Our Media: Tawdry, Tantrum-Seeking Twits & Pols Screeching like Psychotics on Speed
(How a competitive, capitalistic press can cause more harm than a press run by Dictators)
By David Gottfried
The conventional wisdom is simple and seems intuitively irrefutable: When dictators run the press, the people are fed lies and, in times of war, may become murderous agents of the regime. When a capitalistic free press is on the scene, reporters fight like hell to find the important truths, hidden by government lies, because a fantastic, shocking story will get more viewers and earn more money.
Very often this just isn’t so. First, I will explain why and how the Western “Free Press” often fails us. Then, I will explain why the press in dictatorial regimes, with limited freedom or no freedom at all, very often does not succeed in muzzling the truth. Finally, I will prove my point by contrasting public opinion in the United States with public opinion in Russia regarding the war in Ukraine.
1) Why the Western, Capitalistic “Free Press” Very Often Is Not Interested in Truthful journalism.
The capitalistic “free press” usually is not looking for important stories about government corruption which can open people’s eyes and usher in cleaner, better government. The free press wants to make money and the free press knows that sex and smut sells. Our glorious free press wants more Monika Lewinsky stories and considers FDA failures to crack down on carcinogens a snooze.
And far too many people feel the same way. As some critics have said (Footnote 1), many people in the west have the outlook of petty bourgeois philistines. This sort of person reasons that since his western country is all about making money, he is going to concentrate on only one thing, augmenting his asset balance, and he won’t give a damn about the damn public interest. Democracy gives us the right to protest and participate in the political system, but the freedom to make money, and the risk of being pauperized by other more adept capitalists, forces one to forget all about participating in politics. Most Americans forget about political issues shortly after graduation.
In Britain, stories about Princess Diana readily topped the charts. In the U.S., most people knew more about the Monica Lewinsky scandal than of any of the achievements and failures of Bill Clinton’s presidency. In New York, more people are more familiar with the sexual scandals surrounding Governor Cuomo than anything he ever did as governor.
Most people, when they watch the evening news, are simply interested in obtaining a certain sort of pleasure: The voyeuristic pleasure of surveying sex scandals, the pleasure of people making fools of themselves. It is a way of obtaining Schadenfreude, or pleasure from other peoples’ pain. They are not interested in learning about political problems and how they can be solved.
News outlets are light on investigative reporting. They are primarily interested in making money so they would rather do without the sort of sleuthing that in years past broke the Watergate scandal. Good reporters require salaries, and myriad expenses to help reporters get the scoop. They would rather just hire bimbos with gorgeous blond hair to recite the government’s official press releases.
And sometimes, instead of giving us news stories based on investigative reporting, they air fraudulent films, produced by the US government, and they don’t tell their viewers that the footage was produced by the Pentagon. For example, during the Vietnam War, the U.S. government wanted to conceal the South Vietnamese reluctance to fight the communists because, after all, so many of them sided with the communists. To achieve this end, the Pentagon made films, of Asian men in uniforms running around the forests and marshes of Georgia, and told CBS et al that this was footage of the South Vietnamese fighting the commies. CBS and the other head honchos of phony liberal journalism aired the films and described the films as footage of South Vietnamese men fighting. None of the networks said that the films were shot by the Pentagon and taken in Georgia. The govt. was happy because the media served as a conduit for free propaganda masquerading as news. The press was happy because it did not have to spend a dime on reporting.
They want to make money. Ergo, they seek what sells. Celebrity sells. Ergo, we have been subjected to hordes of brain-dead academy award winning actors who try to sell us various political bromides, pablum and bullshit. The right gave us Ronald Reagan and Charlton Heston. The left gave us Jane Fonda, Barbara Streisand, etc. etc,
What has Hollywood politics shown us:
Histrionic emotion is so dazzlingly exciting that it can’t be wrong.
When Barbra Streisand is angry about a political issue, and seems ready to launch into on operatic aria of high-octane rage, she’s such a glorious, gorgeous screaming diva we just have listen to her.
The Hollywood Press knows that facts are superfluous:
I am talking about something that started with the New left of the 1960’s and eventually found it’s home in the land of Donald Trump.
