---Oscar Wilde 1854-1900
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There is a recent article in Newsweek magazine (US) that is nearly ten years overdue. When I read it this morning, I could only shake my head and feel so infinitely sad that I nearly wept at how the wondrous and wonderful idea of a "free press" in my country has been so subverted that it keeps "the public" distracted from real issues by sideshows, no matter how tragic, silly or entertaining, so that they aren't paying attention to what is "worth knowing." The piece describes, at long last, one example where one journalist in the US "Mainstream Media" ("MSM") has had an epiphany. Will it become perhaps the first tentative step for other MSM journalists to have theirs and finally to begin doing their jobs, to investigate the facts of a story rather than the "spin" or what passes as popular wisdom? Or will this piece, like so many others of its kind, simply sink into oblivion? At least, it's actually been reported in a MSM publication.The article entitled "Would Bloggers Have Cracked Chandra's Case?" looks at a new book, "Finding Chandra," that discusses the number one summer news story in the US in 2001 - the disappearance of a 24-year-old intern, Chandra Levy, who, as it happened, was also having an affair with a US Congressman, Gary Condit. The disappearance caused a media frenzy that obscured what actually was happening, did not advance the investigation or solve the mystery, and smeared a politician whose behavior was certainly unethical and unsavory, but hardly criminal. The MSM so misreported the facts and misrepresented the truth that it was not until May 2009 that Ms Levy's remains were found, near a place where her computer had clearly indicated that she was planning to go - based on searches for jogging paths - and that a suspect in other similar assaults finally confessed to hers.
Blame does not fall only on the MSM. There were serious, even shocking, blunders by the police, who failed to retrieve security-camera footage showing Levy's final departure from home and who somehow were unaware of a pattern of similar attacks on other female joggers. But the press corps failed to ask smart questions, instead "jockeying for scoops concerning the most intriguing suspect: congressman Gary Condit," whether those scoops represented the truth or not.
In the final analysis, anyone who followed only the US MSM would have been hard pressed to learn that anything else was happening in the world at the time. As many of us remember all too well, however, the summer of 2001 was a time when alarming pieces were being published elsewhere about fanatically zealous religious groups that were determined to attack within the US. It was a time when responsible counterterrorism experts such as Richard Clarke were trying desperately to get attention from feckless, lazy and incompetent leaders who had their own ideological agendas in mind even then. As a result, that summer culminated, once and for all, in the worst terrorist attacks ever on US soil: 9-11 and the horrible aftermath. The reverberations and consequences from those deliberate omissions and failures to report are still being felt and will continue to be for some time to come. Tragically.
While my heart literally aches at all the media-manufactured frenzy about this particular story, which is representative of too many silly or sordid tempests in a teapot which perform the same distractive function as did ancient Roman circuses, I take heart that one journalist believes that she has learned a lesson. I hope that she has. I also thank her for pointing out the site Web Sleuths, which will henceforth become one of my own sources. Unfortunately, too many other journalists have learned nothing. They will continue to follow the same pack mentality and post the same distorted stories in an effort to achieve ratings or notoriety.
We are all the poorer for that. And our so-called "free press" will remain a myth.
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