A Torch of Truth Still Burns Here and There
JIM KLOBUCHAR
The Old Gray Lady of newspapering, the New York Times, got caught up in a church discussion on the fate of humanity not far from the prairie Sunday. For anybody interested in the fate of the embattled lady, she emerged with reasonable dignity.
The encounter came after a church forum on the fringes of Minneapolis, where a speaker had finished probing the cult of power, theft, fraud and concealment now running the American government. An elderly man approached him after the bean soup and sweetbread.
"They're getting away with it," the old man said. "When I was young they'd say these guys were pulling a snow job. They win elections with it. How do they get so many people to buy it?"
Since I was the speaker, I was more or less obligated to produce an answer for the parishioner.
I tried to identify the obvious complicitors, beginning with monopoly control of the government. With that in place, the shrewd exploitation of fear follows easily, greased by disinformation. Handled right and relentlessly, it shuts the citizens' eyes to the folly and bloodshed of unprovoked war and the buildup of unchecked corruption in Washington. To this is added the "Yea Bretheren" conscription of God to camouflage criminal behavior. And finally the cult of power intimidates or embeds enough of the mainstream media to make black look like white.
Because I had spent 45 years employed daily in the mainstream media, the man wanted to know if there is anybody there with enough guts and principle to tell it right or to dig often enough so that we at least have a glimpse of the spreading fraud.
I said there was.
You aren't going to see it very much longer on television, if at all. CNN is now trying to transform itself into Fox Junior to retrieve some of its ratings. The broadcast networks are corporately owned and the newsrooms worry about not offending their paymasters.
What then, he said.
I told him there were newspapers in America that were still trying hard to cover what is really the biggest news of this young century -- the deliberate, predatory attempt to rip genuine democracy and public interest out of this nation's gut and soul and to create a ruling class corporately controlled and the guardian of hereditary wealth. The symptoms include but are not limited to Tom DeLay's illegal redistricting schemes and Jack Abramoff"s multi-million dollar payoffs. These that have dirtied government so badly that the cream of the conservative commentators, George Will, David Brooks and others have been disgusted almost badly enough to concede what is even worse: The White House complicity in all of this.
The old man asked who could be trusted today in the media. I began with the Times but I said there were other newspapers that still tried to do an honest job despite some hangdog mea culpas for an allegedly sin-stained liberal past. There are editorial writers, columnists and political reporters on this territory's own newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, who still follow the old J-school's commandments of following the truth where it leads. There are others, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and a few others, some smaller, who don't look hopelessly intimidated. Occasionally you can add the big national news weeklies.
And Monday morning, the Old Gray Lady, the New York Times, was still doggedly at it. Its play story headlined: "As Profits Soar, Companies Pay U.S. Less for Gas Rights."
Here is a newspaper that has been bruised by the embarrassments of Jason Blair and Judith Miller so much that it devotes vast stores of energy to examining its professional morality in public every week. It was nonetheless capable of spending three months to document a pattern of stealthy enrichment by energy companies that extract oil and gas from public lands and now exploit fuzzy rules and laws that they themselves helped create in secret government hearings. The result was a raid on the U.S. treasury, ripping off the American taxpayers to the tune of 700 million dollars.
All of this, of course, was aided and abetted by the cult of power running the government.
Maybe it ought to be examined by George Bush's white-collared cheerleaders in church next Sunday.
The Old Gray Lady of newspapering, the New York Times, got caught up in a church discussion on the fate of humanity not far from the prairie Sunday. For anybody interested in the fate of the embattled lady, she emerged with reasonable dignity.
The encounter came after a church forum on the fringes of Minneapolis, where a speaker had finished probing the cult of power, theft, fraud and concealment now running the American government. An elderly man approached him after the bean soup and sweetbread.
"They're getting away with it," the old man said. "When I was young they'd say these guys were pulling a snow job. They win elections with it. How do they get so many people to buy it?"
Since I was the speaker, I was more or less obligated to produce an answer for the parishioner.
I tried to identify the obvious complicitors, beginning with monopoly control of the government. With that in place, the shrewd exploitation of fear follows easily, greased by disinformation. Handled right and relentlessly, it shuts the citizens' eyes to the folly and bloodshed of unprovoked war and the buildup of unchecked corruption in Washington. To this is added the "Yea Bretheren" conscription of God to camouflage criminal behavior. And finally the cult of power intimidates or embeds enough of the mainstream media to make black look like white.
Because I had spent 45 years employed daily in the mainstream media, the man wanted to know if there is anybody there with enough guts and principle to tell it right or to dig often enough so that we at least have a glimpse of the spreading fraud.
I said there was.
You aren't going to see it very much longer on television, if at all. CNN is now trying to transform itself into Fox Junior to retrieve some of its ratings. The broadcast networks are corporately owned and the newsrooms worry about not offending their paymasters.
What then, he said.
I told him there were newspapers in America that were still trying hard to cover what is really the biggest news of this young century -- the deliberate, predatory attempt to rip genuine democracy and public interest out of this nation's gut and soul and to create a ruling class corporately controlled and the guardian of hereditary wealth. The symptoms include but are not limited to Tom DeLay's illegal redistricting schemes and Jack Abramoff"s multi-million dollar payoffs. These that have dirtied government so badly that the cream of the conservative commentators, George Will, David Brooks and others have been disgusted almost badly enough to concede what is even worse: The White House complicity in all of this.
The old man asked who could be trusted today in the media. I began with the Times but I said there were other newspapers that still tried to do an honest job despite some hangdog mea culpas for an allegedly sin-stained liberal past. There are editorial writers, columnists and political reporters on this territory's own newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, who still follow the old J-school's commandments of following the truth where it leads. There are others, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and a few others, some smaller, who don't look hopelessly intimidated. Occasionally you can add the big national news weeklies.
And Monday morning, the Old Gray Lady, the New York Times, was still doggedly at it. Its play story headlined: "As Profits Soar, Companies Pay U.S. Less for Gas Rights."
Here is a newspaper that has been bruised by the embarrassments of Jason Blair and Judith Miller so much that it devotes vast stores of energy to examining its professional morality in public every week. It was nonetheless capable of spending three months to document a pattern of stealthy enrichment by energy companies that extract oil and gas from public lands and now exploit fuzzy rules and laws that they themselves helped create in secret government hearings. The result was a raid on the U.S. treasury, ripping off the American taxpayers to the tune of 700 million dollars.
All of this, of course, was aided and abetted by the cult of power running the government.
Maybe it ought to be examined by George Bush's white-collared cheerleaders in church next Sunday.
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