There will be a march on Washington this Saturday, a ritual rallying of the anti-war faithful who will come by the busload as they have twice a year, once in the fall, once in the spring, for decades, on issue after issue.
This mobilization promises to be a big one. The war has lost public support, with only a minority of Americans now endorsing it. The outrages we saw on television after the Katrina catastrophe have stirred even more anger.
For the first time, the Bush Administration seems on the defensive, as its public approval ratings are falling and dissenting voices are rising among the Republican ranks.
Hence, the latest march on Washington.
You can almost predict the slogans we will hear, and the shape of the stirring rhetoric from the stage. It will rouse us, yes, but will it inform us? Will it lead us into a deeper understanding and commitment?
THE PLAN
Here's the plan from the United for Peace and Justice website:
Saturday, September 24 Massive March & Rally, Peace and Justice Festival, Operation Ceasefire Concert
Sunday, September 25 Interfaith Service, Training for Grassroots Lobby Day, Training for Mass Nonviolent Civil Resistance, National Meeting for Counter-Recruitment
Monday, September 26 Grassroots Congressional Lobby Day & Mass Nonviolent Civil Resistance at the White House
Notice how, once again, most of the energy is aimed only at government, at the White House, at Bush and his boys (and girl, Ms. Condoleezza Rice).
But these targets are, alas, only part of the problem.
Other government institutions and interests are complicit in the war and the policies that the activists oppose. With so many people coming to town, and some staying for Monday, why not split them into teams and smaller marches, and bring some popular fury to these others?
WHY NOT MARCH ON THE MEDIA?
Where is the march on the media? The media is the front face of the corporate interests who stage-manage the government. In an age of globalization, challenging corporate power is essential.
Washington is a media city. It is home to many major outlets, including the Washington Post, the Washington Times and USA Today. Every network has a big bureau there. The National Press Building houses many media offices.
Washington is also the base of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency that makes government media policy, of the reactionary National Association of Broadcasters (NAB), and of the cable industry.
It's the center of lobbying by well-connected law firms and K-Street influence peddlers that are paid big bucks to carry Big Media's water.
We all know that the war could not have galvanized the support it did without media collusion and complicity, a charge I document in my forthcoming book, When News Lies, and my film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception).
THE MEDIA MERGED WITH THE PENTAGON
Responsible leaders such as Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) have denounced the media for falling for the war "hook, line and sinker."
We all know how the media "merged" with the Pentagon's pro-war propaganda effort and not just with its embedded-journalist program.
We all know about the jingoism posing as journalism on the airwaves, the false claims, the contrived "facts" and, yes, the relentless, ongoing deception.
We know this was also a war by media.
We know how few antiwar voices were heard on TV and how many conservative pundits dominated the discourse 24/7.
We know that the stream of lies continues. We know that the media's limited apologies and Mea Culpas were just ways of co-opting critics and pacifying the public.
So, why not add some media targets to the mix so that marchers can express their disgust with media subservience and demand truth as well as responsibility and accountability?
Back on February 15th, a small group of activists who wanted to picket CNN were discouraged on the grounds that they would "alienate" the reporters.
Did you see the pathetic coverage? CNN didn't have to be alienated. They, like many corporate media outlets, already are -- alienated from deeper truths and honest reporting.
In that period, the networks and not just CNN had become PNN: the Pentagon News Network.
It is time to recognize that the war in Iraq was not just a government crime. It was and is still a media crime.
The Hurricane Katrina coverage gave us a glimpse of what American journalism can be when it gets up off its knees and speaks truth to power. But far too many media outlets are returning to their dumbed-down business as usual. As Nikki Finke wrote in the LA Weekly, "the pictures of angry black men are gone, replaced by white politicians in suits."
We need to keep the pressure on, to move the media and press the press to play the role they should be playing in a democracy.
And to protest their performance when they don't.
What do you say?
News Dissector Danny Schechter is the "blogger-in-chief" of MediaChannel Comments to: Dissector@medichannel.org
Submitter: Rob Kall
Submitters Bio:
Rob Kall is an award winning journalist, inventor, software architect,
connector and visionary. His work and his writing have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC, the HuffingtonPost, Success, Discover and other media.
He's given talks and workshops to Fortune
500 execs and national medical and psychological organizations, and pioneered
first-of-their-kind conferences in Positive Psychology, Brain Science and
Story. He hosts some of the world's smartest, most interesting and powerful
people on his Bottom Up Radio Show,
and founded and publishes one of the top Google- ranked progressive news and
opinion sites, OpEdNews.com
more detailed bio:
Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.
To watch Rob having a lively conversation with John Conyers, then Chair of the House Judiciary committee, click here. Watch Rob speaking on Bottom up economics at the Occupy G8 Economic Summit, here.