The Bailout, the Media, and the War Party
Yes, they're connected…
by
Justin Raimondo
by Justin Raimondo
DIGG THIS
 One
is hardly ever shocked anymore: that seems to be the defining characteristic
of modernity. Yet I got to experience that rare sensation the other
day when I read
this blog item on LewRockwell.com. Aha! I thought. So
that's why the MSNBCers are hailing the Big Bailout at the
top of their lungs – their parent company, General
Electric, also owns GE Capital, which was declared "too
big to fail" and given its bailout infusion the day after the
election.
The timing
of this announcement was fairly interesting, as noted
by conservative-libertarian columnist Jim Pinkerton. Pinkerton was
rightly outraged when, in response to MSNBC's Chris Matthews' comment
that his job is to "make
this presidency work," he told a Fox News panel:
"Well,
Matthews is entitled to his opinion, although if he wants to run
for the Senate in Pennsylvania in 2010 as has been widely reported
he should resign and not have a platform on the air.
"But I think that the overall culture of MSNBC was established
when they changed their slogan, post-election, to 'The Power of
Change.' Now, that sounds a little bit familiar to the Obama campaign
'Change We Can Believe In.' Maybe that's not an accident.
"But of course, I think the big story here, I think it goes
right to what MSNBC's up to as a strategy, is the news that the
FDIC, which is now following election returns, is guaranteeing
$139 billion of General Electric Capital debt. That's General
Electric Capital, as in General Electric, which is the parent
company of MSNBC, CNBC, NBC. Now, for a $139 billion guarantee,
I'd consider, I'd probably go more, I'd probably go all the way
over to the Olbermann/Maddow territory. $139 billion."
 In
answer to the question of why the current FDIC would reward MSNBC
in this way, Pinkerton suggests that the bureaucracy is looking
to the future – or, more accurately, its future – although
he seems to back down a bit in describing the corporate proprietors
of MSNBC as "lucky." This falls considerably short of
outright bribery, but the sudden infusion of massive amounts of
tax dollars into corporate mega-entities does indeed have profound
implications for American journalism. In the age of bailouts,
the wall of separation between the corporate media and the government
– never
that strong to begin with – is coming down, and this prospect is
truly ominous.
I never fail
to smile when I read contemptuous references in American news outlets
to the "state-controlled media" of, say, Russia
or China.
This from the same crowd whose news "reporting" in the
run-up to the invasion of Iraq might
have been written by someone in the Pentagon press office –
and probably
was! With billions in bailout money pouring directly or indirectly
into the corporate "mainstream" media, only the thinnest
pretense of independence remains, with the more honest journalists
like Matthews coming out of the closet, so to speak, as shills for
the government, or this government, at any rate.
Read
the rest of the article
November
28, 2008
Justin
Raimondo [send him mail]
is editorial director of Antiwar.com
and is the author of An
Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming
the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.
Copyright
© 2008 Antiwar.com
Justin
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