Sleeping Duty
Mar 25th, 2006 at 9:44 pm by Susie
Duncan links to this post from Glenn Greenwald, and says, “I have no idea how to wake the slumbering press.”
Put another way, the Administration has seized the power of Congress to make the laws, they have seized the power of the judiciary to interpret the laws, and they execute them as well. They have consolidated within themselves all of the powers of the government, particularly with regard to national security. This situation is, of course, exactly what Madison warned about in Federalist 47; it really is the very opposite of everything our Government is intended to be [...]
As usual, the most amazing aspect of all of this is not that the Administration is claiming these powers. It is that even as it claims them as expressly and clearly as can be, the Congress continues to ignore it and pretend that it still retains power to restrict the Administration by the laws it passes. And the media continues to fail in its duty to inform the country about the powers the Administration has seized, likely because they are so extreme that people still do not really believe that the Administration means what they are saying. What else do they need to do in order to demonstrate their sincerity?
This is one of the things that infuriates me about the media and, like Duncan, I just don’t get it. Clearly, there’s something about the emphasis on credentialism that’s attracting journalists who are constitutionally incapable of questioning the status quo.
Part of the problem is that there are so few publications that actually support that kind of work. This truth is self-evident; if publishers wanted hard-hitting political coverage on the national level, they’d pay for it - and they wouldn’t back down when the subjects of those stories put the squeeze on.
But of course, media ownership is concentrated in a handful of corporate interests who are more interested in making money than they are in saving democracy.
Maybe one of these days they’ll figure out that it’s not an either/or question.
There seems to be an evolution of the news media. The in-depth shows are getting less and less (or being run off the air). 60 minutes is the one saving grace. Todays news seems to seek the lowest common denominator; local stories like car chases and missing white women constitute breaking news. But the media only goes with what gets ratings I suspect, and are viewers going to make the intellectual investment into the detailed reporting of show A when OJ’s giving chase in a white bronco on show B?
Stay tuned.
Tried to trackback but couldn’t figure it out. Here’s a semi-coherent response.
btw… why is the gop congress writing laws to make bush’s illegal spying legal when the bush administration is already insisting it’s legal? does the gop congress therefore think it’s illegal? if the gop congress thinks it’s legal, then why create a law making it legal? seems redundant.