A Pillar is Missing

 

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

The mainstream media, both before and after corporate ownership and influence, has always had a high-minded and haughty way of looking at itself. "The Watchdog of Democracy". "History's First Draft". "The Fourth Estate". 

     "A Pillar of Democracy".

     It seems "history's first draft" doesn't seem very interested in how posterity will look upon it. In fact, it appears as if the media, whether it's print or TV journalism, doesn't see any further into the future than the next sweeps week or Pulitzer Prizes.

     So it's inevitable, or should be inevitable, that thinking people, noting the dreadful coverage of the entire 2024 election cycle, will wonder how "history's first draft" will be viewed by actual historians of the future, those who are far more invested in it than its first draft.

     I can easily see them sadly shaking their heads.

    They will walk away from their exhaustive analyses before writing the only history that really counts with a profound sense of disappointment and bewilderment at how so many people, wealthy people, those with journalism degrees, got it so wrong and gave all the benefits of the doubt and deference to one presidential candidate in this sad, strange year, and virtually none to the other.

     Obviously, 2024 is not the year the media consistently fell down on the job. 18 years ago, Norm Solomon wrote a seminal book on the subject entitled War Made Easy, a book that is, sad to say, barely clinging within the top 2,000,000 in books on Amazon (my own books, incredibly, consistently have a higher sales ranking).

     Solomon's book was primarily concerned with how the mainstream media essentially act like a stenographic service for whatever regime is in power on the Beltway when we decide it's time to go to war against one small nation or another. And the truth, or lies, that always go behind these imperial declarations be damned.

     And the reasons for the media, that lapdog of democracy, playing ball with any administration that wants to rattle sabres are manifold and never changing. The first reason is access. No one in the mainstream media would be content with a mere daily press pass. The "hard passes", as they're known in the news business, can be used day in and day out. Those are the ones worth coveting, those are the ones that guarantee you entry into the sanctum sanctorum: The White House press briefing room.

     So, if you're part of the corporate mainstream media, access is primary and key.

     And the White House, through either the Press Secretary's office, or even the Oval Office, can revoke press credentials at will without having to worry about that pesky First Amendment thingie. We discovered this when the Trump junta briefly revoked Jim Acosta's own hard pass back when he still covered the White House.

 

"Oh, no, he didn't just say that! Really, he didn't!"

Another way that the MSM are poorly serving us is their sanewashing of virtually anything that comes out of Trump's mouth. The other day, during an interview with Tucker Carlson, Trump said of Liz Cheney,

     “Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK. Let’s see how she feels about it, you know, when the guns are trained on her face. You know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building saying, ‘oh, gee, we’ll, let’s send — let’s send 10,000 troops right into the mouth of the enemy.’”

     Then, typically, it dropped into the media memory hole within a day or two. And no one in the MSM had the guts to call out this language for what it was- Trump using dog whistle language to his Second Amendment people to do something about Cheney.

     Meanwhile, at the same time, the media went into a frenzy over what Biden had allegedly said about Trump supporters being garbage. When they put the president's words into written form, they elected to delete the invisible apostrophe that should've been put after the word, "supporters". The NY Times has been especially egregious in its alleged coverage of this election, with publisher Arthur Sulzberger going on the warpath with Joe Biden when he was still at the top of the ticket because Biden refused to grant the Times an interview.

     All we've been hearing about was, "Biden's old," "Biden's slipping" then, even after he dropped out on July 21st and Trump became the oldest man to run for president, suddenly, Trump's age wasn't a factor. Biden makes gaffes once in a while (who doesn't?). But when Trump starts yelling about sharks and electric batteries, Hannibal Lecter and Arnold Palmer's penis, they harrumph and move on.

     If the mainstream media were doing their job, they'd remind the American people that Trump is not normal and nothing about the Republican side of the ticket is normal. That would not be biased, it would be decidedly objective and non-biased because some things, like a presidential candidate's descent into obvious dementia, is objective and self-evident.

"Only we can read the tea leaves, so tune in!"

