[NLA] Media Alert

[KathleenBombach@aol.com]

Art:
I've read the Federalist papers, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution many, many times. Yep, that is not what they had in mind.

Many journalists are very unhappy over the present state of affairs. Some have even quit their jobs in protest, like Helen Thomas. Lou Dobbs has so much power at CNN, he says what he wants to on the role of the press and the Bill of Rights. He was the only TV journalist who had the strength to criticize the successful effort by politicians to demand that news coverage on Afghanistan support US policies, for example.

It is not that Americans are going to join Osama bin Laden en masse if we read and hear different viewpoints. It is not going to happen--and the sad suicide of one depressed, impulsive boy who had been abandoned by his half Arab father is not evidence that it will happen.

Press censorship, whether explicit or internalized, hurts literacy because we have a message that there are problems, life is messy, and there are people who need the rest of us to pay attention. Poverty, the handmaiden to literacy, is nasty and brutish. An inability to fully participate in 'family, work, home, and community' is nasty and brutish. Having to show your soiled sanitary napkin to your boss in the multinational-owned factory where you work for a dollar an hour to prove you are not pregnant so you won't be fired is nasty and brutish. And when your primary concern as a journalist is that multinational corporations will not buy ad space on your network if you show what they actually do in their factories in the Third World, well...

If the press can't or won't cover news that is unpleasant because it might depress the viewer right before the movie promo, we have a problem. Real national resources are not going to be forthcoming as a result of only 'positive' news pieces. I love news stories that show happy mothers reading to happy children because I know their struggles and pride. The average viewer does not, unless other, deeper and more analytic stories are also part of the culture. The viewer will have a warm fuzzy right before the movie promo, and think all is well in the world for everyone.

So it is an uphill struggle.

Kathleen Bombach


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