A View From Middle England - Conservative with a slight libertarian touch - For Christian charity and traditional belief - Free Enterprise NOT Covert Corporatism

Monday, September 05, 2005

Ditching the Deference?

Maybe, just maybe, the American TV media are beginning to realise that asking direct questions to get at the truth is what the public really wants. BBC reporter Matt Wells suggests - "Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina. National politics reporters and anchors here come largely from the same race and class as the people they are supposed to be holding to account. They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties, and they are in debt to the same huge business interests. Giant corporations own the networks, and Washington politicians rely on them and their executives to fund their re-election campaigns across the 50 states. It is a perfect recipe for a timid and self-censoring journalistic culture that is no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration."

Maybe the good people that populate the towns and cities of America, who work hard, but never get the vast riches that the stereotyping around the world suggests they have, can at last have a true democracy. A democracy where votes mean something and voters feel they are counted as thinking citizens.

The world has watched the tragedy unfolding in the Southern states where the poor have been left to their own devices. Many Americans of all backgrounds, classes, and colour have been deeply troubled by these events of late. Out of disaster good should prevail. Let's hope that good men and women will not let their country fall back on the old ways. A new democracy may yet rise like a phoenix, in this case from floods rather than fire.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4214516.stm

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