Our Media, and Government

"The "big picture" economic news gets buried under this trivia. Perhaps the best example of a "big picture" problem is the situation with derivatives markets, considered by many to be the junk bonds of the 1990s. Even as Congress continues to pick billions out of taxpayers' pockets over the savings and loan debacle, they haven't yet shown the stomach to confront Wall Street on the issue of regulating derivatives. This market is massive in size; on August 25, 1994 the Wall Street Journal estimated the total "notional" value of outstanding derivatives at $35 trillion, up from about $4 trillion in 1989. This figure of $35 trillion is "equal to nearly three-quarters of all the world's stocks, bonds, money-market securities and currencies put together." Moreover, this market is highly leveraged and extremely volatile -- big bets are made with little or no money down. It's a prescription for disaster; a huge global Ponzi scheme."

-The Decline of American Journalism
by Daniel Brandt
From NameBase NewsLine, No. 9, April-June 1995

So, clearly I have a few things that I'd like to point out here for the sake of my constitutional sanity. First off, I came across this article by chance. As you can see, it is dated to 1995, and he accurately predicts the economic recession that inevitably hit us in 2008 as a result of these derivatives policies. I myself remember a discussion with my father in the summer of 2007, in which he spoke about the coming crisis due to this issue. Everybody knew about it. The Media, clearly failed to correct their faulty reporting in a timely manner.


Yet when I searched for articles regarding the decline of our media, I expected to find something regarding a more recent incident that struck me as ominous. Some of you might remember that a few weeks ago (I'm writing on August 8, 2010) there was a new sensational, important, groundbreaking story. It was about RACISM and a BLACK WOMAN and GOVERNMENT and POOR WHITE FARMERS. Yeah right.

So here's the real skinny, some of which I'm paraphrasing from the wiki if you want to check it out: Somebody, whose identity is unimportant, submitted a video clip to the internet media site Breitbart.com, which is run by Andrew Breitbart. Shortly after the NAACP expressed concerns over racism in the tea-party movement, Breitbart published the clips with accompanying captioning that was misleading. The video was of a speech being given by Shirley Sherrod, an employee of the USDA and a black woman, at an NAACP fundraising event. The clip purports to show her making racist comments.

The american television news media was all over it. It was one of those stories, like Anna Nicole Smith, or Michael Jackson, or a particularly brutal crime, or whatever... ...they upsold the shit out of this story. They were devoting all this airtime to making wild guesses about such weighty issues as the state of racial relations in the United States, bringing in talking heads to weave different interpretations and predictions of great import out of these few moments of video, which they analyzed nearly syllable by syllable.

But there were simple, basic questions that remained unanswered in their coverage. Most glaringly, what was the full context of these remarks? The television played minute soundbites, teasing the audience with promises of more soundbites, and then commercials. Then another soundbite to bring us back into the mood of outrage, and some more talking heads. Finally, after I almost gave up, the television news media deigned to give me a single uninterrupted viewing of the clip. I watched it. It was obvious from the pacing and intonation of the woman's speech-- there was more relevant material immediately following the end of the clip. She had been telling a story, and she had not used that "and that's the moral of the story" voice yet. She had made some comments regarding her feelings and perceptions and race, but they were in the context of a story, and it seemed as if she was just about to tell us the moral when the clip ended.

Well, it turns out this gets bigger. As a result of all this media hubbub, the NAACP issue a public condemnation, and this woman's boss forces her to pull over to the side of the road and submit her resignation. The controversy continues.

Wait a minute! It turns out that her remarks were taken out of context! The film of the whole speech shows that her tale was one with a positive moral conclusion. It turns out that she has greatly contributed through case law to civil rights in this country, and that she has had first hand experience of discrimination-- her father was lynched when she was young. And it turns out that the story she was telling involved the white farmer with whom she'd made this positive contribution to civil rights and race relations. Oh.

So, the government offered her a job back, and the NAACP issued a correction, and the media dropped the whole hot potato, dusted their shoulders very casually, and moved on.

Wait. What about what just happened? Didn't you all completely fail in your journalistic duties? How could you term what you just did as anything other than wild speculation? Or gossip even? Was there no effort to check facts before devoting airtime to this story? Did nobody even think to look up the whole video before convicting and condemning this woman as a racist? That's no small accusation. The press, the ancestor and descendant of the freedom of speech, inquiry, and truth-- one of the necessary components of our republic-- has been failing and continues to fail us. It's nothing more than reality television, and I mean that in the most demeaning, scripted, adolescent way possible.

But at least I can see why they got there. Money. It pays to upsell this clip, and really wrench all possible value out of it. You don't have to fund the real reporting, the issue is already a hot potato, it's about racism, and it comes with a juicy government employee angle. 'That's gotta be milkable,' they must have thought. And their right. They probably saved money by getting away with not running down real issues for a day or two, or a week, or for longer.

But they are owned by corporations. The news media is a for-profit enterprise. I can see how that came about, and then rightly lambast the media for their declining ethics, presumably at every level from the lowly anchorperson who reports obviously biased and slanted material to the top editors and executives who so obviously set the ideological agenda towards maximum profit. I have a right to be angry and dissatisfied as a customer, and so I take my business elsewhere, where I am not so clearly lied to. Fine, I prefer my news online anyhow.

BUT THE GOVERNMENT?
Am I to believe that a person was fired on a reflex? That our body public, empowered to protect our liberty, not only carried out penalizing actions against a person based on an assumption of guilt, but didn't even bother to check the relevant facts before it did so? Is this truly what I should believe? Am I to believe that in a government system where this happens, that this is the only time it's happened? That this sort of irrational action is an anomaly?

But there you have it. Our government, caught on polaroid: knee jerk reaction to partisan accusations, directly into own crotch. Is this really the institution that we trust to manage such huge sums of OUR money on foreign adventures, and subsidies (which always profit the rich), and regulation of financial markets that-- clearly-- worked so well that when it failed spectacularly to avert disaster, it became clear we needed more of it.

We all need to be more consciously aware of the fact that our government is corrupt. It's bought. A lot of it is legal, but that doesn't make it right. American politicians are by and large in on the graft, republicans and democrats alike. But the government is not a corporation. They are supposed to represent you. Would you accept a bribe in your job now? What if you knew that bribe had consequences, negative ones? That's what politicians are doing. Their lack of ethics is undermining our system, and when it comes to a body that draws its power from us, I say we demand better.

I therefore advocate that everybody, citizen or not, read the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States (don't forget the ammendments). It's got some great political philosophy, an explanation of how our government should work and why, some historical bloopers, and it is the law of the land that guarantees to recognize your innate rights. A good read all around, and it's interesting to delve into deeper. Highly recommended. Now be a politically active citizen. Vote. Vote intelligently. Know your candidates and know the issues. Are candidates and government officials acting in accordance to the oaths they swore, or to ethics? Or are they acting according to some plan that looks likely to be primarily motivated by self interest? I submit that you can make your discontent known to your representatives and to your fellow mankind. Advocate for justice and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The american republic functions on compromise, which can be a great thing. But compromising your ethics is never a good thing.

Join me in demanding more from the government established by, of, and for the people.