I wouldn't trust anyone who works in the corporately owned mainstream media to level with the public if they come across information that would cause significant embarrassment or legal jeopardy for the establishment or its top personalities. Sure, if the wrongdoing is egregious and glaringly obvious and simply can't be ignored any more, as in the case of Bernie Madoff and Ken Lay for example, then they'll report it. By and large, however, the corporate media knows there are lines that are not crossed. And that goes for Anderson Cooper and the whole lot of them.
Now that the Pat Tillman coverup scandal is blatantly in the open and can no longer be ignored because of the ceaseless work and dogged persistence of his long-suffering parents, the blogs that helped keep the story alive, and a new, about to be released documentary on the matter, only now can Anderson Cooper safely venture forth and offer his pitiful mea culpas for himself and his colleagues and seemingly wonder out loud in a sort of dumb founded manner, "Jeez, how did this story get away from us eagle-eyed, always-striving to-get-at-the-truth, media types?"
Have you ever heard of the book into the Buzzsaw?
April 23, 2002 |
Kristina Borjesson never expected to write an exposé of the business she'd devoted her life to. A 20-year veteran of mainstream journalism, she was a successful insider who produced for the country's most well-regarded news shows, including Frontline and 60 Minutes. Working with industry stars including Dan Rather, she'd won one Emmy and had been nominated for others. She said she imagined spending the rest of her life "going around the world, doing the stories, doing documentaries, having a great time and putting out important information."
As she writes in her book "Into the Buzzsaw", "Trust me, never in a million years did I ever imagine that I'd find myself in my current position as some kind of rebel trying to take on America's journalism establishment. I was reared a member of Haiti's Morally Repugnant Elite‚ and educated, for the most part, in private institutions, including Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Not a thing in my frankly elitist background prepared me for this experience."
The experience she's talking about is her excommunication from mainstream journalism for digging too deep on the TWA 800 story, which she'd been assigned to research for CBS. Like the other reporters whose stories she collected in "Into the Buzzsaw," she essentially lost her job for doing it too well.
snip
After years on the inside, it was both shocking and galvanizing for Borjesson to find herself marginalized in this way. "It causes a shift in paradigm for you. It really rocked my world and changed my reality forever," she says.
Her book examines how such marginalization happens. One important element is other reporters, who often gang up on dissenters like her and Gary Webb, whose exposé about the CIA's role in the crack epidemic was denounced in The New York Times, The LA Times and Washington Post.
snip
According to investigative journalist David Hendrix, who collaborated with Borjesson on the TWA investigation and contributed a chapter to Into The Buzzsaw, "Any media organization, once they decide that this is what the picture really looks like, there's almost a commitment to shoot down whatever might come along saying the picture actually looks different." Instead of investigating new developments, Hendrix says, most journalists hold tenaciously to their version of reality.
(And way too often that version of reality is what the government or authority figures tell them it is. /JC)http://www.alternet.org/story/12941/
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