18 June 2005
Watergate and American media today
A man who has been known as "Deep Throat" exposed himself to the public.
Deep Throat was Mr. Mark Felt who was No.2 ranking officer of FBI at the time Nixon was accused of Watergate scandal.
Some say this exposion changed the watergate from journalism justice to inner politics quarrel because now we found Deep Throat was No.2 of FBI. FBI at that time was threatened by Nixon because of the organizational reform plan the president was trying to implement. FBI wanted to prevent that, then they used the Washington Post to turn the president down.
However, Watergate proved how American journalism was healthy at that time. Japanese media is in fact pets for the government. Our constitution insures freedom of speech but the media is so attached to politicians in order to protect their exclusive press club.
But American media today is becoming like Japanese. Media became conglomarit for big corporation. One example is NBC is owned by GE which has been providing products to US army, so they are not against war in Iraq. Media put the business ahead of seeking the truth.
Conglomarit is not the only aspect that changed American journalism. Public opinion became so conservative. Since 911, patriotism became the most important thing for Americans. People do not want to hear anything that sounds unfavourable to their government. Fox news is the symbol of this phenomenon.
Even the US government admits Iraq has no link with 911 attack and doesn't have WMD, FOX news watchers don't know such facts.
Our nation went through the same path in the past. In 1930's when Great Depression agonized the country's economy, the imperial army started invasion of China. Although the invasion started with fake incident that Chinese army bombed Japan owned railway and Japanese media knew it, they did not report it to the public but they rather supported the army's action which led to Rape of Nanking in 1937 and Pearl Harbor attack.
What should we learn from that?
21:45 Posted in Media, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | Tags: political issues