US Hubris and Lack of Professional Journalists in Corporate Media

Since I never voluntarily watch US corporate media nor read corporate news sources often, hearing a report on Egypt at the dentist’s office on Thursday, the day before Mubarak resigned, was stunning to me.

I believe it was CNN’s chief national correspondent and anchor John King, pictured above with US Congress building in the background (or is that just a picture of it, a false backdrop in keeping with the whole charade), who was holding forth.  Whoever he was, he might have been the White House spokesman instead of a journalist.  He assured the public that Omar Suleiman, Mubarak’s choice of Vice President, was well known to the US government, liked and approved by Obama, a good choice.

Not a word about Suleiman’s record as torturer exposed here, and here, nor a hint of what the people of Egypt wanted.  What right has the US government or president in the matter at all? None is the obvious legal and furthermore moral and ethical answer.

This man on the television screen was mouthing the US State Department position without question or demur.  A journalist would have exposed Suleiman’s history and that of US support of torture there.  She would have provided evidence that not only Suleiman but Obama himself, is a torturer.  He would have told the truth about why the US was supporting this monster.

Corporate media have not provided outlets for the work of journalists for years.  It is to be hoped that the comparison of them with the superior work of al Jazeera will help people to see what a difference there is.  The fact that the US had to resort to al Jazeera at all is indication of real problems.  There were not US corporate reporters in Egypt, though Democracy Now sent their Senior Producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Correspondent Anjali Kamat.  When the ridiculous Anderson Cooper arrived, knowing no Arabic and not much journalism, he fled to an undisclosed location to report!

What can we expect from media owned by the entertainment industry for whom “ratings” not quality journalism determine what is not determined by the priorities of the corporatacy to keep people in the US ignorant and uninformed?