Matt Taibbi, Katie Halper, and Jimmy Dore: Why Is the Media So Bad

"Always fight for progress and reform, never tolerate injustice or corruption, always fight demagogues of all parties, never belong to any party, always oppose privileged classes and public plunderers, never lack sympathy with the poor, always remain devoted to the public welfare, never be satisfied with merely printing news, always be drastically independent, never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by predatory plutocracy or predatory poverty.”

Joseph Pulitzer, Retirement address


"Day by day the money-masters of America become more aware of their danger, they draw together, they grow more class-conscious, more aggressive.  The [first world] war has taught them the possibilities of propaganda; it has accustomed them to the idea of enormous campaigns which sway the minds of millions and make them pliable to any purpose.  American political corruption was the buying up of legislatures and assemblies to keep them from doing the people's will and protecting the people's interests; it was the exploiter entrenching himself in power, it was financial autocracy undermining and destroying political democracy."

Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check


"It’s not just political spin, however, that explains the rose-colored coverage [in the media]. Another explanation is that the media is plain stupid — quick to accept guidance from economists on Wall Street, for example, who have a vested interest in making everything wonderful."

John Crudele, Americans Have Not Gotten a Raise In 16 Years


"In 1983, 50 corporations controlled most of the American media, including magazines, books, music, news feeds, newspapers, movies, radio and television.  By 1992 that number had dropped by half.  By 2000, six corporations had ownership of most media, and today five dominate the industry: Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany and Viacom."

Independent Lens, Democracy on Deadline


"The elite want to keep us fighting left and right, so we don't pay attention to the top-down."

Jimmy Dore

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson on Congress and their 18 Percent Approval Rating

"Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters."

Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check

Congress has an approval rating hovering around 18% according to the latest Gallup poll.  

Yikes! How can that be in a 'democratic' system?

 

Even President Obama's approval rating is hovering around 48% with about the same disapproval in our polarizing society.

 

Can 18% of the people pick the representative they like, while ignoring the other 82%?

Is it the fault of the people, the voting public?

Yes, but mostly by inaction, and their obvious confusion in the face of well funded onslaughts of command, control, and propaganda across most of the media spectrum. 

 

Gerrymandering.  Disgracefully obvious voter suppression. A insider controlled two party candidate selection process. Distorted primaries.  Rabid framing of the issues based on stereotypes and emotions.  Purposeful deceit.  Secrecy.  Manipulation.  Even the results of polls and headlines are distorted to support the 'messaging.'

 

And powerful private interests would definitely like to convince you that government is necessarily evil by its very nature, and that you should just get rid of it, and trust the monopolies and moneyed interests to be naturally benevolent and virtuous.  

They have been waging this campaign to overthrow democracy and repeal every reform, one by one, for thirty years.  And they seem to be winning, little by little, in overturning most safeguards for fairness and justice. 

 

The massive pollution of the airwaves by corporate funds and the moneyed interests with an almost incessant stream of persuasion and propaganda.  They phrase the questions carefully, and then give us the answers they want the people to hear.

And most people still believe what they see on television, the radio, and the mainstream media.

 

You give the 'wrong answer' on television, and you are never invited back.  You are also cut off from access to power and information.   You would not believe have many times I have heard this.  

 

The key morning message from Bloomberg Television this morning was an old meme from almost exactly this time last year by David Zervos, chief market strategist of Jefferies, with Eric Schatzker and Stephanie Ruhle nodding approvingly:

"Stocks are for lovers, gold is for haters."

"In short, he said that if you're somewhat of a pessimist — a hater — and think the Fed's monetary easing can't go on forever, and the system is destined to crash, then you think we're going back to the 1970s and want to be in hard commodities, such as gold. But if you think the U.S. economy is eventually going to emerge from this period of low growth and eventually recover, much like the 1990s, then you're a lover and should be in equities."

 

Yes, that 'worked' as stocks greatly outperformed metals for quite some time now, about three years.  The trend is your friend.  And so is the Fed and their method of implementing monetary policies.  Not so much for workers and real median wages though.  I think we can stipulate that Wall Street has been a major beneficiary of the Fed and the government.  Why not, they paid well enough for it.

