I read an article on the great I.F. Stone years ago. In the article he recounted his experience as a young reporter covering the murder of a young woman. The suspect was the son of a local furniture store owner - his newspaper had evidence supporting the guilt of the young man. The editor of the newspaper brought in the furniture store owner and showed him two different headlines - and let him choose. According to Stone, the newspaper got a large number of paid advertisements for the furniture store and the young man walked.
It doesn't seem to me anything has really changed in the last 100 years. There is the approved narrative and those not supporting it should, or will have to, seek employment elsewhere.
"....if you can’t be fired or demoted or otherwise punished, you can simply be denied air time."
That was quite obvious in the run-up to the invasion in 2003. There were large protests in cities across the country; the estimate was 100,000 in NYC on February 15th alone. Did it make breaking news? Did we see massive coverage of the worldwide gatherings? Um....nope. I don't know if there was even a passing mention on the local news of the protest here in CLE.
Denise, great point. If you have the fortitude to flip back and forth between the various cable "news" networks, you can often see they don't even cover the same news. Mostly, it's about the other team - and never yours.
Gotta admit, Tom, I don't have the fortitude. I never watch cable news. Or network news, either, for that matter. It's all about ratings. It's not even about coverage anymore, let alone the type of reporting that Bill is talking about. That level of journalism doesn't exist anymore on news shows, and rarely elsewhere.
and this is THE central problem of America foremost but of the world besides - profit rules and as such distorts everything. We face undeniable global warming but the fossil fuel company execs can come right out and say they intend to maximize their investment and see it used to the max right up until it becomes impossible to continue. What investor in anything could not in complete sincerity say the same?
Was this a major story? Did anyone say anything about what must happen to determine that fossil fuel use cannot continue? Isn't it happening right now? But it is profit before people before planet everywhere you look.
The very last thing people want to attack is profit because they appreciate it when they can obtain it and in fact seek it out. People may say they hate Jeff Bezos, but they would be the first to admit that they profit from low prices on Amazon. Would people voluntarily see Mom and Pop stores return? No - hell no!
Therefor I am a dedicated pessimist because what we have to escape is capitalism which is so much a part of everything we do and enjoy and the thing that drives the driven we place at the top of our culture that there is no conceivable alternative nor is one being investigated. We want more, we want it as cheaply as we can get it and we want it now. Capitalism delivers on all three. Every problem to every politician can be solved with growth.
We are marching with dedication and enthusiasm toward the undoing of the very environment that has supported us and still does even as it is obviously faltering under the load we place on it. Capitalism is a human construct that humanity is incapable of controlling. Capitalism must have more of everything and new things to add to it all the time.
To your point about unending growth, an editor I worked with long ago wrote a column about it. We worked on an engineering magazine, and this guy was considered a curmudgeon's curmudgeon. Not exactly a liberal. Anyway, he remarked on the prevalent business model of insisting on X% more profit every year. He contended that endless increases in profits were not only not sustainable, they'd wreck business as we know it. As he pointed out, such increases were not possible without raising prices, and continually doing so would inevitably result in decreasing sales. And if everyone had the same idea---raw materials suppliers jack up prices by $X, so manufacturers raise theirs by $X+Y, to maintain profit margins, and so on--- where would it all end? His prediction was that everything would implode. Wouldn't be surprised if he turns out to be right, eventually, as inequality continues to spiral upward.
a wee excursus here: 'me-first-at-minimum-cost' capitalism is not only a "human construct", it is arguably endemic to the human genotype. gaia, to anthropomorphize, will not go down w/out retaliatory recriminations. i humbly suggest that climate-induced global warming is a manifestation of gaia's resistance in an effort to achieve equilibrium. if any segment of our planet's inhabitants do not manage to rein themselves in, our planet's land, sea, and air habitats will do it for them. for example, nyangi island off the coast of sierra leone's sherbro island, where we completed the CIDA-funded SeaLife [sierra leone integrated fisheries expansion] project from 1978~'81, has been feckly swallowed by the eastern atlantic ocean. the thriving, economically viable fishing villages of that time are now under the sea, ravaged by brobdingnagian storms and monstrous sea levels. 90% of the island's inhabitants are refugees on either the larger island of sherbro, or across the inland areas of sierra leone's landmass.
