12/4/08 f.g. (B2)
Pseudo-Journalism
From book: King Max of America
Page: 31
Excerpt from Chapter 2 – THE CAMPAIGN

Until now, the mainstream media, often referred to as the corporate media,
had ignored Max. “Why wouldn’t they?” Jo said to Max. “People like you and
me are burning dust in their eyes. We are biting ticks in their hair. We are
cockroaches on their empty dinner plates.”

Completely profit driven, the corporate media by now was a slick
and highly effective mass communication tool catering entirely to the
conglomerates that owned the media and the corporations that supported
the media through advertising. At will, the corporate media’s content was
slanted and tinted to further the agenda of the Big Boys. True journalism
once was considered a non-reproachable business of hunting for the truth.
But the corporate journalism of today had turned into something completely
different: pseudo-journalism.

“Pseudo-journalism” Jo said, “is like food with little or no nutritional
value—intellectual junk food, basically. What looks odd, however, is that
the same pseudo-journalists still claim straight-faced that they are the
defenders of our democracy, our values, and even our morals.

“They don’t defend those things! They spit on them. They abuse our
democracy. They have shredded our Constitution to pieces. And things
like morals and values and justice and freedom, which, I’m sure you have
noticed, they always carry at the tips of their tongues. In fact, they use
these values to cover up their sleazy plots and projects for self-profiteering.
And look what else they are doing. The corporate media now behaves also
as the Big Boys’ guard dog. Social justice and fairness for all has long
been removed from their scope of reporting, most likely also from their
conscience.

“Little people like us, working-class Americans, have no value to them,
except as passive, consuming beasts. They don’t want to hear about our
concerns and fears for our country and our future. They think working
people have no brains, certainly no match for theirs. And to them, we are
bleak, too close to the truth. They don’t want the truth; they detest it. To
sustain their deception and to divert attention from real issues, they want
fakery, the banal stuff, you know. They need sex scandals. They gorge
on celebrity missteps. They thrive on who had what silicone implanted
where, how much and when. They need senseless TV spectacles. They
need the never-ending barrage of sporting events. They need greasers like
Sam Spiffer, phony pro-wrestlers, slick, sugar-tongued TV psychologists,
magic-curing-head-banging TV preachers. They need parades. They need
memorial holidays galore. No doubt, they have an insatiable appetite for
what you, Max, have called it ‘rutted dirt.’”

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I don’t know if I want to go as far as Jo [Altman], the farmer, who describes
the corporate media so delicately! But one thing is clear to me also: Once a
media, corporate or not, is involved with reporting on the given subject and
creating content for the same given subject, trouble automatically becomes
a partner. The worst and most obvious trouble appears right away in realizing
that the reporter / commentator has absolute no intent to get to the bottom
of any story. This only agitates the skin of the surface while the real issues
under the skin are completely ignored.

Pseudo-Journalism has nothing to do if a media is corporate or not. Corporate
media can make choices not to engage in pseudo-journalism. And so can the so
called “non-corporate” media. In the final analysis it is all about the fundamental
principles behind, the soundness thereof, and the morals involved conducting the
business of journalism, or for that matter, conducting any business.

Future ahoy,


Franz G.