 

And yes, we are just about at that point in the banal insipidness of our economic discussion.  Whatever works for whatever reason, just go with it.   Bear and bull markets make people economic forecasting geniuses.  Until they don't.  And then they blame you for listening.

Speaking of geniuses, next year will you may have the privilege to vote Bush v. Clinton, or Clinton v. Bush.

You get to vote for the candidates that the insiders select for you.

I am not sure about Wilkerson's assessment that 95% of the Congress are just stupid.  Jim McGill's opinion on lawyers in the second video is of course exaggerated, but has some merit.  And it seems applicable to quite a few other professions these days, where people say what their paychecks demand.

Sarah Lacy and the Darker Side of Über Corporatism

This is a stunning video, with some serious implications. I urge you to watch it. It involves abusing corporate power to smear and intimidate critics.

It was a bit humorous to watch the talking heads discomfort with some of the implications and statements.  The West coast anchors tend to be more business focused and laid back than their New York based cousins who are more deeply into the Wall Street culture.

I am not familiar with Sarah Lacy's work as a journalist and editor, but as a debater she is on point and brilliant.

I am not completely unfamiliar with the attempted use of power to suppress people's views. Outside of professional circles it is petulant and childish, given to snarky emails, snide backstabbing, and cliquish exclusion. You know, the kinds of things one often finds within University departments, corporate bureaucracies, and the blogosphere. lol.

But too often where serious power and money is involved it is real, it is a threat, and it cannot be tolerated if there is to be any aspiration to a free and open society. And we are fools if we allow such power to grow and its abuse to be tolerated, for the misguided fears for our security, much less some short term easy money.

Corporate Media and Censorship In America

"Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.

That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know."

John F. Kennedy, The President and the Press, 27 April 1961

"There are men, now in power in this country, who do not respect dissent, who cannot cope with turmoil, and who believe that the people of America are ready to support repression as long as it is done with a quiet voice and a business suit."

John Lindsay

This link below is a fairly long and very interesting discussion of the recent crisis in the Ukraine, and what some of the bigger picture implications and reasons for it may be.

However, I am starting this video towards the end, so that you can hear one key point that Professor Stephen Cohen of Princeton makes that is in my opinion essential.

He states that there is no longer a place in the popular mainstream media for debate over the different positions and opinions on key policy questions outside of a narrow range of acceptable views as decided by a few major media outlets.  If there is a dissenting view that is distasteful to the powerful interests that influence the government, they will not allow it to be heard or discussed rationally, except perhaps in a few scholarly journals out of the reach of most.

And in this I think he is absolutely correct. And it is not just about issues such as a new Cold War, but on a broad range of social and financial topics as well.  Journalism as I once knew it no longer exists except in select locations on the Internet.

Staged discussions between paid 'strategists' from the two major political parties with commentary from a few corporate media representatives is not journalism, and does not provide the platform for the serious discussion of issues that affect all of us.

The seeds for the decline of American mainstream media were sown by the overturn in 1987 of the Fairness Doctrine which required broadcasters to air both side of controversial subjects, and not just the officially sanctioned sides of a carefully selected and phrased question or topic. 

And the Communications Act of 1934 was further gutted by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 which permitted corporate conglomerates to acquire and establish powerful monopolies across the press, radio, and television.

I am finding too many cases where topics are being effectively censored by implicit agreement of the corporate media to either not cover a story, or to permit only certain aspects and views of an issue to be heard.

I am no big fan of the governments of either Russia or China.  It is the oligarchs who like the way these statist governments operate, but only when they are making deals with them and getting their way.   It was Bill Gates who came back from a tour of China in 2005 and praised this new kind of capitalism.

I have been to both Russia and China, and I prefer neither of those brands of oligarchy and monopoly in alliance with the State.  And so I am concerned about the modern attraction by the powerful in the West to emulate them, to manage the news, to establish monopolies, and to hide behind secrecy as they engage in undemocratic backroom deals with powerful interests as a standard matter of doing the business of the nation.

