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newsmanfan
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- Joined
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“Bringing you the truth in a world gone Max.”
Does anyone else here recall that tagline? It’s on a magazine ad I still have, for the long-gone show Max Headroom. And while most people who recall the show at all only remember the wisecracking, Pepsi-hawking, computer-generated Max, he was actually a very minor character in the show. No…the show was all about investigative reporter Edison Carter, who fearlessly hunted down the truth week after week, braving an Orwellian, tangled government and shady, powerful megacorporations to get the facts out to the populace…the ultimate hero-journalist!
Does that scenario sound familiar in today’s world? No? D—d right it doesn’t, and we’re worse off for it.
Recently, I’ve been researching media censorship, both as background for my current fic (yes, I DO research, as should any and all writers tackling anything they don’t have intimate history with, no matter what the genre), and simply to educate myself. A number of very disturbing things have come to my attention as a result. And even though some of my book sources are a few years old now (though none more than ten) the inescapable conclusion is that we Americans are still vastly, dangerously uninformed or underinformed. Vastly and dangerously. That’s right, guys…what we don’t know has already hurt us and will continue to hurt us, and it continues simply because those in real power (follow the money, folks) know we’re all too blithely ignorant and too easily led by the nose to rise in outrage and expose them, depose them, and send them packing to someplace where state censorship is a matter of accepted fact – Dubai, maybe. Or North Korea.
For instance. Remember the uproar over Jeb Bush illegally refusing voting rights to millions of people in Florida, or the questionable voting machine “errors,” or the fact that the Bush family had financial ties to the company which supplied the actual machines? No? Gee, that story kinda vanished after 2000, didn’t it?
Remember the unresolved issues about how, exactly, Building 7 at the WTC came down...as though it had been a controlled-implosion demolition…and explosive chemical traces were present in the dust…and hundreds of engineers, architects, and demolition experts pushed for a thorough investigation which has yet to be undertaken? No? Bet you never even heard about that one. Do I think the Bushies were somehow complicit in 9/11? No…corrupt and dangerous though they are, even I don’t think they would have callously sacrificed so many just for a pretext to invade Iraq (which was being pushed for by Bush and Rumsfeld months before 9/11). Certainly, homegrown terrorists could have trained and planned and gained access to the buildings as part of a concerted plot – they infiltrated other sensitive areas, why not there? …But the fact that to this day, there has never been a thorough investigation or explanation of exactly how the buildings fell (nope, it wasn’t the burning jet fuel, guys, look into some chemistry and do the math)…the blind eye officials have turned to the whole matter…now THAT is scary. (Check out the award-winning, fact-checking, genuinely frightening articles the folks at Project Censored have put together… www.projectcensored.org )
Remember TWA Flight 800, which mysteriously exploded just off Long Island, and which was written off as a “probable malfunction” by the FBI…despite hundreds of eyewitnesses who saw something streak from the water’s surface into the sky, and the fireball in the air moments after? Despite the evidence of solid missile fuel within the plane wreckage? Despite numerous completely conflicting reports by the various Armed Forces branches as to what ships, planes, etc were where in the vicinity and whether a training exercise was going on? Good reporters lost their jobs when trying to pursue that one, and inside sources were sued and ruined. What’s worse, possible friendly fire…or a massive coverup?
What’s worst, in all these and many other examples I could cite, is that the major, mainstream media – not to mention Rupert’s wonderful little Faux News Network – wouldn’t touch any of these stories unless it was to discredit them by quoting the official line, even when the facts disproved those blithe press releases --doing no research or investigation themselves! And we bought it!
I’m sorry, do I sound angry? Yes. Yes I am. I’m furious.
I’m not Edward Murrow. I’m not even Edison Carter or the Muppet Newsman, much as I enjoy my online alter ego. I’m just a deeply appalled person who has taken the time to educate myself. I’m just someone who wishes the bulk of this nation would tear themselves away from reality-tv bread-and-circuses long enough to do the same! Were I a billionaire, right this minute, though there are many worthy causes I would be happy to support, one of them would assuredly be to establish an online newsroom and hire the hungriest, most ethical, most willing-to-dig-past-the-corporate-or-government-press-release journalists I could find… yes, I have hope there remain a few… and tell them, “Smell a story? Go for it. I will back you up.” I’d hire the smartest lawyers money could buy to counter the inevitable BS lawsuits by ConHugeCo sharks. I’d make an haven for actual news again because I strongly believe everyone has the right to know who’s making deals with whom under the table (and our noses), who’s in bed with whom financially, who actually wields the power in this country.
