It Is Not Just the Politicians

Trey Smith

If you watched any news on television Wednesday, you almost certainly caught a glimpse of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie during his stunning five — yes five! — national television interviews about Hurricane Sandy. The interviews with ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC and Fox Business, not surprisingly, featured plenty of 2016 presidential speculation, some conversation about the state of the Republican Party and a bit of discussion about how hard the New Jersey shoreline was hit by the storm.

However, did you happen to notice that something was missing? Yeah, me too. Somehow, in interviews with every major national television news organization about an unprecedentedly severe weather event, Christie wasn’t asked about climate change. That’s right, he wasn’t asked about whether Hurricane Sandy changes his views on climate change or whether Hurricane Sandy means we should address climate change more urgently. He wasn’t asked whether homes should be rebuilt in New Jersey’s climate-change-threatened areas. He wasn’t even asked why he didn’t mention climate change in his first state of the state following the hurricane.

Indeed, he wasn’t challenged with a single question about the entire issue. Not one.

Before this, of course, there has been ample evidence that the national news media and local news affiliates have devoted painfully little coverage to climate change. Up until now, that perhaps could have been written off as some unfortunate combination of bizarre coincidence and poor news judgment. But a mere one day after we learned that 2012 was the warmest year on record, for 5 separate networks to interview the titular head of the Republican Party about a hurricane and not even mention climate change – that suggests something far more pernicious. It suggests that America’s major television news organizations are actively avoiding the subject.

If that sounds like hyperbole, consider the fact that the size and intensity of Hurricane Sandy — again, the specific topic Christie was on television to talk about — is undoubtedly linked to climate change. Don’t take my word on that, either. Read this definitive Scientific American piece, or read the Sandy-related from the vice chairman of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or listen to this post-Sandy interview about New Jersey weather systems with Rutgers University climatologist Jennifer Francis. And not only is the science overwhelming, public opinion polling data show the public sees a strong connection between climate change and Hurricane Sandy.

And yet, despite all this, Christie didn’t face a single question about the issue.

~ from Why Didn’t Anyone Ask Christie About Climate Change? by David Sirota ~

You know what I miss most about the 1960s? Journalists were tougher on the establishment! Reporters asked questions that politicians and government leaders would rather not answer and, when they tried to sidestep these uncomfortable questions, the reporters would ask them again and again. Were it not for the dogged persistence of the mainstream media, we might have stayed in Vietnam far longer than we did. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 may never have passed. Heck, we might not have Medicare today.

When the mainstream media is vibrant, citizens are better informed and better informed citizens apply pressure on government leaders to address pressing societal issues. There are protests in the streets and citizens are more involved in their own governance.

Compare this to today. The mainstream media has forsaken its adversarial role to become an extension of the established order itself. Rather than dig up uncomfortable facts, the mainstream media simply regurgitates government lies and disinformation. Not surprisingly, the citizenry is far less informed than it use to be and is far more likely to be swayed by demagogs and charlatans. Few people are in the streets and little pressure is applied to the oligarchy to make meaningful changes.

As with most things in our society today, big money is the root cause of the mainstream media's abdication of its role as the chief watchdog of the government. While the media may lean ever so slightly to the left on a very narrow highway, the consolidation of media into too few hands has tilted their overall position far to the right. The major media corporations no longer share all the information that's fit to print -- today they share only that information that fits into the machinations of the ruling class. Any information that might mean a few less dollars in the pockets of the oligarchs is thrown into the nearest dustbin.

If a nation lacks a robust and independent press, then that nation lacks genuine democracy and freedom.