On The Professionalization of "Journalism"

 southpaw
@nycsouthpaw
·
17h
It took me while to understand that part of the press corps is grieving, not for the dead, but for the war.

That puts it so well it seems superfluous to add anything but there's more to it than that.

Most of the people in the media realize something they won't admit, they are in show business, they have to generate buzz and interest in what they put on or eyes won't remain on their programs and advertisers won't pay them.  More than that, their careers will stagnate and in show biz a stagnant career is one that's over.  They'll get cancelled or not called to be on the cabloids or the Sunday morning lie shows, etc. 

I think a good majority of those on the news, especially in the DC and NYC press corps are determined that no matter what the facts are, their words and gestures must go along with the expected, orthodox line on American wars which must always be for good and noble reasons, must always make rational sense if not be wise and must be supported no matter what because "support the troops" has been instilled as part of the de-facto American civil religion, certainly by show biz in the wake of the last major disaster, the war that started in Vietnam but was enormously expanded to ever more disaster into much of South-East Asia.   There are literally no numbers of local dead that could change that American media narrative, there would appear to be a very large number of Americans dead before the media changes its narrative, though merely ending the draft had that effect for cynical Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger.  

The media, most of those you see on TV and the internet and the radio for the most part and most of the time chose to merely ignore the 20 year long war that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney started, that's what you do in the conventional narrative which is required by habit and ill considered convention when attacked.  The American media can be counted on to ignore things that go on too long because they need novelty to serve their prime purpose, which is getting and keeping an audience, not in serving the best interests of the United States or the world.  The pundit class is a part of that, their prime purpose is to peddle their own wares, including, often, their ersatz expertise, their newspaper column or magazine scribbling, their invitations to be on CNN or ABC, NPR, PBS, C-Span, etc.  it is a circle jerk the prime purpose of which is to serve their careers of serving the interests of the American establishment but, also, to bring in an audience.

The stupid and naive faith in the guaranteed good effects, ultimately, of allowing the media to say whatever they want to, no matter how separated it is from fact or reality or wisdom, has certainly been shattered in the past fifty years of ultimate press freedom here.  They serve primarily themselves when allowed to and those whose financial and, so, ideological purposes also serve their owners and their associates.  

How you can force the media to a. stop lying, b. stop having on liars and idiots, c. serve the public need for accurate information, etc. I don't know, I do know that when they are allowed to do what they do 24-7-365 the results are illegitimate presidencies, Republican-fascist congresses and state houses, incompetence of the kind that led to the Bush II regime ignoring the warnings that 9-11 was coming and the resultant catastrophe for Afghanistan and, since it was sold with 9-11, Iraq, the resultant empowerment of ISIS in Kurdish territory, Syria, etc. and everything up to and including the regrets of the pundit class and the media that Joe Biden has decided to expend the political capital he has to end the folly of the Afghan war.  

The media is what got us here.  It is on them, they will try to move it onto Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and Democrats but they are what got us here, they and the Florida Republican Party under Jeb Bush, their cousin Ellis at FOX and the Rehnquist Supreme Court that installed the incompetent Bush and the war-monger Cheney.  

If this happens again, I hope our allies in Afghanistan will realize the price THEY paid for the folly that was generated from the American habits of allowing the media to lie with abandon along side the many booby traps for good government contained in our Constitutional system.  I hope the experience of this disaster will teach them to be less willing to go along the next time.  Because if the American media can be counted on for something, it is to make sure there is a next time.