- Helen Thomas is a syndicated columnist for the Hearst
chain of newspapers. She served fifty-nine years as a UPI reporter and
a White House correspondent. She recently published a column in which she
referenced the 1972 Watergate scandal that toppled President Nixon and
she claimed, among other things, that "There is much more skepticism
today, not only from journalists, but also from the American people, who
desperately want to believe in their leaders. That is the sad legacy of
the Watergate scandal."
-
- http://www.thebostonchannel.com/helenthomas/1518553/detail.html
-
- Dear Ms. Thomas:
-
- You recently wrote a column ("30-year-old scandal
still affects us") in which you make the puzzling assertion that Nixon's
fall from grace "was a wake-up call for journalists. Never again would
they take a president's word at face value."
-
- I won't divulge a lady's age Ms. Thomas, but any journalist
who has attended the press conferences of eight different presidents, is
old enough to know better. A skeptical, questioning, suspicious press corps,
if it existed today, would be a healthy change, not a "sad legacy."
-
- Pardon me for speaking frankly, but I was alive and well,
devouring daily newspapers like the Wall Street Journal and the New York
Times during the days before and after Watergate. I remember the days when
the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which of course we now know to have been faked,
was reported as fact, without question, by a most gullible and cooperative
press corps.
-
- I also remember when our president, sweating under the
hot lights of the TV cameras, could see the "light at the end of the
tunnel" in Vietnam, and no reporter questioned his vision or asked
him to define "light."
-
- I remember when every Vietnamese villager who was instantly
converted into a running, screaming human torch by U.S. napalm was later
identified as a "dead Communist." The press adopted this simplistic
labeling system, as if they had interviewed each of the dead Vietnamese
concerning his or her understanding of Marxist-Leninist philosophy. Such
interviews would have been tricky since so many of the incinerated bodies
belonged to infants too young to have mastered any language.
-
- For some reason, the bodies of 50,000 dead GIs were identified,
not by their presumed ideology (capitalists), but by their nationality
- American. Perhaps U.P.I. reporters found it emotionally difficult to
interview fatally wounded GIs about their personal allegiance to various
theories presented in Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." Anyway,
the Nixon years were not a high water mark in U.S. journalistic standards.
They were days of insidious double standards, employed by compliant writers
to create mind-numbing propaganda.
-
- Nixon's faithful press corps never exhibited any skepticism
about the sanity of sending an army of uniformed soldiers, armed with bullets
but with no consistent set of principles, to kill an ideology. In retrospect,
the "war on Communism" looks downright cerebral compared to our
present "War on Terrorism." At least in the late 1960's there
actually were some foreign demons who identified themselves as "Communists."
Who, among our rapidly expanding list of current villains identifies himself
as a "terrorist"? The arbitrary labeling is left up to our chief
executive, and the press never asks for any working definition.
-
- Please explain what has changed since Watergate. What
has changed since those days when the Fifth Estate repeatedly demonstrated
a cowardly lack of integrity in order to appear docile and patriotic?
-
- Which particular "presidential word" is no
longer "taken at face value" as you assert in your column? It
certainly is not the word "terrorist." Nor is it the word "extremist,"
nor "radical," nor "fundamentalist," nor "religious
cult," nor "defend," nor "war," nor "rogue
state," nor "evil," nor "terrorist infrastructure,"
nor "security alert," nor "self-defense," nor "smaller
government," nor "smart sanctions," nor "patriotism,"
nor "freedom and democracy," nor "weapons of mass destruction,"
nor "peaceful," nor "right to life," nor "the
rule of law," nor "security," nor "conservation,"
nor "pollution," nor "private enterprise," nor any
of the other thousands of words which perform forced labor in Bush's Orwellian
propaganda factory.
-
- These words are all being tortured to death by politicians
and journalists who pretend to be ignorant of their historical and literal
meanings.
-
- Bush uses words in bizarre new ways every day but the
dewy eyed White House correspondents never get inquisitive enough to ask
him, "what do you mean when you use that word in that way?"
-
- They never ask,"What do you mean, for instance,
when you call Ariel Sharon a man of peace? What is the meaning of the word
'peace' when used to describe a man who turns his rifles and fires upon
BBC journalists who dared to photograph and report some details of his
armored assaults against civilian populations?"
