Corporate Media: Who Cares? (BBA VIII)
A shot from the Whiskey Bar ("Downing Streed Redux"):
In my own screed on the subject yesterday, I should have included links to two other organizations that are working to keep the story alive — afterdowningstreet.org and the Big Brass Alliance, a coalition of lefty bloggers who are also pushing the issue with admirable intensity.
Some folks have told me they think I'm being too pessimistic about the odds of actually persuading/pressuring the corporate media drones into doing their jobs. Pessimism is definitely my natural state, but in this case I'm speaking from a certain amount of personal experience (about 14 years) with how the news business works.
Prodding the media into revisiting a story it has collectively decided to ignore isn't impossible, but it's extremely hard.
This makes me think that it's time to clarify my own expectations, and what I hope to happen from being part of the Big Brass Alliance.
I've written several times about my opinion of corporate media, not to mention how tiresome I think it is when people waste all their conversational energy talking about what the media is not talking about, and using all their activist energy to try to get the corporate media to talk about what they'd like to see them talk about.
Sure, this was once a viable tactic when those newspapers and radios and TV outlets had an interest in journalism, before they were bought by largely reactionary business interests who use them to advance their own self interest. All liberal political activists of a certain age grew up learning tactics for generating publicity and news reporting for their cause. Largely, these days, I think it's a waste of time.
I write about the Downing Street Memo, as part of the BBA, to do my bit towards keeping the issue alive by actually talking about it, forcing my three readers to learn about it and read my opinions and tell others, and maybe get congressional leaders to take appropriate action and investigate the pre-war activities of the President and his administration in "fixing the intelligence" about Iraqi WMDs as a pretext for invasion.
I am most decidely not aiming at getting the corporate media to talk about it. They're not much use anyway, except as another form of popular survey. If some real journalist comes along who wants to investigate and expose, more power to her. But, overall, I don't care. (Oddly enough, if enough of us keep talking about it, then they will conver that "story".)
Each of us has a voice; we can speak for ourselves. I'm talking about it because I think we should talk about it, and if we keep talking about it more people will talk about, and then more people, and then maybe enough people will see that which is lying in plain sight right in front of their noses and recognize it for the corruption that it is.
And then we might find the collective will to do something about it.
[This continues my series of posts concerning the pre-Iraq-war actions of the US administration, aimed at increasing awareness of those activities, as part of the Big Brass Alliance (or BBA) and it's support of AfterDowningStreet.org. For more information from me, see my first posting on The Downing Street Memo: "Worth Remembering"]
on Friday, 10 June 2005 at 19.33
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Congressional Hearings Spell V-I-C-T-O-R-Y
That is pretty stunning news and it definitely confirms that Congress will listen when the people of the country speak out!
on Tuesday, 30 August 2005 at 14.20
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I have to laugh at your comment, how you are forcing my three readers to learn and read your opinions.
Well, now you have four readers and I can certainly relate.
Having seen part of The Corporation on public television, I ordered the DVD.
I expect you've seen this film. For anyone who hasn't, it is worth watching.
Corporations are under a legal mandate to put profits above all other concerns. It is that legal mandate that must be changed.
It will help us not a whit to keep decrying what corporations do, if we stop at that. They will never change voluntarily or via moral pressure. We need to unite and get legislation passed that changes the nature of the beast.
Perhaps this is the drum that all of us should, in one accord, begin beating with absolute commitment.
There are so many issues – too many – and they are keeping us fragmented and powerless.
Progressives need to put all differences aside and unite on a handful of major issues and ride them like the wind.
I suggest these three as being most pressing: 1) creating a culture of peace (includes withdrawing from the war), 2) creating a culture of compassion (includes changing the law governing corporations so the callousness and greed we see in business here and abroad is no longer is fed by legal mandate) and 3) reclaiming our primary national value of freedom and justice for all (suggested subsets: jobs/fair wages for all, no torture condoned, affirmation of first ammendment rights.)
The need to act in regard to corporations is critical. You may be interested – if you are not already aware – of the move on the part of corporations to privatize water.
Information is included in my rambling blog of August 25th.
Also, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom is sponsoring a "save the water" campaign.
We are all walking a line here, trying to keep up-to-date and share information while, at the same time, trying not get so "blogged down" that we have no energy or time for the activism of creative thinking, proposing policy, collecting signatures and getting out the vote.
We need some sort of Policy Webring, where millions of us unite behind basic tenents and policy. MoveOn is trying to provide focus, but we still don't have a political party listening to us.
Yet I have faith that we will.
Keep blogging,
Clyo
[jns adds: Clyo's blog is here.]