The key word is “shameless.”
These people live in a world in which cheating their readers, lying to the hoi poloi, smoothly papering over the gaping, and bottomless, holes in their stories are all things on which they pride themselves. Indications not of intellectual bankruptcy but of technical skill- creativity in story telling.
Their ability to mislead and to to misrepresent is a form of virtuosity: any old hack can open his eyes and report what he sees but it takes a J-School graduate, with Ivy League undergraduate socialisation, to put shit like this over the crackers and suckers in the hinterland (which begins just outside the Times office.)
When these people get together after work nobody calls them, on the lies or the dreadful consequences of lying-the million dead Iraqis, the 1600 Gazans, the Afghan wedding parties and the Pakistani girls and boys snuffed out colaterally.
It is no accident that this culture has its epicentre in the USA, it’s a set of attitudes spawned in the casual genocides of Indians and the ruthless and relentless cruelty, over three centuries of slavery and one and a half of Jim Crow. Not to mention the heady experience of lording it over unarmed Filipinos and mowing down Gooks with complete air superiority.
The recent reinforcement to these attitudes of Zionism simply completes a few circles, one of which was the zionist nature of American exceptionalisms from the Puritans to the Mormons and many other sub cults.

Posted by: bevin | May 28 2011 2:15 utc | 4

There is a lot of talk about the possibility of a EU wide ‘revolution’ – Greece, Spain, etc. One may be hopeful or prefer to hold one’s breath.
One of the first things to do, the very first, is to discredit the MSM, get rid of it, or annul its influence. The MSM are de facto not just para-Gvmt agencies, that might be the least of the problem, they are the interface between domineering, incredibly powerful Corporations (they are such themselves), those ostensibly in charge (Gvmts, etc.) as well as other influential but opaque interests. They cherry pick and shape all the narratives, all of them. Propaganda raised to the Nth level.
Ex. Ppl demonstrate and try to seduce the TV stations to cover the demo. The demonstrators are subservient to the MSM.
Apparently, though, this point doesn’t strike home, or nothing can be done about it. Mubarak might be flogged and his millions confiscated; Obama might not be re-elected, etc. etc. and the same old cinema – narrative – will appear on the blue screen.
One might have thought that the internet would mute the MSM at least a bit. That hasn’t really taken place. What has gone down is that the MSM takes its cues from popular opinion and provides a public echo chamber for grass root opinion or knowledge, very often stealing without attribution 1; it has infiltrated the blogosphere to the point where it is hard to tell who is whom, who is paying for what; and indie bloggers remain dependent on what the MSM publishes as ‘real’, ‘newsworthy’ stories. Investigative journalism has not expanded, if anything it has been drowned out by millions of partisan comments. The end effect has been to make ‘news’ more emotional, more gossipy, more personal, more shifting, labile, which the PTB think is just peachy.
There are upsides as well. E.g. public opinion on the Isr-pal. conflict has changed.
1 Most journos write articles based on Reuters info dressed up with blogger comments, takes and facts.

Posted by: Noirette | May 29 2011 14:55 utc | 6

so far i dont see any frevolution in US UK or France. Maybe Freedom house is too busy organising ‘revolutions’ elseswhere.

Posted by: brian | May 29 2011 21:31 utc | 8