October 20, 2002- Full Disclosure

One of the things that Americans say makes their land great is the freedom of the press in America. That freedom is one that is cherished by many and looked on as the cornerstone of America itself by many as well. After all, it was the press that helped ferment the American Revolution in the first place. Their coverage of events was the key to getting the people to support the American cause, since newspapers were all the media that there was back in those days. One of the ways that Britain tried to stop the Colonial uprising was to try and stifle the press in America. They passed laws concerning what the press could print and they went after media outlets that violated these laws. This so inflamed the American populace that they insisted that freedom of the press be one of the cornerstones of the America that they hoped to create. And they did just that. They made freedom of the press an integral part of American society, a model for the rest of the world to follow, or so the story goes. Either way, the press and the media in general have always been a big part of America. Ever since Day One of the Republic, there have always been ways for the people to find out what was happening in the world around them. For the first number of decades, it was the newspapers that were the media. They always had enormous influence on events, so much so that they have played many a role in American history. Their freedoms went far beyond just reporting the news back in the day. The papers dictated public opinion on many cases. The case of the man that treated John Wilkes Booth's broken leg right after Booth assassinated President Lincoln, Dr. Mudd, is a case in point. Since the assassination of a President was seen as the most terrible act ever committed by many Americans, the veritable beginning of the end, the papers capitalized on that. They demonized Booth to no end, but since he was killed by the Army when they found him, the papers needed someone to be the scapegoat in all of this, someone still alive,m and Dr. Mudd became the man. He was slandered in every paper in the land as a traitor that helped a madman and as a scoundrel turncoat against America, and so on. The poor Doctor was demonized every bit as badly as Booth was, maybe even more. He was hounded by the Pigs, had his land and assets confiscated, and every bit of this was reported with great glee in the press. They helped contribute to the downfall of Dr. Mudd so much by writing so many negative things against him ,that they saying "your name is Mudd" came out of it, a saying that exists in American slang to this very day. So this free press in America has been used for many things other than just mere reporting of the news over the years. By the time the 20th Century came around, the papers had competition in the media world. First the telegraph, then the radio, then the telephone, then the television, then the computer and the various things that have sprung forth from the computer, and so forth. As this went on, the media became less concerned about shaping opinion as they were about reporting it in a way that the competition could not. Rather than making the news themselves, the press and media in America became concerned with reporting things in the most attention-grabbing, sensational way possible. Each one tried to outdo the other. The bigger the story, the more ways that the media tried to out-sensationalize each other, the mother of all of this being September 11th, 2001, which has been covered in minutiae every which way. There was no shortage of the lurid and the sensational in that story, and the free press in America went to town on it like they never had done before. All of this sensationalistic coverage of things has led many to ask a question of America's media, and that is do they encourage copycats and other assorted lunatics to do shit just so they can get big coverage on TV. There are many in America that are convinced that this is so. They claim that the culture of lurid media coverage of big stories only makes people want to have some of that "fame" for themselves, and they will go and commit other criminal acts just to be on TV and so forth. So these people feel that American media should just shut the fuck up about these big crimes and shit and not make such a big deal out of them and then there won't be so many of these crimes. They point to shit like thse high-speed car chases involving suspected criminals running from the Pigs and hauling ass through the streets. In places like Los Angeles, these are almost daily staples on the news. Critics say that these constant showings of this shit encourages people to try and go this route when confronted by the Pigs. The lurid, sensationalistic styles that the LA TV stations use to cover these things are pointed to. I guess they break into programs with this shit, passing it off as "breaking news." No matter how much this goes on, it is impossible top blame the media coverage of this for the never ending numbers of them. Rather, the real reason that this happens so much is because the Pigs insist on chasing these "criminal suspects" for all sorts of trivial, insignificant crimes. If they stopped chasing these people, then there would not be so much of that shit on LA TV. So, for petty shit like this, the free press and their lurid style does not really contribute to anything. However, many of the same critics of the free press's ways point to larger, far more serious crimes to make their point. Shit like the Tylenol murders that I wrote about a few weeks ago are their case in point, like the copycats that plagued that one. In that case, the sensationalistic media hype certainly helped keep that shit going on far longer than it needed to. But, now in 2002, we have another case in America that is raising the same questions.

