Sign of the Apocalypse, Now

The end of the world, brought to you by A-leave...
Need a long sleep? Now you can have it!

Thanks to my dad who influenced me to listen to news radio, read the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Amsterdam News, I've been a broad-spectrum, news junkie since I was a kid.

That was until last week, when I saw a disturbing story.
In full view, the mighty CNN aired a "Dog makes it's way back home after harrowing ordeal" story.

I was horrified.

Not by the story, but by the fact that they devoted air time to it. Can you see a 'dog returns home' on the front page or even the back page of the Wall Street Journal?
Before that moment, I saw CNN as the present day torch of journalism like CBS was back in the days of Walter "Uncle Waltie" Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.

For years, I watched the former powerhouses of hard hitting, uncompromising broadcast news go under. One after another, they were bought out by major corporations like GE or Westinghouse, both who make a good living selling high-performance fighter jet engines and weapons system components; the other network bought by Disney? Good Lord!

And Americans didn't seem to care. To me, it was like living Orwell's 1984, but right here in River City! The ramifications felt like something out of Russia's Politburo where "news" released to the proletariat came from the state. But here in free America, there was no outcry, not even a peep. We trusted GE, Westinghouse, and Disney - who brought us helpful, reliable major appliances and Mickey Mouse - to bring us fair and balanced news. Well, tra-la-la.

CNN's canine transgression wasn't a total surprise; I saw the writing on the wall years ago. It was just a matter of time.
In conversations with my friends and overhearing 'water cooler news,' I noticed an unnerving 'common conciousness.' There was little deviation from a short set of talk about what was going on in the world or what they saw on sensationalized, gossipy TV news. Disturbingly, very few read I overheard read newspapers either. So, I took a few evenings to see what was happening.

And there, plain as day, I watched ABC, NBC and CBS telling one story. Not one story each, but the same story.

For days, I sat before the tube promptly at six and watched the first story on CBS, then remotely controlled my TV to NBC and then ABC in the span of 10 seconds. To my chagrin, they all had the same headline.

Okay, I said to myself, they all read the same newspaper, The NY Times or the NY Daily News or - heaven forbid - The NY Post, but story for story from six to six thirty, all three aired the same stories. This went on every day for the entire week.
For a long time, 60 minutes and PBS were the only broadcast news sources I knew of to have different stories; convincing me they were either otherworldly or not on the grid. For a while, I even turned to the BBC to find out what was happening around the U.S. and the rest of the world because our networks weren't.

For weeks, I lamented about how all 'Big Three' national networks, ABC, NBC and CBS, could air the same "national" news stories at nearly the same time throughout the day - day after day - without little deviation.

"Impossible!" I thought.

Then, slowly, investigative reporting slowed to a deafeningly silent halt. replaced with fluff stories and stories that had "The Illusion of News."

Local news here became local news from Indiana or Minnesota because a truck flipped over and exploded or the pointless coverage of a desperado's futile run from the law in a car pursuit through the streets of Los Angeles. For me, those stories didn't stand up to the, "So what?" question. There are things going on in my backyard that the news isn't covering while they're showing me someone outlaw on the run - like this is still the wild west. Then again, they might wind up in my front (or back) yard.
Even local news in rural areas has farm reports; that's useful local news. But why on Earth am I interested in a car fire in Kalamazoo? Or a frackin' Dingo migration in the outback? There's real news happening here. I just know it.

For a news organization with the size and scope as CNN to report on a dog making it home tells me something is very wrong.

Especially when less and less time is devoted to our sons, daughters and friends who are fighting and dying in a war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the genocide in Darfur, unrest and killings in Tibet, and a mosquito-borne disease spreading across Brazil.
And will someone please tell me why the Queen of England traveling to Nairobi on Safari is news? Or, for that matter, where Prince William parties on the weekends?

Seems like all the networks signed some unholy alliance with an unseen, dark power - no, not the guy who sounds like a diver's air regulator either. Where's the SNL church lady when you want an appropriate question and raised eyebrow?

For a recent example of the networks - including CNN - operating like tools, I look again to the Iraq War. Reports came through the 'big four' that the vaunted 'Surge" in Iraq worked and, for a moment, the networks went quiet about the war. Then the fledgling Iraqi military tried to flex on the Mahdi army and the "insurgents" let fly with bullets and rockets on them and a well aimed mortar barrage on the American held green-zone - with minimized casualty reports. To me, that sounds to me like the Mahdi army's cease fire was bought.
The accuracy of the "Zone" strikes tells me that area is zeroed in. Does anyone remember Saigon? Tet? Too bad the Viet Cong couldn't be bought. Or, maybe they just weren't buying.

But then the headline news stories out of Iraq stopped, again. It suggests that the operations was supposed to go better than it did and the news was supposed to inform concerned Americans - and the world - that the Iraqis can finally take care of them selves, their army has been 'blooded' so to speak. Literally trial by combat. But there were those nagging stories about desertions and soldiers returning to clan affiliations. I guess the British had the same problems with the loyalist colonials.

Few reports are coming out of Iraq on the national army's progress. Why is that? News organizations track things us ordinary folk can't but are concerned about.
Make no mistakes, this is a new war.
And it boggles my mind that a Nation that can fight a war in Europe and the Pacific can't rout what's being called a tribal or insurgent army doesn't make sense to me. Not for a minute.
Anybody notice that, unlike before, this Iraqi war is only Now being called a civil war? Last year, none of the 'pundits' wanted to call the conflict a civil war. They were ready to argue that it wasn't. Where are they now?
Now, five years and 4,000 American lives later, no one is asking, Mr. Bush, "Where are those WMDs?" Is the question really moot? Or is it the near $4 dollar gas prices and the gas companies billions in profits or the housing variable mortgage rate crash that has us preoccupied.

I felt like the end of the bloodless news coup came when Dan Rather and Tom Brokaw "retired." Anyone ask, "Why did they leave at the same time?" And then Peter Jennings, who said he started smoking again after 9/11, died.
Dan Rather made the mistake of openly disliking Bush and would not let go of the President's "questionable" military service. Then, the investigation turned on him when certain damning documents were reportedly faked! My, my. The intrigue. Like so many things - like the Kennedy assasination or whether we really landed men on the moon; the general public will never know.
The creepy thing is that the one possible "free" news medium was - of all things - You-tube.
Now, Rupert Murdock owns it...Hmmm.

So much for the "Free Press."

* * *

"Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States and advocate of Liberty.

If there's not a car chase in progress, the TV news networks give us the newspaper headlines from each section. There's so much that just never makes it to the air and thus, American citizens. Does that mean we don't want to now? I sincerely hope not.

By the way, I'm not sure if anyone noticed but this Global War on Terror we're fighting is "World War III."

Get right with God, make your peace with family, visit mama and dad, kiss your spouse, you significant other and your children.

Some call this the time of Armageddon.
Who knows, it might even be televised.
Be a shame if the networks missed that news story.