The Existential Question of Whom to Trust

(The complicit media and the corporate press are wrapping themselves in the First Amendment as if they are the unsung heroes standing against tyranny. They feel they have the RIGHT to lie, mislead and essentially terrorize you into doing their bidding on a daily basis. Freedom of the press is not the same as freedom to propagandize. Freedom of the press is not the same as freedom to instigate color revolutions. Freedom of the press is not the same as freedom to scream “he’s got a gun!” during a high school pep rally. In this article, Robert Perry writes about how these shills, what I call “corporatist ladder-climbers”, parrot the group-think of the day, no matter how stupid or insane it is, so they can move up the corporate structure just as fast as they can)

by Robert Perry, Consortium News

The looming threat of World War III, a potential extermination event for the human species, is made more likely because the world’s public can’t count on supposedly objective experts to ascertain and evaluate facts. Instead, careerism is the order of the day among journalists, intelligence analysts and international monitors – meaning that almost no one who might normally be relied on to tell the truth can be trusted.

The dangerous reality is that this careerism, which often is expressed by a smug certainty about whatever the prevailing groupthink is, pervades not just the political world, where lies seem to be the common currency, but also the worlds of journalism, intelligence and international oversight, including United Nations agencies that are often granted greater credibility because they are perceived as less beholden to specific governments but in reality have become deeply corrupted, too.

In other words, many professionals who are counted on for digging out the facts and speaking truth to power have sold themselves to those same powerful interests in order to keep high-paying jobs and to not get tossed out onto the street. Many of these self-aggrandizing professionals – caught up in the many accouterments of success – don’t even seem to recognize how far they’ve drifted from principled professionalism.

A good example was Saturday night’s spectacle of national journalists preening in their tuxedos and gowns at the White House Correspondents Dinner, sporting First Amendment pins as if they were some brave victims of persecution. They seemed oblivious to how removed they are from Middle America and how unlikely any of them would risk their careers by challenging one of the Establishment’s favored groupthinks. Instead, these national journalists take easy shots at President Trump’s buffoonish behavior and his serial falsehoods — and count themselves as endangered heroes for the effort…

[read more here]