I rarely do this, run an entire text of another source in full in this blog. Links are my usual relationship device to content I find interesting and worth sharing. This piece is an exception, partly due to copyright issues. Just as important is the content itself. The emergence of Fox News North makes this piece relevant to Canada. The American government-journalist relationship and the symbiotic news "reporting" actions that dumbs down and mislead the public is pathetic politics, scary governance and dangerous to democracy.
Most interesting is the extensive quoting of JFK on the proper role of the media in a free and democratic society. Much of the tone and activities referenced about the US government in the Bush years should be looked at through a Canadian lens. Ask yourself how many times can you say or see the same things about Canada under not so Prime Minister Harper? Just askin' - "Who can you, as a citizen, trust to tell you the truth and provide objective reporting these days? Who can you trust to protect you and your rights as a citizen." Not the American or Canadian federal governments...that is for sure.
America Has Gone Away
by Paul Craig Roberts
Global Research (December 29 2010)
Anyone who doesn't believe that the US is an incipient fascist state needs only to consult the latest assault on civil liberty by Fox News (sic).
Instead of informing citizens, Fox News (sic) informs on citizens. Jason Ditz reports (antiwar.com, December 28) that Fox News (sic) "no longer content to simply shill for a growing police state", turned in a grandmother to the Department of Homeland Security for making "anti-American comments".
The media have segued into the police attitude, which regards insistence on civil liberties and references to the Constitution as signs of extremism, especially when the Constitution is invoked in defense of dissent or privacy or placarded on a bumper sticker. President George W Bush set the scene when he declared: "you are with us or against us".
Bush's words demonstrate a frightening decline in our government's respect for dissent since the presidency of John F Kennedy. In a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association in 1961, President Kennedy said:
No president should fear public scrutiny of his program, for from that scrutiny comes understanding, and from that understanding comes support or opposition; and both are necessary ... Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed, and no republic can survive.
That is why the Athenian law makers once decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment.
The press is not protected, Kennedy told the newspaper publishers, in order that it can amuse and entertain, emphasize the trivial, or simply tell the public what it wants to hear. The press is protected so that it can find and report facts and, thus, inform, arouse "and sometimes even anger public opinion".
In a statement unlikely to be repeated by an American president, Kennedy told the newspaper publishers:
I'm not asking your newspapers to support an administration, but I am asking your help in the tremendous task of informing and alerting the American people, for I have complete confidence in the response and dedication of our citizens whenever they are fully informed.
The America of Kennedy's day and the America of today are two different worlds. In America today the media are expected to lie for the government in order to prevent the people from finding out what the government is up to. If polls can be believed, Americans brainwashed and programmed by O'Reilly, Hannity, Beck, and Limbaugh want Bradley Manning and Julian Assange torn limb from limb for informing Americans of the criminal acts of their government. Politicians and journalists are screeching for their execution.
President Kennedy told the Newspaper Publishers Association that "it is to the printing press, the recorder of man's deeds, the keeper of his conscience, the courier of his news, that we look for strength and assistance, confident that with your help man will be what he was born to
be: Free and Independent." Who can imagine a Bill Clinton, a George W Bush, or a Barack Obama saying such a thing today?
Today the press is a propaganda ministry for the government. Any member who departs from his duty to lie and spin the news is expelled from the fraternity. A public increasingly unemployed, broke and homeless is told that they have vast enemies plotting to destroy them in the absence of annual trillion dollar expenditures for the military/security complex, wars lasting decades, no-fly lists, unlimited spying and collecting of dossiers on citizens supplemented by neighbors reporting on neighbors, full body scanners at airports, shopping centers, metro and train stations, traffic checks, and the equivalence of treason with the uttering of a truth.
Two years ago when he came into office President Obama admitted that no one knew what the military mission was in Afghanistan, including the president himself, but that he would find a mission and define it. On his recent trip to Afghanistan, Obama came up with the mission: to make the families of the troops safe in America, his version of Bush's "we have to kill them over there before they kill us over here".
No one snorted with derision or even mildly giggled. Neither the New York Times nor Fox News (sic) dared to wonder if perhaps, maybe, murdering and displacing large numbers of Muslims in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen and US support for Israel's similar treatment of Lebanese and Palestinians might be creating a hostile environment that could breed terrorists. If there still is such a thing as the Newspaper Publishers Association, its members are incapable of such an unpatriotic thought.