I can't say I do it frequently - but maybe when a big story hits that involves partisan issues. Two-three minutes per headline reporting is about enough. Then I go sit in a dark room and howl. :-)
The second most serious problem with the antiwar protest demonstrations against the Iraq War is that they happened AFTER the Congress had already voted on the AUMF for Iraq. That resolution was passed in September 2002. Everything after that was a fait accomplit.
That's how they get you.
The most serious problem is that mass demonstrations pale in comparison with actual representative democracy clout, and the antiwar coalition has no traction in our national elections as an issue movement.
I agree with your points, DC, especially about the lack of political power in demonstrations.
But to your comment about ranked-choice voting, I'm not understanding how would that help if there are no prominent anti-war candidates. Currently, Williamson, West, and Stein (I assume) are anti-war, but they're so low on the radar, I don't know if the average voter knows who they are....? Could you please explain more, with an example?
A ranked choice ballot allows the opportunity for political parties and leaders to build a following, and to act as pressure from outside of the institutional party structures instead of attempting to alter either or both of them from within.
Under the current system, the reason there are no prominent antiwar candidates is because--in the states where it counts--no voter can feel secure in expressing a preference for a non-Democrat, non-Republican candidate without running the serious risk of their vote assuming a "spoiler" role that--as a practical reailty--would be liable to help elect the candidate who they would least like to see in office.
The two major party establishments are fine with this, because the result works to police the minds of voters (toward conformity/cynicism/apathy/submission to the status quo) and it reinforces illusions (such that electoral success means that a majority of the voters must therefore love and support the winning candidate, when it's actually the case in many instances that the single vote was only cast in order to obstruct victory by the candidate/major party that the voter most abhors.)
Ranked choice voting is able to provide a ballot result that upsets the illusion--which richly deserves to be upset--that most American voters support either Democrats or Republicans, voluntarily, as opposed to the way it actually is: cornered, for all practical purposes, into voting either Ds or Rs.
Whereas with ranked choice, instant runoff voting, it would be entirely acceptable for someone to vote for Marianne Williamson as their top choice--the candidate who they would most want as President--and ALSO pick the major party candidate they would find relatively more acceptable (i.e., the current voter calculation, based on "realistic chance of winning.")
This capability doesn't seem like much of an improvement, but it actually makes all the difference--especially in the long run. Ranked-choice voting is not a quick-fix solution. It's a foot in the door for ideas, candidates, and parties of merit. A candidate/party/platform that starts out with a first-choice vote of 3% can find ways to expand their base- not out of the question that the outsider appeal could double every four years, once people realize that the have two votes to rank. Instead of being forced into a single choice-to either throw their vote away on an outsider candidate, or throw it away on one of the stagnant status quo candidates.
Ranked-choice can be a difficult concept for American voters to wrap their minds around, because we're so unused to the effectuality of any political movement from outside of the current ballot system. Outside parties and candidates in the US are routinely viewed as flashes in the pan- because they're foredoomed to that role, under the current system. In the aftermath of single-choice elections, any outsider candidate perceived to have drawn off votes that might have gone to the major party candidate who ended up losing is REVILED. That's no way to build a political movement.