Is Wikileaks doing all that? Hardly. Though I love ‘em, they’re just a repository for facts. It still takes someone brave enough to risk having their editor bow to pressure from above, risk their job, risk in some cases their personal safety, not to mention their reputation and personal finances, to put those facts into context. Note I said context, not spin. We need real news, not all the skewed facts which Monsanto or Du Pont or the Rockefellers think fit to print. We need real reporters, not talking heads quoting yet another meaningless “poll” of a hundred students at some small college, presenting the results as if they were even vaguely representative of the populace of the nation as a whole!
Why am I going on this rant here? Well…because I have to hope, silly though this sounds, that as Muppet fans, you all actually believe in honesty and decency and doing what’s right. And what’s right ought to include finding out the facts behind any news story – and finding out what stories the mainstream won’t even touch because they’re more worried about their bottom dollars than keeping a voting public accurately and fully informed at all times! Even if you “have no interest in politics,” even if you think I’m only another nutjob with a slant of my own, please, research for yourselves. Project Censored is a good place to start; Mother Jones is another (www.motherjones.com) but there are of course many others. International news often carries stories the American press won’t touch – the Bush election fraud stories are a great example of that, when the BBC and the Guardian newspaper plastered them all over that side of the pond, and paid mouthpieces here simply smirked about Gore’s “sour grapes.”
I don’t pretend to be an expert. I’m just a deeply worried citizen. Frankly, so should you all be. Fictional or not, Edison Carter is my hero. Support those who dig for the truth by at least reading their stories and seeing the evidence for yourself, even when…especially when…the official line is the equivalent of the old movie cop: “That’s it, move along, nothin’ ta see here!” Will some crack theories remain simply unsubstantiated conspiracy nutjob fare? Of course…but a savvy public will find that out for itself, not be content to be spoon-fed sheep! So shear that wool and go look for yourselves, for frog’s sake, or when the slaughter comes you’ll have no one to blame but yourselves. The media has failed.
It’s up to you.
Sources – and I urge you to go read these yourselves:
CENSORED 2011, ed. by Mickey Huff, Peter Philips, and Project Censored, 2011.
Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press, ed. by Kristina Borjesson, 2004.
Bad News, Tom Fenton, 2005.
Getting It Wrong, W. Joseph Campbell, 2010.
-----------------------------
“Bringing you the truth in a world gone Max.”
Does anyone else here recall that tagline? It’s on a magazine ad I still have, for the long-gone show Max Headroom. And while most people who recall the show at all only remember the wisecracking, Pepsi-hawking, computer-generated Max, he was actually a very minor character in the show. No…the show was all about investigative reporter Edison Carter, who fearlessly hunted down the truth week after week, braving an Orwellian, tangled government and shady, powerful megacorporations to get the facts out to the populace…the ultimate hero-journalist!
Does that scenario sound familiar in today’s world? No? D—d right it doesn’t, and we’re worse off for it.
Recently, I’ve been researching media censorship, both as background for my current fic (yes, I DO research, as should any and all writers tackling anything they don’t have intimate history with, no matter what the genre), and simply to educate myself. A number of very disturbing things have come to my attention as a result. And even though some of my book sources are a few years old now (though none more than ten) the inescapable conclusion is that we Americans are still vastly, dangerously uninformed or underinformed. Vastly and dangerously. That’s right, guys…what we don’t know has already hurt us and will continue to hurt us, and it continues simply because those in real power (follow the money, folks) know we’re all too blithely ignorant and too easily led by the nose to rise in outrage and expose them, depose them, and send them packing to someplace where state censorship is a matter of accepted fact – Dubai, maybe. Or North Korea.
For instance. Remember the uproar over Jeb Bush illegally refusing voting rights to millions of people in Florida, or the questionable voting machine “errors,” or the fact that the Bush family had financial ties to the company which supplied the actual machines? No? Gee, that story kinda vanished after 2000, didn’t it?
