I wake up every morning between the hours of 9:00am and 10:30am. After I wipe the crust from my eyes and groan a little complaint because of a late night the previous night. I find myself doing the same rituals that everyone else does, or at least I think they do, I'm far from normal so I wouldn't expect this to be atypical. I wake up, gather clothes, swear a little bit, try to think of whether I have a reason to stay home, practice some hygiene and straight out the door with my swagger and cocky grin loaded and ready to go.
Up until my car radio was stolen my drive home was filled with talk radio of the "Air America" nature, however as of lately without my trusty Pioneer, my drive leads me to think. I have a shorter commute than most people in this state and for that I'm thankful after all a whole 6miles in Northern Virginia. [ That's 15-35minutes depending on the time of day. ]
Everyday as normal I walk up to the black magnetic card reader and prepare to scan the electrons I carry across its faded grey surface. Typically the device responds with a strained muffled "*blureep*" as I pull the door open dreading the day before it even begins. The 3 flights of stairs required to ascend tends to be another sad part of my day. I never would have believed that actually swiping a plastic card across a reader would be one of the saddest things I've done but yes it is becoming that.
It seems to me that every day this job gets harder to arrive at and even harder to get the motivation required to do complete my tasks. I have little doubts that my brain will prevent me from swiping that little plastic card across that magnetic device one day saving my soul by prohibiting me from entering that steel door ever again. This is my plea for some sort of help.
You see, I work a support role for the "Mainstream Media". I do IT work as some may already know with the project I completed for the Attorney Purge. If I had a greater command of the english language I would take Administrator/Engineer out of my title and have it a stable, "Journalist".
Yes. I said it, I am part of the problem and the sad part is, I realize this...
As the time has passed since I have taken the position from a straight IT company into the Mainstream Media I can't help but pay attention especially with my beliefs as strongly as they are in transparency and freely available information. There's a lot of people in this newsroom who believes this war is right, justified, and the President is within his full boundaries of responsibility and power. There are times I feel that I'm the only person within the walls of this building who has actually felt any sort of grief over the loss of our constitution, nation and heroes.
This morning I have reached the end of my rope with regards to my limit to cope with the horse radish of the Media establishment. A trip to GameStop was in order. I've decided to quit the news media and go hover a counter until my next consulting contract starts in January. Prior to leaving though you better believe I will have my voice heard.
The front page of our newspaper had no mention of Gen. Patreaus when he testified however when we covered Erik Prince's testimony it was more thorough I felt, at least we gave him a 2.5-3" column. Yet the Erik Prince article was greatly overshadowed by the announcement of BlackWater's new vehicle they had developed we spouted it a god-send within the very same edition.
Those are two places where we've failed miserably as a source of information and news. When I had my conversation with the Editor-In-Chief I honestly and bluntly called him out for dropping the ball on the General Patreaus book report. I showed him our newspaper which I still have so I can show HR on my exit interview as evidence to why I'm leaving, and directed him with questions regarding our coverage and why it was so lacking.
Below will be an "edited" paraphrase of our conversation. Names and any distinguishing phrases/texts will be removed to protect my anonymity and ensure that I can at least work here until I can find a temporary job, whether it be Blockbuster Video or GameStop at this point, anything that will give me enough money to pay my rent for a few months is enough.
Me: So I have some questions regarding our coverage on the General David Patreaus hearing if you have a second.
EDITOR: Sure thing, don't mind me I'm eating though.
Me: No Problem sir. I read through the article and I truly believe that we unfortunately dropped the ball on this coverage. Nothing we wrote about in the 5-10 paragraphs we dedicated to the General actually speaks of the situation in it's truthiness form. Instead all it seems to do is cheerlead his testimony.
EDITOR: Well you see Ichi. We haven't the same budget as the NYT or the WSJ. When the NYT or the WSJ or the Washington Post covers a story, they tend to have 8-10 people working on that story. They also pay their reporters a lot more money than us, and probably tend to have a higher calibre of talent.
But we also can't forget the fact that I was just tired of hearing about him. I had been hearing about him all week, no-one would drop the subject, and we made an executive decision to not run with the story.
[ here is the part that I massively disagree with. ]
Our readers are a complicated set of people Ichi. We have retired Generals, Active-Duty Generals, Political Appointees, Active-Duty enlisted, Active-Duty Officer, Retired and cowboys who wish they were soldiers. They have informed us that they don't want any politics in their paper. So we have pretty much came to the agreement, top level editors, that we will avoid speaking of politics in our newspaper.
I think the General Patreaus hearing may have had some points of interest, but that's more for people like the NYT, WaPO, WSJ etc. to actually report on. Our job is to report on what our readers want to hear about and what's important to them.
ME: So what happens when the military men that've said they don't want politics in their newspaper, find out that politics has infiltrated their military ranks in even greater levels than ever before. How can you determine what someone has to hear, and what they want to hear, and what they should hear? Shouldn't what they need to hear be the truth of the situation? That General David Patreaus is cooking numbers, and making the military reports appear quite similar to the Enron or WorldCom financial books?
EDITOR: Well, our readers have said they don't want politics in the newspaper, therefore we don't report on anything remotely political.
[ I just wonder though if the government dollars handed over to the defense industry then passed off down into our newspaper through advertising revenue is more of a reason to not dig very deep in stories. ]
My advice to everyone who complains about the media and agrees with me that we're not reporting on anything close to what needs to be reported on. The process of the free press has dissapeared, and I can't speak for every news room. But I can tell you this. The newsroom of this newspaper with hundreds of thousands of subscribers has fallen off of the original meaning of what it means to report the news.
