Our Coin Operated Media

 

To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. . . Edward R. Murrow

I grow increasingly disgusted with the corporate-owned, open sewer that was once our free press.  Their collusion by omission, their refusal to tell both sides of the story, their insistence upon limited vision via limited scope appalls me.   For instance, in the current mess in the Middle East the American news viewing public has been consistently treated to the world according to the pro-Israeli lobby while the voices of the pro-Palestinian camp are conspicuously ignored.  The ever present chant “Israel has a right to defend herself,” rattles through the ether like the chains of Jacob Marley in Dickens’ famous Christmas Carol.  However, what of the settlements that Israel persists in extending into the occupied territory of the Palestinian people in violation of international law – nothing, silence, they aren’t relevant enough to mentioned.  Apparently, Israel has a monopoly on the right of self defense. 

Don’t get me wrong, Hamas is an abomination.  It is a terrorist organization that lends the stain of a terrorist state to the hopes and dreams of the Palestinians.  On the other hand, to whom do they turn for fair treatment?  Certainly not us, or the UN or the EU or Ralph Nader.  So the terrorists move in and we are astounded at the bad judgment of the Palestinian electorate.  We lead the world in being astounded at the ramifications of crises of our own making. 

The attack on our Consulate in Benghazi is yet another example of the media playing fast and loose with critical information.  While the Republicans line up in pairs chains and clusters like bacteria to pillory the Obama Administration and Ambassador Rice for failure to protect our diplomats and the alleged reporting of misleading information concerning that attack to cover negligence, these same partisan Republicans conveniently forget that earlier this year their House cut billions from the State Department’s budget some of which was earmarked for protection of our embassies, consulates and missions.  The Viagra brothers McCain and Graham, always happy to rob State to pay Defense and keep George Carlin’s bigger dick theory of diplomacy alive, never objecting to the action taken by their colleagues in the lower chamber are suddenly prostrate with grief at the loss of our diplomats in Libya.  The media allows this circus to go forward, never calling any of them out no matter how vicious their insinuations or accusations. 

In much the same way the press allowed Republican pundits and assorted hatchet people to refer repeatedly to Obama as a failed president during the election.  The same press did not make a point of reporting on the organized Republican obstructionism – conceived of on the night of Mr. Obama’s inauguration – that was responsible for the failure of the president’s first term agenda where it did fail, until well into the campaign.   Now, many of these obstructionist Right-wingers who were driven by an irrational hatred of this president are counting on a similar pass from the media as they try to reinvent themselves as reasonable leaders for the benefit of an electorate that kicked their buts earlier this month. 

This puts me in mind of the old story about the lunatic inside the asylum gate who notices a car stopped outside.  The lunatic informs the car’s driver that he has a flat tire to which the driver responds with an astonished look.  Prompting the lunatic to announce, “I am in here for being crazy not stupid.”  Let that be a lesson to us all.  Just because someone is capable of presenting themselves intelligently and rationally in one instance does not make them sane under the surface no matter what the corporate whoring, fact hiding media of limited perception and short memory would have us believe.