Remember the unresolved issues about how, exactly, Building 7 at the WTC came down...as though it had been a controlled-implosion demolition…and explosive chemical traces were present in the dust…and hundreds of engineers, architects, and demolition experts pushed for a thorough investigation which has yet to be undertaken? No? Bet you never even heard about that one. Do I think the Bushies were somehow complicit in 9/11? No…corrupt and dangerous though they are, even I don’t think they would have callously sacrificed so many just for a pretext to invade Iraq (which was being pushed for by Bush and Rumsfeld months before 9/11). Certainly, homegrown terrorists could have trained and planned and gained access to the buildings as part of a concerted plot – they infiltrated other sensitive areas, why not there? …But the fact that to this day, there has never been a thorough investigation or explanation of exactly how the buildings fell (nope, it wasn’t the burning jet fuel, guys, look into some chemistry and do the math)…the blind eye officials have turned to the whole matter…now THAT is scary. (Check out the award-winning, fact-checking, genuinely frightening articles the folks at Project Censored have put together… www.projectcensored.org )
Remember TWA Flight 800, which mysteriously exploded just off Long Island, and which was written off as a “probable malfunction” by the FBI…despite hundreds of eyewitnesses who saw something streak from the water’s surface into the sky, and the fireball in the air moments after? Despite the evidence of solid missile fuel within the plane wreckage? Despite numerous completely conflicting reports by the various Armed Forces branches as to what ships, planes, etc were where in the vicinity and whether a training exercise was going on? Good reporters lost their jobs when trying to pursue that one, and inside sources were sued and ruined. What’s worse, possible friendly fire…or a massive coverup?
What’s worst, in all these and many other examples I could cite, is that the major, mainstream media – not to mention Rupert’s wonderful little Faux News Network – wouldn’t touch any of these stories unless it was to discredit them by quoting the official line, even when the facts disproved those blithe press releases --doing no research or investigation themselves! And we bought it!
I’m sorry, do I sound angry? Yes. Yes I am. I’m furious.
I’m not Edward Murrow. I’m not even Edison Carter or the Muppet Newsman, much as I enjoy my online alter ego. I’m just a deeply appalled person who has taken the time to educate myself. I’m just someone who wishes the bulk of this nation would tear themselves away from reality-tv bread-and-circuses long enough to do the same! Were I a billionaire, right this minute, though there are many worthy causes I would be happy to support, one of them would assuredly be to establish an online newsroom and hire the hungriest, most ethical, most willing-to-dig-past-the-corporate-or-government-press-release journalists I could find… yes, I have hope there remain a few… and tell them, “Smell a story? Go for it. I will back you up.” I’d hire the smartest lawyers money could buy to counter the inevitable BS lawsuits by ConHugeCo sharks. I’d make an haven for actual news again because I strongly believe everyone has the right to know who’s making deals with whom under the table (and our noses), who’s in bed with whom financially, who actually wields the power in this country.
Is Wikileaks doing all that? Hardly. Though I love ‘em, they’re just a repository for facts. It still takes someone brave enough to risk having their editor bow to pressure from above, risk their job, risk in some cases their personal safety, not to mention their reputation and personal finances, to put those facts into context. Note I said context, not spin. We need real news, not all the skewed facts which Monsanto or Du Pont or the Rockefellers think fit to print. We need real reporters, not talking heads quoting yet another meaningless “poll” of a hundred students at some small college, presenting the results as if they were even vaguely representative of the populace of the nation as a whole!
Why am I going on this rant here? Well…because I have to hope, silly though this sounds, that as Muppet fans, you all actually believe in honesty and decency and doing what’s right. And what’s right ought to include finding out the facts behind any news story – and finding out what stories the mainstream won’t even touch because they’re more worried about their bottom dollars than keeping a voting public accurately and fully informed at all times! Even if you “have no interest in politics,” even if you think I’m only another nutjob with a slant of my own, please, research for yourselves. Project Censored is a good place to start; Mother Jones is another (www.motherjones.com) but there are of course many others. International news often carries stories the American press won’t touch – the Bush election fraud stories are a great example of that, when the BBC and the Guardian newspaper plastered them all over that side of the pond, and paid mouthpieces here simply smirked about Gore’s “sour grapes.”
I don’t pretend to be an expert. I’m just a deeply worried citizen. Frankly, so should you all be. Fictional or not, Edison Carter is my hero. Support those who dig for the truth by at least reading their stories and seeing the evidence for yourself, even when…especially when…the official line is the equivalent of the old movie cop: “That’s it, move along, nothin’ ta see here!” Will some crack theories remain simply unsubstantiated conspiracy nutjob fare? Of course…but a savvy public will find that out for itself, not be content to be spoon-fed sheep! So shear that wool and go look for yourselves, for frog’s sake, or when the slaughter comes you’ll have no one to blame but yourselves. The media has failed.
It’s up to you.
Sources – and I urge you to go read these yourselves:
CENSORED 2011, ed. by Mickey Huff, Peter Philips, and Project Censored, 2011.
Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press, ed. by Kristina Borjesson, 2004.
Bad News, Tom Fenton, 2005.
Getting It Wrong, W. Joseph Campbell, 2010.
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