The first outcome of a Presidential election (or House/Senate election) where most of the citizens are allowed to rank two preferences will be to obtain some semblance of an accurate snapshot of the political spectrum of the country. We don't have that at all, right now. We also have no assurance of the majoritarian system that was intended by the founders. Only two presidents have been elected to their first term with over 50% of the vote since 1976- Carter in 1976 with 50.1%, and Obama in 2008 with Hypothetically, every other election can be said to come down to who got a smaller number of "spoiler" votes. A formula for the continuing hegemony of the two established status quo "major parties"--and also for their decadence and stagnation- because one or the other of them have "got us", no? Whereas ranked-choice voting allows us to express preferences for outside alternatives in a way that would get the attention of the established Big Two. Ranked-choice give us some push.
I want the simplest form of ranked-choice voting: first choice, second choice. Something easily calculated with basic math skills. Top choice, the candidate with their hat in the ring who I would most want; second choice, the candidate who I would have been forced to rank at the top in the bad old days, in order to block the person who I REALLY don't want to be President. All my life, the system has conditioned my vote on fears about the opposition. Very often, I've found that in practice, there was much more similarity between the priorities of the two major parties than differences. Because of their entrenchment in the status quo, neither major party establishment feels any obligation to listen to people like me, on most issues. Most often, they take my vote and ignore their own party platforms. They don't have to be accountable, so they don't act accountable. It's a shell game. That's why outside leverage is imperative.
Although ranked-choice voting doesn't require a Constitutional reform, apparently these ballot reforms have to be accomplished state by state. Maine already has ranked-choice voting. (California has a runoff between the two highest vote getters in an open primary election in the spring, which I view as inherently flawed- even though the actual extent of the problems might not show up right away.)
THANK YOU for this very thorough commentary, DC! I wasn't getting the incremental effect you outline. Two lines that really stuck home for me:
"All my life, the system has conditioned my vote on fears about the opposition."
"Most often, they take my vote and ignore their own party platforms."
I've expressed exactly these sentiments on several forums lately. The first one has been universally ignored. The second one has drawn unanimously negative replies, ranging from anger to vicious attacks. From Dems. You're absolutely right that candidates build platforms and make promises to get your vote, then all the promises go by the wayside, because Congress, or the budget, or reasons.
Bernie was supposed to be the "'second choice" that pushed Biden to the left, but we saw that his influence was minimal. Perhaps if someone with his views were to consistently receive, say, 10% of the votes, in an official, designed-to-be-that-way system, the pressure would eventually effect change. I like your approach!
Wow. Thank you for the Banfield lecture. The voice of reason. She says at one point "I am fascinated to know how we are going to work out the situation in Iraq" this just after Mission Accomplished.
This is why I wrote over a year ago about a desperate plea to unplug from corporate media, as well as convincing your friends and family to do the same.
Thank you! There has been a cottage industry of corporate-backed "independent" media which makes it much harder to see the line. Being vigilant about the motivations of your news sources is the only way to feel comfortable that you're not being sold a bill of goods for someone else's agenda. Appreciate the commentary!
Thank You, Bill, for introducing me to Ashleigh Banfield. Reading and learning about her, i was led to wonder what she had to say about 9/11. And discovered this…:
(NewsNation) — We all remember where we were and what we were doing when tragedy struck the country on September 11, 2001. The same can be said for journalists who were on the ground covering the attacks, including NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield.
21 years ago, Banfield was covering the attacks in New York for MSNBC. Looking back on video clips of her coverage, she says she hears terror in her voice.
“Everyone calls me so brave for having been there that day. The truth is, I was absolutely terrified,” Banfield said on “NewsNation Prime.”
Despite the chaos, Banfield felt like she needed to keep covering what was happening to the U.S. She said there were many moments that have stuck with her all these years, but there’s one in particular she will never forget.
“The one moment that I really take with me is the time when I was broadcasting live, it was in the evening sometime, and it was after 9/11. So it would have been on the 12th or 13th, or maybe even 14th. A woman came up to me while I was on the air with her poster, because everybody had their posters asking ‘Have you seen my loved one? My husband, my wife, my daughter, my son, everything?’
