Where Have All Our Investigative Reporters Gone?

Alexis de Tocqueville in his classic Democracy in America long ago made the point that Americans tend towards group think -- and ignore dissenting opinions. As one watches the press coverage of recent U.S. abuses of the most basic standards of international law -- a criminal war and continuing prosecution of same involving massive civilian harms in Iraq, torture as a defended practice by our de facto president, Cheney, one wonders why U.S. citizens in general are not rising up in open revolt against such fundamental abuses of our oft stated democratic values?

The obvious answer is that our media are using the tactics of 'divert and deny' to draw attention away from these horrors. Only in the worst regimes of the last century was the endlessly repeated big lie the standard operating tactic used to divert attention from homeland horrors and other abuses beyond national borders.

I well recall the pressures that I faced as an initially naive student journalist, the decisions we made to blow the cover on abuses in our undergraduate scene, and the authorities' threats and charges of disloyalty ensuing on reports that Yale maintained an anti-Jewish admissions quota (particularly directed against "those from Brooklyn and the Bronx,") the "Pig Night" group rape operations carried out by the frats -- especially DKE -- of which the present Bush later became the glad-handing president, the violations of state drinking laws and cover-ups by university authorities of resultant gross sexual rapes of young teen girls enticed into student dorms, our extra-campus reports on the latest McCarthyite abuses that drew to us the ire of William Buckley.

I also saw media censorship carried out by the power that was Time, Inc. ("fair, but not objective journalism") -- Henry Luce -- when I wrote for it one summer as an undergrad. But our TV media reports covering events today (have been watching more than usual as I am trapped at home with a bad cold) are unbelievably irrelevant to what are the critical issues facing the U.S. today. Bush and Co. have blown it. Even the long abused (by us) Latin Americans no longer fear sticking it to him, face to face. Where are those in-depth reports of U.S. uses of proscribed weapons against civilians in Iraq -- the phosphorous bombs that incinerated civilians in Fallujah last November (playing not here but on Italian TV), the CIA torture victims now rendered out to such bastions of the still Soviet-esque residual empire in Romania and Poland?

Why must one get one's daily real news either from the internet or through such small windows as Amy Goodman's Democracy Now?

Yes, the New York Times gets out some of the news (as does the Washington Post) -- _some_ of the news. Its 'balanced' op ed people are a study in truth and propaganda -- side by side. One can trust Krugman and Bob Herbert. Maureen Dowd sticks it to them. Friedman fiddles while the U.S. burns people. The others 'on the right' offer the latest spins out of their right-winger well funded think tanks -- Heritage, Hoover, Manhattan, Free Enterprise et al.

I am old enough to remember as a frightened child the rants of Adolph Hitler and his minions. I reported to my parents, following the interruption in my Jack Armstrong, All American Boy, radio program, the announcement of the attack on Pearl Harbor. I lived as a kid in a world in which we all bonded together to resist a _real_ set of enemies. I am, thus, particularly horrified by the junk that passes now for news -- even in the NY Times -- the latest mother who has carelessly caused her infant's death, the sex crime murder of the week out there somewhere, the doings of this or that celeb.

When I press my students on their views on torture, very few endorse it. But they are overwhelmed both by the excess of irrelevant noise coming their way from our media and silenced by the inaction of those of us who should be shouting loud and clear for the impeachment of our war criminals. Clinton diddled with a young aide; Bush and Co. have murdered many thousands now with prohibited weapons in their greed dominated criminal wars.

Where the hell are you guys?
--
"A war is just if there is no alternative, and the resort
to arms is legitimate if they represent your last hope." (Livy)
--
Ed Kent 718-951-5324 (voice mail only) [blind copies]
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