WHAT PASSES FOR JOURNALISM TODAY

Perhaps we should separate out from journalism two practices rampant today: propaganda and gossip. If journalism is a discipline of verification and verification is what separates it from propaganda, then much of what we have in the sports-politics-entertainment complex is propaganda.

Much of the remainder is gossip--malicious talk which meddles in personal business and should have no place in news reporting. It stems from the need to have news cycles continually churning with prurient interest to satisfy the mentally-challenged American audience.

Blatherskiting media entertainment is now the norm, in political reporting and sports.

CARTOGRAPHIC PARANOIA

Think of the Sen. Joseph McCarthy hearings into supposed Communist infiltration of Hollywood and the U.S. government in the early 1950s. See the paranoid Senator ranting in front of the wood-paneled hearing-room wall nearly covered with a Mercator Projection, a world map exaggerating the areal extent of the high-latitude lands of Communism represented by the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and China. (Do not blame Gerardus; he just wanted a straight line on his 16th-century map to coincide with straight-line sailing).

Next, select a color, Senator, to make the point that Communism was on a death march, about to take over the world: Use red--a deep, alarming, message-sending blood-red--to remind the American public of Stalin’s gulags and bloody purges, another being planned right up to his death. Then visually illustrate the second Red Scare in the U.S. by splashing the distressing blood-red on your blown-up map, as a signifier of your blown-up, seeing-Red rhetoric.

Success! You, sick Senator, have perfectly matched the message, the map, and the color.

THE WAY OF PROPAGANDISTS

An early 2007 emailed message--titled “Who is Barak [sic] Obama"--forwarded through countless e-message trees has kept in circulation a debunked urban legend. The message purports that Senator Barack Obama is a radical, ideological Muslim. The message states that, “If you do not ever forward anything else, please forward this,” thus lending an air of emergency. The message goes further: “This is very scary to think of what lies ahead of us in our own United States” (my emphases), thus indicating that Sen. Obama is not a legitimate member of “our” United States, that somehow he would hand the country over to “them,” the “radical, ideological Muslims,” of whom the message tries to make Sen. Obama a confrere. The message then says, “…better heed this and pray about and share it.” The latter gives it an air of religious duty to pass on the message and vote against Sen. Obama.

The message contains a link to snopes.com and challenges the reader to check it for authenticity. The forwarders of the message do not personally check snopes.com. I DID. If you go to Snopes, you will see in the left column, under the “Hottest Urban Legends,” that the third one is “Barack Obama.” When you click on that link, you will read an earlier similar letter that is judged by Snopes as false. It is interesting reading. Snopes says that no evidence supports the claim that Obama is currently “ideologically Muslim,” or has ever been a “radical Muslim.” In fact, those who made these claims “have offered nothing to support it—no letters or documents, no reports of conversations, no revelations from friends or associates…”

Fortunately, CNN.com did its fact-checking of the message. Here is its link:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/01/22/obama.madrassa/

Within the CNN.com article there is a link to its video footage of the report: Watch video of Obama's school

Remember, as the current political season moves along, we should expect more swiftboating propaganda.

I do not personally care how you vote. I do care, however (being a high-school Social Studies teacher), about the gullibility of the American public. In a time when we have (overly) busy lives, and when we are deluged with “information,” this affords the opportunity for those who are interested in disinformation to cause a great deal of damage. If your sense of nationalism and Christian identity are appealed to, along with a message of fear, then have great doubts about the authenticity of those political messages. They are designed to touch you where you are most vulnerable to falsehoods. This is the classic way of propagandists.