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Disgruntled media and journalistic integrity vs. Trump, who win?

As the circus of 2016 falls behind us, 2017 opens on a more sobering note for the United States, and the rest of the world. With a nation divided, and an epidemic of paranoia bred from an assail of fake news and propaganda dispersed by a foreign superpower and perpetuated by the new leader of the free world, one question is magnified among the myriad of others Americans have been forced to ask themselves and their country.

Is a majority of the media lying to us? Has NBC, CBS, PBS, CNN, Politico, and The New York Times used their reach to spread falsehoods to manipulate the beliefs of millions and wage a war of words on our new administration to further the disparagement tearing us apart and doom Donald Trump to failure for ratings boosts? Or has Trump discredited most of the media outlets to get away with actions that under any other normal administration, would be abhorred?

Tricky and razor thin is the margin one walks when attempting to answer controversial and crucial questions like these. At a time when they exist in the present and the grains in the hourglass haven’t settled to the bottom that allow for years of reflection and revelations to inscribe the truth of these answers in the pages of our history books. Without the illumination bore by the years to come, as outsiders of our own nation looking in, were left to speculate as history culminates before us, and reflect on the past and the lessons and parallels its given us to draw upon.

Journalism, like any profession, has had both extraordinarily selfless and world changing moments, as well as fraudulent sensationalism used for personal gain and notoriety. While today journalism is seen as a profession that boils down to a race of ratings promoting over playing of facts, and even complete fabrication, resulting in people only listening to sources that parrot what they want to believe even if its a complete falsehood, its past is rich with passion truth, and commitment. The realities and complexity of this dilemma extend far beyond today’s perceptions that have left a nation split in two.

Perceptions that are both, correct and incorrect. When we think about the news, the people that come to mind are the ones we see sheltered in a chair with a screen behind them, with table and a cup of coffee before them. Well dressed and dictating stories that have been spun to make a jab or push a point, from a teleprompter out of our view. Who we don’t see are the people that have put themselves in danger and sub par living conditions of their own free will, and sometimes even paid the ultimate price, just to show us the unadulterated realities about the world around us. Realities that have both humbled us and made us grateful to be Americans, but also instilled empathy, gave us the ability to step into another person’s shoes. And feel their pain as our own. An invaluable skill, a gift. Its times like these that remind me of people like Kevin Carter, who’s passion for truth, outrage at apartheid and discrimination, and willingness to stand up, even to the military as an enlisted man, produced some of the most powerful images of the 80’s and 90’s. Exposing racial discrimination and unjust executions. A passion that eventually carried him to Africa. Where in Sudan he would take one of the most famous photographs in history. A photograph that would open the worlds eyes to a level of depravity unseen before then and expose an unprecedented disregard of human life. The same photograph that would end his own. A prolific and horrifying scene, of a child emaciated and starved to the point she had to crawl unable to support her own weight in the desert heat trying to reach a feeding center, as a vulture towered behind her, waiting, for her death rattle. Horrified having never seen starvation of that magnitude, he made sure he got the shot. Waiting an agonizing 20 minutes inching close enough to capture the photograph without scaring off the vulture, and with a snap of his camera he made history.

After taking the shot of the dying Sudanese child, he got up and chased the vulture away. But left her, as they were told not to touch anyone for chance of transmitting disease. Sold to the New York Times, his photographic evidence of horror and neglect in Sudan hit the stands on March 26th, 1993, and filtered out to every other publication and news outlet around the US, evoking nationwide empathy and shock. Calls and letters would flood their offices in the following weeks, inquiring about the fate of the girl in the photograph. A question none, even Carter could answer. Her fate still unknown to this day.

In April 1994 his photograph won the Pulitzer Prize in recognition of its worldwide impact. An accomplishment he he was initially proud of writing to his parents in Johannesburg after receiving the award “I swear I got the most applause of anybody” “I can’t wait to show you the trophy. It is the most precious thing and the highest acknowledgment of my work I could receive.” But it would come to haunt him in the months ahead, the question of what happened to her, and why they didn’t transport her to the feeding center would come up over and over again. Amid his success, the questions loomed over his life like the towering vulture polarized in his picture now forever embedded in history.

In March 1994 he would take his last series of photographs in Bophuthatswana, South Africa, of three Afrikaner Weerstansbeweging members being killed in a failed invasion, pictures that once again would make front pages all over the country. In the process weighting down his soul, and brought his vulture ever closer, waiting.

On July 27th 1994, it would have to wait no longer. Carter drove to the Parkmore where he used to play as a child, parked his car, and taped a hose running from his exhaust pipe to his window. Dying at 33 of carbon monoxide poisoning, penniless and alone. The note he left, would be the only expression to the world of the pain and guilt he had carried, day in day out.

“I’m really, really sorry. The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist….” it read. “I am depressed….without phone….money for rent….money for child support….money for debts…..money!!!…I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain…of starving or wounded children, of trigger happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners…I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky….I have always had it all at my feet…but being me just fit it up anyway”

Every true journalist, more often than not, has to sacrifice a part of themselves, if not destroy themselves completely to show those of us who sit, safe in our western haven, the reality of the world around us. For every photograph taken, every child seen dying, every innocent civilian they watch murdered, the weight that crushes them no award can alleviate. No amount of money can erase what they’ve given up. And while we sit, and balk and question the validity of their reports and photographs they ruin their lives to attain, they sit in pain and reflection, their vulture towering over them. Waiting.