“And she said, ‘Have you seen Lindsay Herkness?’ Lindsay Herkness was my friend. Yeah, so I didn’t know it at the time. And Lindsay died. So that hit me live on the air,” Banfield said. “I just had to really kind of figure that one out, you know, and there’s no pamphlet, blueprint. There’s nothing to help you as a journalist kind of get through something like that. That one stays with me.”
In the video above, Banfield describes more of her experience reporting on 9/11 and how she remembers the tragic day each year.
Great piece. I do think, however, that the tide is slowly starting to turn. Dana Bash practically called Netanyahu a liar to his face on CNN, and then Nancy Pelosi came on and confirmed Netanyahu wasn't telling the truth about food shipments to Gaza.
The Democrats are going to try to pin all of the blame for the Gaza Genocide on Netanyahu, and that breaks the unified wall of pro-Israel reporting from American media. Let's all do our bit to make sure they can never rebuild it.
Scapegoating Netanyahu is deliberate and by design. We have fed Netanyahu with every bomb he has dropped and now that he is becoming radioactive to the cause, it’s time to dump him and anoint the next Netanyahu. This is not a crack in the wall, it is the wall shedding a weak brick.
... it's hard changing the world, trying to make it better, when you're only getting one-sided information-propaganda-coverage... we need be better than that otherwise status-quo prevails, and we all keep loosing
...and tnx to you too, roger, for the approbatory feedback. i'm more accustomed to receiving censorious macerations and lacerations from the vulgate, particularly the US/UK/EU/canada fopdoodles and cattywumpuses in their respective armadas of angry ants and disputatious donnards who luxuriate in that misguided pantheon of pampered pricks. conciliatory saphrosynes they are not! concomitantly, they are immune to absorbing parrhesia [truth-telling].
b/c i'm a hopeless sumpsimus, please take pity on my OCD, and manumit me to correct the catachreses in my quondam comment... videlicet, "nyangi's" should be "nyangi", and the phrase "significantly more extensive than nyangi island's footprint" should be enisled in brackets. your patience w/ me is appreciated. i must absquatulate to more salubrious endeavours before i go off the rails entirely!
tnx dennis and toma. am dubious it will be possible, but am keen to remain a living life form long enough to witness the behemoth island of plastic trash, significantly more extensive than nyangi's island's footprint-size, be tossed by those monstrous storm-driven seas in the north pacific gyre back onto land, preferably onto the coastal and even upland cities, states, megalopolises, and provinces from which they 'provenanced'. a pox on their demesnes!
Ray: "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." President John Adams
I read an article on the great I.F. Stone years ago. In the article he recounted his experience as a young reporter covering the murder of a young woman. The suspect was the son of a local furniture store owner - his newspaper had evidence supporting the guilt of the young man. The editor of the newspaper brought in the furniture store owner and showed him two different headlines - and let him choose. According to Stone, the newspaper got a large number of paid advertisements for the furniture store and the young man walked.
It doesn't seem to me anything has really changed in the last 100 years. There is the approved narrative and those not supporting it should, or will have to, seek employment elsewhere.
"....if you can’t be fired or demoted or otherwise punished, you can simply be denied air time."
That was quite obvious in the run-up to the invasion in 2003. There were large protests in cities across the country; the estimate was 100,000 in NYC on February 15th alone. Did it make breaking news? Did we see massive coverage of the worldwide gatherings? Um....nope. I don't know if there was even a passing mention on the local news of the protest here in CLE.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_protests
Denise, great point. If you have the fortitude to flip back and forth between the various cable "news" networks, you can often see they don't even cover the same news. Mostly, it's about the other team - and never yours.
Gotta admit, Tom, I don't have the fortitude. I never watch cable news. Or network news, either, for that matter. It's all about ratings. It's not even about coverage anymore, let alone the type of reporting that Bill is talking about. That level of journalism doesn't exist anymore on news shows, and rarely elsewhere.
and this is THE central problem of America foremost but of the world besides - profit rules and as such distorts everything. We face undeniable global warming but the fossil fuel company execs can come right out and say they intend to maximize their investment and see it used to the max right up until it becomes impossible to continue. What investor in anything could not in complete sincerity say the same?