This de facto censoring of the news in the West is not a healthy situation.  And so we must get information about important topics where we can.   The coverage of too many news topics, from Snowden to the financial crisis to the Ukraine, have been disgracefully one sided and carry the stink of propaganda wrapped in a  press under the thumb of a few moneyed interests.

You may wish to listen to the entire interview which I found to be most interesting.  Please click on the link below to start the interview at the point of discussing censorship.

Stephen Cohen, The New Cold War: It's Five Minutes to Midnight

Related: National Publications Refuse Journalist Bill Cohan's Expose of Price Rigging in the Silver Market

               Salon, Obama's Unprecedented War on Whistleblowers

Mr. Cohan Responds On His Silver Rigging Exposé - Two US National Publications Refused the Story

"We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put up a façade to prevent ourselves from seeing it.”

Blaise Pascal

This is starting to make more sense. 

Apparently Mr. William Cohan, a highly respected journalist, did look at all the relevant information he had been provided, and decided to write a story about rigging in the silver markets.

It was submitted and refused by at least two US publications which refused to run it.

Based on past history, one might assume the two national publications that refused to publish it were on the order of The New York Times, and perhaps Bloomberg News or even possibly Forbes.

The actual reasons that they gave for refusing to publish the story are not stated. One can assume they were not sufficient for Mr. Cohan to decide to take his name off of it in his professional judgement, so we can only surmise. 

So we cannot tell if this was editorial scruples, a failure in fact checking, or just good old fashioned minding of one's place.

Insiders never speak ill of insiders.

Bill was good with publishing the piece at ZeroHedge with his name on it.  So he apparently still had confidence in what he had written. 

 

That speaks volumes. 

At that point the whistleblowing parties, if one might call them that, deferred, feeling perhaps that printing something like this on the web alone, even on a large and widely read site, would relegate it to something easily dismissible by the status quo.  The Very Serious Players choose to read only properly vetted, fully credible and approved mainstream sources.

I am being a bit sarcastic, but not so much.  The thought leaders and ruling class in the US are, alas, out of touch almost without regard to their origins. And one does not have to think too hard about it to discover why.  They only read the right publications, watch the right shows, talk to the right people, say the right things, and think the right thoughts.

They live in virtual palaces and bubbles of ease and influence.  To borrow a phrase from one of their less pliant pets, when they go out amongst the common people, it often resembles Prince Charles on a royal visit to Papua, New Guinea.   As George Orwell noted in his diaries, 'apparently nothing will ever teach these people that the other 99% of the population exists.'  

They exist, they just don't matter in the halls of power anymore.

I might have suggested some publishing options a little 'out of the box' like The Guardian or Der Spiegel.  Choosing publications that might be less beholden to the New York financial powers seems as though it could be a more fruitful course of action.  South China Morning Post, or even the Asia Times?  Radio Free America?

So there you have it. We have a story. And the mainstream media refuses to publish it. And there is some wrangling about where and when it might achieve adequate exposure to do some good.

To:  addressees

Thank you all for writing me regarding Andrew Maguire's story of alleged "manipulation" in the silver market. As you may know, I was approached 11 months ago by a PR representative of Mr. Maguire's who wanted to introduce me to Andrew and to his attorney Gordon Schnell, at Constantine Cannon, in New York. I found what Andrew had to say very interesting, especially so in light of a piece I had written in the New York Times about the silver market three years ago.  A Conspiracy With a Silver Lining

I wrote up the story and submitted it to a national publication in the United States, which decided not to publish it. I then tried another, national financial publication, which also decided not to publish it. I then abandoned hope that the story would be published.

About a month ago, Ned Naylor-Leyland contacted me and suggested that Zero Hedge might publish the story. I thought that would be a fine idea.

Unfortunately, Mr. Schnell did not like the idea of Zero Hedge, nor apparently did his clients. They also declined to approve the use of key facts and key quotations that I felt needed to be included in the story to give it credibility. Part of my agreement with them was that they would be given quote approval and without their approval, I could not use their quotations or their information.

