About the post below

I like to write, and have even on occasion been paid for my written words. One time was by the Rocky Mountain News. I submitted a piece, it was accepted, and I was paid … the number that comes to mind is $600, but that seems a lot. Maybe more like $200. I don’t recall much about the piece (it will come to me later I suppose), but I do recall that when I read the published piece, the editor had inserted words I had not written.

He made it better, dammit. But I recalled then what my oldest daughter, trying to decide her future, had confided in me: that she could never be a journalist, because they are not allowed to think on the job (my words, hers were probably better). How did such a young person come upon such wisdom? I know what she said to be true, but at her age, not about me.

Over the years I have read and thought a lot about journalism, from Bagdikian to Chomsky ( I say I “thought” but I really just internalized their writing), and now look back on my days reading newspapers as folly and mindless pursuit of trivial nonsense. There was a power structure in newspapers*, as follows, lowest to highest:

• Copywriters, or people hired and ordered to write exactly what they are told to write, and never to think. You’ll find their work in the arts section.
• Journalists. I repeat something said to me that I do not know to be true, as follows: As far as college degrees are concerned, journalism is among the easiest to attain.
• Beat journalists. These are people who are given a slightly longer leash than ordinary ones, and told to write as they please about things like City Council, local restaurants, or the condition of local streets. Becoming a beat journalist is a promotion because it is understood that these scriveners will not deviate or think independently. They can be trusted. (Often they are called upon to moderate political debates, so defused are they.)
• Editors. When a journalist demonstrates that he/she can be trusted never to think independently, never having written anything original or insightful, they are put in charge of all of the other journalists. They become editors.
• Publishers: Well paid, they live in or near the country club, hobnob with the local power structure, and keep an eye on things, making sure that the newspaper never offends anyone local who has power.

This leads us to the famous Ben Bagdikian fable, which are his thoughts in my words:

A young journalist is hired by a newspaper, and given his share of copywriting and some beat work. He is watched carefully. He as absorbed all of the mythology about the profession in college, and imagines that his, eventually, will be an inspiring line of work. He has covered the City Council beat briefly, and quickly absorbed that there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes chicanery going on. In his spare time, he writes it up, a scorching piece exposing some powerful business people in the town. He submits it to the editor.

He is called into the editor’s office. He is told that his piece, while original and thoughtful, reflects a bad trait. He got “personally involved”. Journalists are taught to be objective in all reporting, faithfully reciting the words given by the people they cover, but never allowing a personal opinion to enter the fray. His piece will not be published, he is told. Back to his regular job.

He’s unhappy about the chastisement, and still carries the notion that he is an investigative reporter, and so, on his own time, writes another piece, this time on a different subject, an idea he had about the structure behind the local public library and how books are selected. He finds a tremendous amount of censorship going on. He thinks hard on the piece, and realizes that the editor will not publish it. He got personally involved again. He takes the piece home and files it with his own papers, thinking someday he might publish it in an independent journal.

Time passes, ideas come and go, and with each he realizes that the editor will block him from publishing. In the end, he stops writing about his ideas.

After that, he no longer has ideas. He’s now a professional journalist, and a trusted one. Someday he might become an editor, and after he retires, they might attach the title “emeritus” behind his name. Note that “emeritus” is built on “merit”, and he has none, and that is why he succeeded in journalism. He toed the line, stopped thinking. His career thereafter flourished.

That’s Ben Bagdikian. From Wikipedia:

Bagdikian was a critic of the news media.^[4] His 1983 book The Media Monopoly, warning about the growing concentration of corporate ownership of news organizations, went through several editions and influenced, among others, Noam Chomsky. He has been hailed for his ethical standards and has been described by Robert W. McChesney as one of the finest journalists of the 20th century.

I read his book. It helped form my notion that if I wanted to write, it had to be independently. I could never again allow some half-baked editor oversee my work or, God forbid, change it. For that reason I cannot be published, and can only have a forum on the nascent Internet, where fishes go to die. I became an accountant. I’ll let that last sentence stand for everything I stand for: The ability to make a nice living.

By the way, a journalist I knew in Billings, DC, who still functions as far as I can see, once wrote that a fellow journalist friend who had passed was outstanding in this sense: DC never knew his personal opinions on any subject. That, in that profession, amazingly, is a compliment.

When I write, I am a spectator. Everything above in this piece fell before my eyes as my fingers worked away. My fingers do my thinking. Hence the title of this post, “About the Post Below“, which I wrote hoping I could come up with the proper words to describe the people who are part of Just Stop Oil, the Climate Emergency Fund, and Extinction Rebellion. I wanted to say what I really felt underneath, that they are morons. But then I realized they are funded by The Families (Getty and Kennedy, as I wrote, but others as well), and so are not accidental entities. They are, like the Ku Klux Klan, intelligence fronts given us by higher-ups and with purpose. Here is the comment I made to TimR wherein my fingers finally got through to my brain:

“‘Anyone can brush up on trigonometry’ … true enough. MM claims all the Jan 6 people were military. These people who join up with Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil either cannot think for themselves and rely on the experts who are behind the movements, or are military themselves, hired to make mayhem. I just presumed that they have a pile of stupid going on, morons and blind followers. What is your bet?

Of course, these movements, hardly organic or grassroots, are financed from above. Members are few in number, but their activities always draw news media coverage. Below is a photo I spent far too much time constructing one morning:

The photo (aside from my insertion of my words on the green banner stating “We Are Morons”) is a composite, a fake. That sort of work is common with crowds, as it is easy to insert blurry faces and blend lines, making it appear to be a large group of people when it is only, really, the ten or so in the foreground. See below for another example of this Photoshop (then darkroom) trick:

Everyone behind the banner was inserted in a darkroom.

In the color photo above, those ten in front are not morons. They are hires. I think the original, before I monkeyed with it, was from Extinction Rebellion. They are paid and have signed non-disclosure agreements. If they are military (likely), the NDAs have teeth, including jail sentences for violation. This is the nature of “popular” movements – they only succeed to the degree they have support from higher up. Try carrying a banner down main street, as above, for any cause you can think of that is not an approved grievance, and see where it gets you. Maybe someone will put you on Facebook, aside the lunch they ate that day.

I’ve come a long way, but I also have to pay tribute to my oldest daughter, who made the same journey in record shorter time.

_________

*And these days, popular Internet sites that “allow” comments, Twitter (X) perhaps the lone survivor. The power structure in the Internet age, has not changed.