Outside our restrooms on the Newsroom floor is our "mission" statement. I guess to remind us daily why we're here if it's not to report on anything substantial or factual. Everytime I leave that restroom I can't help but glance at the mission and see the phrase, "Maintain profitibility through advertising revenue".
I cry wipe my tears and journey across the newsroom back to my office, where I close the door and try my best to work on whatever project they feel is more important than protecting the constitution of the United States, I once swore an oath as a lot in this building, to defend.
Please do everything you can to inform newspapers that the reason they're dying, isn't only classified sales etc. but the fact they're being quite complacent in the removal of our democracy. I was laughed at today for saying George Bush has taken steps to remove democracy from this country and poses a legitimate threat against this nation, almost to the level of threat that Hitler and Mussilini posed to their respective homelands.
What was I told? I was lessening the struggle of people who survived brownshirts and blackshirts and what I should realize is talking in ways that compare bush to fascist dictator only makes me sound crazy because Hitler was just way more evil than George Bush. I try to explain that its not the level of evil I'm comparing in the actions of the men, but the equivical danger to the respective countries and societies when men of this nature obtain as much power as George Bush has had. Hitler was in power for 3-7 years before he started killing people as indiscriminately as effectively as he did.
Pretzlenit has technically only been a dictator since Congress approved both the Patriot Act, and the authorization to invade Iraq. Now we have an Iran authorization which was just approved, yes by Hilary Clinton also, which will end us straight up in another quagmire to protect Babylon.
The Air Force is asking for 80~Million dollars to retrofit stealth and/or B52's with the ability to drop Bunker Buster Bombs for urgent theater needs. When I asked a reporter who's beat is defense department,state department and defense industry they said the following:
Noone can answer why the Polish missiles are so important. No one can answer why the Bombs are an "urgent" theater need. The biggest answer I get is almost equivocally, if they want to pay for it, we will build it.
You see Ichi, you're on base, but off base. The problem isn't BlackWater for example, the problem is the Department of State. Who has actually investigated whether or not Condaleeza Rice is effectively running the State Department. I wouldn't be surprised if she was running it as efficiently and along the same rules as Gonzales was running Justice. She has for example, 13 people employed at any given time overseeing the entirety of the contracts handed out for Iraq.
So far, George Bush has lead the killing of over 800,000 Iraqi citizens, as a conservative estimate. If you believe the Johns Hopkins study it's probably over 1,000,000 at this point but we all know universities are bad so who would believe them. Whenever a dead Iraqi shows up, we call him/her a terrorist or an insurgent with no questions asked or evidence proving otherwise.
Adolf Hitler hadn't even killed that many people in such a short amount of time. So can you compare? Sure. Can you contrast? Not exactly because Hitler did consolidate power and remove the President's actual position in Germany. Bush has not done so yet, or should I say Cheney hasn't done so yet.
Yet ironically the same day, not less than 15-20m after me arguing these points in a newspaper meeting room, did the Pretzlenit make a statement today comparing Osama Bin Laden to Hitler.
Yet the Pretzlenit didn't let the US Special Forces kill him when they had their chance. Save the media, complain, in effective ways to everyone. Call someone, tell them you'll never buy their newsstand again, tell them they got their facts wrong, tell them you'd rather read a blog b/c at least then you can forgive amateur mistakes when made by amateurs, their word not mine.
Tell them you'll wipe your arse with their Sunday section. Call the advertisers and request that they stop advertising in the paper until the newspaper actually reports the news. You must do something. The media is convinced that everyone is a loyal Bushie, just like a lot of them. If people banded together for example, and looked at the WaPO for the most "prevalent" ads you could easily contact the advertiser directly and inform them you don't read the WaPO you don't respect the WaPO, and you'll not buy their products until they advertise elsewhere.
Take a few big advertisers from the conversation and the news agencies will start to sweat. After all, George can only intimidate and control the media to a certain extent. The rules of business still half-way exist in this open/free market.
It sickens me that the biggest failure we've seen is by that of the Press and it's responsibility to report on the news, not pander to advertisers. However, one must realize, this President will not stop where he is.
Let's examine his quote from today, and use his own words against him. I'm a believer in the theory that people project the problems they have with oneself, as they analyze why someone is unlikable. I think Bush has yet another Freudian slip and at times think he's secretly threatening them with his own delusions.
Bush's Words to Dems regarding Hitler and War.
"History teaches us that underestimating the words of evil, ambitious men is a terrible mistake," Bush said. "Bin Laden and his terrorist allies have made their intentions as clear as Lenin and Hitler before them. And the question is, will we listen?"
When I pressure the Editors and the Executives for this organization the average response I get is something like below:
People don't want to know about this, and if we print real stories a few things will happen. We will lose advertisers and subscribers which is not the way a newspaper is supposed to maintain profitibility. We also will have our Pentagon, White House, Congressional access removed by the administration for printing a story against their interests. If we lose our access like that, effectively that's our business down the drain. Ensuring the survival of one newspaper company is enough motivation to not report on stories or dig into stories which require extra digging.
Help save the media. Complain. Write letters and stop buying the Sunday newspaper especially. You have no idea the implications of just banning that "one" day. Most the advertising dollars I would assume on a daily paper are made from the sunday section. It's almost pure profit. In fact, I know a news agency which explicitly purchased certain newspapers because of their effective Sunday section. Little do the citizens of those cities know that the only reason they have a newspaper in their area still is because they keep buying those damn Walmart ads on Sunday.