They did not approve. At that point, without their cooperation, I did not feel the piece could be published. I explained that to Mr. Naylor-Leyland but he didn't seem much interested in those facts and then went on to encourage the publication of the piece to which you are all responding.

All of which is to say, you are directing your passion to the wrong person. If you want the piece published, you need to reach out to Mr. Maguire and Mr. Schnell.

Thank you for your interest and your passion on this topic.

William D. Cohan

Related:  Ned Naylor-Leyland Suggests Media Overhanging an Exposé of Rigging in the Silver Markets

Tweeting the Decline and Fall of Western Civilisation, One Institution At a Time

“[Edmund] Burke said that there were Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate, more important far than they all.”

Thomas Carlyle

"In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people."

Hugo L. Black

"The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason."

Hunter S. Thompson

“We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else, whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, Newsworld or CNN.”

B.W. Powe

Quod erat demonstratum. (that which was to be demonstrated)

Follow the Money: The Failure of Corporately Owned Journalism in a Crony Capitalist System

"I have been told by multiple members of the media that JP Morgan Chase has called them and stated that if their media outlet has me on television again, that JP Morgan Chase will pull their advertising from the offending network."

James Koutoulas, Founder of Commodity Customer Coalition and advocate for victims of MF Global

"The crisis blew into public view last November when The New York Times, followed by the Financial Times and others, reported that a big, new enterprise project from Bloomberg, said to have documented an extensive web of corrupt ties between one of China’s wealthiest businessmen and elite politicians, had been spiked at an unusually late stage in the editing process.

The reported spike came after an extensively footnoted version of the story had been fact-checked and pored over by company lawyers, and after members of the reporting team had been praised internally for yet more stellar work. The Times reported that Winkler, in a conference call with reporters, defended the decision not to publish the story by likening the situation to the need for self-censorship by foreign bureaus in Nazi Germany to preserve their ability to continue reporting there.

That reasoning was controversial enough, but a Bloomberg executive would later let slip a motive that was even more problematic...The defining moment, however, the one that has dealt the deepest shock to Bloomberg and may affect it for years, was a widely reported speech by the company’s chairman, Peter T. Grauer, who in March said, in effect, that Bloomberg had gotten carried away with its investigative journalism in China to the detriment of its true vocation: selling computerized terminals that provide financial information.

“We have about 50 journalists in the market, primarily writing stories about the local business and economic environment,” Grauer said in answer to a questioner after a speech at the Asia Society in Hong Kong. “You’re all aware that every once in a while we wander a little bit away from that and write stories that we probably may have kind of rethought—should have rethought.”

Howard W. French, Bloomberg's Folly, Columbia Journalism Review, May 1, 2014

Read the entire story here.

Corporate Media: Journalism In the Service of the Powerful Few

"But the biggest clue that Sorkin's take on Greenwald was no accident came in the rest of that same Squawk Box appearance:

"I feel like, A, we've screwed this up, even letting him get to Russia. B, clearly the Chinese hate us to even let him out of the country.

I would arrest him . . . and now I would almost arrest Glenn Greenwald, who's the journalist who seems to want to help him get to Ecuador."

"...As a journalist, when you start speaking about political power in the first person plural, it's pretty much glue-factory time."

Matt Taibbi, All Journalism Is Advocacy Journalism


"And remember, where you have a concentration of power in a few hands, all too frequently men with the mentality of gangsters get control. History has proven that."

John Dalberg Lord Acton

While I obviously can not agree with everything in this long documentary, Orwell Rolls In His Grave, I found the discussion and examples to be interesting.

I have included a short video clip concerning the standard visual media set piece afterwards just for fun.

The problem is not that there is advocacy in journalism. There is always advocacy in journalism, even despite a striving for objectivity. Taibbi goes to some lengths to show this in the piece I quoted from above.

The problem is the concentration of ownership in a few powerful hands, and the accompanying diminishment of the exposure of all the facts and perspectives. Even deciding what is not covered becomes a form of censorship.

