Corporate Media Has Lost Its Mind
I think Russia has hacked the corporate media’s already useless minds.
Having already had zero confidence in the collective corporate-media-industrial-complex’s ability, or desire, to cover mass suffering permeating America, I generally gave them the benefit of the doubt that it was more cluelessness and laziness than intentional ignorance.
But, as I returned from my seventh reporting trip in the rubble of the former Middle Class that is Flint, Michigan, and turned on my TV this morning, I officially realized NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox, CNN and their brothers at The New York Times, Washington Post, and the rest of the worst have lost their minds.
Does it matter if the Trump campaign “colluded” with the Russian government to influence our election results: sure.
Is there any real, concrete evidence that this occurred? Absolutely not.
Shady business dealings of Trump confidantes and Trump himself; inappropriate conversations Trump campaign officials had with Russian ambassadors, Trump firing the FBI Director because he wanted the investigation to end; Paul Manafort being a mobster-like huckster; and Trump’s hesitance to adopt John McCain-like hysteria over Russia are not concrete proof of “collusion.”
And by the way-what does “collusion” even mean? Did Trump’s campaign, filled with a bunch of rag-tag shape shifters without much campaign experience-somehow coordinate with the Kremlin to hack into DNC emails (which, by the way, occurred in in 2015 when Trump was very far from being the Republican nominee), then John Podesta’s emails (who, by the way, lost his phone in a taxi cab in summer of 2015 and fell for an email phishing scheme in March of 2016), to then contact WikiLeaks, who then ended up releasing the DNC emails nearly a year after Russia allegedly hacked into them and Podesta’s months after Russia allegedly hacked into them?
Besides the fact that Trump, and his campaign, are not the smartest tools in the shed to pull this off, the DNC “hack” occurred nearly a full year before WikiLeaks released the emails during the DNC Convention. If Russia, with a president who hates Hillary Clinton, and Julian Assange, who equally hates Clinton, had access to emails that could potentially cause a media and campaign firestorm during the Democratic Primary, why wouldn’t they release them in order to help Senator Bernie Sanders?
If, the aforementioned parties worked together to hack Podesta’s email through a phishing scam in March of 2016-and were successful-why would they sit on the emails until the fall? Again, why wouldn’t they immediately deploy them when Sanders still had a mathematical chance during the primary and thousands of emails were now available that directly supported his anti-establishment argument.
Click to viewHave you heard corporate media outlets ask any of these common sense questions? No, because it doesn’t fit their red scare narrative which has been delivering stellar ratings for MSNBC, CNN, Fox, and website traffic for legacy media online.
In truth, even my employer, The Young Turks, has covered the story extensively, to the detriment of other stories that need covering.
Again, if a presidential candidate worked with a foreign government to get elected, it’s a scandal. But, where I come from, 24/7 news reporting shouldn’t be a mass speculation show on what sinister things might have happened, chomping at the bit on every new bone that gets tossed your way. Or how the potential, hypothetical events might affect the Trump presidency and 2020.
What about the things we KNOW have already happened and the things THAT GO BEYOND SPECULATION.
The Dakota Access Pipeline, which the corporate media completely ignored aside from sending news crews down in hopes of a police-veterans shootout, leaked crude oil in the FIRST WEEK OF OPERATION! Crickets on cable news and scarce coverage in print. Did you know there’s still two lawsuits in play against DAPL, that, gee, gosh jolly Jim, might merit coverage now that what EVERY OBJECTIVE person and their mother who warned in regards to the pipeline leaking were proved correct?
Why isn’t the corporate media covering the leak, which fortunately did not happen in the Missouri River, before it does?
Why isn’t the corporate media grilling Kelcy Warren, the CEO of parent company Energy Transfer Partners, about his now-debunked claim that a spill was unlikely because of the brand new, state of the art steel pipe? Or the 18 spills ETP’s Rover Pipeline in Ohio has had already?
Maybe because they don’t see the profit in it and it would require some actual hard work beyond RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA!
Did you know there is a nuclear waste site in the St. Louis area that the EPA and local officials have NO CLUE about in regards to how close it is to an underground chemical fire that experts warn could create an explosion whose radius could reach Illinois?
Why would you? Russia didn’t cause the chemicals, or refuse to move the waste, so why would “liberal” darling Rachel Maddow give a damn (need a whole other piece for this former-progressive-turned-Glenn-Beck charlatan)?
And then there’s Flint-the catastrophe that’s poisoned a whole city in silence. Silence left by a corporate media, whose main duty it is to equip the public with information so they can act and make informed decisions, but has allowed the poisoning of citizens by their corrupt government to become normalized by simply ignoring it.
Do journalists at CNN, who presumably entered journalism in order to make a difference, not care that poor white and black people are facing FORCED EVICTIONS and HOME FORECLOSURES because they won’t pay their POISONOUS water bill?
Do they not care that these same citizens have permanent medical conditions brought on by a privatization scheme gone wrong? Or that the federal and state government refuses to fully cover these illnesses via health insurance?
Do they not care that citizens are now being arrested in Flint for the crime of speaking out in frustration at public town halls?
They don’t give a DAMN, which makes them just as bad as the government officials who delivered the poison.
If it ends up being revealed that Trump is a secret, Russian spy who, alongside his comrades in Russia executed a sinister plot to “steal” an election, I’ll be the first one to say I was wrong and welcome egg on my face (even though said sinister plan didn’t actually “steal” anything. Hillary Clinton lost because she was an awful candidate).
But, that egg won’t change the more important egg these corporate stooges masquerading as journalists have all over their souls.
The truth is, you’re either a fighter for justice or you’re not. You’re either someone who believes in reporting news to save lives and lift communities or you’re someone trying to wear makeup, a nice suit, be on TV and get mentioned in the papers while sipping summery drinks in the Hamptons (talking to you Anderson Cooper).
But to me, Saturday night was who I am and why I do this. At a local Flint bar, several Flint residents who were facing potential felony jail time due to bogus charges against them thanked me. One nearly broke down in tears.
To them, my continued reporting on their behalf-while the national and local media ignored their arrests and the shady investigation afterward-was the reason the county prosecutor had no choice but to drop the charges.
I don’t know if my reporting made the difference or not, but I do know this: a scandal is when American citizens are poisoned by their government so that government officials can launch privatization schemes, and then arrested for speaking out too loudly, three years later, when their water is still a disgusting pool of toxins.
A scandal is when one of the most controversial pipelines, which sparked one of the most historic protest movements in U.S. history, leaks in its first week of operation, and there’s barely a pin drop.
A scandal is when I do a report driving around a Flint neighborhood, and what the audience sees is a ghost town that was once America: vacant lots, burnt down homes, and a sea of abandoned homes-left by the very people who built the modern middle class.
Russia isn’t a scandal-it’s a distraction that continues to allow corporate media cover to ignore the active demolition of America’s middle class.
And the government-commissioned fascism that has begun to take root in order to protect special interests.
I’ll never stop calling them out because they currently hold the largest microphone.
But as their kooky, corrupt coverage continues, that won’t last for long.
By Jordan Chariton