Was this a major story? Did anyone say anything about what must happen to determine that fossil fuel use cannot continue? Isn't it happening right now? But it is profit before people before planet everywhere you look.
The very last thing people want to attack is profit because they appreciate it when they can obtain it and in fact seek it out. People may say they hate Jeff Bezos, but they would be the first to admit that they profit from low prices on Amazon. Would people voluntarily see Mom and Pop stores return? No - hell no!
Therefor I am a dedicated pessimist because what we have to escape is capitalism which is so much a part of everything we do and enjoy and the thing that drives the driven we place at the top of our culture that there is no conceivable alternative nor is one being investigated. We want more, we want it as cheaply as we can get it and we want it now. Capitalism delivers on all three. Every problem to every politician can be solved with growth.
We are marching with dedication and enthusiasm toward the undoing of the very environment that has supported us and still does even as it is obviously faltering under the load we place on it. Capitalism is a human construct that humanity is incapable of controlling. Capitalism must have more of everything and new things to add to it all the time.
Very well said, Clif.
To your point about unending growth, an editor I worked with long ago wrote a column about it. We worked on an engineering magazine, and this guy was considered a curmudgeon's curmudgeon. Not exactly a liberal. Anyway, he remarked on the prevalent business model of insisting on X% more profit every year. He contended that endless increases in profits were not only not sustainable, they'd wreck business as we know it. As he pointed out, such increases were not possible without raising prices, and continually doing so would inevitably result in decreasing sales. And if everyone had the same idea---raw materials suppliers jack up prices by $X, so manufacturers raise theirs by $X+Y, to maintain profit margins, and so on--- where would it all end? His prediction was that everything would implode. Wouldn't be surprised if he turns out to be right, eventually, as inequality continues to spiral upward.
supernal exegesis, clif.
a wee excursus here: 'me-first-at-minimum-cost' capitalism is not only a "human construct", it is arguably endemic to the human genotype. gaia, to anthropomorphize, will not go down w/out retaliatory recriminations. i humbly suggest that climate-induced global warming is a manifestation of gaia's resistance in an effort to achieve equilibrium. if any segment of our planet's inhabitants do not manage to rein themselves in, our planet's land, sea, and air habitats will do it for them. for example, nyangi island off the coast of sierra leone's sherbro island, where we completed the CIDA-funded SeaLife [sierra leone integrated fisheries expansion] project from 1978~'81, has been feckly swallowed by the eastern atlantic ocean. the thriving, economically viable fishing villages of that time are now under the sea, ravaged by brobdingnagian storms and monstrous sea levels. 90% of the island's inhabitants are refugees on either the larger island of sherbro, or across the inland areas of sierra leone's landmass.
I can't say I do it frequently - but maybe when a big story hits that involves partisan issues. Two-three minutes per headline reporting is about enough. Then I go sit in a dark room and howl. :-)
I can imagine. I think perhaps such news consumption should be accompanied by a fairly large component of alcohol.
The second most serious problem with the antiwar protest demonstrations against the Iraq War is that they happened AFTER the Congress had already voted on the AUMF for Iraq. That resolution was passed in September 2002. Everything after that was a fait accomplit.
That's how they get you.
The most serious problem is that mass demonstrations pale in comparison with actual representative democracy clout, and the antiwar coalition has no traction in our national elections as an issue movement.
For that, we need ranked-choice voting.
I agree with your points, DC, especially about the lack of political power in demonstrations.
But to your comment about ranked-choice voting, I'm not understanding how would that help if there are no prominent anti-war candidates. Currently, Williamson, West, and Stein (I assume) are anti-war, but they're so low on the radar, I don't know if the average voter knows who they are....? Could you please explain more, with an example?
