Anything But The Real Story

They’re starting them off young.

During an elementary school visit on Sunday, a fourth-grader came up with a question for former NSA/Sec of State Condoleezza Rice. And it wasn’t just any question. In fact, it was the kind of question that should have put so-called “journalists” to shame.

The student, Misha Lerner, wanted to ask: “If you would work for Obama’s administration, would you push for torture?”

But he wasn’t allowed to ask that question.

Because using the word “torture” is a no-no, and any kid with this much promise of one day being a real journalist has to be stopped now before it’s too late and he ends up with…I dunno, ethics?

Lerner’s teacher – supposedly one of those people that shape young minds and challenge their students to reach new heights – “rephrased” the question, omitting the dirty little word.

So instead, Rice was asked: “What did [she] think about the things President Obama’s administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration had used to get information from detainees?”

Sounds like the kind of dribble that the mainstream media would regurgitate – still so stuck on 9/11 talking points that they can’t think for themselves.

Poor kid. Only 10 years old, and already he’s been told to drink the Kool-Aid.

But I guess you have to learn sometime. Journalism isn’t about the truth – it’s about distracting people with a shiny object. When it comes to focusing instead on something that divides, isolates, or generates fear, if the media doesn’t do it – our schools will.

Meanwhile, NBC Nightly News was hard at work covering their mess. Monday night’s headline story about the Swine Flu noted that “it may be milder than the regular seasonal flu…” and then referred to it as a “strange” virus.

It’s not strange, you idiots. Just because it turns out (as many said but were ignored) that this isn’t the apocalyptic Ebola-style virus outbreak that the sensationalistic media hoped it would be, doesn’t mean you can now label it “strange.” How about just labeling it what it is – the fucking flu.

But of course, as The News Writer pointed out last week, now that the torture question (oops, sorry, the “methods used to get information from detainees”) is off the radar, the media doesn’t have to own up to yet another failure to actually report the truth.

Even the allegedly “lefty” media – the print media – are in on the “anything but the real story” act. Because if the story isn’t divisive enough to distort on the US networks, the print media will jump in.

A pregnant 20-year-old British woman, Samantha Orobator, faces the firing squad in Laos for drug smuggling. She was arrested last August (that’s 8 months ago – keep it in mind) for possession of 1.5 pounds of heroin. Of course, she denies the drugs are hers.

Human rights activists are all over this one. A pregnant British citizen, being held without access to a lawyer, facing the death penalty?

So story after story is churned out, all of them noting the horrible possibility of a pregnant woman being executed. Or about how she’s been denied a lawyer.

Despicable violations of human rights, no doubt.

But where is the outrage over Orobator’s pregnancy itself? After all, she didn’t get pregnant until December – 4 months after her arrest.

I didn’t know Laos prisons had conjugal visits. Or, I guess, another explanation is that she was raped.

But no, rape is no human rights violation. I mean, she probably asked for it, right? Or maybe it was that prison outfit she was wearing so provocatively. Or perhaps she tricked one of the guards into impregnating her in a ruse to generate sympathy for her release.

The BBC did quote a human rights lawyer in last Friday’s story who duly noted that “nothing that happens in that prison is voluntary.” But this angle was conveniently edited out by the time Monday’s version was published.

Unfortunately, our “journalists” are busy falling over each other to report the sensational aspect of a non-white, non-Christian foreign country attempting to execute a pregnant woman.

So the human rights issue of how she got pregnant in the first place isn’t newsworthy.

Of course, if Orobator was Anglo-Saxon, the story of her being raped in prison by Third-World “Orientals” would be too much to pass up.

Wil Robinson
AWOP International Contributing Editor
Author of International Political Will Blog

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