don't take a stand) reporters that are causing the viewers error in perception and it is done intentionally by the editors a priori "blue penciling" of the reporter's comments.
This caused me to come to the conclusion that major media wants to cause ambiguity so that we citizens cannot come to a consensus. If we cannot come to a consensus then we cannot appeal to our representatives to solve the problem. Hence; no problemo.
It's not objective when you exclude other points of view, and only allow discussion in a narrow framework.
So is anybody feeling the urge to head up the PEOPLE'S PRESS--I would submit to hear what the PEOPLE had to say--wouldn't you?
To survive, an organism must behave appropriately, which requires an accurate perception of its environment. That applies to the amoeba as well as the State.
At base, we depend upon the media - and the CIA - to provide accurate descriptions of our realities. Without those, our odds of survival are drastically shortened. So there is a lot more riding on our ability to gather facts than just having an informed public because that sounds like a good idea in principle.
That makes fact finding much too important to be left to private enterprise. A new institution is needed.
Good point. The utility of having brains is in establishing input-output connections that allow for the development of models of the external reality so that we may better predict and impact the future of the world (social/political/economic/physical environment) we live in, so that we may better survive. When so many media organizations are manufacturing facts so as to create information chaos, the opportunity is lost to build a common model of the common reality that we can trust in and build on for the good of all. The elites should recognize that they lose too as the information chaos inevitably will hamper their understanding and thus their control and the ability of their minions to carry out assigned duties. They are taking their war on the common good to a self-destructive level.
The elites probably think they will endure in the coming chaos. Many high-rollers on Wall Street are known to be personally preparing for a collapse of the financial system, so you can imagine that the top elite, say, the 5,000 wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet, are making plans to survive what their intelligence networks are telling them is coming...soon.
Could be. Creating so much information chaos doesn't make sense in the long-term, but the short-term is a whole different matter. Maybe we are closer to the precipice than even I imagined, and I am pretty pessimistic about such matters.
The force in the knowledge of one person can, and will, change this world forever, in a reporting way.
The power of thoughts is immeasurable.
There's an about to happen in the unforeseen.
What is your point?
The crisis in journalism I believe stems from the delinquency of journalists doing investigation to get the facts -- facts that they need to know in order to ask meaningful, probing questions of official sources. Just to take an obvious example, on September 11, 2001, three buildings collapsed that should not have according to their engineering parameters. If this could happen, are those engineering standards reliable? How safe are the landmark structures in other cities? If those events of 9/11 had happened any time before the 1980s, no one could have prevented journalists from seeing the potential for danger and taking the initiative to investigate the safety and tour the machinery of local buildings. To date, absolutely no one has undertaken that probe. Investigators who do their own thinking and research, despite a lack of resources and credentials, are instead routinely dismissed as conspiracy nuts; but they are just trying to fill the void left by the abdication of professional journalists from fulfilling professional standards in the public interest -- a void that began to open up for all to see after the JFK assassination.
Two things struck me about this article.
1. Molly Ivins statement that truth "seldom neatly nestles half-way between any two opposing points of view."
2. Hedges statement about the "Failure of the fact-based press to express empathy or outrage for our growing underclass..."
If you read about the RWA (Right-Wing Authoritarian) mind you will find that one of their most prominent characteristics is their inability to feel empathy for human suffering.
Is Fox news trying to erase the moral content of humanity's stories so that we always end up with a sterile, fact-based, the truth is always in the middle conclusion?
If there is always ambiguity among the population then we cannot come to a consensus and if we cannot come to a consensus then we cannot demand that our politicians make decisions to rectify the issue.
It appears to me that the "social fog" machine that we call journalism has been permanently left in the on position.
Think about it. Empathy for human suffering, at least for those who were non-citizens - in the days of, say, the Roman Empire, would be considered a weakness. We are a warrior culture, a global Sparta: aint no place for commie-pinko-bleeding-heart reporters to weaken the disciplining of the masses and interfering with their function as the elites obedient slaves and cannon-fodder for the coming Resource Wars.
"Fox News and most of the other cable outlets do not feel constrained by verifiable facts."
Recent poll: 74% of Republicans feel FOX 'News' is the most trustworthy of ALL news organizations.
In other news, in a new tape purportedly from Osama bin Laden, he thanks FOX 'News" for all their help and support...
To read a contemporary American newspaper or watch broadcast or cable news is like being a fly on the wall at an Animal House style fraternity party.
"The Creed of Objectivity Killed the News."
And the irony is, mainstream "news" is anything but "objective."
We keep hearing about newspapers going out of business or struggling. Tell 'em to report THE TRUTH -- until they do, they don't deserve to be in business.
I've wondered why George Soros, whose foundation supports a free press all around the world, doesn't use some of his money to purchase one of the major networks.
There would then be ONE network committed to true reporting from a small-d democratic viewpoint -- much as The Guardian is unabashedly liberal and tells the truth as best it can no matter who doesn't like what they say.
