Conspiracy theories are a lot of fun. From the second shooter in Dallas to reports that The ONE was born in Kenya and is not a United States citizen and therefore is ineligible to be the First African American President of the United States, they run the spectrum of political views. Most such theories are crap but they serve a purpose. For while sometimes a New Mexican weather balloon is just a weather balloon, there are occasions when what is reported as truth is nowhere near reality. Conspiracy theorists keep us on our toes and help remind us to question everything.
In these days when the main stream media has surrendered its mantle of investigative journalism to become the town crier for the current administration, we all need to seek alternative sources for conflicting and often truthful reporting. With reports indicating that a large percentage of young adults are getting their national news from John Stewart and Stephen Colbert it is no surprise Press Secretary Gibbs feels the need to try his hand at stand up on a regular basis. He must be pretty good at it. He has seasoned journalists rolling in the aisles to a point where they are incapable of asking a probing question regarding the unprecedented rate at which the government is putting its grimy fingers in to every aspect of our lives. That guy from Harold and Kumar must be doing a bang up job behind the scenes slipping Gibbs little throw off lines.
Where hope springs eternal, evidence that no matter what our government decides, the will of the people will win out. Case in point: Iran. News reporters were asked to leave the country when protests started in the wake of the recent election of the Players club jacket guy who hates Jews. As the Maxwell Smart cone of silence of the leaders in Iran descended on its citizenry and television station and newspapers closed, every day people began to Twitter and Facebook and YouTube their way to publicizing an country wide uprising. Evidence of violence by the government against the protestors shows a ruling party willing to do anything to remain in power. This repression would have gone on in seclusion were it not for Al Gore’s greatest achievement of the internet.
1 comment:
" ... our own cone of silence being lowered, not yet by government fiat ..."
I'll argue about that "not yet." Whether the news media are biased or balanced is a secondary issue. The primary one is that the government has any say at all as to how radio, TV, and especially telephony or the Internet should operate.
The conventional wisdom is that the radio spectrum is owned by "the public" and that governments, as representatives of the public, decide who gets to say anything. Thus we have broadcast licenses. Those licenses come with basic rules about what can or can not be said. These rules mostly arise out of some collective ideas about decency. But as long as any single entity can dictate anything about how the broadcast media are used, no ideas are safe. If the FCC can prosecute CBS for the Janet Jackson "wardrobe malfunction," it's only a small step to the "Fairness Doctrine."
On top of all this, the FCC's decency rules are arbitrary and vague. It is often impossible for a broadcaster to know whether a particular word or image (e.g. the wardrobe malfunction) is illegal until after it is transmitted and the FCC renders a decision. In the face of that, broadcasters avoid anything that comes close to being controversial.
I say that the media should be unregulated with respect to content. Only then could we have a chance for that content to be an honest reflection of someone's views.
CrackerBarrel.
P. S.:
1) Getting back to telephony and the Internet, even if "public ownership of the airwaves" were a valid concept, it is a huge stretch to extend regulation to non-broadcast media.
2) If the wardrobe malfunction was an accident, why did the FCC prosecute anybody for it? If it wasn't, why didn't the FCC go after the perpetrators: Federline, Jackson, and their producers and directors?
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