But just as there are those that give up everything to expose the truth, there are those that fabricate it, for nothing but notoriety, ratings and trophies they never deserved, like in the case of Steven Glass. The double edged sword journalism and media is, cuts deep, and both ways. And can destroy as much as it can illuminate. Truth as well as being a catalyst for change, can also be used as weapon. 2016 being the year that revolutionized warfare yet again, in a way as profound as the introduction of the atomic bomb. The echo of a dead era in the United States reanimated, a ghost from the past we had assumed had been exorcised with diplomacy, returned with a vengeance and aggression not seen since the years of the “Red Scare” . Our national security had been compromised in a way that not only divided our nation and changed the way a lot of American’s viewed foreign espionage, but changed the fate of our country, a fate so unpredictable its outcome still unable to be assessed. Media outlets, our congress, and senate remain outraged uniting democrats and republicans alike, the threat and purpose of the abuse of the truth clear in their eyes, but not in the eyes of the people of our nation. Despite all the proof and bipartisan agreement in our government as to its purpose, the people of our country still doubt what its purpose was. But its purpose was made clear, in a visit our senators, John McCain®, Lindsey Graham®, and Amy Klobuchar (D) made to Ukraine, Latvia and Lithuania. In an attempt to reassure them of our continued support and protection against the constant acts of Russian aggression threatening their borders. That the attacks we had seen during our elections they had been enduring for years. A revelation to our government, about the goals of the perpetrator. Some say that truth is truth and no matter how its used it is what it is. And while a portion of that is true, the real question we should be asking ourselves is, is weaponizing the truth to execute a goal that will result in the death of thousands, and the invasion of many countries that are our allies in an attempt to amass power for a government already complicit in genocide, and terroristic demonstrations excusable? Is using the truth as a weapon to achieve mass devastation acceptable? Unfortunately only the sands of time will reveal this answer, but abusing the truth to harm others, to me at least, its hypocritical at best, but terroristic at worst. The truth is powerful, but its what you use it for that gives it its purity. But if there’s one thing 2016 proved, its that virtually anything can be used as a weapon. Even the truth.

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Pandora's Box

On August 6th 1945, Harry Truman, the 33rd president of the United States was faced with a decision that’s result changed the world forever. With an army still recovering from WWI, thousands of US troops killed on the shores of Pearl Harbor in kamikaze attacks ordered by emperor Michinomiya Hirohito, and with a brutal expansionist Joseph Stalin prepping to invade Japan, our only recourse was an extremely powerful experimental weapon, the effects of which were only half understood. The first bomb dropped being a uranium bomb by the name of “Little Boy”, and the second being a plutonium bomb by the name of “Fat Man”.

Hiroshima was the city hit by “Little Boy” and almost completely leveled. Nagasaki was the city hit by “Fat Man”, the more powerful of the two, but due to miscalculation resulted in decreased damage and death toll than originally expected. But the suffering was undeniable. No one expected the effects of these weapons to be as painful, horrifying and long lasting as they ended up being.

And I stand by Harry Truman’s decision, given the situation and limited knowledge of those weapons and their long term effects on a population.

After seeing the immediate aftermath, a true hell on earth was revealed to me, where flesh dripped from the bone as they dragged themselves like zombies begging for water from soldiers who refused to give it to them thinking it was worsening their condition and killing them, ignorant to the affects of radiation, seeing those in tact thinking they were safe only to die in the hours following the blast of radiation poisoning, and seeing the terrifying birth defects that plagued communities for years after, the extremity of the brutality was hidden from the public for an extended time as not to upset the American people. It became clear that not only were they the most powerful and inhumane weapons ever to be created, but were also the opening of Pandora’s box. And they knew it would, even without understanding the full effects of the weapons they had created at first, another hard choice forced upon them. With the results of the first nuclear test in Trinity New Mexico, it’s possibilities of destruction were clear. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led the Manhattan Project and was dubbed “the father of the atomic bomb”, recalled that the Trinity test brought to mind the words from the Bhagavad Gita,

“Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

One would think, after the proof of the scale of the damage both immediate and ongoing circulated among the nations, the production would cease immediately. But you would be wrong. Once the atom was split, life and fear changed forever. With the help of the atomic spy Klaus Fuchs, the Soviet Union would attain the wild card the US had held exclusively for a short period of time, and initiate an arms race that would soon get out of control. Hoarding thousands and thousands of multiple types of warheads and compatible missiles and brutal deployment designs (like the underwater tests we conducted that it’s estimated killed between 9 and 11 thousand, poisoned sea life, and carried fumes that aided that enormous number) the US and Russia would compete for the nuclear crown through the 70’s and some of the 80’s. Until President Ronald Reagan, Boris Yeltsin, and Mikhail Gorbachev concurred, that nuclear war, was unwinnable. And finally agreed to start reducing their nuclear stockpiles. And everyone seemed to follow suit, to a degree. Until Mikhail Gorbachev abdicated the Presidency, to Vladimir Putin.

Since assuming office, he’s brought back brutal cold war style nukes, tricked the US into diminishing theirs while silently dishonoring the agreement and stockpiling even more before pulling out of the security pact completely. As well as pulling the wool over our eyes, he’s also eyeing reopening the Russian bases in Cuba and Vietnam. Something that to my recollection, didn’t go so great for the US the first time. Some designs Russia has in the works have been turned down by the US for humanitarian reasons, like their submarine “system-6” that utilizes highly unethical and barbaric components like cobalt in the warheads (nuclear warheads combined with cobalt have never been produced successfully) attached to the missiles kept within them, and raise serious questions of what the future holds for not just the US and Russia, but the entire world.

Either way, it’s a sad year to see the decades of progression in nuclear disarming halt, and be replaced once again with nuclear proliferation.