After the recent Supreme Court Decision, the corporate owners of our mainstream media will have even more power over what Americans see and read, making Democracy Now and internet sources like Common Dreams even more essential. (Imagine the presidential candidate debates, already debased and slanted to favored participants based mostly on how much money they have collected, when contributions by the media owners themselves can be added to the unlimited amounts from other corporations.)
Soros and free media!? Ha, ha,ha !!!!
His role was / is to create fake movements and prop neocons all over the World. Almost entire Eastern Europe is being sucked dry by Soros' leaches.
In the UK the situation is different (I'll leave it to you to decide how different). TV news is required by law not to take party-political sides, so not only the BBC, but commercial TV news also, must be as impartial as possible.
Newspapers are not required to be imparial. So the Guardian, owned by a Trust, is able to be left of centre and is in fairly robust financial health (to the best of my knowledge). The Independent - sometimes even to the left of the Guardian - is in poor financial shape, and I'm sure would have succumbed to UK market forces some time ago were it not for the fact that it is Irish-owned. It is rumoured that it will be sold soon to a Russian oligarch, and I fear for its independence should that happen. Most other UK national papers are well to the right politically.
"Shock-jock" talk radio has been tried in the UK and has failed miserably, partly because the BBC's speech radio output is so excellent and varied, and partly because we have no one in the Rush Limbaugh league of outrageousness. The nearest we came was David Starkey, but his outlandish manner was such a pose, he being both a highly respected (though not by me) academic historian, and openly gay.
The Independent is ALREADY owned by the Russian oligarch, Lebedev. The Mirror is leftist, and also sensationalist.
Yet, as Media Lens often points out, the BBC is hardly impartial or unbiased, and operates as the government's propaganda arm most of the time.
As for George Soros -- I have read that when Obama was elected, the money men were contacted to keep the minions quiet, and to limit organizing efforts of the liberal and progressive groups. These money men, including George Soros, did the Obama administration's bidding, and threatened to withdraw funding if the groups took to the streets, or organized their members.
I could be wrong about this, because no one is owning up to it, but it does make some sense to me. I have been attending rallies and protests, on various issues, here in NYC since Obama's election, and the groups are quite small and fragmented. This is a city of 8 million people. We should be able to fill medium-sized halls, etc.
How fortunate for the MSM that the people they report to do not think; otherwise, they would go out of business!
Do they watch Fox because they don't think or don't think because they watch Fox?
The most egregious myth: The MSM is liberal! When Bill O of Foxy News says "so what if we are a conservative station you have 50 other channels that are blatantly left". Bill, you have sold your soul to Fox News. First: Fox News should not be called real news as it is mostly stupid, nonsense entertainment for the dumbed down sheeple. Second: What news there is, is edited to appeal to these politically, ignorant, and cheerleaders for the war people. Third: The 50 other channels are not left, that is a canard and a myth to say the least! Fourth: What you are admitting Bill, is that you are a conservative, news channel; a cheerleader for right wing causes and that is a long way from being " fair and balanced". Fox News: We omit and distort so you cannot decide what is true!
I think the real problem is that when the reporter asks 'are there any other opinions?', the moneyed-interests have people paid, on-hand, to offer opinions on any topic. They are often very forceful opinions delivered by very well-groomed, sober individuals. And the opinion itself is utter cr*p: emotion-laden, lacking in statistics but filled with dangerous warnings of incipient communism, fascism, muslimism, etc.
This is why I think only wealth redistribution via renewed and very strong progressive taxation can properly address what has happened. Wealth already owns the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd estates, and the 4th estate is about 75% owned. Money will always corrupt politics and skew the 'voice' being heard. But our democracy can still represent the voice of the people, if the people actually own the money. Wealth redistribution: now! (and I don't mean 'off with their heads'. I mean return to the 1950s, when the wealthiest 10% of the country owned about 55% of the country, instead of todays 75%. We have to give the poor a 'voice' again in our democracy, or it isn't one).
I distinctly remember reading articles like this back in the late '70s and '80s, when it was already well known that the media were little more than courtiers to power. Harper's has had many similar pieces over the years, and of course the problem is now cancerous and has basically destroyed the media as we once knew it. All we have now, anywhere on the left, is Democracy Now! and internet sites like this. Even shitty Air America, which was pretty good five or six years ago, is no more, thanks to idiocy and incompetence from management.
The way it's going, soon there will be literally nothing left of progressive media and O'Reilly and Beck will be screaming even louder about how Faux News is the only "traditional" news source in a sea of liberals and socialists. With MSNBC becoming more and more a fortress of the Democratic Party, with Olbermann and Maddow as its chief media defenders, there's no progressive left presence at all now on cable. This is about all we've got, a few dozen of us here discussing these issues and lamenting how dire and dismal it's all become. Oh wait--there's Kucinich in 2012! I mustn't forget that.
"soon there will be literally nothing left of progressive media and O'Reilly and Beck will be screaming even louder about how Faux News is the only "traditional" news source in a sea of liberals and socialists."
