Shrill Shouting in the Public Domain

This week I've taken a "news break." That means that I have watched no television, except for Monday night's Operation Iraqi Stephen, hardly listened to NPR except when I first wake up, and kept away from nytimes.com, well that's a lie. I do check it periodically during the day, but I've avoided reading much more than the headlines.

I decided to listen to music instead, and although I've been warned not to do this, I have had my iPod on while driving. Instead of arriving at work agitated, I get there in a state of ecstasy. Not bad.

Since the switch from analogue to digital television, my cable provider has taken MSNBC off of the basic cable service. With only one cable box, that means I can't watch Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann in bed anymore.

Not bad. They were beginning to sound too much like Jon Stewart anyway.

I haven't turned to television now that "In Treatment" is over (Gabriel Byrne as a flawed therapist). I didn't watch American Idol, although I did catch Adam Lambert singing "Mad World" and he broke my heart with his voice and talent. No dancing, no housewives, just music and reading.

And the world seems a bit quieter to me this week, which isn't so bad.

Where Have All the Journalists Gone? Part II

While Howard Fineman, Senior Washington correspondent at Newsweek and frequent talking head on MSNBC is trying to be heard through the numbing noise of cable news and journalism without investigation, by suggesting that perhaps Barack Obama isn't up to the task, ordinary people like you and me have to decide where we are going to find our news.

Yes, I find the smug tone of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow entertaining, but I can't watch both, since they repeat the same stories and frankly, by the time a news item gets onto their shows, I've read it somewhere else. Except for some of Rachel's interviews. She's had some thrilling guests on, telling harrowing stories, especially about the Bush administration's war on terror.

I wake up to NPR, but lately they seem to be reading press releases and not really doing the hard work either. When I tune to WBAI, I sometimes wonder what year it is! Air America doesn't come in over the radio here, so I can only listen on the computer and during the day, I'm just too busy.

How could I have forgotten Democracy Now! If you miss it on local radio or television, you can watch the daily broadcast on line. In addition to getting arrested at the Republican National Convention despite her "big access" press credentials, Amy Goodman, founder and principal of Democracy Now! believes in the adage made famous by I.F. Stone: All governments lie.

And it's up to journalists to uncover those lies.

In celebration of I.F. Stone's 100th birthday celebration, he died in 1989, the first Izzy Award, was given to recognize independent journalism. The award was shared by Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer turned blogger on Salon.com.

Watch an extraordinary interview conducted by Bill Moyers, one of the best of America's journalists, with both of these independent journalists and then reorder where you get your news from.

The Symantics of Fear

Having been in the Czech Republic when the Mumbai attacks began, I watched BBC World and CNN International, which blathered hour after hour with rumors and unconfirmed reports to fill up air time. Perhaps it was the European accents that made their reporting a bit less hysterical than what we have come up against upon our return home.

But I expect more from NPR, National Public Radio. Saturday morning, Juan Williams, not my favorite conservative African American news analyst, was filling in for Daniel Schorr, one of the best. Williams spoke about "the terrorists" generically, as if all of the attacks in all of the countries across the planet have been coordinated by one organization. That assumption is wrong; there are dissatisfied people in every country and the more unstable a country's economic, social, and political system, the more likely it is that there will be civil unrest. However, to imply that all of these discontents are connected is reminiscent of the "Red Scares" of the 1930s and 1950s. Rebels are notoriously isolated, because they are forced into hiding. Every discontent is not Al Qaeda.

This assumption that there is a singular enemy merely accelerates fear and makes repression by governments not just feasible but acceptable. Remember what Bush-Cheney got away with post-911? Considering that George Washington set the precedent for "no torture" of captured British soldiers and Tories, it saddened all of us who believe in American ideals that the President, Vice President, and Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department were spending their time justifying the use of torture and enhanced interrogation techniques on human beings captured as suspects in the amorphous "war on terror."

There is no such thing as "we" and "them." Our way to make the world safer is not to create false enemies, but to understand how we are connected, what we need for dignified and sustainable lives.