Like the deregulation of the financial industry, the concentration of the media in a relatively few corporate hands was a ongoing trend that took a great leap forward under the presidency of Bill Clinton, and was then continued and reinforced under George Bush and Barack Obama. It was the conscious undoing of reforms from past lessons learned.

It is the concentration of ownership of the corporate media that is at the heart of the problem of the decline of independent journalistic standards. That, and the culture of unprincipled expediency in the service of power and shameless greed.

We are not responsible, but are culpable to the extent we accept this decline in decency and justice, even by doing nothing as simple as passing on a leaflet, conveniently electronic these days. As Sophie Scholl once said, many years ago in Munich, a people deserve the government which they are willing to tolerate.

Glenn Greenwald Interviewed by David Gregory on 'Meet the Press' This Morning

Not the finest moment for the national mainstream media.

Please know that Glenn Greenwald is a regular writer for The Guardian newspaper, and has been reporting on certain policy issues for years. 

I found it repulsive that David Gregory could question Greenwald's right to the title of 'journalist,' preferring to label him a 'polemicist.' Is that because Greenwald was never a stand-in for Don Imus' morning talk show like David Gregory had been?

Where are the journalism schools in this time of official assault on their profession?

Gregory resorts to the bullyboy 'questioning' style in which statements and assumptions are first put forward as if they are true, to provoke a reaction of the person being questioned.  It is often saved for those whom the network views as undesirable, and in a weaker power position.

Television national broadcast media often resembles entertainment and infomercials moreso than straight journalism.    And it is little wonder why so many are turning to alternative sources for real news.

“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.”

George Orwell

This is like some bad version of The Hunger Games.





Here is a link to the complete show.

Obama's War On Whistleblowers - McClatchy

Currency Wars: Chinese Gold Rush and American Pravda

Sometimes there is a juxtaposition of stories that is just too striking.

Here is a piece that appeared today in the People's Daily Online.  It presents some interesting information on the buying of gold in China during the most recent fluctuation in price.

As I seem to recall, China holds so many US dollars that if they tried to convert them into gold and silver, they couldn't.  Well, not at anything near today's prices.  And their bond selling would certainly stress the Fed's Balance Sheet. 

Those in the know who were able to position themselves for such a move could make quite a bit of money out of it, especially if they could keep it quiet.  But if some major insiders were to demand their metal from the hypothecation schemes of the bullion banks it would create some short term traffic jams and delivery problems.  High leverage makes for a tough and often volatile unwind.  

One might even see a few bullion banks with major outflows from their bullion storage as servile managers and brokers leak the word, over cocktails and canapés, to favored customers with significant financial deposits at the firm overall.  As Jeff Sachs says, that is the way it is these days on Wall St.

And with the right finesse, it could be used to recapitalize some Banks who were positioned with leverage in derivatives.  It has a similar feel to the two step operation that FDR used in recapitalizing the Banks by revaluing gold against the dollar after taking it from the public.  It was public money then and within the purview of the state; it is private property now, at least to the extent that it has not been 'bailed in' and rehypothecated away.

As for the second story, the G20 conference on Global Finance in Transition and Reinventing Bretton Woods begins next week.  And the discussion of replacements for the US dollar reserve system, which is so near and dear to the Anglo-American banking cartel, are high on the topics to be discussed.  The BRICs are growing increasingly unhappy with the financial status quo, and the exorbitant privilege of a single country controlling the world's reserve currency and thereby having the ability to promote their domestic ends with it.

They would like to replace the existing international trade regime with something more broadly based on a basket of currencies and precious metals like gold and silver.  How do we know this?  Because they have said so.  And the dollar mouthpieces will object, pointing to the metals' recent volatility.

As George Orwell once remarked 'we have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.'

And before one unctuously dismisses the news in the People's Daily as statist messaging,  which by the way I am sure it often is, here is an interesting piece on the craven and tarnished performance of the corporate media, Our American Pravda.  It is a bit uneven, but an interesting read nonetheless.

