MIA: Responsible Media
Where's the teeth?
An historic event took place on September 24, 2005: Hundreds of thousands of protestors took to the streets in the heart of the nation to call for an end to the murderous Iraq occupation. It was the largest protest since the Iraq War began, and it was a beautiful testament to the poetic power of peace.
The crowd, with its abundant and colorful signs, some embellished with sardonic humor, others laced with angry taunts, moved with lyrical elegance along the march route on Constiution Avenue toward the White House. There was both a jubilant energy and curious calm permeating the crowd, which numbered between 200,000-400,000 participants from varied walks of life. The mirthful vigor seemed to emanate from a life-affirming sense of shared purpose, while the serenity, I suppose, radiated from the peaceful ideal of the march itself.
But as invigorating as the march was, that joy is somewhat punctured by the distressing fact of a missing-in-action responsible mainstream media.
For, predictably, mainstream media coverage of the historic DC event was a pathetic match for the magnitude of the march. This huge DC protest should have made huge headlines, and pictures of the event should have been splattered across every newspaper in every US city. But even liberal-seeming The New York Times was demure in its coverage, granting a tiny picture on the front page and a medium-sized article on page 12 or so. Apparently, CNN and The Washington Post stepped up to the challenge admirably, although I was not a witness to either. But in Atlanta and other major cities, the protest received, at best, second-page coverage, and even then, the coverage was anemic and riddled with patronizing platitudes.
People seem to have forgotten (or perhaps never understood to begin with) the fact that media’s main aim is to question any given policy of government, and to illuminate the public as to the disparities that exist between government propaganda and the truth. The media are supposed to mirror society’s needs, not feed into the propaganda juggernaut. When the media simply tow the government line, then the media are no longer discernible from the government itself, but merely an arm of the institution they are supposed to be critiquing.
And today, since the American government has been taken hostage by the corporations, the corporations are really the true puppeteers.
The mainstream media, then, has become subservient to corporations, who have adbducted democracy, locked it up in a filthy cage, and whipped it into whimpering submission. Corporations are the Abu Ghraibs and Guantanamo Bays of America, and the media are the security guards in these torture chambers.
Fortunately, scores of responsible alternative media outlets (Air America, alternet.org, tompaine.com, etc.) have sprung up in response to our missing-in-action responsible media - hopefully to the point where the alternative will morph into the mainstream, which will in turn further galvanize a mainstream movement against the imperialistic bullying taking place in its name.
Until then, stay tuned - or not.
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Alison Ross is a passionate but peeved advocate for the poor and homeless. She deplores American fascism but adores American liberalism. She has had her sociopolitical rants showcased in Democracy Means You, Exquisite Corpse, Democratic Underground, Muse Apprentice Guild, When Falls the Coliseum, and Creative Loafing. She also venerates verse, and has had her poetry published in Cerebral Catalyst, A Little Poetry, Muse Apprentice Guild, Mad Swirl, and Nova Express, and forthcoming in Underground Window. When not writing, she enjoys reading, drinking wine, snoring, and bonding with her feline friend, Quetzal.
