Newspaper -- Toilet Paper

Newspaper makes lousy toilet paper and toilet paper makes a lousy newspaper. Yet that's exactly what newspaper is -- and we've got toilet paper.

A functioning Democracy rests upon an informed voting public that, at the minimum has the capacity to think with an ability to separate the subject from the object and is endowed with some moral and ethical compass. Clearly, the 100 year (more or less) experiment to formulate "good citizens" rather than teach problem solving skills with the necessary tools for a decent sense of self that empowers one to use those tools has failed -- failed miserably. Or, did it?

For someone's point of world view beyond Joe Blow's observations, read the following:

The question:

What is your comment on the current mainstream media and how it shapes our perceptions and priorities?

The answer:

I don’t believe anything as changed. If it is one to change in the middle east as other parts of the world, I think one of the really significant and building areas of discussion- and data has been building for the last few years—is just the kind of information we get through the so- called mainstream. We have many alternative sources of information now, not least of all your own program. though I wouldn’t call that alternative.

But for most people, the primary source of their information is the mainstream. It is mainly television. Even the internet for all its subversiveness has still a very large component of the mainstream. And that means we’re getting still either its this singular message about wars, about the economy, about all those things that touch our lives. All we are getting is what I would call is a contrived silence, a censorship by a mission. I think this is almost the principal issue of today because without information, we cannot possibly begin to influence government. We cannot possibly begin to end the wars.

All of this, it seams to me, has come together in the presidency of Barack Obama who is almost a creation of this media world. He promised some things, although most of them were more for us, and has delivered virtually the opposite. He started his own war in Pakistan. We see the events in Iran and Honduras in quiet subtlety, but very directly influenced in the time-honored way by the Obama administration. And yet the Obama administration is still given this extraordinary benefit of the doubt by people, who in my view are influenced by the mainstream media. It is a time when I think, where either we are going to begin to understand how the media really works, or we’re going to let that opportunity pass. Its almost a historic opportunity the we understand that the perception of our world is utterly distorted, most of the time through what are seen as credible sources of information.

Read the rest of the interview with John Pilger.

A good example of this is Israel, Pilger says, "The way Israel is reported in the United States is media manipulation as almost as high art form."

But no one ever presses an Israeli leader. Netanyahu or Olmert or any of them. There are given, Israeli leaders were given a legitimacy during what was unconditionally a massacre in December-January of this year. And the sum of that was to suggest, number one, that there was a war between Israel and Gaza and there wasn’t. There was an assault on Gaza that was aimed at civilians, on a defenseless country, a helpless country, a trapped people. And the second impression was that, yes, Israel is a democracy. And we will discuss this on television with you, we will discuss the finer points.

The way Israel is reported in the United States is media manipulation as almost as high art form. When people like Netanyahu whose very utterances and his background would suggest somebody, I think safe to say not credible, but somebody of well, those of us who would say somebody would be a prima facie war criminal, is given this kind of legitimacy. Not even questioned, not even challenged about the events in this country and his own extreme utterances. ****

I think it is that legitimacy the mainstream media gives one side. And the sum of that, as far as Palestine is concerned is that there is no illegitimate occupation. There is no illegality. There is sum illegality as Obama referred to in his Cairo speech about the continuing building of settlements, but there is no suggestion that this is the longest, most brutal, illegal military occupation in our lifetime.

Why is any of this okay? Anyone read the Times-Standard for Tuesday, July 7, 2009? We've got a bankrupt creamery, a corrupt 20 year old county jailer, out of control homeless campfires spread around the Eureka area, and a convicted sex offender sentenced. On the inside we've got James Faulk's solution for humanities long-term survival - space travel. Included is an article by Byron York on Democrat double-speak on immigration. How appropriate!

Not to forget page A6, we got the headline, " ... the completion of border berm." Don't you just love the words they use for "steel-meshed fence and bright lighting"? Word manipulation, double-talk; double-speak propaganda à la the anonymous Associated Press.

Truth, honesty and integrity -- any part of someone's moral compass?

John Pilger writes on his web "johnpilger.com": 'It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and myths that surround it.'

Words this Report strives to emulate, but not without paying a heavy price.

[Picture Source]

--Joe