We on the left got tired of America’s steadfast refusal to listen to hard, cold facts about the Vietnam War, such as the fact that the U.S. stopped the elections, scheduled for 1956, because CIA polls showed that the communists would win. Since American morons, who learned only two things in high school, football and cheerleading, had been knocked in the head too many times to think, we decided to give them entertainment: The left wore wild clothing, took over buildings and Avant Garde poets like Allen Ginsberg said he would levitate the pentagon. The media gave the New Left airtime, the New Left soared in popularity, and by 1969 the New Left was already losing strength as too many silly and aimless performances on the evening news discredited not only theatrical, crazy poets like Ginsburg, but also sober, sagacious critics of the status quo.
What has been the latest and most dangerous iteration of the decadent political-media industrial complex? Donald Trump. He, like the leftist activists of the 60’s, also capitalizes on drama, screaming passion, and play fast and loose with the truth. (However, the left mostly did not make stuff up; we simply preached with purple passion and heroic hyperbole. The Donald’s world view is as fictitious as Donald Duck and the other loony tunes characters of kids’ cartoon masterpieces.)
Why has Donalds, and his heirs (the Marjorie Taylor Greenes), been so successful:
They moved away from dated stuffy dictums, such as
“All the news that’s fit to print,” toward a politics of trendy, tawdry, tantrum-seeking tinkerbells in which the politicians learn to emote like psychotics on speed and the press learns to slavishly and lovingly record a political prima donna’s every curse, grimace and grunt.
Liberal stations say they hate Trump, but they can’t hate him that much because he is their bread and butter. The more CNN and MSNBC bash trump, the more viewers they get and the more popular Trump got. Trump and his liberal media “antagonists” help each other, and American democracy is further debased. Indeed, CNN, perhaps more than any station except for Fox New, gave Trump the Whitehouse in 2016. On so many afternoons, CNN broadcast thousands of minutes of trump rallies. Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton for that matter, were lucky whenever they got more than ten seconds. (Of course, it’s hard to express a complete thought, and one's supporting arguments, in ten seconds, but Hollywood journalism has no use for intelligence or coherence)
2) Why journalists who are mouthpieces of dictatorships often fail to mold opinion in accord with a Dictator’s wishes.
It is not easy being the mouthpiece of a dictatorship. Sooner or later the viewers of the dictator’s media outlets will notice inconsistencies in the government’s position. (Of course, there are inconsistencies in our government’s positions, but Americans, for reasons already stated – namely the outlook of the petty bourgeois philistine -- don’t notice these inconsistencies because they couldn’t care less. Incidentally, Ivanka Trump told the American people that she also couldn’t care less when, shortly after entering the Whitehouse, she visited migrants at the Southern border while wearing a blouse or jacket that said, “I couldn’t care less.”)
I once heard Arthur Miller contend that there was more freedom of speech in the Soviet Union than in the United States. He explained that the citizens of the Soviet Union don’t trust their government. Accordingly, when they hear a government press release, they deconstruct it like a lawyer or a Talmudist. They struggle to find the inconsistency in the government statement. They know that for every cover story mouthed by obedient newscasters there is a hidden story. In Moscow, the newscaster or writer might lie, but the analytic Russian may find the truth obscured by a web of lies.
The relatively frivolous westerner is so busy wondering whether Lady Diana will be the Scarlett Ohara of England, or bemoaning the travails of her glorious majesty the queen (I heard one positively deranged man say that Elizabeth was certainly the greatest English person who had ever lived), and meditating on the sex lives of dozens of gilt-ridden, guilt-free celebrities that he pays at best a passing glance to matters of consequence.
Of course, Americans don’t want to seem like utter fools, so they will profess to have some serious opinions. Since he doesn’t want to spend too much time reviewing serious issues (After all, he has to spend hours looking at pictures of Diana, and the Queen, and he has to wallow and sometimes drown in the warping waters of catty social media), he will make up his mind with pictures, ideally with just one picture.
For example, after we conquered Iraq in Gulf War Two, the media broadcasted one piece of film footage that defined the Iraqi war for most simpletons. The film footage showed about six dozen Iraqis, in Baghdad, taking down a statue of Sadaam. For millions of Americans this was all the proof they needed to support George Bush. If 72 Iraqis elected to take down a statue of Saddam that led to the ineluctable conclusion that so many morons would make: All 15 million Iraqis hated Saddam. Hence the American people were totally surprised by the insurgency. They were surprised because they have no idea what is going on. (And because they believe a picture, on the evening news, of 72 Iraqis doing something has to be representative of all Iraqis. When we think in pictures, we forget to think abstractly. When we use words, we are less apt to think like four year olds.)
