Steve made a bold prediction a short while back, saying that media reports of released Guantanamo prisoners being behind the curious case of the explosive Christmas Day unperpants were likely “bullshit.” (Here, and here). Now Dan Froomkin, a serious man with a critical eye (and therefore marginalized by the Washington Post), says the same thing. (“Media being fooled over and over again“, Huffington Post.)
First, let’s deal with absurdity. Meet me on camera three.
[Pssst! Folks, there’s no danger! There’s no “Al Qaeda”, just a ragtag group of dissidents unable to pull off meaningful revenge for the things that are happening to them. Even the name itself, “Al Qaeda,” is an American invention. They take these isolated incidents of attempted revenge, and make it out to be a huge conspiracy with evil dark-skinned bearded people wanting to blow up our darling blond children.
Remember Sean Connery as Jim Malone in the Untouchables?
They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. *That’s* the *Chicago* way! And that’s how you get Capone.
It could be rewritten for the current script:
We drop a bomb, they set a shoe on fire. We send a million of them to the morgue, they set their underpants on fire. *That’s* the *Al Qaeda* way. And that’s how you get the Great Satan.
Please, Americans, get a grip. These people fight back now and then, but look at where they come from! It’s always place that we are attacking and/or occupying. Just sayin’.]
Now, about the American media and its tendency to uncritically repeat Pentagon lies and then fail to follow up when the truth becomes available: It’s not a recent phenomenon. It transcends wars, decades and centuries. The press, owned by the Warbucks corporations that finance the politicians as well, is fulfilling a function: it is advancing the story line. It’s a play put on to keep us in fear and off balance, never giving us time to reflect on what is really happening.
In the Italian loafer world of the media hierarchy, this is probably understood, though these people are most likely focused on earnings per share. They are not about journalism. But in the lower levels, where our eyes meet theirs, we are dealing with the clueless. That’s why they have a job, these pretty people who give us our news, while the Washington Post set Dan Froomkin adrift.
It’s propaganda. It’s the air we breathe. These gray little men and women are unimaginative cogs in the big machine. These supposed “journalists” are dreary wretches. They uncritically repeat Pentagon lies because they have no souls.
At least the people at the Pentagon who write the lies have to come up with fresh ideas, but those whose job it is to repeat these lies and never think critically have no life force within them. They are nothing.
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Jim – he’s worse than dead. His brain is gone!
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PS: I pass on an observation by one Thom Hartmann, a radio host and run-on talker. He’s an introvert. He says that most radio hosts are that way. On the other hand, he says most TV personalities are extroverts. I tend to prefer introverts, as they tend to be a little more thoughtful, taking gratification from internal resources, where the exxies have to get it from outside sources.
I am often harshly critical of the profession of journalism, but mostly when I write that stuff I am thinking about the pretty TV people who are the primary source of news for the American public.
Piece of Mindful 
The People believed the Media was “theirs” and would be their eyes and ears on the despots of government.
The People do not know the Media was always a double-agent.
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What’s funny here is the extent to which media hatred is the cornerstone of Palinism. As wrong about the role the media plays as BF’s “People.”
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The phenomenon of uncritical repetition of Pentagon lies is real, and never so prevalent as in the leadup to the Iraq invasion. Journalism ceased in November of 2002. I do not imagine this – it has been objectively quantified by people like Michael Massing in NY Review of Books. That’s just a small part of the writing on this subject, but the objective view is this: In the leadup to the invasion of Iraq, the American news media did not fulfill a journalistic role, but rather took on a propagandist one. It might be either by intent or stupidity – I maintain that it is the former at the higher levels of those corporations.
The Froomkin dismissal is quite real. I have written volumes here on media failures. I have cited the reasons as being institutional, and given the reasons for the lack of integrity of media personnel as being a selection process that favors mediocrity, as an honest journalist naturally comes to blows with both private and state power. I point to ownership and advertising and inherent flaws in the news gathering system. The media is non-partisan but heavily tilted towards service of power.
And you say it’s equivalent to the paranoid rantings of the Palin crowd. Get real. The phenomenon of repetition of Pentagon lies and failure to fix them later is real, and has been going on since my youth and long before. Forget Palin – explain that one tiny but real phenomenon.
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You misunderstand me. BF says that people are mistaken in how they think the media works. I agree, and point out that the other side is equally mistaken. They think the media is unduly critical of the Pentagon line.
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I would beg to differ, and ask that you look for objective studies of the matter. The only one I have ever seen that actually tried to quantify media bias was
Manufacturing Consent
by Chomsky/Herman, circa 1988, and it found a heavy pro-Pentagon bias, and quantified it. They actually counted the newspaper articles and editorials and number of mentions of various events. At that tiem, during Timor and Nicaragua the press was nearly unanimous in support of the Pentagon.
Michael Massing says pretty much the same thing in his New York Review analysis of press behavior leading up to the Iraq invasion.
Don’t do he said/she said on me. Don’t do mere perceptions either – the right wing consciously hawks a media bias line as a means of disciplining the media and keeping it in check.
Quantify.
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Journalism requires investigation. Our pop media does not investigate when it might lead to a change in the status quo. Will we ever hear about what really happened on 9/11, and who the real anthrax killers are, just to name a couple potential game-changers? Not from the spin-doctors now polluting most print and public airwaves, with the usual several exceptions.
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