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MORNING EDITION: BY DAWN'S EARLY LITE |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sam Smith
(No verified email address) |
21 Jan 2003
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Propaganda is not just about thinking a certain way about things; it's also about not thinking about certain things at all. |
While crisp, critical analysis is difficult when one is only half awake, your editor is reasonably certain that Nominally Public Radio's morning news show is losing interest in news, favoring instead - and lengthening - non-political features of the sort you'd normally read in a dentist's office. This morning, for example, I dozed off twice only to find that the feature on fishing on Russia was still droning on, so I pulled the quilt over my head and successfully achieved a hat trick of somnolence.
The shift could be the result of NPR's boss, ex-government propagandist Kevin Klose, finally hitting his stride, or perhaps advice from broadcast consultants who may have suggested that members of America's establishment did not want to hear the painful results of their peers' hegemony. In any case, the network that brings you the aural Prozac of Diane Rehm and a mindless quiz show in which celebrities try to recall what they read in the paper last week is now doing quite a good job of knocking the news out of the news.
It is, of course, precisely the wrong time for this. For example, "Morning Edition" could easily fill a fortnight's worth of slots by simply reporting the damage being done to each of the constitutional amendments. Or, now that many - if not most - Americans don't actually favor unilateral action against Iraq, they might actually interview someone who represents that view as other than an occasional oddity.
Propaganda is not just about thinking a certain way about things; it's also about not thinking about certain things at all. Since the arrival of George Bush, the media has done a particularly fine job of keeping our minds off what is happening to us. It is not just bad journalism. It's a lie. If there was ever a time for hard news, this is it.
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See also:
http://prorev.com/indexa.htm
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