Deaf, Dumb, and Blind; Just Not Mute

For over six years now the main stream media, particularly its members who reside in this nation's capitol city, have remained silent and obediently complicit as the Bush Administration rides roughshod over the Constitution, the rule of law, and most of the general principles upon which this country was founded.

Through abuse after abuse, lie after lie, breach after breach, and crime after crime the media has remained deaf, dumb, and blind. The abdication of journalistic integrity and responsibility has been complete and total.

Until recently it was easier for the main stream media to behave this way and the media elites in Washington D.C. appear to hope that it will remain so. For the first six years of the Bush Administration whenever something questionable or untoward arose, regardless of its deeper implication or blatant criminality, the press blithely repeated the Administration's talking points. The main stream media took to the airwaves and to the pages of newspapers and magazines to assure the American public that there was no real wrongdoing, that the President could be trusted, that even asking or hinting about impropriety would make America less safe, that the mere suggestion that the Administration was overstepping its bounds or trampling on the Constitution would aid the terrorists, that dissent was unpatriotic, and that everything would work out just fine if we simply did not ask so many questions.

And so terrorists attacked America on September 11th and no questions were asked, and American invaded Iraq and the questions were thrown aside. Those who dared to ask them were labeled as unpatriotic and quickly shouted down. American's were spied on illegally by their own government and it was business as usual, a great American city was flooded and destroyed and the blame was passed along. Things went from bad to worse and justification to justification in Iraq and we were told to stay the course.

It has been more difficult of late for the main stream media and its D.C. talking heads to aid and abet the Administration's gross derelictions of duty. Finally there is a voice in this country again that believes in responsibility and accountability. The American people elected Democrats to Congress because they were tired of corruption in the White House and the complacency of the Republican Congress. This new Congress has begun to stand up for the people who elected it, and to question and demand answers from an Administration not used to giving them and a press not used to asking them. The treatment of soldiers has been investigated, and the conduct of the war in Iraq is finally being examined, and the abrogation of justice through overt politicization at the Department of Justice is under investigation as well.

Still the Administration insists that everything is okay because they say so, and the press goes right along insisting that the Administration does and will tell the truth blindly ignoring all of the accumulated evidence. The press takes the Administration's talking point that subpoenas and investigations are but show trials and that the Democrats have but a political ax to grind, ignoring both the pursuit of the truth as well as a Constitutional responsibility to oversight.

The main stream media has grown too comfortable with a government behind closed doors. Their friends in power have sedated them and sown effectively the seeds of apathy which now poison our nation's journalists. Journalism should construe nothing less than a zealous and unending pursuit of the truth, and in America that right is codified in law.

With what country have the press confused America? With whom have they confused its citizens? For how long will they continue to call themselves journalists without deserving the name?

Glenn Greenwald and Media Matters offer more details.