When the Anglo-American media does get inexplicably involved in something, other than the real news and the trivial diversions they so enjoy, and even when they are inexplicably silent in the manner of the dog that does not bark,  one suspects that the moneyed classes see an opportunity for profit in it, and the public interests be damned.  Their designated role is to keep quiet and 'bail-in.'

As the fiatscos of relativistic monetary theory like to say, a currency is all consensus.  Money is what we say it is, is worth whatever we say it is, and goes wherever we command it to go.   And fiat means never having to say your are wrong, if you have enough power on your side to bend truth to will.

Even if you do not believe that there is a currency war, quite a bit of the rest of the world does -- and they are holding a lot of votes. 

Perhaps currency war is a misnomer.  At times this appears less like a conventional difference of intentions among nations, and more like the internecine power struggles amongst competing crime families that often do not cleanly divide themselves by political boundaries.  So the common person, mark, and pawn is often given to ask, 'is our side on my side?'

What this all means for us is interesting times, and never a dull moment.  Change is in the wind.

Enjoy

Shanghai Daily
Housewives' gold rush keeps price from falling
By Wang Yanlin
08:21, May 02, 2013

A "TUSSLE" to determine gold prices has connected two groups of people who could hardly be more different - Wall Street moguls and Chinese housewives, with the latter turning out to have the edge.

According to Voice of China radio program, one of this year's most popular phrases may be "Chinese housewives" - as a major force which reportedly spent 100 billion yuan (US$16 billion) over the past two weeks purchasing 300 tons of gold and thus helping to sustain gold prices at US$1,468 an ounce.

The Chinese gold rush has prevented short selling, where gold is sold and then bought back when prices fall. The practice was seen as a possible bid to shore up the US dollar - gold is often regarded as a means of safeguarding wealth against a weak dollar - and to maintain stable interest rates in the US...

Some critics said the fall in gold prices was a well-planned scheme drawn up by investment bankers to bolster the US economy, as two days before the price slump, Goldman Sachs released a research note saying gold's prospects for the year had eroded and recommending investors to sell short.

Before Goldman Sachs, investment banks including Barclays, Societe Generale and Deutsche also projected gold had ended its 12-year bullish performance. Societe Generale even predicted an outright crash, saying "gold may have had its last hurrah."

On April 13, China National Gold Group, the country's biggest gold producer, slashed the bullion price from 313 yuan per gram to 298.5 yuan per gram, the lowest level in two years.

This triggered the enthusiasm of Chinese shoppers, who swarmed into jewelry shops desperate to get their hands on a bargain. In most Chinese cities, gold bars were selling like hot cakes and some even reported empty inventory during the May Day holiday...

The number of Chinese gold buyers and the money they spent caught out those investment bankers who had bet on prices continuing to fall.

"A large rebound in gold prices is unlikely barring an unexpected sharp turn in the US recovery," analysts at Goldman Sachs had written in its research note.

But to their disappointment, gold prices rose by more than 10 percent yesterday compared with that on April 16...

Read the entire story here.

Related: Currency Wars

The Secret Deal Between the Democrats and Republicans To Control the Presidential Debates

"The only way to forestall the work of criticism (critical thought) is through censorship, which has the same relation to criticism that lynching has to justice."

Northrop Frye

Would you be surprised to learn that secret deals between the two major US political parties and the major news media control access to the Presidential debates, thereby controlling the discussion, turning them into show pieces and beauty contests obsessed with the trivial and the technicalities of performance art, rather than substantive discussions of the issues?

Did you wonder why third party messages and non-corporately sponsored ideas are completely ignored in the discussions, debates, and for the most part in the 'free press?'

It appears that for at least once the Democrats and Republicans were able to agree on something. They agreed to monopolize access to the presidential debate, with the help of a compliant and greedy corporate media, in a way that would almost certainly violate the antitrust laws, assuming these politicians were subject to any laws but their own.

This is not a serious and original discussion of the issues. This is bread and circuses. Bread for the media and the politicians, and circuses for the people.