Today’s leaders are armed with powerful high-tech weaponry and the pervasive influence of government-friendly Hollywood executives and a highly partisan echo chamber. TV News needs to start doing better reporting on the effects of what has actually been done by politicians and other officials and stop spending so much time covering stories that perpetuate the info Americans keep getting wrong.Ask around. While TV News continues to act, for example, as a Dick Cheney bullhorn, a mass of Americans are in the palm of his hand. Too many citizens are ravenous for an unnecessary war with Iran, defensive about waterboarding in secret prisons, callous toward the widespread killing of innocent civilians, and oblivious to endless global military occupations. As so many millions of impressions are made with selective storytelling and repeated with carefully constructed talking points, these subjects can hardly be brought up in public without preparation for tough conversations!TV News rarely ever connects the dots. The outcome of their cursed desire for more and more exclusive access is harm inflicted on so many thousands of American youths by the US military, as well as Congress. The ex-CEO of Halliburton influenced the very same government contracts now creating minor, yet palpable public outrage whenever abuses and fraud are revealed. The apparent shortage of public disapproval for war profiteering is enabled by the willingness of TV News to omit the very real, very human stories of young Americans (and innocent civilians) destroyed by US occupations.So get to work, TV News, reveal the rest of the story. Fabulous ratings await. Tell the stories of veterans fighting to overcome lost limbs. Explore the research on birth defects from chemical weapons. Shed light on the psychological damage of PTSD and the flow of veterans toward homelessness. Check out the differences between repressive regimes and their civilian populations. Americans deserve to know all that tax and national debt is being spent on.Or else ever-evolving news organizations and public interest activists will eventually reach a large enough audience through other technologies besides TV to inform America about the ugly side of the war machine. The word is already out about complicit media institutions who have perpetrated a massive cover-up of their own involvement in domestic propaganda, disinformation on world affairs, even illegal wiretaps.Too many patriotic, liberty-minded Americans have already begun to investigate. Once more reporters and activists empower an American public equipped with enough knowledge to use leadership and diplomacy instead of the bodies of so many thousand American youths, and foreign policy changes, a decreasing audience will still look to the knuckle-dragging TV News to hear the latest utterance of the mouthpiece.The time to invest everything in investigation is now. The grip of TV News on the American psyche is already getting threatened by developments in social technology and the corporations who own and/or control TV News could be dramatically weakened by an administration determined to push through public interest technology policy in Congress and at the Federal Communications Commission.An informed populace will decide for itself what is best for democracy. The age of endless foreign wars and skyrocketing national debt will end. Hopefully as the empire crumbles, Americans will finally force the US government to become more democratic. We’ve sung of liberty but in order for freedom to ring truth must be amplified.Otherwise, the cycle of powerful actors scheming up black ops, convinced their activities will not receive the illumination of public disclosure, will only continue. And the American public will keep making grave fundamental mistakes in assessing the rapid developments in global politics – a dangerous precedent for human life and liberty.
Gavin Dahl is a contributor to Raw Story, Boise Weekly, Common Frequency, Reclaim the Media, KRFC Radio & other independent media outlets & nonprofits.
