[Dialogue] A Passionate Lament

[jim rippey]

>From Jim Rippey, Bellevue, NE

Below are excerpts from a current article on Alternet. It dramatizes how dangerously close we have come to letting powerful special interests deprive us of a vigorous, free press. The wise men who drafted our constitution knew that power inevitably corrupts. That's why they carefully crafted a system of checks and balances in hopes that evil people grasping power in one branch of government could be held in check by the powerful in others sectors

And those founders were smart enough to enshrine a free press, outside of government, as another of our essential checks and balances. They understood that tyrants and dictators always move to eliminate press freedom and freedom of speech. Today, alas, the tyranny is far more subtle. And like the hungry Biblical Esau, we trade our birthright for a mess of pottage. It's no accident that today's Federal Communications Commission has allowed rich and powerful business interests to buy major tv networks and newspaper chains, then allow them swallow up competitors and thereby control more and more sources of "news." 

I feel passionate about this. I spent 13 years as a newspaper reporter or editor and I've continued to be a writer. Today the people who control our government and the news outlets are very clever. Both political parties are captives of powerful lobbies. These interests can afford to employ the most skillful propagandists. They conduct focus groups to find out which of our buttons they need to press to manage our opinions and control our responses. 

It's no accident that most Americans are deeply in debt as a result of our consumerist saturated media. And it's no accident that as many as 25 percent of Americans actually believe that we found Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and that we are now safer. 

For the moment, at least, Katrina's devastation has raised doubts about just how safe we really are, and how our reliable the mainstream media is. The following article excerpts say it well

----------------------

Media Hurricane, By Russ Baker, TomPaine.com (via alertnet) 0907-05

The magnitude of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and the media's astonished--and astonishingly vigorous-- response puts in perspective how hard it has generally become, in this country, to deliver the unadorned, unapologetic truth. Indeed, for at least as long as George Bush has been in office, the great unspoken challenge for mainstream journalists has been to do one's job while keeping one's job.

.... When Fox reporters are the most emphatically critical of the Bush administration, you know something is going on. Had Roger Ailes decided that it was simply impossible to ride out this storm with Bush? What of the defections of The New York Times' conservative columnist David Brooks and others in recent days? .... maybe, maybe, even they have finally had enough.

Another remarkable breakthrough came Sunday, on Meet the Press , Tim Russert freshened his typical beltway bonhomie mix with a "real" person, Jefferson Parish President (i.e., county manager) Aaron Broussard. His guest, who, by the way, is white, delivered a startlingly blunt indictment of the federal response to the death and destruction facing the largely poor, black population that had been unable to get out [VIDEO]. 

.... BROUSSARD: [T]he aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history. ...Why did it happen? Who needs to be fired? .... every single day (we were told) "The cavalry's coming," on a federal level, "The cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming, the cavalry's coming." I have just begun to hear the hoofs of the cavalry. The cavalry's still not here yet, but I've begun to hear the hoofs, and we're almost a week out. 

...We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. ...we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. 

...The guy who runs...emergency management...His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home and every day she called him and said, "Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?" And he said, "Yeah, Mama, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday." And she drowned Friday night. [Broussard was sobbing at this point] ... Nobody's coming to get us. Nobody's coming to get us. The secretary has promised. Everybody's promised. They've had press conferences. I'm sick of the press conferences. For God sakes, shut up and send us somebody. 

RUSSERT: Just take a pause, Mr. [Broussard]. While you gather yourself in your very emotional times, I understand, let me go to Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi....

And there we were, back in the bad old days. Russert had no tasteful way to note that Barbour had been GOP chairman in the mid-90s, a key strategist and fundraiser for the transformation of American government into a one-party state for the interests of the rich, and the dismantlement of the safety net, that, among other things, is supposed to protect all Americans from the most extreme ravages of natural disaster and daily life alike. Or to ask hard questions about Barbour's avid support for Bush's Iraqi war, and its unusual overseas deployment of National Guard units that properly should have been in place in the Gulf region to provide relief and order in case of emergency. It's hard to point this out when you work for NBC, a unit of General Electric, a huge defense contractor that has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of Bush administration priorities and policy.

Fixing journalism's deep structural deficiencies will take more than the Labor Day Revolt.... it's not the administration's spin with which we need to concern ourselves. It is the media's long, long sleep in the face of mounting evidence that Bush and his team are not only ideologues seriously out of touch with the American public but grievously incompetent managers of the nation's commitments, resources and people. As we take stock of the true costs of the failures surrounding Katrina, journalists should note their own role as collaborators. We, too, have been complicit in this.

--Russ Baker is a freelance journalist and essayist. His web site is www.russbaker.com.

(The full article is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/25158/)