Is Iran Collapsing? Find Out Right After The Next 75 Commercials!

6/20/09
Dear Father,

Television news here, as always, exaggerates everything, with headlines like “Is Iran Collapsing?”(CNN) and other methods to keep the masses watching. It is almost painful for me to watch five minutes of the sensationalistic, hackneyed, context-less bunkum they feed people round the clock—which is, of course, about advertising dollars, nationalism and the corporate America’s genius at peddling the inferior to the very lowest common denominator.

It’s like eating at McDonald’s—dish out manure and call it glory—watching these same hair-sprayed actor-journalists who hurrayed America into Iraq six years ago and went bonkers when one of their own dared to simply state the facts on Iraqi TV.

Note the title of CNN’s report on Iran: “Is Iran Collapsing?” Hey, we’re not saying it is collapsing, CNN’s corporate jockeys would say; we’re just asking the question.

So a few street protests and CNN is shrieking about the collapse of the regime that fought the largest land-based war since WWII and has withstood ceaseless international opposition for nearly 31 years.

Cable news’ tactics are so predictable: they grab the most violent footage off YouTube, shot by the unknown, unnamed, unverifiable, and put it on continuous loop. Then they paste on the crimson-colored “Breaking Story” or “Developing Story” sirens, and, voilà, they’ve got themselves another lucrative excuse to replace reporting for round-the-clock speculation and endless re-runs.

Another tube magnet is born—which of course necessitates pimping the story with more dog-and-pony tricks as the story ages.

Seeing this, I almost miss the time CNN just left the camera running for nearly an hour in front of a Los Angeles courthouse to catch Micheal Jackson walking out.

But what exactly is a “breaking story”? How long does it take for a fact to become a fact? If it has happened, where’s your reporting? If it hasn’t, what are you doing speculating about it?

When boredom forces me to look up at CNN at the health club, I realize one of our greatest freedoms is the ability to shut damn thing off for good—something the poor denizens of 1984 couldn’t do.

(Though I have to concede: I’m grateful it’s CNN at my health club and not the one pitching “fair and balanced” nonsense.)

BBC is the only large English-language television source that doesn’t insult one’s intelligence the majority of time - my God, it actually dares to show the realities of the occupied Palestine - though too often the underlying British conceit toward the developing world is hard to miss.

I’ve been seeing interesting articles on the Christian Science Monitor website. They talk about something strange called “the moral responsibility” to report on the important issues!

It’s hard to believe they’re still in business in a country where agenda-setting is almost exclusively in the hands of corporate nationalists who’ve managed to change the meaning of the words news and information.

The slobs of 1984 would know all about that.

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6/20/09
Dear Ali:

Thanks for your comments. Many people here are angry of so much false sympathy
a number of foreign governments are showing in the name of human rights while
in reality their interests have always been political. We have human rights problems here but seeing what great powers did in our neighboring countries, then their concerns means little.

Fortunately a number of foreign TV channels like BBC, VOA, + almost all those cheap,
and funny Iranian stations broadcasting from LA have been cutoff through government jamming of the airwaves.