Under Attack

Helping mom with the Baking

Covered in Flour for the Process

Oscar Wilde

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

 I’ve been watching all the hue and cry recently about the Russian insertion into social media “news” cycle during the recent presidential election. What most people don’t fully appreciate is that this is an attack by a foreign power on one of our basic democratic institutions. Putin, dedicated cold warrior that he is, obviously has made the strategic decision to attack one of our fundamental weaknesses. He did the same thing in Russia when he took over. Anyone watching, not even that closely, saw his systematic destruction of the fledgling Russian independent media that emerged following the demise of the Soviet Union.

Social media’s rise to its leviathan role in everyday life in the West has seriously eroded the objectivity and focus of traditional journalism making it ripe for the Russian attack. The attack seems squarely aimed at exploiting existing fractures within our society whether it be racial or any of the other myriad issues used to separate ourselves. The model of the dedicated journalist seems doomed to extinction due to a society distracted by all the other noise competing for their attention. It’s such much easier to find some obscure, and often erroneous news story to back up even the most outlandish beliefs. Journalists need to be reasonably objective, independent, and are actually crucial to representative government.

Ultimately democracy or at least our representative republic is about spanning the ever more widening societal fissures. This proves impossible without a reliable source of information – objective journalism. We need electoral decisions based on facts about both policies and politicians. Transmitting information is a vital aspect as it brings transparency to what our government is doing. Curious, skeptical journalists who point out inconsistencies, draw attention to mistakes, call out misleading statements, and identify outright lies serve that larger purpose. The most important values of a journalist are impartiality, independence of commercial and political interests and responsibility. The abandonment of these values by a large sector of the 4^th estate has made them vulnerable to attack and not only by the Russians. While this Russian attack may have been partially responsible for the Divider in Chief, he seems to be taking a page out of Putin’s playbook with his relentless attack on the media’s credibility. Those of us that were around in the 1970s remember another president doing that. It all eventually caught up with Nixon – because we had a strong 4^th estate to call him on his crimes. One can hope their current descendants are up to the task.

Henry Anatole Grunwald

“Journalism can never be silent: That is its greatest virtue and its greatest fault. It must speak, and speak immediately, while the echoes of wonder, the claims of triumph and the signs of horror are still in the air.”

I Hosted a Going Away Luncheon for One of my Employees Yesterday

The FBR Negotiating with Wingman

I was back at the cinema last night and took in Only the Brave. Most fact based movies about tragedies attempt to lionize their subjects to the point that the true story is lost in the telling. That’s what makes this so much better and memorable. The filmmakers let the simple humanity and undeniable bravery of the Granite Mountain Hot Shots and their families speak for themselves. Josh Brolin and especially Jennifer Connelly (painfully skinny) as husband and wife were particularly effective. The film tells the story of the tragedy surrounding an elite wildfire fighting team in Arizona. The simple bravery they demonstrate on so many levels and the bond the team formed speak eloquently to their sacrifice. The fires they fight are not overdone but possess the ferocity that highlights the odds they faced on an almost daily basis. This is one of the best movies I’ve seen all year.

She Usually Wins

I rushed through the next in LE Modesitt’s excellent Imager series with Treachery’s Tools. While this is #10 in the series, it is a direct sequel to the earlier one featuring Alaster as head of the imagers. The events take place 13 years after the preceding book and Alaster, now married, has to deal with an immense threat against an unworthy king he must support. The aristocracy is rebelling against the growing power of the merchant class and wants to draw in and discredit the imagers. The first half of the book is fairly mundane as Modesitt does his typical thing of gathering the storm of the plot points that break wide open in the thrilling second half of the book. I’m already on to the next and sadly last of the currently published books in the series.

The Bad Cinema project count rises to #43 out of 100, with They Came From Beyond Space which actually wasn’t putrid, high praise indeed for this series of films.