The corporate corruption of America’s televised news increasingly makes for some ugly moments. Spooky ones, too.
On April 24, for example, all the newscasts, national and local, paid plenty of attention to that day’s testimony before Congress of Kevin Tillman. Tillman’s brother, Pat, was the NFL player who quit football for the Army Rangers and combat duty in Afghanistan.
The rest you likely know by now. In 2004, Tillman was killed in action, a death that the U.S. military and government were quick to portray as heroic: Tillman gave his life for his country in a firefight with the forces of evil.
And the country just as quickly bought in.
But the entire tale was a fabrication, a lie. Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire.
And now Kevin Tillman, among others, sat before a Congressional hearing to declare that the public’s trust had been violated, that the real news had been tossed out and replaced with propaganda, marketing and self-promotion.
And every newscast we watched that Tuesday night and deep into Wednesday was eager to tell this story. Shame on our government for taking such a dive! Does the credibility and integrity of what’s presented to the American people as news mean so little?
And then it was back to the modern TV news business as usual.
CBS newscasts, national and local, replacing real news with promotional stories about “Survivor” and clips from David Letterman; Fox’s newscasts continued to be loaded with the latest about “24” and “American Idol ABC’s newscasts continued to present “Dancing With The Stars” come-ons, and so on right down the line.
Yes, the tall Tillman tale had violated the public trust. TV news organizations were appalled. But only for a few moments. Then it was back to serving their corporate fatherlands, then it was back to replacing legitimate news with network advertisements posing as news.
“Deliberate and careful misrepresentations,” Kevin Tillman, seen on all that night’s newscasts, said of the military.
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From The Dept. of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up:
At the same time MSNBC was in the process of sacking Don Imus for his bigoted comments, NBC was in the process of hiring one of Canada’s most recognized – and beloved – bigots, Don Cherry, to add some zing to NBC’s National Hockey League telecasts. Cherry, as is Imus, is even given to wearing cowboy hats.
Cherry, 73, is “old school” in every way, and that includes being an old school xenophobe.
Cherry is hockey’s shock jock, having regularly celebrated NHL violence and attaching negative stereotypes to players based on their nationality. French-Canadian players lack toughness. European players are bad for the game. A player with long hair stimulates Cherry’s clever side; he’ll call that player someone’s daughter or sister.
Cherry, coach of the Boston Bruins in the 1970s, has been a front-and-center hockey commentator in Canada since 1980. Some embrace him as irreverent and outrageous. He’s widely indulged as an Archie Bunker character, the uncle who makes everyone wince – and occasionally laugh – at Thanksgiving dinner. The meal carries on.
Many find him to be very funny. Those folks tend to be those who aren’t targeted by Cherry. Others find him to be inexcusably cruel and harmful, especially those on the receiving end. Sound familiar?
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Odd, the instances when the media choose to lead with its polite side. A total of 2,973 humans were slain on 9/11. But how many times have you heard any of them or all of them referred to as murder victims?
We’ll instead hear and read that they were “killed” on 9/11 or that they “perished” on 9/11. Their deaths are provided the same general distinction of those who have died accidental deaths or by natural causes.
But those innocents who died on 9/11 were not merely killed. They were murdered.