From: The New World Reporter
R.F. Goggin
Could the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement, inadvertently precipitate
the demise of some long-established American mainstream news media
companies, or their conglomerate hierarchy? The thought comes off a
little more than wishful thinking to me, as I absorb the news reporting
having to do with the protests to date. Be it traditional television,
print or the well-known internet media companies that most people
generally use for news or information, it’s clear to me at least that
these powerful news outlets prefer to safely immerse themselves in a
sort of conveniently contrived, self-conscious fog of war, so to speak.
And so I wonder for such reasons, if I am the only person who finds
the coverage having to do with the Wall Street protesters by major media
outlets, curiously lacking in detail or ability, or more importantly,
in journalistic integrity.
While continuing to underestimate the disillusionment of many
millions of ordinary U.S. citizens with the current condition of their
republic, having basically neglected to turn up the heat on Washington
D.C. politicians, multi-national corporations, mega-banks or the Federal
Reserve, what if anything of relevance to such matters has the
mainstream media chosen to occupy themselves with or to emphasize?
Currently, when they are not seeking some manner in which to
politicize the protests taking place across the country, the only
question applicable to ‘big media’ seems to be what it is exactly
that Americans demonstrating in the streets are protesting? That
obviously loaded question, seems to me, the product of some entity or
another who would sooner not know the answer.
Such broad-based journalistic irresponsibility lends itself to the
supposition that there seems to be a sort of across the board denial by
nearly all major news outlets of the clear and present fact that the
political process in America is in the most obese state of corruption
and disgrace, that the nation has ever experienced.
Are the people who are protesting in the major cities of the United
States being purposefully marginalized, or to take it a step further,
publicly tried by media conglomerates for their transgressions into the
national spotlight? Has, ‘Fox News’, ‘CNN’, ‘ABC’, ‘NBC’, or ‘CBS’
silently declared themselves the judge, jury and executioner of an
American protest movement? Or is the traditional media, simply existing
in a self-imposed protective cocoon because of this unexpected popular
uprising? Could it more subtly be rather, that the symbiotic
relationships of big media companies to their commercial advertisers; or
with Washington politicians, is at risk of compromise should they
actually choose to function like a genuine ‘free press’? Suffice as to
say, all the major news companies are the offspring of parent companies
which donate regularly to Presidential candidates or political parties.
No need for me to single out any one major media company
for preferable extinction, except perhaps, for ‘Fox News’, which at this
moment sees fit to set loose their tiresome talking ‘pinheads’. People,
who find it acceptable to go so far as to degrade those citizens
presently exercising their inherent right to protest, and to thereby
demean the unimpeachable prerogative of Americans to employ as a matter
of individual liberty and sanctity, the cherished practice of
self-determination. This, time-honored means by which of course, the
union of the United States itself, was founded upon.
The case for media conglomerates in the U.S., does not seem a
promising one, should they fail to embrace the ideals of the ordinary
citizenry over the greedy and fraudulent displacement of our very
democracy. By not holding the feet of Wall Street high-rollers,
federally elected politicians, big banks, investment firms or
ultra-corporations - to the fire; all of which have played a part
in igniting the flames of revolution, it just might mean
the eventual obsoleting of some.
The all out abandonment of investigative reporting in favor of
political bias – or objective, the quick, sensational buck, or the
practice of elevating rich and famous media magnets to demigod status,
just may become everything but good copy from this point forward to
casually slap upon those who have finally made it their business
to defend ‘their’ American dream.
