POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY CHARLIE BROOKER IN THE GUARDIAN
Charlie Brooker has it exactly right.
His citing of instances couldn't be more accurate.
There is the endless repetition of the same meaningless anecdotes as though they were defining matters of substance, a kind of idiotic mantra which, like catchy advertising slogans, stick in the minds of many.
But there are more problems with American news sources than the growing 24-hour phenomenon.
Today's corporate consolidation of news corporations means fewer and fewer sources, and those in the hands of people whose interest and focus is anything but genuine news. It also means cost-cutting and shortcuts. And it means a propensity towards audience-building sensational entertainment rather than hard information.
And, like the phenomenon we see in the primaries with Hillary Clinton's stooping to the lowest approach, once one major news source takes the low-road, competitors find it awkward to remain above the low tactics, the basic phenomenon which has kept American national politics in the Political Stone Age.
Networks like CNN have done so many mindless, shabby things in recent years, it is remarkable that anyone still watches it, but then it is also remarkable that so many Americans watch "infomercials."
And there really are bad intentions at work in America's press.
Recall CNN's broadcast of "secret" tapes, supposedly from al Qaeda's caves of Afghanistan, with "experiments" of mass-destruction materials on dogs. Sandals shuffling and dogs dying. Good Lord, Goebbels himself couldn't have done better, and it doesn't matter at all if its all found a fraud later, the emotional impact has been made.
Recall CNN chasing around the poor innocent man, Richard Jewell, accused stupidly and wrongly of setting a bomb. CNN filled the airwaves with idiot material like their reporter standing there watching as the poor man drove off to work without saying a word.
Even a "prestigious," supposedly "liberal" newspaper like New York Times is not above this behavior. They hounded an innocent scientist of Chinese extraction on the basis of FBI rumors over the unproved contention that the American W-88 thermonuclear warhead, its most advanced at the time, had been stolen by China.
The Times of course always supports America's imperial wars at the beginning. Only once they've failed and the public become impatient does the New York Times do the kind of investigative journalism of which it is capable.
American broadcasting and broadsheets typically do almost nothing helpful to the public's understanding of destructive events like Iraq. Indeed, quite the opposite, they typically beat the drum for imperial conquest, as they all did for Iraq (and for Vietnam in 1965), encouraging swelled chests, breast-thumping, and marching bands all to the tune of God Bless America.
