free press... really?

The major media outlets are "operating on the best available information". They are fighting for the creation of courage and truth. We can't really blame the journalists, we need a more systematic understanding of war and coverage. Everyone is working for someone, for a person, a company or branch, for money, for collateral, to save their neck, etc. News has timeless and immediate value, and this is based on journalism’s efficiency. The CNN effect means that we are live 24 hours a day. But, is it only entertainment? Can what is seen as crucial information, the "truth", be taken at face value now, when there is such intense competition for viewership and there are such high audience expectations (48)? This has led to a growing gap between occasional, and well-edited footage of genuine newsworthiness, and a superfluity of shallow and attention-deficit discourse on television. Thus, the end of hard news. The current oligarchy doesn't need an educated public, it only needs people with a great card, or a few extra hours on the couch.

John Stewart, Host of “The Daily Show”:
“There is some good news coming out of the hunt for WMDs as coalititon forces in Iraq have, in fact, uncovered and disarmed one of the most dangerous and destructive weapons known to man: the free press"

But the population is misled, drowning in information and controlled by the media. Mostly, this is a psychological phenomenon, both involving the involuntary input of certain sensory ideas, and also this collective stance, where we are within earshot of news and information sources. Even if we want to be objective in our stance, it is very hard to maintain this within the culture we live in today. This is equally as important in the Western world, as it is every where else. For example, at the Nuremberg trials, American prosecutors wanted the German media on trial for supporting, or at least promoting Hitler’s policies during the second world war. But- you see how strange it is of a dilemma? It wasn’t there fault, no more was it the fault of the Hitler youth to get involved in the first place. In Rwanda, the hate radio was a major part in mobilizing conflict there, instigating radical Hutus, and organizing- in some part- the massacre of over 800, 000 men, women and children. And, although news reporters there did their best to show the fatalities, I fail to see why nothing was done, or why the United Nations didn’t interfere more quickly. Is it because policy makers chose to turn a blind eye? Was it that the sight of machetes falling wasn’t enough for them to mobilize? I fail to see why this genocide had to take place under the eyes of the world. Failure to really address the issue has resulted in a variety of wars within the African continent over the same issue, having effect in the Democratic Republic of Congo and in Burundi, not to mention the thousands of refugees that have been displaced because of the violence.

Another example which hits close to home was the Serb-Croat war in the former Yugoslavia. When I was in high school, for some reason there was a massive influx of refugees that just happened to come to Hull, Quebec, and to my school, specifically. Anyways, I was in the international development program there, and we got to discuss the conflict in detail since there were so many people that had been influenced first hand. My focus here, was that the war turned into an Antenna War. American intervention was influenced by Bosnians in the Pentagon who believed that intervention was not in the vital interests of the US, and that it was too dangerous to interfere anyways. Thus, civilian agencies continued as they would in the form of ethnic hatred between groups. This caused hyper-nationalistic attitudes to be heightened, rather than downplayed. Rather than using the medium for dialogue, and the spread of information and communication, it became the drumbeat for violence within the country. Since the conflict has ended, things have eased up.