It is no accident that the First Amendment emphasizes freedom of the press; without it the electorate is kept in the dark, and few capitalize on the freedom of information act. Today’s criteria of the mainstream news media are to scoop competition, spin headlines and TV clips with sex, drugs and violence, pedophilia, political misstatements and muckraking while, for the most part, important and urgent issues go unnoticed. The media also engage in blatant jingoism in crises without having the foggiest notion as to the causes of a state of war. From Korea to Iraq there was little investigating reporting as to the underlying motives of such actions. The massive anti-war protests against Iraq throughout the world was sloughed off as the same old hippie crowd from Vietnam protestors with little attempt to find out if they had some legitimacy. The exception was Afghanistan where the globe favored invasion, yet confidence bred little follow up on how that war should be conducted. Concerning Iraq, reporters did not bother to explore the dissenting voices in the Pentagon warning of unpreparedness and lack of substantial strategy. Homeland security alerts, suspected of crying wolf too often, go unquestioned despite the press embarrassment in failing to uncover the disinformation for the war on Iraq.
In other matters such as Greenspan’s observation in the mid 90s of ‘irrational exuberance” that led to the “bubble” in the stock market, the mainstream media ignored it as an overstatement without merit. Nor did they pursue Greenspan’s ensuing optimistic observations completely ignoring his own warning. The impending crash of the economy, owing to deficits and uncontrollable debt, whereby the nation will be beholden to foreign nations, does not seem to be in the realm of journalism. Because corporate viability depends on the supply of fossil-fuels, there is no urgency that alternative fuels are paramount for a sustaining economy and national defense. Global warming, perhaps the greatest potential terror of this century, still is not seriously covered by mainstream media — nor even aggressively by environmentalists — because the nation as a whole is perceived as distrustful of the science fringe.
In all fairness, however, the greatest incompetence in the sharing of information lies with the politicians who tend to hold issues close to their vests unless it is scandalous and politically advantageous. The presidency is not mandated to hold frequent press conferences, the cabinet only passes on data that is symbiotically favorable unto itself. Congress is concerned mainly with pet cultural issues, and when one in congress does legislate for the common good, it is under the scrutiny of attack. Even worse, as in the example, the foreign relations committee, of which Kerry himself had been a member, over the years was unable appraise incisively global problems with serious implications; nor did the intelligence committee do its homework by blindly consuming what was fed them by intelligence agencies.
Both these branches of society are in violation of the First Amendment subsection guaranteeing an informative public — not to mention the freedom of information act. The redeeming factors to this are C-Span, offstream publications, and, of course, the internet. Alas, relatively few of the masses even bother; but that’s another story.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: August 7, 2004.