Now, with Walter Cronkite gone, Wapo sets out to peer into the abyss – telling us who different people think they completely trust. There was just one wise answer in the bunch
“If the standard is Walter Cronkite, forget about it. The era of universally trusted people is gone if not forgotten.” – Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.).
For the rest, they came up with 3 Obamas, 3 Oprahs 3 Jon Stewart and the occasional Bill Moyers. Ending with Google – which is quite astute: if we are accepting contrieved entertainment and political figures as sources of truth, why not skip the middle man (the image makers) and go directly to the statistics?
I mean polls have been used since W’s years to measure what’s legal (PATRIOT ACT, Plame affair), what’s right (wars) or even what is or isn’t a fact (intelligent design pitted against evolution).
Truth has been thus manufactured so weaker minds would think: if they all believe that, it must be true…
Except that, of all things, truth is not democratic
The whole world can be wrong and one man, opposing its opinion and belief, can be right.
Ironically, I got this version of the quote from a militant Christian book, explaining away excesses, but I happen to agree.
Eleanor Holmes Norton is right. There are no more universally trusted people. (Well, in all fairness, Archie Bunker deeply mistrusted Cronkite too)
The more the media is using its powers to manufacture – not just consent, but reality itself – the less credibility it gets.
Here’s the most recent example: Catie Couric is packaging Obama in an interview
Couric pressed Obama to extend his deadline (“Is there any flexibility on this August deadline?” and “You’ll have some flexibility on this deadline?),
and
she reminded Obama “your administration projected that with the stimulus package, as you know, unemployment could be kept under 8 percent,” so she wondered, in absolving him of blame: “In the future when you make these projections and estimates and cost savings. I mean, it’s a pretty dicey proposition, don’t you think, to predict economics into the future?”
Although it was quite astonishing to see the likes of Brian Williams popping up in the answers.
And I am not sure, but seems to me the “Oprah”s outnumber the “Obama”s. Why not – she occasionally gives cars to her audiences…
So, maybe people getting less trustful – not such a bad thing after all. I hope they get really cynical after this last swindle – but not passive and inert. Just harder to swindle.
On edit, an excellent summation of the truth by Murphy
2 comments
July 22, 2009 at 10:50 am
paper doll
The more the media is using its powers to manufacture – not just consent, but reality itself – the less credibility it gets.
Totally…and one of the major reasons newspapers are disappearing. It hasn’t be a seemingly viable mode for years… huge rolls of paper needed etc and TV of course . But they did fine even with TV for many years….What made that possiable was they reported the actual news and what killed them was the credibility drain starting in Clinton’s time.
Another point is, if they are total tools, they lose effectiveness…. as tools! So this media jack booting is stupid on top off everything else.
July 22, 2009 at 1:20 pm
cj
Obama & the press?
It’s all “double plus good.”
“We control life, Winston, at all its levels. You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature, Men are infinitely malleable.”
Couric then observed, “You’re so confident, Mr. President. And so focused. Is your confidence ever shaken, do you ever wake up and say, ‘Damn, this is hard! Damn, I’m not going to get the things done that I want to get done,’ and it’s just too politicized to get anything done?”
. You must love Big Brother. It is not good enough to obey him; you must love him.’