As the global economy collapses, links between America and the outside world is crumbling. In a increasingly fragile world where information is the highest possession, any foreign outlet that does remain is being aggressively consolidated even more by intelligence services and their corporate cronies. For Americans, the Internet is the only bridge left standing for information to cross without outside interference. Those who argue new technology is curtailing journalism couldn't be more wrong. It is the only avenue left, outside some radio stations, for journalists to present their stories to the public. Because of the internet, stories can not be killed, like they have been by publishers and editors, for whatever reason. David Wallis's Killed: Great Journalism Too Hot to Print includes two stories on Israel, one killed by Harper's magazine in 2002, and the other by The Washington Post magazine in 1988. The Harper's story was written by Robert Fisk, called "Remember the Whys" and it demonstrates how the publishing world has been used with great effect to keep Americans from finding out crucial information about the Middle East. And that was immediately after 9/11, when a few questions could have saved us from the catastrophe that is the War on Terror.
The problem is not that we lack quality journalism, and heroic truth excavators, but the news publishing environment that they operate in has been thwarted by amazingly powerful players. If Woodward and Bernstein were beginning their careers in 2002 they would have been immediately pulled away from anything to the magnitude of the Watergate story. So the real muckrakers like Alex Jones and his team are operating underground. Jones, along with Daniel Estulin, and of course Jim Tucker, have brought to light the biggest story of the last half-century, the Bilderberg group which meets every year to discuss world events. And by discuss I mean manipulate. There is a core cast of characters, but the guest list is not always the same. Their existence in the crazy mainstream world is popular legend, implying that only extremists with no lives are attracted to such socio-cultural phenomena. I have only one response to those incurious cynics: Galileo was once called a heretic. You better believe it. This world is strange. We've been on the moon for god sake. Anything is possible.
Anyways, back to saving journalism, which is inconceivable to democracy and human rights, and freedom, and, modern life as we have come to know it. And I use that last phrase literally. Just because we know things doesn't mean we live them or have lived them. Democracy and human rights still remain ideals after all these centuries, with so much bloodshed in two world wars in the last century. It is a bit like Christianity in the Middle Ages. People lived with that myth their whole lives, but they were not perfect in their dedication to the Christian message, just as we have sidetracked our religion, democracy, and for what? Money, what else?
II.
One of the things at the disposal of producers of television networks is the endless stream of television feeds, and their poppa, the satellite. It has become invaluable to the daily operations of broadcasters but it is one of the biggest crutches. The importance of satellites to news coverage is highly overrated, and television cameras can not direct journalists to their story. On-air magic must be traded for off-air hard work. Journalists need to be more like stunt doubles and less like actors, or, more sweat, and less make up. And there are still plenty of those, and you can count them on your hands and feet, if you have plenty of toes.
At the same time that publishers, editors and producers are not providing the goods, the hunger for truth is thriving, and this "reality market" is anyone's for the taking. Alternative information agents have already filled up the space left by traditional journalists. Broadcasters and journalists with various backgrounds are picking up the slack. Newspapermen turned businessmen are blaming everyone but themselves. To be fair, publishers and editors are under pressure, as every other industry in America, and the quest for endless profit as requested by Wall Street pay managers is the biggest reason. I can not fault them for being short-sighted, they're human, and I can relate to that. But in periods of crises things change.
Disasters open our eyes, and bring the best out of us. Brian Williams, who I bet rarely travels outside his New York studio to cover a story for days on end, remarked how surprised he was at the government response in Hurricane Katrina's wake. For the first time, he was revealing his humanity and dismissing all that objectivity bullshit. To appear objective means to appear robotic, and the individuals who succeed in television are those who can do that real well. A lot of people criticize Alex Jones for his on-air flare ups but how can you not be emotional about injustice and human corruption? What you call paranoia and rage, I call intuitiveness and anger. What you see as putting on a tantrum, I see as showing raw passion. Jung said the modern world is a madhouse, and that is why only a madman is fit for such a place. If you are not a mad man then you are experiencing world events in a seriously deformed way. The power elite have consolidated power to the point where they are able (for the first time in a long time) to re-institute political and economic serfdom. And the newspaper industry is dead not because it can't figure out a way to make a profit, but because it won't recognize that simple fact.
Also, let's not forget that the newspaper industry failed to report to the American people undeniably important stories when it was making hefty profits. As creator of The Wire, David Simon, who appeared on the senate floor, notes :
In fact, when newspaper chains began cutting personnel and content, their industry was one of the most profitable yet discovered by Wall Street money. We know now – because bankruptcy has opened the books – that the Baltimore Sun was eliminating its afternoon edition and trimming nearly 100 editors and reporters in an era when the paper was achieving 37 percent profits.Wall Street finance started out as a parasite in the American economy, but is now the host of the global economy. Over the past thirty years it injected itself into every American industry, from car manufacturing to news publishing, and after killing them, is now killing the American federal government. Toxic money is toxic money. And people, high up in corporate America, and single mothers in poverty, got their hands all over toxic money.
The only logical answer to saving the American news industry is not to remove the pressure of profit, but the pressure of unattainable profit. Profit is good, but in moderation. All things in moderation, as Aristotle said. Even truth.
