After being invited last month to spend a week giving lectures to journalism students in Kolkata, I planned to start by writing the word “integrity,” and asking this bright young next generation of journalists: “are you ready to die for it?”
The US presidential elections created an existential crisis in journalism and ruined its credibility, to the point that it might be better to rename the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room in the White House as the James S. Brady Citizens Briefing Room. It would more accurately honor the late White House Press Secretary who was seriously wounded during the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan. That room cannot insult Brady’s memory by hosting assassins of media credibility.
Media credibility can begin recovering by keeping out the mouthpieces of vested interests masquerading as journalists.
Unfortunately for honest reporters, sacrificing the White House press corp ranks among first steps Donald Trump needs to honor his campaign vow to “Drain the Swamp,” and get rid of lobbyist monsters and their war-mongering masters.
Desperate diseases need radical remedies, a global message that we media professionals cannot get away with murder – murdering media credibility.
Time to ask the White House Press Corp to pack their bags
Mainstream media has placed itself in a shameful situation where we cannot anymore demand transparency and accountability from others.
“To straighten the crooked, you must first do a much harder thing”, said the Buddha. “Straighten yourself.”
A trustworthy new media order needs getting rid of the corrupt news middlemen.
Elected leaders can communicate directly with citizens through emails, social media, webcasts, Town-hall type interactions.
A White House TV channel that would have been dismissed as propaganda ten years ago, will have more credibility than most big TV networks.
Millions who voted for Trump trusting his volition, ability to rebuild the country, escaped being hoodwinked by those he called “dishonest media” in his campaign speeches.
So more importantly, he cannot do ‘business as usual’ with the same media credibility assassins. Having made themselves irrelevant before Nov 8, they are irrelevant now.
Traditional press briefings are anyway anachronism and a wasted ritual in the Internet Age. More effective alternatives exist for a democratic leader to directly communicate with citizens without facts-twisting middlemen.
News-distortion disease and Citizens Briefing Room
The peculiar media disease of facts-twisting continues – like headlines on President-elect Trump’s decision to deport ‘two million immigrants’ or ‘two million undocumented immigrants.’ His exact words in the CBS interview on Nov 13: “What we are going to do is to get the people that are criminal and have criminal records, gang members, drug dealers, we have a lot of these people, probably two million, it could be even three million, we are getting them out of our country or we are going to incarcerate. But we’re getting them out of our country, they’re here illegally.” I saw no headline that included the crucial word ‘criminal’ – indicating Trump’s intention to send back illegal immigrants with crime records.
The Trump transition isn’t in chaos. The media is. They have been wrong on every prediction, have no credibility, & no one trusts them.
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) November 18, 2016
Trump can ensure Barack Obama becomes the last US President to waste taxpayers’ time with a facts-twisting media.
Get rid of the news brokers who do not represent ground realities, not interests of the country, not journalistic ethics, not rules of fair play – but are lackeys of a corrupt establishment.
Live webcasts, emailing White House briefings to anyone who wants it, including the extinct White House press corp, town-hall meetings can replace the old order of press conferences.
Cross-sections of citizens – with occasional focus groups like professionals, scientists, school children, corporate leaders – can ask the US President questions of personal, national and international interest.
The ordinary Joe and Jane will ask more honest, relevant queries than a media “no one trusts.” People can interact with their President from anywhere in the world courtesy Internet technology.
Allow a honest reporter or two into the White House, but no entry for professional truth-killers calling themselves ‘press.’
Time to start a new media order of the people, by the people, for the people.
Better for world leaders to use credible alternatives, in the democracy of the Internet which ensures free information anywhere online is accessible to millions worldwide.
Smaller media entities have become more credible options than the disgraced old journalism order of Washington Post, CNN and Co.
When the media watchdog of a democracy becomes lapdog of criminals, citizens need to take up the watch.
Can media professionals who colluded with a Presidential candidate having perhaps the worst CV in American political history be called “journalists”? Never again.
Why does the cynical mainstream media ignore this side of the man
called Donald Trump? Is positive news never news?
Genesis 12:1-4 "Now the LORD had said to Abram: "Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation;
Galatians 3:7 "Therefore know that only those who are of faith are sons of Abraham."
The highest ideal of America,British,German or Pakistani or Saudi Arabians for their citizens in this epithet.
Only in Asia you will see people writing books about "My experiments with truth" or a emperor who would have said "truth alone triumphs" so telling lies is not considered a sin …..they will be pathological liars that is why they have the best liars like BBC,Guardian,Washington Post,Newyork times,CNN & Los angeles times,Voice of America or USA today.
See there is a big difference between India,China,Japan with America or Britian…in Asian countries the novels or mythologies talk of heroes where he will never tell lies even if he loses his kingdom,his life…..if he is a surgeon also instead of telling lies to his emperor that his son will die he will take his own life than telling lie.Integrity or speaking truth is not a virtue in xtian morality of america,germans or british actually….so their eco system will produce great liars to protect their materialism.
I am afraid that your proposal to kill the White House Press Corp is dead in the water before it even leaves the dock. In fact the opposite is getting under way. they are going to kill all alternet news sources that do not conform to the official narrative. " Truthy Ism is here to stay" Have you not been following the " Fake News" propaganda effort to silence the alternative news sources? The NYT, WAPO, CNN, BBC, FOX News are all on board to kill anything that is not approved by an official censor, who will make the final decision on what truth the general unwashed public will be allowed to hear , see and read. As the editors of the NYT instructed there news room " We set the narrative and you write the news to conform to that narrative. " Free speech went out the window a long time ago, now the big guns are out to kill it while it is still in flight for it´s life.
Everything in Western Life is a scam. And the idea of truth telling is the biggest scam of all. The Rich and Powerful have no intention of telling their long suffering public the truth, because if they did the long suffering public would bring back the Guillotine in a New York Minute.
While it’s a comforting idea to think that it would be as easy as the author portrays to bypass the hold of the oligarchs in the US, that just ain’t so. First off, doing what he says will do little to open up the minds of Americans (and the rest of us) when it is the entertainment environment that sets the filters firmly in place. When the entertainment aimed at ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ both portray certain lies as being the truth, most people find it emotionally uncomfortable to look at the evidence that they are lies. And if that entertainment also portrays those not believing the lies as bad, or deluded, or gullible, guess how people feel about questioning those lies. Add to that the the default settings of what people use to access social media and get information is under the control of the oligarchs as well, and even if the President were to spam an email to every American saying the things Americans are carefully shielded from, most of those deciding that maybe they’d better check it out would find themselves looped back to the stuff designed to keep them believing the lies.
Finally, even if you could get the American public exposed to the facts, and get those facts credibility, there’s still human nature to overcome. People just don’t want to believe that they’re on the wrong side. It is much easier to believe, say, that there really is an Iranian nuclear weapons program, even if it is so nebulous and compartmentalized that the only ‘evidence’ has perfectly innocent explanations or is so sensitive in nature no one can be allowed to know anything about it, than it is to believe that both the Republicans and the Democrats, the ‘progressives’ and the war hawks, have been punishing Iranians for the ‘crime’ of wanting to control their own country and resources.
When it comes to freedom of speech and real news, USA is a totalarian nation
Ken Nguyen
There is only one American in the entire history of that screwed up country that has told it like it was and that is George Carlin. He nailed the USA dead on for many many years.I miss him.