July 5, 2005

Shed no tears for Judith Miller. Don’t be surprised over Time Magazine’s spinelessness. It’s really too bad Miller will not go to prison for her role in creating a pretext to murder 100,000 Iraqis. Time Magazine is more worried about the damage to its business than it is about any possible damage inflicted on journalism. The Supreme Court decision last week not to hear the appeals of Miller and Matthew Cooper for refusing to squeal on the Bushcon (probably Karl Rove) who outed CIA agent Valerie Plame “doesn’t spell an end to journalism functioning as it should. It is a serious crimp in press freedom, but we will survive,” according to John Watson, assistant professor of journalism at American University. In other words, corporate “journalism” will continue function “as it should,” that is say it will remain a propaganda tool for government. Corporate media is not sincerely worried about “a serious crimp in press freedom” because it does not need to exercise press freedom—it only needs to read Pentagon hand-outs and allow propaganda operatives such as Miller to feed the public a wheelbarrow of lies and half-truths. Judith Miller will be easily replaced by any number of pile-climbing careerists capable of dispensing government propaganda. And the next war will be sold almost as effortless as the last two. It has nothing to do with the First Amendment or freedom of the press because such noble principles no longer exist in the United States of America. Most of us here in the blogosphere still enjoy what passes for freedom of the press (or freedom of electrons) but that is because we are so easily ignored or marginalized. On the day the blogs actually make a difference (enough to motivate political action), the plug will be pulled and the electronic commons shut down for good. As for how this will be done, consult the Chinese.