An Uninformed Democracy
In a failed search for news the other evening, we perchanced upon Andrea Thompson. She used to be an actress on a prime time cop show, and recently became an anchorwoman for AOL-Time-Warner's CNN's Headline News. It caused all sorts of hullabaloo from the last remaining pedantic purists. How can an actress be an anchor? Well, if they've been paying attention, the anchor chairs have been stuffed with clowns, drunks, and idiots. It seems hardly fair to reject someone for her past. For decades, people who are clueless about news and current events have been reading the highlights and the intros, often oblivious to the substance of their palaver.
Being a purist at heart but not blinded by it, I have long opined that the quality of news broadcasting in this country has edged from disgraceful to treasonous. I wonder if the networks had been doing a proper job of reporting these past twenty years if we might not have avoided the terrorism that gut-checked us last week. If the general public had been fully informed about the criminal nature of Ariel Sharon, who in 1982 slaughtered perhaps thousands of Palestinian civilian refugees in a camp in Lebanon.
Surely with our globally-celebrated sense of fair play, the American people would have demanded that our government reconsider our blank-check support for Israel building new settlements on Arab land instead of pioneering a peaceful resolution to the conflict.
If Jennings, Brokaw, Rather and the other seven-figure primpers had told us about the mercenaries and psychotics we hired to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, we might have objected at the time. Instead, taxpayer dollars went to the training and arming of these beyond-the-fringe extremists who are likely the ones responsible for the hijackings and murder.
If back with the car-bombing of the World Trade Center, we were given to understand the building fury at our tacit support of Israel, we might have had time to stop the events on September 11th. Or the car-bombing of the American military barracks in Saudi Arabia. Or after the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Africa. There would have been time to educate the American people — the proud wavers of the flag of democracy — about the growing network of well-financed lunatics who abhorred our support of the despotism that oppresses their people in Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Until a week ago, we had a chance to question why our government was propping up hateful despotic regimes. Surely if we knew how awful were the American partners-in-crime, we would have objected and forced a change in our foreign policy. If we had known.
For the players, television news may just be a high-priced, ego-stroking gig, but in a country where the government is of, by, and for the people, the stakes are considerably higher. When we are ill- and mis-informed, we make mistakes in the voting booth, electing people with policies that don't fit the facts. Our collective ignorance has brought us to the point of war. The responsibility lies principally at the feet of the obscene profit-mongers who took the journalism out of news to increase their ratings and revenues.
They're doing it again with Headline News, where the would-be alluring Andrea Thompson sits in her anchor spot, spinning her chair around like Linda Blair's head in "The Exorcist." Interviewing, introducing, and swiveling like the mistress in a three-ring circus. It is a circus. The newly revamped Headline News "features" are a half-dozen screen visuals to distract at any one time; so much happening you simply can't keep track. Not to mention the pitiful news copy with lines like, Now from the human tragedy to the economic reality."
A decade ago, we watched Peter, Tom and Dan cheerlead us through the Gulf War. Not that they shouldn't have favored the American position, but they failed to give us an objective and accurate picture of what was happening because they were too busy rah-rah'ing our military campaign. It was propaganda, spoon-fed from the military to the media, and from the media to the public. Perhaps we'll see them wearing their letter sweaters in the rubble of Kabul.
And that's SetonnoteS...I'm Tony Seton.