I speak of the sniper killings that have been going in in and around Washington D.C., the shit that I wrote about a few columns ago. It looks like there was another sniper shooting a few hours ago in that area, the Pigs won't know for sure for a few hours yet, they should by the time that many of you read this. This is a story that has the American media going all out to out-hype one another with their coverage of it. You are seeing satories about this sniper and his rampages not only on the news and information shows, but also on the infotainment shows, like the tabloid news shows such as the one that Deborah Norville is on, I forget the name, maybe Inside Edition? With all of these outlets competing on a story that has very little evidence or facts to write about, sensationalism is the watchword here. Every outlet tries to make the sniper out into more of a Boogeyman type character, a real-life horror show. Whoever can scare the people about this dude more sees themselves as the winners. This is leading many to say that the sniper is continuing his rampage just so that there will be ever more sensationalistic coverage of him and his acts. These folks say that this guy is getting off on the attention that he is receiving from his deeds and keeps on doing them just so he can watch all the media outlets go wild covering it. They say that if there was not so much coverage of the sniper's deeds, that he would not have any incentive to do them anymore, and we'd all be safer. Scaring and alarming the public does no good, according to them. However, this approach does not deter anything like this at all, this has been proven out in the past. All we have to do is to turn the clocks back to the glory days of the USSR. Now, there was a society where freedom of the press did not exist at all. Not even in theory. The media was tightly controlled by the state, and they did just what the state wanted them to do at all times. What you saw on the news back in the USSR was just what the authorities wanted you to see and nothing more. Stories were selectively chosen, and if one was deemed non-suitable to the party's needs, it was not broadcast, no matter what it was. Catastrophes and disasters were like number one on this list, they were never reported on, no matter how large or catastrophic they were, the best known example being the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in 1986. There was damn near a total meltdown over there and the resulting disaster was hushed up until Finland noticed that there was a huge amount of radiation coming in on the wind from the direction of the USSR. Only after continuing to deny that anything happened for a while did the Soviet authorities finally admit as to what happened, and even then they were far from forthright about it. Untold thousands of people were dosed with huge amounts of radiation before they wee told what had happened. So this policy of secrecy about bad news in the Soviet media was well entrenched, so the actions of a criminal, no matter how heinous they may have been were never reported on, and the people never had any idea that these types of crimes took place. According to the authorities, there was no crime like that in the USSR because they had a superior system and so forth. What a load of shit that was. For there was plenty of crime in the USSR, crime that was every bit as evil and terrible and lurid as any crime in America. The lack of reporting did not stop any crimes from taking place, in fact, it made it easier for depraved criminals to do their shit because the people were totally unaware of what they were up to, no matter how bad it was. The number one example of this was a man by the name of Andrei Chikatilo. This dude was a serial killer that was right at the very top of that scene. This guy kidnapped people from various places and took them to his lair, where he sadistically tortured and killed them, and, in some cases, ate parts of their bodies, Jeff Dahmer like style. Only Chikatilo made Dahmer look like a poser. He was on the loose over in the USSR for many a year. He killed hundreds of people, the exact number is not know, I believe. He stalked the streets of Moscow and a few other Soviet cities, preying on whoever caught his eye. No matter how many times he'd kill in a certain city, the public never had any idea about him because there was no mention of what he did in any Soviet media of any type. However, this did not stop him from doing this shit for years. The bungling Soviet pigs helped too, by questioning him about many of the murders and releasing him because they could not prove their case. Between that and the media silence, Chikatilo was able to murder unimpeded for many years. No one was watching out for him because no one knew about him. So the media silence there made it easier for this madman to do his evil deeds. Obviously, the answer is not to simply stop reporting these things. It is stopping the sensationalism that surrounds them. Like a report concerning the sniper that I saw earlier on the local news that followed the World series game. They were trying to say that the sniper might not be a trained assassin, but just a regular guy, because what he is doing is not that hard. They had this reporter chick go to a shooting rannge at a gun club somewhere and have the dudes there hook her up with some kind of rifle that might be the one that the sniper is using. The point was to show us all how easy it was to be a sniper. This bitch had never shot a gun before and all that. She hefted the gun and took one shot, and hit that human-shaped target right near the head. Then, after 60 seconds of instruction, she took another shot and scored what the instructor called a "kill shot", meaning that if she had shot a person like that, the person would have died. So the reporter bitch went on and on about see how easy this is I did this and I don't know shit about guns, the sniper does not have to have the extensive training that some ( like me) have said that he has, etc.. This broad totally ignored the fact that the sniper manages to elude total Pig dragnets time and time again, and that is not done without having some extensive training in how to elude capture. She ignored some of the facts in this story that she was reporting on in order to get some lurid, sensationalistic story that would scare the shit out of people. This si the kind of shit that needs to be stopped when it comes to the free press reporting on large stories for it does the whole thing no good at all, and the sensationalistic aspect of it is what would encourage others to try shit, not the mere reporting of facts. If the american media stuck to that, they would not have to worry about people accusing then of crating more of a problem rather than helping to stop it. Because giving the people knowledge about things helps them to be aware of what is going on, and makes them less likely to be prey to a Chikatilo or a sniper type. But taking it beyond that into the realm of the lurid and fantastic does no one any good for it only makes a bad situation worse and further inflames things. If the American media is as free as the purport to be they need to realize this and act accordingly, for freedom always has a good side and a bad side, the trick is to have a good enough stewardship of it so the good is more prevalent than the bad. The American media need to realize this and make sure that they are good stewards and bring out the good side of their freedoms rather than the bad. But as long as money, rather than freedom., drives the media, the most profitable side will win out, no matter which side that is, and that is the problem that needs to be solved here.