Today no one believes that our country's success depends on an informed public and a free press. America's success depends on its financial and military hegemony over the world. Any information inconsistent with the indispensable people's god-given right to dominate the world must be suppressed and the messenger discredited and destroyed.
Now that the press has voluntarily shed its First Amendment rights, the government is working to redefine free speech as a privilege limited to the media, not a right of citizens. Thus, the insistence that WikiLeaks is not a media organization and Fox News (sic) turning in a citizen for exercising free speech. Washington's assault on Assange and WikiLeaks is an assault on what remains of the US Constitution. When we cheer for WikiLeaks' demise, we are cheering for our own.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Centre for Research on Globalization. The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible or liable for any inaccurate or incorrect statements contained in this article.
To become a Member of Global Research:
The CRG grants permission to cross-post original Global Research articles on community internet sites as long as the text & title are not modified.
The source and the author's copyright must be displayed. For publication of Global Research articles in print or other forms including commercial internet sites, contact: crgeditor@yahoo.com
I've often said that a democracy doesn't die with a crash or roar - it dies when its people become silent. The problem that those of us who realize that this is happening in both Canada & the US face - is in bringing vast numbers of our pe...ers to the realization that this is in many ways our own fault, through allowing ourselves (as a whole) to become so blatantly apathetic.
ReplyDeleteI wonder in the case of the US (as described in that article), would redirecting the public's viewership/readership at other media sources still be enough to correct this problem; or, will it come to those who still know the difference invoking their second ammendment rights for their originally intended purpose?
Re: As A Citizen - Who Can you Trust: Thank you for posting this, Ken. I do hope many, many people will see it, read it, and understand it, and that you're not merely "preaching to the choir". I get more and more frustrated with people. Thirty years ago I thought, well it's bound to get worse and people will wake up. But how much worse does it have to get?!? It's time for everyone to wake up and take notice.
ReplyDeleteGreat piece, and even more relevant in this province, where we have issues that need honest coverage, and media that (despite some solid reporters) run the gamut from tame to obsequious.
ReplyDeleteI tend to think we slid into this kind journalist media malaise some time ago in Alberta as the Conservatives became more entrenched and embedded in their belief of their divine right to rule. Ralph did his bit for this style as his reign went on and on. Don't you remember the "wing nuts" phenomenon 10 years or so ago when he clearly articulated the phrase " if you aren't with us, you are against us". And with our Rupert Murdoch/Carl Rove of the north, Rod Love, the Tories have been successful in demonizing "your Liberal cousins" at any response to House challenges from the Opposition.
ReplyDeleteOur two major print media outlets of the Journal and Herald have been up and down in their adherence to this intimidation. I remember previous to Ralph (I think) when the Journal took an editorial position of being the "unofficial opposition" when it didn't think there was much alternative to the ruling party voice. That went away until the wing nut era. And then the Journal seemed to take a significant push for change in the last election. Alas with voter apathy and deliberate string pulling of the Elections Alberta operations by Mr. Ed's machine, the Journal was whipped and has since retreated to a large part. The Herald is clearly a darling of the downtown power elite that put and kept Ralph in the chips.
I believe the Wikileaks phenomenon is a result of this decline of the media professional ethos as an attempt to find another outlet for truth and understanding. Perhaps we need such a movement in Alberta. Or an Al Jazeera bureau here.
No finer example of wimpy, whining, leftist, anti-Israeli, pro-Islam, anti-Conservative twaddle, Ken. Thanks for posting. You always want to know what the defeatist other third actually thinks, and I can count on you to promote it.
ReplyDeleteThank god for Bush, Fox news, Harper, and the new Fox news north. They keep our country safe while the rest promote rot within.
Btw - for those who believe that Islam is pissed because of the west, just take a list of where these guys operate - and it isn't just against the west. No one kills more Muslims than Muslims:
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/
@Graham: I'm curious as to what you think of the current level of access to public information we see in Canada.
ReplyDeleteTake a deep breath Graham, surely you haven't run out of epithets yet.
ReplyDeleteBelligerence and bullying doesn't lead to safety, only more and sustained aggravation and conflict. The disease of paranoia hasn't developed to the US level but many are working hard to change that.
Islamophobia is alive and energized by the neocon Christian fundamentalists all well represented by Faux Noise and the Peladeau boys. The Christians got a 600 year start on the Muslims in efforts of their own to: "No one kills more Christians than Christians".
I will decline to "Thank God" for your rogues gallery. Instead I will give thanks for deliverance from such pious infidels.