Porphyria

The notion that this nation is founded on popular sovereignty is a fallacy that is best left to fourth grade civics classes. The truth is much harder to define, so for the purposes of an elementary understanding of our society, popular sovereignty is as good a notion as any.

Likewise, the fallacy that any there is any "truth" to be gleaned from the news or news media is another one of those urban myths of our democracy. We've allowed our greed to run ahead of our morals, something Jurassic Park illustrated in high definition. However, for the purposes of day-to-day living, the truth as presented to us by the media is as good as any.

If this is a difficult concept to wrap your mind around, then liken it to the fact that, altho it is deeply flawed for exact descriptions of physical events, Newton's law of gravity describes a method for the layman to predict everyday events, you know, what-goes-up-must-come-down sort of stuff.

So, that sense of dis-ease you feel when you turn on the news and watch Tom Brokaw or Ted Koppel present an "unbiased" story is very real, much more real than the story you're listening to. When Disney can spike a story on its amusement parks, then you have to know that traditional sources of news are no longer valid.

Similarly, when opinion makers transform into "news sources", we have to maintain a certain skepticism about what they are telling us. Yet, many people take Matt Drudge at face value. These are the same people who think professional wrestling is a real sport and that Pamela Anderson can act, Mark Rothko is an artist, and Milli Vanilli was a victim of a huge right-wing conspiracy of the music industry.

What develops from this is a cynicism that takes the form of sarcastic comment, where satire passes as keen observation, and Rudy Giuliani can be an art critic.

The connection between popular sovereignty and truth, and cynicism should be pretty obvious. Money.

See, both our popular sovereignty and the truth can be purchased for the appropriate sum. GWBush runs for President, and will probably win with his $50 million war chest (assuming he doesn't inhale it first). He's probably not the best candidate. Hell, he's probably not the best *Republican* running! Co-optation of our rights and processes is too easily bought, and so goes your popular sovereignty.

Similarly, the truth can be purchased for the right amount of money. This proposition has been put forth in many films, most recently Wag The Dog, although I guess the most potent example of it was Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Maybe you missed the film-- it's an old one-- but a young idealist is elected as the junior Senator from a state that also elected one of the most corrupt cronies, who has amassed immense amounts of power, including the power to purchase the local media (then, the newspapers), if not at the source, then off the newsstands. In the real world, this would have been enough to ruin the junior colleague, but it was a Frank Capra film, so everything works out in the end.

What makes recent events so chilling is the ease with which this has happened. See, in the past (a la the Capra film) it took great effort to twist the truth completely. One could succeed to a limited degree, but no one had the resources (read: money) to keep a lid on all outlets. Now, money isn't the resource that is at a premium. Time is. Covering up the truth is less a problem of blanketing the news as it is of creating enough confusion and doubt that the average reader/voter/listener gives up out of frustration in trying to learn the truth, and asks instead to have it handed to them on a platter, and so you have Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern passing as news sources.

The one piece of good news on this front over the past few weeks is that these two opinion bimbos are running in the top ten of Phonies of the 20th Century on Time Magazine's website.

The damnable thing as far as any of these pocket-puppets goes is the cynical attitude they take, the "it's-not-news-it's-entertainment" gambit. It must be insulting to be a Dittohead or a Stern-nut, because if you listen to the program with a discerning ear, you can hear the wink of the eye. Unfortunately, most of their fans don't listen with a discerning ear, so many of them believe it as gospel truth. These two numbnuts will pass along "facts" and then build "truth" on these facts, and next thing you know, polystyrene is biodegradable, and Metallica makes music. The real truth behind either of those statements is how much money each of them earned for the sayer.

And that's where the danger lies. "Truth" is written by those who win, and in America, winning = money. In the tobacco lawsuits, truth until recently was written by the tobacco firms, until it was revealed that they didn't believe their own statements. That was forty years of "truth". Now those winnings are shifting the other way. How? Truth, the real truth, was uncovered, partly by a free press that could dig in and discover memos and reports previously hidden from view.