-
- By the way, why is it no longer permissible for the press
to call a bloody assault against unarmed civilians a "massacre"?
Instead, all reporters have agreed to refer to such mechanized homicide
as "incursions" or "mopping up." The latter phrase
probably originated in the South Pacific where the enemy was actually armed
and capable of fighting back. This term from some Tidy Bowl commercial
is currently pressed into duty to help the propaganda team sprinkle a fresh
clean fragrance over piles of rotting corpses in Jenin.
-
- Words do matter, Helen, and a real journalist would ask
for precise meanings. Words describe our intentions and enable us to evaluate
our results.
-
- The current ruler of the "free world" (whatever
that phrase means) has used volumes of unchallenged "presidential
words" to declare his war against some vague notion of "evil"
without offering any definitions or explaining any principles by which
we grownups could measure the consistency of his policies or the morality
of his actions.
-
- We can't possibly criticize his results because he describes
his goals in such childish and simplistic terms that any action, even the
obliteration of a peasant village, can be construed as fitting the objective
of "destroying evil." Any village so reduced to rubble might
easily have once contained a naughty something or someone who could conveniently
be called "evil," if an excuse for the slaughter of civilians
was ever requested by the press.
-
- Of course New York City is also a village where bad people
have been known to set up residence from time to time. Some of New York's
drug lords and organized gangsters could even be called "evil"
by polite society. Does New York City thus fit the new presidential definition
of "terrorist infrastructure" and "evil"?
-
- There was a very low level of skepticism in 1972, but
that level has dropped even lower today. If Nixon were still alive and
if he called for an unending war against an unnamed "bad ideology,"
located in some unnamed "bad place," today's reporters would
politely decline to even ask for the name of the target country! Richard
must be rolling in his grave, jealous of the press latitude now afforded
his successor in word crime.
-
- So, dearest Helen, Grand Dame of the White House press
corps, veteran of so many presidential briefings, where is the "skeptical
press" that you assure us is our legacy from Watergate? Are these
wonderfully skeptical reporters hidden deep inside Mystery Mountain with
Bush's "Shadow Government," scouring their notebooks for evidence
of presidentially adulterated words? The private muttering that takes place
among reporters and columnists, in their favorite watering holes, hardly
qualifies as professional skepticism.
-
- When I survey the current crop of journalists, I see
a fawning herd of patriotic but stupid stenographers, decorating White
House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer's fantasy prose with red white and
blue bunting. The pressroom flag flappers dutifully report the Generalissimo's
"great victory over evil" in Afghanistan, as if something had
actually been accomplished, something besides the replacement of one gang
of warlords with a more pipeline friendly team of tyrants.
-
- The press casually refers to this "victory in Afghanistan"
as if that new oil pipeline had always been the publicly declared justification
for Bush's war, and therefore it is the only appropriate measure of his
success.
-
- On June 15th, the New York Times published the following
report: "Classified investigations of the Qaeda threat now under way
at the F.B.I. and C.I.A. have concluded that the war in Afghanistan failed
to diminish the threat to the United States, the officials said. Instead,
the war might have complicated counterterrorism efforts by dispersing potential
attackers across a wider geographic area."
-
- Nevertheless, no major newspaper, not even the New York
Times, which carried this candid confession, is about to cease and desist
from making repetitious references to the "victory in Afghanistan,"
as if it were a reality that had been observed, measured, and verified
by objective reporters. The big lie gets endless front-page repetition
while the truth is only an occasional footnote at the bottom of page ten.
-
- Please Helen, why don't your skeptical comrades question
any of what Norman Solomon calls the unspoken "underlying assumptions"
of the pabulum that sleepy stenographers are spoon-fed every morning in
Ari's Day Care Center? "Open wide," says Uncle Ari. "Here
comes another whopper." Here come "pre-emptive strikes,"
and "nuclear first strike options," and "unlawful combatants".
-
- If Watergate left the press corps overly skeptical, as
you claim, then why do they not fly overseas, like real reporters, like
British writer Robert Fisk for instance, to see for themselves, and to
ask other people what they see when they look toward the West? Do foreign
victims of oppression and starvation see an America that is poised to lead
the world out of its present darkness or do they only see a giant bully,
blinded by irrational rage, flailing against noises in the night with his
nuclear tipped sword?
