Can't you just see Jack Nicholson's face and hear him screaming..."You want the truth? You want the truth? ....You can't handle the truth!"
That's the way we have been dealt with from the first hours of the BP disaster. First by BP and then by our Federal Government. This tragedy has magnified the weakness of real journalism in America today. Journalism and news reporting in America today is as broken as the Deep Horizon.
Constricting news budgets, minimal reporting staffs, fewer newspapers and news magazines, and 24-hour cable "news" networks are a sad reflection of where we are today and what we now settle for insofar as news reporting is concerned.
The 24-hour news channels on cable TV are the worst. They never dive into depth on stories, even though they have unlimited time to do so.
Jon Stewart ran a spoof on this and showed all of the cable show hosts cutting off the questioning and using the phrase "We'll have to leave it there...." and then they move on to some other insignificant story just when they were getting to the interesting part of the interview or actually get to the point of the interview where they might actually ask follow-up questions.
Really? We have to leave it there? Time and time again?
Let the manipulation of the masses begin (or should I say, continue).
To prove my point, next time you see "Breaking News" scrolling across the bottom of a cable news show, just change the channel (to all of the other channels within 30 minutes) and you'll see them all covering the same story. It doesn't matter what it is--they all cover the same things and call them "Breaking News."
Meanwhile, there are so many things going on in the world that receive no coverage from the mainstream media in the U.S.
Instead, we get the same talking heads commenting about the same stories. Meanwhile, there are stories that are virtually ignored. How long has it been since you have seen any meaningful reporting from Iraq?
Ever notice how the advertising on TV affects the news coverage? Follow the money from advertisers and then look at the absence of critical reporting on issues pertaining to the advertisers. And this is supposed to be "breaking news?" More like broken news.
And when there are reporters sent to report on a story, we don't hear about how they are being denied access to facts or to the scene of the disaster, because of corporate or government controls.
Have you heard about the No Fly Zone that BP has been able to convince our government to allow? Have you heard that BP has prevented journalists from getting close to the scene of the spill or do fly-overs on planes? It's happening, but you won't hear about it unless you dig deeper for your news sources, because, well, "we'll have to leave it there..."
Why has NOAA known for weeks that the amount of oil being spilled was 100 times greater than what was being reported, yet they weren't allowed to release that information to refute BP's numbers? Please tell me why, Mr. President.
Keeping us in the dark doesn't help. Releasing the information weeks later only makes us wonder why the deception occurred in the first place.
We can handle the truth. We need the truth. I look forward to the day when I don't hear..."we'll have to leave it there" and actually start getting some good reporting. Reporting breeds accountability and more competency because it helps to expose those who need to find some other line of work.
Treat us like adults.
