Reporters and Corruption

Everything is for sale, including our supposedly representative government. What I find almost worse is the market of public information--and what, apparently, is not for sale.

Fox News, the most popular (faux) news channel, is despite its slogan "Fair and balanced," an unabashed propaganda mill that actively disseminates half-truths that become, momentarily, lead stories in the rest of the news.

Supposedly, on the other side, is NPR, which Congressional Republicans and candidate Romney both want to cut off from the public teat. NPR may favor Democrats, you see, because it's just as wishy-washy as they are. It's not hard-line for tax cuts for the wealthy, but it takes no position and attempts to present a 'fair and balanced' presentation of the issue.

NPR listeners are better informed than Fox watchers, or those of MSNBC, but none of the above present serious analyses of an issue, like reasonable rates of taxation. Even on NPR, the tendency is to parrot whatever one side said, and then how the other side responded: a he-said-she-said model that requires of the reporter no thought or research.

Will the Watergate break-in, and the investigations that issued from it, be our last really serious and effective investigative journalism?

Fewer and fewer news bureaus have reporters on the ground, either around the nation, or around the world. A worker-police massacre in South Africa is reported on by a journalist in Nairobi, 1780 miles away. If something happens in Minnesota, the reporter may be sent in from Chicago.

And more and more reporters only report: recording what the official, and/or his opponent say, without any reflection like: What the hell is "legitimate rape?" Or, damn, is that how contraception works: "the woman's body" somehow knows how to get rid of it--no abortion needed? Should I report that Congressman Akin don't know nothin'?

Maybe Akin made even the laziest reporters sit up and realize: they can't just report; they've got to base their reporting on facts.

Maybe. If extremists--who seem to be overwhelmingly on the right during this period--keep on attempting to present fiction as fact and fact as fiction, ever more wildly, maybe a more responsible information system will emerge. I hope it will finally allow most people to really know what's going on, and why it affects them.

On the optimistic side: people do help each other, and given a choice, most people will lend a helping hand when needed. Factual and analytic reporting would help people.

On the negative: fear is probably our most powerful emotion, and the one-percent, ably represented by Fox and Limbaugh, are backed by much more money, because our moneyed Roman Senators only want more money, and think in zero-sum terms: if they pay workers more, or protect us more from their pollution (pay their own external costs), they'll get less. Their strategy: keep'em scared and angry.

Will fear and anger work?