The "new battlefield" (Part 1) – an introduction

Before today’s perils emerged on Sept 11, much of the communication environment I’ve called Media-ville appeared, like nature’s settings, occasionally beautiful and serene. If the communications environment was becoming clouded by the merging of fact and fiction, the deceptive manipulations of commerce and politics, the bias toward irony and cynicism, there was a rough balance to it all. 

But after Sept 11, the global 24-7 media world has become a new kind of place. It has become a primary battlefield in the war between tyranny and freedom.  In fact, the entertaining and somewhat amusing world of Media-ville has become a fruitful new territory where jihadists can easily roam at no cost – using cable TV, the internet and the global 24-7 media markets – to terrorize, distort, mislead, recruit, propagandize and otherwise assault free people and the lawful institutions that sustain them.

Since Sept 11, the new battlefield has become lawless and contains cut throats of the most vicious kind ready to pounce on any traveler or raid any settlement. Today, this new battlefield is policed ad hoc. It is everybody for themselves. Every band of renegades that emerges is chased away by pick-up posses of individuals free to be deputized to chase down lies, distortions and jihadist propaganda.  But in this new battlefield, the existing and traditional communicators of the corporate MSM do not work for free society at large – they work for their corporate employers who work for their shareholders or investors whose fiduciary responsibility is to earn profits.  The MSM professional journalists say what their audiences will pay for.

They are like Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade, private detectives who only work for their clients and who feel duty bound to keep the identify of those clients private. This is great for the clients and the best of the private dicks may see themselves as admirable knights of chivalry, and that may be true of some. But what of the others – the jihadist who exploits, tricks or manipulates the communications system – the new battlefield – for tyranny?  What of the louts who find it amusing to scream fire in the theater or cry wolf to get attention. What of the perverse, the selfish, the careerists who only see the new battlefield as a place to earn money or fame and who care nothing of the wider consequences?

Nobody is standing guard who can be trusted to work for society at large.  There is no organized militia, no army, no marshals, and no sheriffs.  There’s no Marshall Dillon, Wyatt Earp or Lone Ranger.  Today’s reporters?  Sorry.  However many excellent journalists may be amongst the 50,000 hard working professional reporters and editors, the cream of their profession have been horribly misused by their employers and managers in this period of civilization's peril.  The brand of today’s reporter in the MSM has been trashed. The audience doesn’t trust the media because the 24-7 global media has proved that it isn’t trustworthy.  The new battlefield is not only occupied by raiding parties of killers, the media environment and its atmosphere has become polluted with fog, waste, trash and filth of the MSM who seek to satisfy their corporate paymasters in this new world of jihadist terror. What a mess! Is there sense to be made of this?  Can law and order be restored?  Can the new battlefield be occupied and patrolled by trusted defenders of freedom?      

In the coming days, Quillnews will post entries under the headline “the new battlefield” that will look at some of these questions, consider the context of our traditions of a free press and the necessity that all communications remain free.  But I will also offer some criticisms, suggestions for reform, and also concrete proposals for a few institutional changes in the way people communicate with each other to make sure that their freedom continues and tyranny is defeated.  Stay tuned... Part 2

Comments

[Joe Katzman]

Speaking from experience, you need to create a cateory called "News & Media: New Battlefield" so when we link in to your stuff, we can also give them the whole set without overwhelming them with your full media archives.