The American Press

There is something going on with the American Press. I travel all over the world and watch news programs all over the world. During the last 10 years the domestic American news content with respect to foreign affairs has almost vanished.

If you watch CNN in Australia or London you get a fairly even consolidated view of whats happening in the world. Turn on CNN or FOX while your in the US and foreign news disappears. Domestic American news is almost completely filled with domestic issues, Michael Jackson , Tanya Lacey or the latest story that won’t die, the runaway bride Jennifer Wilbanks (sorry Jennifer I dont fucking care)........

these stories fill the news channels as if these are the issues that are important to Americans . One of the tragedies of the 9/11 disaster is that Americans were genuinely mystified why another country or group would want to attack America.

Not one of the major networks, not CNN, FOX, ABC have anyone dedicated to reporting on issues in the Muslim world, the greatest threat to American or western security in the last 30 years goes unreported by the American news corporations.

Most of what you see coming out of IRAQ comes out via agencies, that is all the network footage is consolidated via news agencies to the networks who share the same pictures. Many of the American reporters in Iraq don’t leave their hotels, they send out locals to get the footage and they compile and consolidate it as a group in the hotels. The US networks are dumbing down the reality of the world, very little information is getting thorough the American news propaganda.

The reality is that the coverage that most Americans are receiving is completely slanted, most Americans would not recognize their country if they saw it through the eyes of people abroad. This picture of America valiantly forging into Iraq to create a democracy and to release the Iraq citizens from tyranny isn’t the news and opinion that’s shared around the world, America is not seen as a valiant defender of world freedom.

American media is biased, its become infotainment for the masses rather than real information based on the journalistic standards that Americans pioneered fought to establish, even those people who believe they are well informed are still subject to the American spin doctors. The reality is that the average US citizen is about as well informed as the citizens of the USSR during the cold war.

The reality is that Americans in foreign policy terms have a very poor understanding of both history and geography. A fundamental problem with the Iraq situation is that Iraq is not even a country its an artificial construct that has never in history formed a coercive nation , creating a democratic nation out of such a complex web of nationalities and religious groups with not history of cohesion is a awesomely difficult task and more than likely an impossible one.

The CIA made huge mistakes by withdrawing the hands on the ground intelligence, a similar thing has happened with the news and the withdrawal and closure of the major networks foreign offices . The reality is that the wise old heads of Washington are talking about further attacks on the US by Muslim groups, Warren Buffett is banging his drum as loud as he can about the risks, (folks you better believe he is well informed) the 9/11 commission has taken the unusual step of continuing their role after they have a legal right to do so (I think it reflects the degree of risk they perceived) many influential people are seeking to express their concern, these are individuals that are not normally so politically active http://www.nti.org/c_press/release_lastbestchance_050305.pdf .

Central to fundamental ideas of democracy and freedom are the information foundations of the societies they govern. Propaganda has been the underlying cancer all forms of government through the ages. These times are like no others and the worrying signs with communications and media is the world may beome less informed rather than more informed as we have always assumed . Sir George Thomson, the British physicist and Nobel prizewinner, suggests in The Foreseeable Future that the nearest historic parallel with today is not the industrial revolution but rather the `invention of agriculture in the Neolithic age. John Diebold, the American automation expert, warns that `the effects of the technological revolution we are now living through will be deeper than any social change we have experienced before. Sir Leon Bagrit, the British computer manufacturer, insists that automation by itself represents `the greatest change in the whole history of mankind.

"Nor are the men of science and technology alone in these views. Sir Herbert Read, the philosopher of art, tells us that we are living through `a revolution so fundamental that we must search many past centuries for a parallel. Possibly the only comparable change is the one that took place between the Old and the New Stone Age .And Kurt W. Marek, who under the same C. W. Ceram is best known as the author of Gods, Graves, and Scholars, observes that `we, in the twentieth century, are concluding an era of mankind five thousand years in length . . . We are not, as Spengler supposed, in the situation of Rome at the beginning of the Christian West, but in that of the year 3000 b. c. We open our eyes like prehistoric man, we see a world totally new.

And the only way we will know what to do is be educated and informed.

Do you think we are well informed ? What do you think about transparency within the US government ? Do you think the media in some ways might be a savior? Does better information support a more integral democracy? What would Integral journalism look like ? What are the highest priority questions, issues and solutions ? Where do we start ? What about a 2nd Tier takevoer what would it look like?