|
Masterful
Manipulators (Mar/Apr 2006)
Chances
are you're a product of psychological warfare. Overwhelmed by
the failings of the fourth estate. Mainstream media outlets have
been redesigned to distance and absolve the viewer from the repercussions
of an administration's actions. It's always easier to feel good
about a war when it's witnessed vicariously.
It's easier
to agree with an educational policy a pundit's been paid $241,000
to promote.
If you follow
the US news, maybe you've seen a Video News Release or two. You
know-those PR segments disguised as real news. The ones where
big business and government officials sell the latest prescription
drug or military action. Maybe you caught a press conference where
a Republican activist pretending to be a journalist brownnosed
instead of asking questions. How about the scripted "live"
video conferences between the President and troops in Iraq, where
soldiers recite memorized responses. Best of all, there's the
town-hall style "conversations" between our Commander-in-Chief
and "average" Americans-a cross-section of the population
specially selected and preapproved to agree with the party line.
The Whitehouse
can't claim complete responsibility for these dubious deceptions.
Journalists
are shirking their duty to root out truth and expose the misconceptions.
The spectacles of political correspondence and war coverage aren't
about disseminating information, so much as they are meant to
reinforce notions of national benevolence. Keep us pumped and
patriotic.
This is what
passes for objectivity.
A democracy
can only be as healthy as its level of journalistic integrity.
In this case, the land of the free is in a definite state of disarray.
Without access to reliable information, it is impossible for citizens
to hold elected officials accountable. Corruption becomes inevitable.
Things like illegal domestic spying programs become a matter of
course.
Those arrogant
enough to assume they can force a system of governance on areas
of strategic interest should at least make sure it functions in
the first place.
It's time to
take the blinders off.
It's time to
stop falling for the marketing blitz, peer through the fog of
faux reporting, and start critically thinking again. It's time
to remember it takes more than cherry-picked intelligence retrofitted
with slick sound-bytes to pass as a legitimate news story. Only
when we begin to actively engage with the media, by scrutinizing
information from a variety of sources, will we become impervious
to these constant attacks on independent thought.
-Jason M. Glover
"There
is nothing more important than the media-it is more powerful than
any bomb or missile and we have to take it back ... we need a
media that is independent and honestly showing us the images,
the hell, ugliness and brutality of war, not selling us war."
-Amy
Goodman
|
