Saturday, February 27, 2010

MSM All in On The Dark Side Part 2

Perhaps some of you are familiar with the recent story regarding the Orca at SeaWorld that drowned one of its handlers. The mainstream media had something of a field day with this, but, true to form, reportage-if that's how one wants to describe the mainstream media's product- of the event lacked the necessary context with which to fully take the measure of the unfortunate situation. Rather, those of us who pay attention to the offerings of the MSM, for whatever reason, were instead treated to this event occurred in a vacuum palaver, where the handler's demise was portrayed as something of a one off, freak accident. That was, regrettably, not the case.

However, not providing essential context, or key information on stories of all shapes and sizes, is de rigeur for the MSM, and is not, in and of itself, noteworthy. The question for this blogger is the following: is the long standing, marked, tendency by MSM to "miss the story" to put it politely, more pronounced than at previous times?

Here one has to rely on conjecture. I have a formulation that goes something like this:

The national scene, politically, economically, and socially, has deteriorated over the last few years such that government now operates, for all intents and purposes, almost entirely as a facilitator of corporate pillage by the remaining remnants of the nation's so called FIRE economy. Presently, despite a de-acceleration in, for example, unemployment, our hemorrhaging national economy is still swelling the ranks of those without jobs. To be reductive, for the sake of brevity, the increasing number of the restless many (as opposed to the ever more prosperous few) are beginning to express their growing dismay and discomfort in myriad ways including random acts of violence (see the recent suicide bombing of a building housing IRS offices in Austin, Texas) and/or nascent political organization such as the tea party movement.

However, in the case of random acts of violence, except in humble blogs such as this one, and local media outlets, where neighborhood mayhem can not be swept under the rug as easily as it can be by the national media, there is scant coverage of the growing discontent and dissent.

That is my premise. In short, if the premise is correct the answer to the question posed is a resounding yes. If, indeed, there is more misery, broadly defined, then the assumed inadequacies of the MSM must be even more resounding. Among other effects of this perverse condition, expect to see cognitive dissonance, which already exists for this citizen, continue to increase as a result of the growing disconnect between what is actually happening across the nation and what is not being reported with respect to our rapidly deteriorating circumstances here in the real world.

I view this development as unavoidable since the MSM's purpose, or more precisely, its imperative, is to distract, confuse, and otherwise obfuscate events that are at odds with the fantastic narrative our nation's handlers seek to enshroud us in. The American poet, author, and musician, Gil Scott-Heron may be most famous for his observation that, "The revolution will not be televised." Increasingly, my view is that there will likely be no revolution, at least of the sort I presume Mr. Scott-Heron envisioned. But rest assured, that with respect to any sort of meaningful change, let alone radical change, here in Freedom's Land, Mr. Scott-Heron was spot on with respect to the role of the mainstream media.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I didn't read any stories about the killer whale, but let me guess: Freak occurrence, no one could have predicted it, anytime it ever happened before (if it ever happened before as far as the article's concerned) was also inexplicable, but there's nothing at all structurally wrong about imprisoning these vibrant, intelligent animals and demeaning them for the amusement of a gaggle of yahoos. The animal would never be prone to have an adverse behavioral reaction to that existential situation.

(So everybody keep shopping, and in this case keep going to shows like that.)

Yes, that sounds like my beloved MSM all right.

(This morning Dean Baker has yet another installment of his endless series on The-MSM-Ignores-An-$8trillion-Housing-Bubble, this time on today's NYT editorial.)

Edwardo said...

Bingo, Russ! You da winner.