Here's a thought experiment for you: suppose that a ride at Disneyland was totally unsafe, killed at least one tourist each month, injured several more, and to boot, that ride was based in large part on technology provided by General Electric. Hell, let's go whole hog: the cost to build the ride was underwritten by Westinghouse and the ride ties in heavily to a promotion that the News Corporation and Time Warner are running as a prelude to the Super Bowl broadcast to boost ratings and subscriptions.

This covers all four major networks. The other networks-- WB, UPN-- don't have national news arms. In addition, you've got CNN, Time Magazine, whatever CBS magazines are extant, covered. PBS isn't covered, naturally, but nobody watches PBS for breaking news, anyway.

ABC couldn't cover the story, because it would hurt Disney revenues (and this has happened for lesser stories). NBC couldn't cover it, because it would hurt the parent company's stock, General Electric, who provided much of the key technology now exposed as a killer. CBS couldn't cover it, because after all, the ride carries Westinghouse's endorsement, and who wants to admit they paid for a killer? Fox and CNN won't cover it, because then they'd be associated with the ride in the crucial run-up to the Super Bowl, which would ruin the multimillion dollar promotion.

Yea, eventually, the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal would poke their noses in, probably after some editor lost a family member on the ride. Local stations might pick up the story first, but often that's a cry in the wind. Politicians, who make a very nice living pocketing the money of the Disneys, et al., won't look into it until they've seen it on TV, which is when it becomes real for their constituents (a point made in Wag the Dog). It would take critical weeks or months before the story became an issue that would make those involved behave responsibly.

Is it any wonder that the National Enquirer broke some of the biggest stories on OJ, Monica Lewinsky, and Jon Benet Ramsey? At least their agenda was upfront-- to entertain as many people as possible with gossip and innuendo and to be as blatant as possible in doing so. So if in the course of this, they stumbled across a true story, hey, it only meant more people reading their magazine the next week.

This turned the traditional news reporting function on its side. It used to be that you reported the news, and if in reporting the news, you could make it entertaining, great. Your circulation or ratings rose, and in turn, you could report bigger and better stories. The new news cuts right to the chase: entertainment will bring readers. Doesn't have to be true, just fun.

Another development that spurred on the change from reporting and then entertaining to just entertaining occurred when networks allowed the entertainment divisions to run the news divisions, which happened to at least two of the big three networks. The entertainment divisions are far more vulnerable to the more unethical influences that money can buy, because there was no ethical standard they needed to obey. To expect them to enforce ethical standards they themselves don't even follow or comprehend is ludicrous, and so they simply don't. That means the news divisions are susceptible to manipulation.

When the NRA or the tobacco companies or anyone with money can buy influence (political and media, or hadn't you noticed how many shoot-em-ups were on TV or in theatres, and how many people smoked in films and shows?) either directly or indirectly, what's to stop them from owning the media (and therefore the news) outright?

It gets more sinister, folks. The FCC recently rescinded rules against multiple television station ownership in any single market. Within days, CBS and Viacom (UPN, USA Network, MTV) announced their deal, and NBC announced it was looking to buy PaxNet!

In New York, CBS Radio already owns the two dominant rock (well, now one is talk-radio) stations AND the all-news stations, in addition to the key sports talk radio outlet, not to mention one of the major urban music stations. Soon. they'll own Viacom, which means MTV and VH-1, as well as the USA Network and UPN, and unless my memory is shot to hell, CBS will also own Blockbuster Video. It's your basic vertical integration strategy: control your market in every way possible, from input to output and all throughput in between.

And that means that CBS will get to fashion the truth to fit their needs. So the "Chris Gaines" album will be an instant best-seller, if CBS decides they like Garth Brooks. Nevermind the music might suck.

In a similar vein, when you can control the truth in a vertical integration, it can be manipulated for things far more important than the record sales of a lagging album. And people will die for it.

The novel we all feared growing up, Orwell's 1984, turns out to have been less ominous than we thought. Where we really should have been looking was at Rollerball.

Carl Salonen,

Visit his home page at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/de_Valois