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Weather Weather everywhere...
Oct. 9th, 2005 10:43 amTropical Storm Vince has now formed, our 20th such storm this season. I keep a wary eye only because I will be in Florida in 10 days and I don't relish hunkering down in Orlando in a hurricane. I read about the devastation in Central America from Tropical Stan and the Horrific death toll comming out of Pakistan from Saturday's earthquake and I wonder why both are not getting more media attention. Sheer body count numbers alone should be worth some drooling, but no, it's tut-tutted as a tragedy in a far off place; an event to be pitied and to offer our assistance, but not the same sort of event on par with say--New Orleans which people call "our tsunami."
I say this NOT to lessen the impact of the news or the devastation of three gulf states. It was horrific, it was right to garner the attention it did to the plight of the victims and the gross indifference and incompetence of our government to cope properly after nearly 5 years of "terrorist preparations." I am simply pointing out the difference in feeling and in coverage. I do view it as yet another way in which our emotions and sympathies, not to mention values, are manipulated by the media.
This weekend sees the opening of a low-budget film called Good Night and Good Luck. This was the signature sign off of Edward R. Murrow. The movie was co-written, produced, and underwrote (funded) by George Clooney. The film highlights a particular period in American Journalism that is frightening close to what we face now. HUAC was in full swing. Joseph McCarthy spellbound most of the nation with firey rhetoric, manufactured fear and commanded awe as he cut swaths through the red-menace that had permeated (according to him and his ilk) American life from the top of Government on down. Lets not forget also who was his right hand man in this...a Junior Senator from California who would become Vice President and then President--yes, Richard M. Nixon.
Murrow took on McCarthy, painting him into his own corner and eventually contributing to his public disgrace. The communist witch hunt McCarthy created demolished the lives and careers of many more people than just a handful of Hollywood actors, but then as now, the American court of Public Opinion was skillfully used and abused to suit this man's personal, misguided vendetta. Just as recently as a few weeks ago, when renaming the federal post office in Berkeley was voted down largely because a Republican senator from Iowa called into question the un-american opinions of the person for which the Post Office would be named. It was the result, so democrats said, of a whisper campaign through the senate. Barbara Lee (D) Oakland, CA likened it to McCarthy.
Senator King (R) of Iowa said: (I pulled this quote from the San Francisco Chronicle)
"I think that if Barbara Lee would read the history of Joe McCarthy, she would realize that he was a hero for America."
It still shocks me to think anyone truly believes the madness, the public fear and hysteria whipped up by the HUAC investigations were in anyway "heroic"
Morrow kicked the foundation of public opinion out from under McCarthy through concise reporting, of telling facts that people did not necessarily want to hear, and by letting McCarthy's rambling disjointed rhetoric prove his own downfall.
Murrow pointed out that television has the power to enlighten, empower and teach but, "It can do so only to the extent that humans are allowed to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box."
I watch the unbalanced news coverage on tv, in print, on the radiowaves and I think about that quote and I watch and wait for a new Murrow to emerge in this day and age of Neo-Con fear mongering, "Hammers" like DeLay and Cheney who feel fully justified in their lies and manipulations and I wait...
I say this NOT to lessen the impact of the news or the devastation of three gulf states. It was horrific, it was right to garner the attention it did to the plight of the victims and the gross indifference and incompetence of our government to cope properly after nearly 5 years of "terrorist preparations." I am simply pointing out the difference in feeling and in coverage. I do view it as yet another way in which our emotions and sympathies, not to mention values, are manipulated by the media.
This weekend sees the opening of a low-budget film called Good Night and Good Luck. This was the signature sign off of Edward R. Murrow. The movie was co-written, produced, and underwrote (funded) by George Clooney. The film highlights a particular period in American Journalism that is frightening close to what we face now. HUAC was in full swing. Joseph McCarthy spellbound most of the nation with firey rhetoric, manufactured fear and commanded awe as he cut swaths through the red-menace that had permeated (according to him and his ilk) American life from the top of Government on down. Lets not forget also who was his right hand man in this...a Junior Senator from California who would become Vice President and then President--yes, Richard M. Nixon.
Murrow took on McCarthy, painting him into his own corner and eventually contributing to his public disgrace. The communist witch hunt McCarthy created demolished the lives and careers of many more people than just a handful of Hollywood actors, but then as now, the American court of Public Opinion was skillfully used and abused to suit this man's personal, misguided vendetta. Just as recently as a few weeks ago, when renaming the federal post office in Berkeley was voted down largely because a Republican senator from Iowa called into question the un-american opinions of the person for which the Post Office would be named. It was the result, so democrats said, of a whisper campaign through the senate. Barbara Lee (D) Oakland, CA likened it to McCarthy.
Senator King (R) of Iowa said: (I pulled this quote from the San Francisco Chronicle)
"I think that if Barbara Lee would read the history of Joe McCarthy, she would realize that he was a hero for America."
It still shocks me to think anyone truly believes the madness, the public fear and hysteria whipped up by the HUAC investigations were in anyway "heroic"
Morrow kicked the foundation of public opinion out from under McCarthy through concise reporting, of telling facts that people did not necessarily want to hear, and by letting McCarthy's rambling disjointed rhetoric prove his own downfall.
Murrow pointed out that television has the power to enlighten, empower and teach but, "It can do so only to the extent that humans are allowed to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box."
I watch the unbalanced news coverage on tv, in print, on the radiowaves and I think about that quote and I watch and wait for a new Murrow to emerge in this day and age of Neo-Con fear mongering, "Hammers" like DeLay and Cheney who feel fully justified in their lies and manipulations and I wait...
