Comments
ACCORDING TO LIZ - In his encyclical, Magnifica Humanity, Pope Leo wrote:
“The use of digital platforms and A.I. systems is driving profound changes in public and political communication. Tools that could foster dialogue and participation are often used to construct distorted narratives and blur the boundaries between truth and falsehood, mixing facts with opinions. Disinformation did not begin with A.I., yet today it finds a powerful amplifier in A.I.
“The ability to manipulate content, images and videos exposes people to biased or misleading perspectives… Only the shared pursuit of the veracity of facts, perceived as a common good, can provide a solid foundation for just communication... Those who command powerful technological and economic resources, along with substantial human capital for intervention, possess significant capabilities for influencing cultural change.
“The search for truth is an essential element of democracy, which is itself a means of contributing to the common good. When questions about what is true lose their appeal, and a pragmatism takes hold that is content with what appears useful or effective, then democratic life is weakened. After all, democracy does not consist of rules and procedures alone, but above all of a solid concordance with the facts and a genuine commitment to the good of individuals and society as a whole. Indifference to the truth leads, slowly but surely, to a descent into totalitarianism.
“As the philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote, the ideal subjects of such regimes are not so much those who are ideologically convinced, but rather ‘people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.’ In view of this, it is important to recall that communication is not only the transmission of information, but it is also the creation of a culture.”
In The Guardian, Arwa Mahdawi expands: “In her essay Truth and Politics, Arendt warned that a flood of lies undermines our sense of reality. A.I. is supercharging this – eroding our critical thinking, casting doubt on everything, collapsing the distinction between fact and fiction. This is why the Trump administration loves A.I. so much: it helps make the rich richer, and the rest of us more compliant.”
Trump has already extracted $16 million from CBS News through his baseless lawsuit claiming “60 Minutes” aired an interview with Kamala Harris edited in such a way as to portray him in a manner he didn’t appreciate.
Days later, after criticizing Paramount for the settlement, Stephen Colbert’s CBS late-night talk show with its persistent criticism of the president was headed for the hopper.
Trump’s billionaire buddies, tech oligarch Larry Ellison and his son David, owner of CBS's parent company Paramount, were on the move to gut CBS and its incisive news coverage.
Bari Weiss, a lightweight opinion journalist and longtime critic of the traditional media values with little experience in broadcast television, was appointed editor-in-chief with a mandate to revamp the CBS news division.
Hiring an unqualified ideologue to oversee an 800-person news organization and allowing her to hire equally unqualified overseers beneath her was a small price for the Ellisons to pay for Trump's blessing of the upcoming Paramount-Warner Bros merger, ballooning their media empire with more movie studios and entertainment properties.
Last week Weiss jettisoned Scott Pelley, one of the network’s best-known journalists, in a clash over the future of “60 Minutes,” the country’s top-rated news program, saying the longtime correspondent had “broken” the trust in the newsroom.
But it is she who has broken the people’s trust by genuflecting to the administration and assisting Trump in strangling the free press and Americans’ right to the truth.
Weiss may proclaim herself a champion of free speech but is, instead, another example of right-wing hypocrisy – free speech for me, but not for thee.
As a real journalist, Pelley had the courage to stand up for a future of “60 Minutes” based on the truth, and rightly accused the company's new regime of having an egregious lack of values for pressuring him to insert bias into stories, and of “incompetence and unprofessionalism” in “murdering” the once-trusted institution.
Morley Safer, the Canadian-born icon of “60 Minutes” for almost half a century, would certainly have been fired out-of-hand by these bozos; letters found by his daughter after his death included one sent to Larry Tisch after a cost-cutting slaughter of the news division, saying “You have ruined this company.”
He called the news divisions’ presidents “sloppy, muddled little errand boys.”
He called out the network’s CEO over newsroom changes that “suggest some form of designer-news, or happy-talk that would by its very nature drive out the kind of information the country needs to have at one of the most dangerous periods in its history.”
A perfect parallel to Pelley. Except he kept his job.
The remaining “60 Minutes” team – Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and Jon Wertheim, being journalists with moral compass, backbone, and integrity something which may not be welcome at CBS much longer – demonstrated both courage in the face of Weiss and her court and loyalty to the program’s staff by stating they would stay on and not let the show die.
In a New York Times interview this weekend, reacting to reports of a Trump podcast pontification that the correspondent didn’t care about his country, Pelleywho’s worked on the front lines in Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Iraq in pursuit of news stories instead of playing war games from behind the Resolute desk, responded:
“You become a journalist because you love the First Amendment. You become a journalist because you love the country.
“There is no democracy without journalism. It can’t be done. That is why I am a journalist.”
Accurate news and the autonomy to fulfill their mission is essential for informing the American people about what their government, its servants, and captains of industry are doing. It was never intended to keep TV executives happy or to soothe presidential egos.
New policy shifts are now designed to give Trump-appointed officials, aka his personal thought police, the right to review all public grants for universities and non-governmental organizations to ensure fidelity to Trump-determined “American values” and “demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities.”
In the brouhaha at Delaney Hall, a notorious ICE incarceration joint in New Jersey, journalists documenting the ongoing hunger strike by detainees over dangerous and abusive conditions were attacked and arrested despite their press credentials. State police ordered media to back away, denying them visuals and sound coverage of the protest.
The US Press Freedom Tracker documented 30 assaults by officers on journalists near the facility in one week, including several photographers doused with pepper spray and beaten with batons by ICE, and a WNBC crew yanked from their vehicle into teargas by state police.
First Amendment rights for the press weren’t intended to make policing easier; reporters’ mandates are to show the rest of the world what is happening. And law enforcement credibility erodes every time an officer is caught swinging a baton at a camera.
With accredited journalists increasingly becoming targets for police, afraid of having their actions appear on the news, more and more coverage now comes from live-streamers instead of traditional TV cameras.
The authors of the Bill of Rights could not have envisioned cable news or wire services, let alone social media. But Thomas Paine’s pamphlets and Benjamin Franklin’s twice-weekly newspaper were interference-free publications using freedom of the press to ignite discussion on the issues of their time.
Whether today’s journalists work for a television network or stream on TikTok, all are engaged in getting out the news, and providing the public with a key service enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
(Liz Amsden is a former Angeleno now living in Vermont and a regular CityWatch contributor. She writes on issues she’s passionate about, including social justice, government accountability, and community empowerment. Liz brings a sharp, activist voice to her commentary and continues to engage with Los Angeles civic affairs from afar. She can be reached at [email protected].)
