WHAT NEXT ?

Recently I have been tuning in to various Television News Programs available on You Tube, in particular from the United States, reporting on current events.  I am bewildered by the variety of opinion being proffered as news, and the amount of time given to some people to expound their theories about the state of affairs in America. I have commented before (The Problem of Listening to the News: Nov. 20) on reporting and fact checking, but since I briefly began to look at some of the more extreme reporting, those items that contain - shall we say - views more to the right of the political spectrum seem to be brought up more frequently on my screen. This in itself is disturbing. These days one kind of expects adverts to follow from searches, as a result of some Google or other search engine note of your “preferences”, but one does not expect political propaganda, which invariably seems to be on the right of the political spectrum.

There are a number of problems arising out of this phenomenon, but what it has revealed is the glaring disconnect between various sections of the American public. There was a long interview on a Fox News broadcast with a lawyer called Sidney Powell.

 Ms Powell is convinced that the ex-president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez (deceased in 2013) is behind the conspiracy to switch, electronically, thousands of votes from Trump to Biden. She claims to have affidavits in support of this contention from witnesses who were on the ground and saw this happen.  It’s all an orchestrated communist conspiracy by Mr Chavez to destabilise American democracy. She does not say who in the Democratic party are co-conspirators, or how they might have achieved their goal.  

As to Hugo Chavez, he is quoted as saying in June of 2010:

“Democracy is impossible in a capitalist system. Capitalism is the realm of injustice and a tyranny of the richest against the poorest. Rousseau said, 'Between the powerful and the weak all freedom is oppressed. Only the rule of law sets you free.' That's why the only way to save the world is through socialism, a democratic socialism... [Democracy is not just turning up to vote every four or five years], it's much more than that, it's a way of life, it's giving power to the people... it is not the government of the rich over the people, which is what's happening in almost all the so-called democratic Western capitalist countries.”

 

Have we ever heard anything like that before? ‘…a government of the people, by the people, for the people…’ I wonder?

 

Mr Chavez, was indeed a Marxist. He was from a middleclass family and had a military career. He was President of Venezuela between 1999 and his death from cancer at the age of 58 in 2013. He was very popular with the voters, but in the end failed to successfully achieve his goals. He tried to use the country’s oil revenues for reform, but with so much money floating around, corruption was never far away. Oddly enough oil wealth has never been a friend of any government. In any event, in looking at Mr Chavez’s history, it is difficult to see how he would have found the time to develop such a conspiracy that would only come to fruition 7 years after his death.

So to give Ms Powell such a considerable amount of air time on such absurd nonsense is incomprehensible. How on earth did she ever pass a bar exam? Even Jenna Ellis and Rudy Guiliani have distanced themselves from her. They have their own conspiracy and fraudster claims to be going on with. On 22^nd November, Mr Trump’s legal team released a statement isolating Ms Powell from its team. It read: “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump legal team. She is also not a lawyer for the president in his personal capacity.” The letter was signed by Mr Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and another lawyer, Jenna Ellis.

One comes back to the plethora of newscast that support this barrage of fantasy. If, like myself, anyone surfing the net, who is buying into this farrago of inanity, will be besieged by much more of the same stuff, all in the guise of serious reporting.

Over the years a certain style of news broadcasts took shape. In America, the demeanour and gravitas of a Walter Cronkite defined broadcast news. This was amplified by Messrs Huntley and Brinkley. We grew used to that kind of televised reporting, and so we have a slightly expanded format attempting to convey the same sincerity of purpose, to simply bring us the news.

 

 

Walter Cronkite

Huntley Brinkley Report with David Brinkley January 5, 1959 on NBC

However, we are brought nothing of the kind  [It is interesting to note, by the way, the take on the news in 1959  of  the events around Castro and Cuba, as well as comment made by Cronkite about Vietnam, which he states is his own view, and not a matter of news] 

There is hardly a newscast now that does not project some sort of editorial agenda. We are always being invited to listen to opinion and the story as explained by the 'political correspondent', 'education correspondent', 'health correspondent', 'economics editor' etc. all in the guise of an informative conversation with the studio host as if we need an explanation of events. Is the listener not able to form their own view without the editor's explanation? Why must everything be editorialised? But that seems to be the preferred format. Reporters feel they are required to challenge the interviewee. They feel they are asking the questions the viewer/listener would want asked, and so they have their lists which they must get in before there allotted time for the story is up, and so they interrupt with great frequency, wanting to push for a controversial answer as if there can only be one answer. Often, the reporter will adopt an opposing view, no matter who they are talking to, simply to elicit argument, to show they are aware of an opposing view.  To what end? It rarely leads to clarification and it only succeeds in irritating the listener. There is also the bonhomie that many newscasters are now adopting. Phrases such as "We've heard, haven't we…"

Who on earth cares what the reporter has heard? Report what's being said, and let the person saying it, say what they have to say. If there is another side to the story, get whoever is involved to tell it. 

There was a time when the BBC was the reliable source of correct information. It sometimes reported information that was incorrect, but that they believed to be correct at the time, and they then corrected the story. I do not know how much of that gets done now, but the news has become a mixture of some straight reporting and tabloid. Not a very good mix in my view. I appreciate human interest stories, but the length of time spent is disproportionate to the events going on round the world. And must every reporter feel they have be ‘investigate’ everything. “Your reporter has uncovered etc..” ..

So why am I ranting, because there are so many stations with slanted views, beaming into so many homes, that the minds of many are being clouded and filled with prejudice and fear. The disconnect between societies is becoming increasingly worrying, as is manifestly demonstrated by what is going on in the United States. One sees the results on the faces of Mr. Trump’s ardent gun carrying supporters and those opposed to them. It’s not just a few but over 70 million. If that is not a worry, I'm not sure what is. It is happening in the UK and it is happening around the world. What next?