-
- Why do your skeptical colleagues not ask our Commander
in Chief to reveal his universal standards for measuring moral behavior?
What is the moral yardstick by which the president of Iraq was once measured
and declared to be a valuable ally to the "free world," while
he was gassing Kurds and killing Iranians? Later, when that same murderous
cretin became an "evil doer who killed his own people," was this
because the man had changed, or was it because the yardstick had changed?
-
- What are the undefined universal standards by which all
men are to be judged, and some, like Saddam, are found to be "evil,"
condemned to die at the hands of American might, while other butchers,
like those in Bogotá receive a presidential pat on the back and
a fresh shipment of torture racks?
-
- What about the once evil Nelson Mandela? How did he redefine
himself, after years of official condemnation as a "terrorist,"
an "extremist," and a "radical" into a national hero?
He was convicted, by America's apartheid ally, of sabotage and conspiracy
to overthrow the government by force. Now he is a "freedom fighter."
When will the enemies of our other apartheid allies become "freedom
fighters"? What definitive dictionary does the press corps use for
reference, when slapping on such labels?
-
- Larry Birns, head of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs
think tank in Washington, says, "What is dangerous now is that the
anti-terrorist war has no standards and no criteria. It is whatever the
Bush administration says it is at any given moment." (The Guardian,
May 7th 2002) Why aren't our own reporters asking any questions about these
standards, Helen?
-
- How can we possibly go to war against "evil"
without even attempting to pin down the constantly shifting standard of
official morality? Only a skeptical press corps can pose such questions
to our Commander. I never hear them trying.
-
- Why are nuclear bombs labeled as "weapons of mass
destruction" only until they have been decorated with stars and stripes,
or with the bright blue Star of David? Why is anthrax a "defensive
weapon" when the spores are cultivated in a lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland,
but the very same spores become "weapons of mass destruction"
if they turn up in Cuba or Iraq?
-
- These are the types of questions that would be asked
by a Watergate savvy press corps. I never hear them being asked by our
"skeptical" press.
-
- In September 1939, Adolf Hitler took to the airwaves
to declare Germany's "right to defend herself," then he sent
the Luftwaffe to "strike back" against my Polish ancestors who
were still on horseback. With tanks and planes, he struck "pre-emptively"
against the Polish cavalry. Now we have a president who talks of "pre-emptive"
wars and incarcerations. Can you and your colleagues really think of no
skeptical questions to pose to our president about this vague notion of
"pre-emption"?
-
- Like Bush, Hitler also enjoyed the pleasant company of
an adoring German press corps which never questioned words like "striking
back" or "terrorist." In return, Adolf, who incidentally
loved his obedient dog, always provided his patriotic journalists with
good theater, with "good visuals" as Uncle Ari would put it.
-
- Where are those post Watergate newspapers which dare
to ask basic questions about international morality? All I see are shallow
debates about tactics. Your colleagues love to hold round table discussions
about what methods would represent the most efficient use of American military
hardware to further suppress the Columbians, and the Palestinians, or to
wipe out the Cubans and the Iraqis.
-
- Reporters think it impolite to ask their president why
the mightiest nation on Earth needs to finance the destruction of such
impoverished and oppressed people. This is like German papers debating
how best to beat down the Poles. Should the Luftwaffe waste precious ammunition
on the horses, or just use "smart bullets" to neatly behead the
riders?
-
- The unquestioned assumption behind such silly debates
is that might makes right. Our current crop of post Watergate sycophants
loves to debate the "how" but never dares to ask "why."
-
- "The sad legacy of the Watergate scandal,"
as you called it, is not a skeptical press, but a paralyzed press. Having
accidentally exposed one petty tyrant for the amoral fraud that he was,
today's timid press doesn't want to make that mistake again. "For
the good of the nation" they bite their lip. Thirty years after Watergate,
America is desperately in need of a healthy dose of skepticism.
-
- Please tell us where we can find some, Helen.
-
- ___
-
- George Lewandowski encourages your comments: glewandowski@YellowTimes.org
YellowTimes.org encourages its material to be reproduced, reprinted, or
broadcast provided that any such reproduction must identify the original
source, http://www.YellowTimes.org. Internet web links to http://www.YellowTimes.org
are appreciated.
|
