COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY MICK MEANEY IN RINF
Well said, Mick.
We have the startling example of what is likely the all-time
great attack campaign by the press, ignoring every journalistic principle, the
one conducted against Trump.
There has never been anything quite like it for relentless
intensity and comprehensiveness.
And what happened? It failed, and Trump was elected.
The old fable of the boy who cried "wolf" too
often definitely applies here.
So, too, does the traditional sympathy many people
instinctively come feel for an underdog.
To say nothing of the revulsion many feel towards showy
displays of the arrogance of power.
In the end, corporate journalism - and that is what all the
mainline press and broadcasting are, corporate - cannot be honest journalism.
It is literally impossible.
We see how even the new hi-tech internet companies - all
started with undoubtedly good intentions - have terribly abused their power now
that they are very large and established corporations. You name the firm -
Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, etc - and it is abusive and often drunk
on its own power.
The press and broadcasting are not a whit different. Big
corporations are big corporations, effectively all fairly powerful special
interests.
This current attack on "fake" news and on
legitimate non-American news sources is just sickening. It comes from what are
special interests, the corporate press and officials of a political party
aggrieved by its own failings.
That number of 200 “fake news” sites immediately struck me
because it is close to the number drunken old Senator Joe McCarthy used to
claim as the number of “commies” in the State Department whose names were
supposedly on one of his secret lists, never even seen by anyone.
Often-drunk McCarthy who was trying to spark a failing
political career with shocking claims, and he briefly succeeded.
He has long been totally discredited, but here is one of the
best-known newspapers in America making a frighteningly similar claim. They do
not even understand the source of their “information,” but they published
anyway. Absurdly irresponsible.
Perhaps they, too, are trying to spark a flagging career,
flagging in terms of traditional advertising revenue and in terms of readership
vis-à-vis the alternate press, but I’m also quite sure they are serving the
interests they always have served, interests such as CIA, special and corporate
interests, and political insiders.
Not everything the alternative press does is sound or even
responsible - although that is precisely the case for the corporate press
already - but the alternative press exercises free speech, the single most
important right there is in distinguishing a free society from an authoritarian
one. In that sense, they are on the side of the angels.
And just reflect on the person who perhaps most strongly
raises her voice against the alternative press and makes utterly unfounded
claims about Russia, Hillary Clinton.