I understand your objection, believe me the problem's not small, but given Amerikan ignorance, we haven't got much choice at all.
Another superb and insightful Hedges commentary.
· Yr Obd't Servant
"Real reporting, grounded in a commitment to justice and empathy, could have informed and empowered the public as we underwent a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion. It could have stimulated a radical debate about structures, laws, privilege, power and justice."
Yet, even in the absence of such reporting, you , I and most of those reading this blog have observed and understood exactly what you're describing. The "truth is out there". But one has to able to care enough to look for it and to accept it when found. The problem is far worse than the media and the elites it serves. It is rooted in the culture. Most of the US population lives lives in a world not unlike that of "The Matrix" - i.e. in a false reality designed to pull the wool over their eyes. But that false reality exists mostly due to their cooperation with it. The sleepers do not wish to awake. So I'm not convinced that many would have engaged in this debate who are not already doing so.
If you are really naive enough to think that a "call for proletarian communist revolution" would elicit anything but guffaws and ridicule, there's little chance of trying to point out much anything to you. Hedges is trying to show how prostituted the press became with the power elite, by its festish for a misleading "objectivity" and how this mantra served to cripple its capacity for disseminating truth. If he wants to totally discredit himself with 99.9999% of American readers, he can follow that up with "the call for proletarian communist revolution." Or do you believe this is still 1933?
I'd like to see a bit more criticism directed at left-wing alternative media.
Although I agree with everyone about Amy Goodman being the messiah who will save the working class - just like Karl Marx saved them.
The only thing that improved conditions for working class folks was blood, sweat and tears from class struggle and union organizing. At least we aint working 12 or more hours a day 6 days a week, losing fingers and limbs, blinded, gettin black lung in the mines. Many people were killed during the early part of the 19th century. Thugs, scabs, goons, police, National Guard gave out many a beating and killings over the years. At least we can give some credit to the older generations. As bad as things are now, it aint as bad as the last Great Depression, at least not yet.
"At least we aint working 12 or more hours a day 6 days a week, losing fingers and limbs, blinded, gettin black lung in the mines"
Instead, we have both parents working long hours, commuting for a few more hours each day, losing minds and personalities via burnout and exhaustion (not to mention the drugs and alcohol that are used to numb the pain) and - surprise - coal miners are still getting black lung digging up the coal we need to destroy our air with. A thousand American coal miners a year die of black lung.
are you just being difficult or did you miss my point?
Agreed. Those guys were heroic. We have nothing equivalent today. We need unions and organizing more than ever, but the call for "proletarian communist revolution" couldn't possibly be more passe. It isn't Marxism that failed but communism, especially Stalinism and Maoism, the two prominent massive efforts to misapply Marxist prescriptions. The very idea of communism will never recover from the examples set by these brutal and idiotic systems.
So forget communism, but democratic socialism, or even better, anarcho-syndicalism are well worth the effort, if only we could forego charismatic leader posturing, which may be too much to ask. We need a self-effacing leader for such a movement, like Chile's Allende. But then, we'd need some way to prevent what happened to him at the hands of our own power elite, coordinated by Friedmanite economists, the Ford foundation and the CIA. Get around those authoritarian barriers and we might stand a chance. Otherwise, we'll be tortured in their prisons as radicals out to undermine "freedom and democracy."
There is no mainstream news. It is all convoluted drivel to appease the corporate owners.
Alternative news sources like Democracy Now are the only reliable news sources - I think everyone knows that already.
Every morning I catch about 1/2 hour of local news, then see how much of the morning national "news shows" I can get through until Democracy Now comes on. (I usually cant get through more that 20 minutes of the crap). The difference between DN and the mainstream shows is stark to say the least. The national "news shows" are mostly celebrity gossip and which blond kid is missing that week. Then DN comes on with hard hitting real news, making the other shows look like pointless drivel.
I would also like to add another internet news organization for its excellence:
THE REAL NEWS NETWORK, which is viewer-supported (i.e. no corporate sponsors)
http://therealnews.com/t2/
Have a look.
We obviously need to identify all these organizations serving the truth and spread the word about them. Indeed, let's use the same template of moving our money from Corporate too-big-too-fail banks to small, local, community-based banks by encouraging American citizens to turn off the TV (permanently or until the MSM gets the message) and turn on Democracy Now,
Real News Network, etc.,
Yes, until we lose net neutrality too.
Mookie: You are correct -- on this site, CD, people do know the score, and that Democracy Now! is one of the only reliable news sources in the U.S. However, I run into people here in NYC all the time who know absolutely nothing about Amy Goodman. Of course, I tell them. But, still, so many people continue to watch the networks, CNN, etc.
"An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff."
-- Adlai Stevenson
Buck: Thanks for this quote! My grandparents were Adlai Stevenson Democrats in a very conservative, very religious, southwest Iowa community. When I look back on my conversations with my grandmother, when I was a kid, I marvel at how informed she was on so many issues.