February 24, 2005
By Pamela Troy
...I reject the notion that as an outsider, a member of the vast "bewildered herd" that makes up the mainstream media's audience, I should just meekly take this player's word for it when he utters such nonsense. At my age that old punch line, "who do you believe, me or your own lyin' eyes?" no longer works.
Now the Guckert/Gannon scandal has broken, and we've all seen yet another version of that conversation writ large, the spectacle of presumably intelligent, well-read insiders like Howard Kurtz, Wolf Blitzer and Aaron Brown gazing politely off into space and indicating that they really just don't see why those peasants in the blogosphere are making such a fuss about a right-wing shill with nonexistent journalistic credentials being given a pass to White House press conferences while using an alias.
There's no arguing with deliberate obtuseness. The question is, why do they do this? And how can they do it on national television without appearing at least slightly embarrassed?
We all know the usual answers. They do it because, as mainstream journalists, they want to protect their turf from the encroachments of the Internet. They do it because they are beholden to, or friendly with many of those powerful folks who are likely to be embarrassed by the Guckert affair. But while these things may be true, there are more insidious reasons that account, not just for the mainstream press uttering twaddle, but for the mainstream press sticking to the twaddle long after it's been revealed as twaddle, and earnestly repeating it in one-on-one conversations off-camera and away from the microphones.
...The greater the power wielded by an individual or an institution, the greater the responsibility they bear and the higher those moral stakes become. Our national media wields a considerable amount of power and responsibility. They are supposed to use that power as a check on other powerful institutions. They are supposed to keep government and corporations honest, get the truth to their readers and viewers.
Our national media has shirked that responsibility. By abandoning the pursuit of truth in favor of a form of stenography, of he said/she said journalism, they have allowed lies to go unchallenged and the power of the press to be transformed into a propaganda vehicle for the Bush administration and its corporate buddies. The damage this has already done to our country and the terrible impact it has already had on individual American lives, is undeniable. When the history of the Bush administration is written – and I have enough faith in humanity to believe that the Bush faux patriotism extant today will someday be remembered with the same contempt that we now remember McCarthyism and Jim Crow – the mainstream press as it is now will not be regarded as heroes.
They know this. They aren't stupid and they aren't ignorant of history. But knowing something and admitting it to oneself are two different things...
During the run-up to the Iraq war, the national media parroted the statements of the president bush and his administration uncritically, and stifled the voices in opposition to this adventure.
After thousands of people were killed, we got some lame apologies from the same media for not being more critical of the assertions that they printed.
The consequences of this failure are horrific, as we see on the news daily. And because of the security situation in Iraq, the reporters still on the scene can't travel from the "Green Zone" in Baghdad. So we really don't know what's really going on in that country. All that they really report on is the press releases the military gives them.
So we get their lame excuses and apologies, and they continue on as if nothing happened. The same stenography journalism is being practiced.
Now as the president bush is threatening war with Iran, and gutting social Security, where is our esteemed 'free press' to challenge the administration falsehoods?
Do they feel, along with the president bush administration, that they American people lack intelligence? Are we children to be fed whatever statements the administration offers up?
I really doubt that I could look my grandchildren in the eyes if I were to assist plunging America into disaster because I was too lazy, or to craven, to challenge the president bush.
My occupation is not journalism, and I have a full-time job. But in less than an hour, I can find out more information about the administration lies than we see printed in our newspapers, or broadcast on the 'news'. Journalists get paid to do that, and they have a lot more resources than I do.
Well, I guess I'll have to wait for their lame apologies again, and again, it will be too late. And, as we've seen, insincere.
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