COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY RUPERT CORNWELL IN THE
INDEPENDENT
"Donald Trump can
criticise the 'mainstream media' all he likes, the press will continue to do
its job brilliantly"
Rupert Cornwell, if that is doing things brilliantly, well,
then you must be one of our great political writers.
But your record speaks for itself, actually rather shabby, a
life of scribbling propaganda and calling it political analysis.
In fact, the corporate press is suffering its worst time in
ages. The industry, a mature one, is plainly in economic decline. In some
cases, it plainly doesn’t have the resources to do the job well, as by having
numerous foreign correspondents as it once had, even if doing the job well were
its aim.
At the same time, new technology and new means of
advertising are driving the creation and growth of new models for the
distribution of news on the Internet.
In addition, the declining corporate press has been found
openly colluding with various special interests, which sure removes the shine
that supposedly comes with the word journalism.
And even a child can see that it has acted out of immense negative bias against
Trump.
There is almost no such thing as journalism and journalistic
principles anymore in America or in much of Europe - that's clear to many, not
just Trump supporters.
The days of the Cold War also gave the press a special
protective and nurturing environment, an environment of the forces of darkness
versus the forces of light, the press being widely regarded as part of the
forces of light.
That is gone, although the United States’ establishment –
always including the corporate press as an intimate part of that establishment
- is trying with its every fiber to re-create it, realizing what it has lost in
many spheres, from unquestioned authority and playing the role of good guy –
getting the role of Jimmy Stewart opposing Yuri Andropov - to facing new forms
of competition. For the power establishment, peace and peaceful competition are
not always the same good things most humans being accept them to be.
Who wants, people in Washington ask themselves, people in
Europe using Russian natural gas or reading RT? And, so, ipso facto, Obama’s
regrettable legacy of re-kindling the Cold War with everything from a shameless
coup against a democratic government in Ukraine to tanks rumbling through Europe’s
villages and towns to be emplaced threateningly in entrenchments on the Russian
border and charming enforcers like Victoria “Fuck Europe!” Nuland being given
high posts of influence there.
Well, that wasn’t even true then, as we know from the existence
of things like unreported and unquestioned dark operations by a totally
unethical CIA, everything from the civilian killings in Western Europe under
Operation Gladio to the relentless terror conducted against Cuba or the
manipulation of elections in Europe by secret payments to leaders and parties and
to the over-throw by coups of even democratic governments not to America’s
liking – all went unreported and unquestioned.
And it certainly not true now, perhaps, the only big difference
being that now much of the activity has been exposed to the bright light of
day. On the domestic front, things like the release of the DNC e-mails provide
the kind of investigative reporting we’ve never experienced before from all
those self-congratulatory journalists of yesteryear. On the international
front, CIA allied dirty operations, like those in Syria, are actually being
exposed to the light by news sources from abroad.
The days of the heroic journalistic duo in All the President's Men are gone,
completely gone. The book today almost seems a silly story on a level with “Goldilocks
and the Three Bears,” yet in its day, it seemed anything but. To my mind
nothing better demonstrates some of the underlying and fundamental changes that
have taken place.
It wasn't Trump's doing, but he is sure putting a high seal
of approval on the fact, and lots of people are applauding. His approach, as at
press conferences where the old privileged gang is feeling discomfort, will help
speed the change underway towards something new, making him a genuine agent of
change.
Journalism for the corporate press is a profession in dismal
decline, having in most cases reduced itself willingly to paid publicity flacks
and propagandists for the state.
Something entirely fresh is emerging using the new
technology and forms of advertising. Its complete form is not yet clear, but it
will deal the death blow to your industry, just as surely as Amazon ended local
bookstores.