Another thing they do every four years is to give the American news consumer the added false impression that any presidential race is going to be a neck and neck contest so you don't want to miss our coverage on election night!

     A lot of presidential elections are blowouts. But tell that to TV networks who really don't toss the bones. Because they want you tuning in to their networks and channels on Election Night. They did the same thing in 1972 when Nixon was well on his way to kicking George McGovern's ass back to the Stone Age. Nixon took 520 of 538 electoral votes and won 49 of 50 states (He couldn't take Massachusetts, which will forever remain a point of pride with me).

     It was the most lopsided (and most inexplicable) landslide in US history. Everyone knew how it would shake out and yet the networks implored us to tune in, pretending it was a presidential election and not the political slaughter it was.

     They did it again in 1984, when Reagan was about to win 525 electoral votes to Walter Mondale's 13 (he carried just his home state of Minnesota and DC) in what is still the most one-sided presidential election of all time.

     This is all in the name of ad buys and Nielsen ratings. They sacrifice actual analysis and playing fair with the American voter so they can bloat their bottom line and richly compensate their top executives and shareholders. After all, who wants to tune in to election results that the networks had already decided was a foregone conclusion?

     This is exacerbated by the media parroting the results of polls that falsely show results one way or the other, especially if they conclude that a presidential election is tighter than it actually is. Remember, those same pollsters told us as recently on Election Day 2016 that Hillary had it in the bag. It used to be that polls got more accurate the closer it got to Election Day but the 2016 election defenestrated that.

Coda

The only conclusion that a thinking and discriminating person can make is that the mainstream media are not very invested in playing fair with the American people. To them, there are much bigger prizes at stake, like ratings and ad buys from well-financed parties and PACS. They will join in the drumbeat to war as they had in 2002-03 when Bush when rattling his sabre against Iraq over non-existent weapons of mass destruction and connections to 9/11.

    The media's complicity in that debacle was shameless and bordered on the criminal. Then CBS decided to play the moralist when it axed 60 Minutes II over a technicality regarding Bush's lack of war service during Vietnam while endlessly amplifying the blatant lies parroted by the Swiftboat Veterans For Truth regarding John Kerry's honorable wartime service during that same war.

     The media beat its war drums during the '64 election cycle when the Johnson administration, lacking any evidence, accused the North Vietnamese of attacking our ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, thereby "justifying" escalating bombing raids in North Vietnam that killed countless villagers.

     And they do what they do all in the name of access, power, money and ratings. And when you stack the truth up against powerful motivators like that, the truth is the proverbial idiot who brings a knife to a gunfight.

     Another way that the MSM are complicit in this institutionalized dishonesty are large national papers deliberately withholding endorsing one candidate or another (But, really, refusing to endorse Kamala Harris.). It started with Jeff Bezos' Washington Post that, over a half century ago, took down a corrupt presidential administration. Bezos had dictated from the shadows that the editorial staff was not to endorse either candidate. Soon, the LA Times and their own billionaire owner issued the same edict and, within days, USA Today followed suit.

     USA Today's own fecklessness, which stands in stark contrast to its stance just four years ago when it endorsed Biden, is especially egregious because USA Today isn't just the fourth largest newspaper in the nation but the flagship operation of over 200 media outlets in the Gannett media empire. And then there's The Arizona Republic, the Detroit Free Press, and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, as well as the Palm Beach Post, all owned by Gannet.

     Obviously, this dearth of endorsements is manifold- They don't want to incur the wrath of a clearly insane man who really has no power outside of a disorganized mob. Or it could be the billionaire oligarchs who own these media outlets are doing their best to make sure Trump gets back in the White House.

     Now, they could hide behind journalistic ethics and pretend they're strenuously remaining unbiased in these highly polarized times. But newspapers have been endorsing candidates since the 18th century, so that pose is a nonstarter. They know exactly how influential they are and what they don't say is often as powerful, if not moreso, than what they say. So, while they may pretend to be non-biased, these billionaire media-shaping scum are keeping their grubby fingers crossed behind their backs.

     And, as possession is nine tenths of the law, so perception is nine tenths of reality.