Comatose Press Twitches

This report from Broadcasting & Cable left me shaking my aching head in some disgust and even more wonderment.

The White House, the courts and the Federal Communications Commission all took hits from broadcast journalists Thursday night, who said they were feeling under fire from a manipulative and even malicious government.

NBC News President Neal Shapiro set the tone, telling a roomful of top journalists gathered for the Radio-Television News Directors Foundation awards dinner in D.C. that the press is under attack as never before from the executive and judicial branches, which he says are pursuing journalists with "actual malice" just for doing their jobs.

Imagine that. Let's do a quick recap, shall we?

Journalists were the sleazy torch-bearers during the GOP Witch Hunt of Bill Clinton.

Journalists looked the other way as voters were systematically disenfranched in 2000.

Journalists ignored the contentious 5-4 ruling in Bush v. Gore - the most roundly denounced Supreme Court ruling in modern history - and pretended the massive demonstration that occurred during Bush's coronation never happened.

This has been their pattern from the very start, regurgitating Karl Rove's talking points as though they were doing their jobs.

Journalists sat mum after 911 while Bush stonewalled survivors' families and the vigorously resisted even forming a 911 Commission, which he would later manipulate without scrutiny.

The anthrax attacks came and went, and journalists exerted precious little investigative effort despite the implications.

Through the Patriot Act, two wars and a culture of corporate kleptocracy, the so-called Fourth Estate has been George W. Bush's biggest, loudest and most obnoxious cheerleader, assisting in the mechanical deconstruction of our Constitution.

Journalists, like the neoCONs they empower, laugh at the alarm expressed by the rest of the world.

Protestors? We were condemned as traitors. And we continue to be.

TRUTH? Thanks to its self-proclaimed guardians, America has replaced truth with blind nationalism.

And now they look at each other, bewildered and bemused, as The Machine turns to the press for more grist. Two words spring to mind: Stupid and Corrupt - not necessarily in that order.

It's time to "sound the alarm," he said. That call was picked up by other speakers and punctuated with applause from the crowd.

Shapiro cited Jim Taricani, the reporter for NBC-owned WJAR Providence, R.I., who was convicted of contempt by a federal judge for failing to reveal a source. Only a heart condition kept him out of prison, said Shapiro. Taricani is on six months house arrest.

"This is what reporters do," Taricani told Shapiro after the conviction. But facing arrest should not be part of the job description, said Shapiro, who took the opportunity to push for a federal shield law, which the Radio-Television News Directors Association and several legislators are championing on Capitol Hill.

Yeah, sound that alarm. Now that the house has burned to ground.

Shapiro attributed some of the repressive climate to frustrated governmnent officials who, having failed to please their superiors, take it out on journalists. But he also cited "a handful of scandals" that have tarred the broadcast industry and a post-9/11 climate that contributed to the crackdown. He advised journalists to do a better job of showing themselves as reporters, rather than entertainers.

A "handful of scandals" huh? I'm not going to list them here. The complacent, uncontested degradation of corporate news media IS the scandal, which is one reason they refuse to admit report the "Jeff Gannon" male prostitute in the White House story, including the propaganda aspect -- because they simply can't do it without implicating themselves.

The "post-9/11 climate" lamented by Mr. Shapiro? His industry created it.

ABC's Sam Donaldson, master of ceremonies, said he had never seen such "vitriolic animus" toward journalists, save for the waning days of the Nixon administration. Donaldson said he hears commentators from the right and left trying to convince the public that the mainstream press cannot be trusted. It's time to "fire back," he said.

Donaldson said he wasn't advocating suppressing commentary, punctuating the point with: "Let every flower bloom." But he suggested that if some flowers were blooming thanks to a load of manure, that should be pointed out, too. "They should have to answer to those who think they got it wrong."

Yes, fire back, Sam Donaldson, but understand the bullets you're dodging today were launched from your very own gun. You think The Bush Machine has contempt for you? They got nuthin' on the freaks at this carnival.

Veteran CBS newsman Ed Bradley took up the charge in his acceptance speech for the Leonard Zeidenberg First Amendment Award (named after the late B&C correspondent).

Bradley talked of the pressure by government and corporations to "control the message," saying journalists must fight those efforts. "There is a price to pay," he said, for representing the people.

Yes, there is a price to pay, Ed. And although you and yours are no longer willing to pay that price, it hasn't stopped you from cashing that paycheck, has it?

For his part, Liberty station group President Jim Keelor, winner of the First Amendment Leadership Award, had a bone to pick with the FCC.

He told the audience that at the same time he was notified of the award, he was making the seemingly First Amendment-unfriendly decision not to air Saving Private Ryan on his ABC affiliates.

Sixty-six ABC affiliates preempted the Veteran's Day airing of the film, saying that they could not be sure its four-letter words would pass muster with the FCC.

It wasn't for the potential fine, said Keelor, adding "We had some spare change." It wasn't the five stations he had up for renewal at the time, he said, adding "though that thought did cross my mind." It was to send a message to the FCC that the indecency crackdown has gone too far. "The FCC is getting more political every day," he said.

You reap what you sow, Keelor. You can't feed the beast for ten years and then complain about its increasing appetite. How delusional you all have been to think you could control the after effects of your crimes against the public trust. As long as it's workaday citizens paying the price, whether their votes aren't being counted or they're coming home in flag-draped caskets, you're content to play the willing executioner. Now that you find yourself in the hot seat, it's a different story, isn't it?

In the wake of Janet Jackson, said Keelor, there are some at the commission who want the TV world to look like Ozzie & Harriet and Leave it To Beaver, while pay TV, by contrast is "getting a pass."

Broadcasters in recent weeks have increasingly pointed to the disparity between the regulation of broadcast and cable indecency. Some have advocated cracking down on cable and satellite if broadcasters can't shed their own indecency yoke, though Keelor did not go that far.

Keelor "did not go that far" but I'll bet he damn sure wanted to. What's good for the goose being good for the gander, and all that. Keelor makes it clear his primary concern is his bank account.

The result of the post-Janet craziness, Keelor said, is that live TV, including news,is threatened. He pointed out that some local TV newscasts are tape-delayed and said live shots are being re-thought for fear of somebody flipping the bird.

Talk about compartmentalizing. The situation the corporate media finds itself in isn't just the result of "post-Janet craziness" but their own gross complicity in advancing an extreme rightwing agenda that is now taking chunks out of their collective ass. Some people - a lot, as it turns out - will do anything for a buck.

If the crackdown continues, he said, broadcast networks will be second-class citizens. For First Amendment and business reasons, said Keelor, "we can't let that happen."

No, we can't have broadcast networks being second-class citizens. That's okay for the rest of us, thanks to you who are so special and deserving of the first class citenzship denied to the rest of America.

Hell isn't hot enough for the morally bankrupt corporate news media.