FILM AT ELEVEN

[NanceGreggs]

FILM AT ELEVEN
By Nancy Greggs

I’m old enough to remember dozens of movies and TV show episodes that featured the ‘whistleblower plot’. They were formulaic but nonetheless exciting – ‘nifty little nailbiters’ as the critics would say.

The heroine (usually a vulnerable-looking but plucky young woman), having discovered some government or corporate malfeasance, would issue the ultimate threat: “I’ll go public with this!” And from there, the chase ensued.

After dodging the bad guys, our heroine finally ran breathlessly into a local TV newsroom or newspaper office and, depending on whether her carefully-guarded evidence was a file folder full of damning documents or a videotape, one of two scenes followed. A TV producer handed the tape to an underling and yelled, “Get this down to the control room stat – we go live with this in sixty seconds,” or, “Stop the presses, boys, we’ve got a new front page.”

“Going public” was the 20th Century version of running into a church and yelling “Sanctuary!” Once the facts of your story hit the front page or the six o’clock news, you were home free – rendered untouchable by the powers-that-be who could not deny their sins in front of a now-informed public.

But that was a bygone era, when journalists were interested in breaking stories of true public interest, a bunch of altruistic hooligans who were determined to get the truth out – the corporate sponsors, the full-page advertisers, and sleazy government officials be damned.

These days, we hear it over and over, the tattered, well-worn excuse: the public are simply not interested in what’s going on in government. They take no notice of torture bills, or how their tax dollars are being funneled into the pockets of corrupt politicians, organizations, or corporations. They go about their lives, seemingly unaware of the machinations that are destroying their country, their way of life, and their future.

I would beg to differ, and strenuously so. The public are not ‘seemingly unaware’; a vast majority of them are totally unaware. And the fault lies not with their lack of interest, but with the simple fact that true journalism is, for all intents and purposes, as dead as the proverbial doornail in today’s America.

The truth is out there. The facts, the statistics, the statements, the videotapes, the unsavory emails, the incriminating documents – all readily available to those who are willing to seek them out and present them to an audience hungry for real news.

But instead our present-day journalists – a term that is now an epithet rather than an honored title – have become a pack of old time flim-flam men, shilling for the corporation or political party whose favor they seek to curry, whose snake oil and shopworn wares they are all too anxious to sell.

While the internet has replaced the MSM for many, especially a new generation who rely on it solely as a source of information, the vast majority of the public look to TV news broadcasts and their daily newspapers – still living in the era when such sources actually delivered something of value.

In today’s media-driven world, our heroine of bygone days, armed with earth-shattering evidence of corporate or political wrongdoing, would never make it past the security guard. And if she did, her documents and/or her tapes would be ignored, laughed at, destroyed before her eyes – unless, of course, she had video footage of a runaway bride boarding a Greyhound days before the wedding, or photographs of a celebrity couple’s newborn child.

As We the People have learned, especially during the tenure of this administration, it is not that we have turned away from our desire to know the truth, but that those who were traditionally entrusted to tell the truth have turned away from us.

If there is one thing the current crop of so-called journalists have learned to do well, it is the ability to pass-the-buck of blame. They ask why they should be held responsible for their inability to act as a political watch-dog, or their lack of talent in ferreting out what is truly important and delivering it, unbiased and unvarnished, to the American public.

The response to that is a simple one: You took the job. And if you can’t perform the responsibilities that come with that job, resign. To be sure, you are expendable. And you are replaceable – maybe by some bright-eyed kid who’s waiting for our heroine to run breathless into a TV studio or newsroom somewhere, just so he can proudly yell, “THIS is the story, boys, and we’re going with it, because America has a right to know.”

A right to know; just another right that has fallen by the wayside in today’s 24/7 non-news coverage. A right that was not curtailed by government edict or newly established law, but simply eroded by a group of well-coiffed, well-dressed wannabees, too lazy to do their jobs, too stupid to recognize their own incompetence – and too self-absorbed to realize that along with dooming themselves to irrelevance, they are dangerously close to having doomed our democracy to extinction.

Film at eleven. Clothing provided by Designer-de-Jour. Brought to you by people who really don’t give a damn.