Speaking critically of her nation’s media, Hillary Clinton says it “amounts to a million commercials… and arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that… is not particularly informative to us.”
The Secretary of State believes news outlets in the United States lack journalistic integrity, especially when compared to the standards set by foreign media like Al Jazeera, who report “real news”.
And you know what? She’s right!
Take, for example, news that just went national exposing the US government’s secret plans to arm Mexico’s drug criminals. You’d think such a story would have made a bigger splash, but it didn’t.
Even the agency responsible for the debacle were shocked by the lack of response. An internal memo reveals a sigh of relief as the scathing story had “not sparked any follow up coverage by mainstream media and seems to have fizzled.”
Federal Agents did execute some damage control, but it seems the propaganda campaign wasn’t even needed. American mass media is so dysfunctional that an important story can easily drown in the noise, all by itself.
So the news sucks in the States. Anyone informed by alternative sources will already be aware of this.
The US people are intentionally kept in the dark, distracted and sedated. If too many of them become aware of the role their nation is playing, they’d be in an ideal position to rise against the injustice.
Fortunately, this uprising is coming even without the support of the mainstream media. Thanks to the diversity of online information, more and more of the US population is waking up to see that their nation has become a highly-militarized, corporatist state where both political parties serve the wealthy more than the electorate.
Americans, just like people from all around the world, are joining in the movement towards a more just global civilization. Even if the revolution isn’t televised, don’t worry. It will most certainly be tweeted.
Our News and Theirs
Wednesday, June 8th, 2011Professor Juan Cole put out another of his intriguing pieces over on Informed Comment. This one outlines key differences between the mainstream media in the western world and that of the middle east.
Cole starts by describing the sad state of affairs in the US:
Professor Cole goes on to compare which stories dominate the headlines:
Cole does an excellent job detailing the striking differences between the Western and Arab worlds, but his work ends there. Never does he mention the mechanism behind the madness, detailing the way nonsense stories are used to intentionally to keep the majority of the Western population distracted and misinformed.
Still, it’s a well documented article worth exploring.
Tags: arab, cole, comment, distraction, east, informed, juan, mainstream, media, middle, world
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