Within a month of taking Baghdad, the United States enacted a law which voided a Sadaam law which forbade foreigners from owning Iraqi oil wells, oil companies or oil interests. This act was proof positive of what Arab Nationalists had been screaming about all along: All we really wanted was their oil wealth. I read about this in “The Nation.” But how many fucking Americans read “The Nation.”
3) The War in Ukraine: What Russians think and what Americans think
Today, in America’s coverage of the Ukraine War, and the feeble American conception of what is happening there, we see evidence of how the capitalistic media is infinitely more harmful than media in a dictatorship.
Putin is, supposedly, becoming more autocratic and tyrannical, and loudly and brazenly claims, and supposedly induces his media vassals to claim, that Russia’s position is laudable and lovable, that Ukraine is fiendish and fascistic, and that the war is a wholly worthwhile enterprise.
And the Russian people are debating and dissenting with all the intensity of quarreling Jewish socialists from the upper west side of Manhattan (a sometimes charming and sometimes infuriating bunch of brilliant souls who never agreed on anything). Many Russians doubt the wisdom of having launched an incursion into Ukraine, and many other Russians are all for the war but are furious at the Russian government for executing the war in such a pitiful, lousy manner. Many Russians are trying to leave Russia so they won’t be conscripted, and at least one Russian said that a leading Russian general should kill himself for prosecuting the war with such ineptitude.
And what of America. In America, the people are like innocent little lambs, believing whatever the man on the TV tells them to believe. Half the time he spouts NATO nonsense, but Americans don’t realize that private enterprise in this country usually backs the regime in Washington, in international affairs, doesn’t realize that his media outlet is, if it is like most outlets, just following Washington policy, and doesn’t mistrust the official party line as do Russians.
Of course, he sees pictures of explosions, and hears a narrator say that the explosion was caused by the bombs and attacks of evil Russians, but because he knows very little, he does not know how to put the carnage into context.
I hear press reports which speak of 10 Ukrainians killed in one locale, and 7 Ukrainians killed in another locale. All killing is terrible, but the number of dead Ukrainians, as crass as this may sound, is comparatively small change. I cannot help but recall that a) in November of 1967, Robert Kennedy said, on either the program “Meet the Press” or “Face the Nation,” that the US was killing 500 innocent civilians in South Vietnam a week (This omits the body count in North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Also, as a man who was part of the “establishment,” Robert Kennedy probably gave us a very low estimate. Also, South Vietnam was 10,000 miles away from the United States; Ukraine is adjacent to Russia and helped Hitler kill over 20 million Russians), b) we scalped Filipinos for years in the wake of the Spanish American War and c) that some of the most of fervent anti-communists and anti-Russians have been the fiends of Al Qaida, whom we aided when they fought Russia and which was responsible for 9/11 which killed 3,000 Americans in one day.
Finally, most Americans know nothing about the issues in contention, and this certainly is a credit to our media’s facility in keeping the stooge-like citizenry in the dark.
I submit to you that most Americans don’t know these salient details regarding the controversy: 1) Bill Clinton, and his successors, violated George Bush’s pledge to Russia to not move the Eastern border of NATO one inch further East; 2) George Kennan, the Father of the containment doctrine which held that we must contain Russia, said that NATO’s decision, to advance further to the East after the Berlin Wall fell, was America’s biggest foreign policy blunder since the Berlin Wall Fell; 3) The Crimea is primarily populated by Russians and its association with Ukraine only began in 1954 when the Soviet Union, as a gift to Ukraine, took Crimea away from Russia and gave it to Ukraine. However, since Ukraine, at that time, belonged to the Soviet Union, and since Russia always dominated the Soviet Union, the transfer of Crimea to Ukraine did not in any way sever Russian ties to Crimea and 4) Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO has been enlarged with the addition of several Eastern European states which had been aligned with Hitler (including Slovakia, Lithuania, Croatia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Estonia, Latvia and Hungary) and which though not allied with Hitler were very anti-Russian and Anti Semitic (Chiefly Poland).
These states, with Hitler, killed over 20 million Russians. Now NATO has made common cause with these states. If Russia is angry, feeling aggrieved and desirous of striking a blow for Russia, her rage is completely understandable.
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Footnote 1: Marx spoke of the petty bourgeois philistine and his disdain for following political affairs. I did not want to mention his name in the body of the essay because if one mentions Marx one is automatically characterized as a socialist fixated on ancient political events. In fact, I think men like John Mc Cain, who aspired to men loving something bigger their petty little interests, would have also disparaged the politically indifferent.