As Jack Nicholson famously exclaimed in his iconic role as Colonel Jessup in A Few Good Men, "You can't handle the truth."
Turns out the Powers that Be have believed we can't handle the truth for a long, long time. From the Kennedy assassination and Oswald's magic bullet to the atrocities of Vietnam, to the pretenses for this immoral war on Iraq, we've been fed a bill of goods provided us by those in charge - to keep us happily ignorant, and to keep their agendas churning away smoothly. We've even got our own bought-and-paid for stenographer's corps comfortably ensconsced to help our leaders "catapult the propaganda."
So what happens to those who still believe in the core principles of journalism? The ones who believe the public should get the facts - no matter how shocking - and be able to decide for themselves? Today, we learned three more have been murdered. One more, on a less crucial scale, has been fired. So what is this "war" really about - from our own shores to the far reaches of Russia, to Africa, to Europe?
More below...
We progressives have been seeing this coming for a long time. I doubt there's a single regular reader of this blog who actually believed there was a "left wing media elite" after the 2000 stolen election. Many like myself who work in the media (though not the journalism end) have been panicking over the vertical integration of information and content providers for over a decade now. The writing on the wall seemed amazingly simple - when a handful of corporations and their powerful (establishment elite) boards control all the information this nation - and in fact, the world - is getting, that information is going to be filtered through a sieve that is powerfully favorable to the parent companies and their benefactors. That has been a "Duh" moment for many of us for a long time, because we started feeling the affects of it back in the early to mid 90's. Unfortunately, our worst nightmares have now become reality.
Today, a confluence of news items brings this reality home. First, on the "lighter side" (if you can call it that) of big media pressure tactics:
http://www.nytimes.com/....
"On Tuesday, Joe Maguire, one of two editors in charge of markets coverage at Reuters, handed his bosses the galleys of his new book, "Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter." On Wednesday, Mr. Maguire discovered he would have plenty of free time to promote his book, which comes out this week. Neither side in this dispute would say that he was fired.
Mr. Maguire, who joined Reuters in April, said the book "looks at Ann Coulter's arguments, and deconstructs them to show how misguided they can be."
He added: "When the political discourse has dropped to the unfathomable levels it has, someone has to say this is wrong."
He said he was unable to interview Ms. Coulter for the book, or even get her to return e-mail or phone messages left through her publicist."
Reuters employees and management were told they were "Not allowed to ask why" Maguire was fired. An inside source at Reuters reported that about 20 of Maguire's co-workers at the markets desk "took a group coffee break" in solidarity on the day of his ouster.
"Mr. Maguire's publisher, the William Morrow imprint of HarperCollins, said, "It would be very disappointing if Joe Maguire's dismissal from Reuters had anything to do with him authoring, `Brainless,' " which it described as a "compelling and witty book."
Yet Reuters, the esteemed news service so many of us revere and trust - or rather, are forced by media integration to trust - had only this to say about the dismissal:
"...a company statement pointed to Reuters' principles of "integrity, independence and freedom from bias."
After this latest "light artillery attack" on journalists comes this piece of stunning news. The heavy guns come out.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/....
"She was a fearless critic of President Putin and chronicler of atrocities in Russia's long war with its breakaway republic of Chechnya. One of those concerns may have cost Anna Politkovskaya her life.
The most famous investigative journalist in Russia was shot dead by an assassin on Saturday, Mr Putin's 54th birthday, as she stepped from the lift of her Moscow apartment building to collect shopping from her car. The murder bore the hallmarks of a contract killing.
Ms Politkovskaya is the twelfth journalist to die in a contract-style killing since Mr Putin came to power."
Everyone from the your average "Boris and Natasha" on the street to Michael Gorbachev is calling this "the death of free press in Russia." Ironically, Politkovskaya was working on an expose of torture in Chechnya. Will her death put fresh ideas in the heads of our own proto-fascist leaders as they work on their new Halliburton-made "secret prison" for enemy combatants at an "undisclosed location" here in the USA?
"Much of the speculation is focused on Ramzan Kadyrov, the Prime Minister of Chechnya. Mr Kadyrov became 30 on Thursday, making him eligible to become the President of the republic. That day, Ms Politkovskaya told the US-run Radio Liberty that she intended to appear as a witness in a torture and kidnap case that would implicate him. It was her "dream" to see him in the dock, she said."
Ironically, today in Paris, the reality of journalist murders and silencing around the world was brought home - the same day two journalists in Afghanistan and Politkovskaya in Russia were silenced forever.
http://www.iht.com/....
"PARIS As the first European memorial to journalists killed while doing their jobs was being inaugurated Saturday, word trickled in: Three journalists had been shot to death in Afghanistan and Russia.
The killings resonated as press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders and the town of Bayeux in northwest France unveiled a memorial to some 2,000 journalists and other news media workers killed in the line of duty around the world since World War II.
"This morning we had tears in our eyes hearing the accounts of family members of those journalists" honored in Bayeux, said Robert Menard, president of Reporters Without Borders, "and then suddenly -- this."
"We were expecting anything but this today ... three at once. You can imagine how people responded here," he said by telephone. "It shows how much such killings are everyday news." Fifty-six journalists have been killed this year -- mainly in Iraq, Menard said.
Also Saturday, two German journalists for the national broadcaster Deutsche Welle were gunned down while traveling through northern Afghanistan. Their identities were not immediately released."
Before these killings were added to the tally, the press advocacy group Reporters Without Borders estimated that 107 journalists and media assistants have been murdered in Iraq since March 2003. Read the sobering roll call at the following excellent link:
http://www.rsf.org/....
On the milder side, we have the firing of, discrediting of, and public humiliation of journalists - and on the more darker, unimaginable side - the political hits on journalists and murders of journalists all across the globe. All these events, centering on the hot zones of Iraq, Afghanistan, Africa and others - seem to be reaching a mass so critical that we are no longer shocked anymore.
Once we're no longer shocked, we begin to become numb. Once we're numb, we'll all be simpletons, happy to sit with glazed eyes and watch FOX News and American Idol all day.
Of course we "can't handle" the real truth" anymore - because anyone who tries to give it to us has to be courageous to the point of reckless - or at least, has to be willing to put anything from livelihood to life on the line. Such courage is in short supply these days - and those who continue to stand up to power - such as the Keith Olbermann's over here and the Anna Politkovskaya's in Russia - deserve our continued support, our endless thanks - and we have to fight for their rights to bring to our attention what we may not want to see and hear.
Otherwise, we'll be left with nothing but the Stenographer Corps - well spoken, well-compensated, well-dressed, well-met - but absolutely tools of the powers that pay them.
To those in the American media who blithely sit there at their computers, at their radio mics and in front of their teleprompters spewing what they know all to well is propaganda, I challenge you to go home, look in the mirror, and then compare yourself to heroes like Anna Politkovskaya. If you have an ounce of humanity and integrity left, I hope you at least cringe with shame before looking away.