Will the Media Grow a Pair?

The Attorney General has a perpetual smirk that makes it look as if he is having a hard time keeping a straight face. This must have been particularly challenging when he announced the thwarting of the Miami “terror plot”. The Daily Show, which I still consider the best news program on TV, put the plot into perspective when Jon Stewart remarked that a full ground war against the US, the suspects’ alleged objective, would require at least as many people as a softball team.

I wish that Americans could reexamine earlier “terror plots” the government claims to have foiled with the same degree of healthy skepticism. The press conference where the AG made the announcement about the “Miami Seven” was remarkable, in my view, because the reporters were so clearly and openly skeptical. It is refreshing to see journalists doing their job for a change.

What will the recent attacks on the media bring? Will they silence further an already near impotent media, or will journalists begin to recognize that being lapdogs of the government is no way for them to prosper? As I see it, journalists must not allow themselves to be intimidated. If they do, they may never recover the ability to report freely. Journalists should go even more on the offensive and reveal the corruption of the government in all its hideous detail. They should deny the legitimacy of the current illegitimate attacks on the press and expose every government shill that poses as a journalist.

It is also time that the American people received a refresher course in what constitutes journalism and news, as opposed to entertainment or punditry. Even the line between punditry and entertainment needs to be highlighted. Keith Olbermann has taken to referring to one famous “pundit” as “Comedian Rush Limbaugh”, and I reckon that distinguishing clowns from real journalists and editorialists is a helpful exercise. Bill O’Reilly is a clown; Pat Buchanan is an actual pundit. Fox News and the National Enquirer are entertainment for the semiliterate; the BBC and the Atlantic Monthly are news outlets. CNN is somewhere in between. The cable news shows where “both sides of the story” are encouraged to hash it out in sound bites delivered by a stable of hacks are not journalism; they are prolefeed.

What might it take to get the average American schmendrick to consume real news instead of propaganda? I suggest that it could be read to them by attractive naked people.