A ranked choice ballot allows the opportunity for political parties and leaders to build a following, and to act as pressure from outside of the institutional party structures instead of attempting to alter either or both of them from within.
Under the current system, the reason there are no prominent antiwar candidates is because--in the states where it counts--no voter can feel secure in expressing a preference for a non-Democrat, non-Republican candidate without running the serious risk of their vote assuming a "spoiler" role that--as a practical reailty--would be liable to help elect the candidate who they would least like to see in office.
The two major party establishments are fine with this, because the result works to police the minds of voters (toward conformity/cynicism/apathy/submission to the status quo) and it reinforces illusions (such that electoral success means that a majority of the voters must therefore love and support the winning candidate, when it's actually the case in many instances that the single vote was only cast in order to obstruct victory by the candidate/major party that the voter most abhors.)
Ranked choice voting is able to provide a ballot result that upsets the illusion--which richly deserves to be upset--that most American voters support either Democrats or Republicans, voluntarily, as opposed to the way it actually is: cornered, for all practical purposes, into voting either Ds or Rs.
Whereas with ranked choice, instant runoff voting, it would be entirely acceptable for someone to vote for Marianne Williamson as their top choice--the candidate who they would most want as President--and ALSO pick the major party candidate they would find relatively more acceptable (i.e., the current voter calculation, based on "realistic chance of winning.")
This capability doesn't seem like much of an improvement, but it actually makes all the difference--especially in the long run. Ranked-choice voting is not a quick-fix solution. It's a foot in the door for ideas, candidates, and parties of merit. A candidate/party/platform that starts out with a first-choice vote of 3% can find ways to expand their base- not out of the question that the outsider appeal could double every four years, once people realize that the have two votes to rank. Instead of being forced into a single choice-to either throw their vote away on an outsider candidate, or throw it away on one of the stagnant status quo candidates.
Ranked-choice can be a difficult concept for American voters to wrap their minds around, because we're so unused to the effectuality of any political movement from outside of the current ballot system. Outside parties and candidates in the US are routinely viewed as flashes in the pan- because they're foredoomed to that role, under the current system. In the aftermath of single-choice elections, any outsider candidate perceived to have drawn off votes that might have gone to the major party candidate who ended up losing is REVILED. That's no way to build a political movement.
The first outcome of a Presidential election (or House/Senate election) where most of the citizens are allowed to rank two preferences will be to obtain some semblance of an accurate snapshot of the political spectrum of the country. We don't have that at all, right now. We also have no assurance of the majoritarian system that was intended by the founders. Only two presidents have been elected to their first term with over 50% of the vote since 1976- Carter in 1976 with 50.1%, and Obama in 2008 with Hypothetically, every other election can be said to come down to who got a smaller number of "spoiler" votes. A formula for the continuing hegemony of the two established status quo "major parties"--and also for their decadence and stagnation- because one or the other of them have "got us", no? Whereas ranked-choice voting allows us to express preferences for outside alternatives in a way that would get the attention of the established Big Two. Ranked-choice give us some push.
I want the simplest form of ranked-choice voting: first choice, second choice. Something easily calculated with basic math skills. Top choice, the candidate with their hat in the ring who I would most want; second choice, the candidate who I would have been forced to rank at the top in the bad old days, in order to block the person who I REALLY don't want to be President. All my life, the system has conditioned my vote on fears about the opposition. Very often, I've found that in practice, there was much more similarity between the priorities of the two major parties than differences. Because of their entrenchment in the status quo, neither major party establishment feels any obligation to listen to people like me, on most issues. Most often, they take my vote and ignore their own party platforms. They don't have to be accountable, so they don't act accountable. It's a shell game. That's why outside leverage is imperative.
Although ranked-choice voting doesn't require a Constitutional reform, apparently these ballot reforms have to be accomplished state by state. Maine already has ranked-choice voting. (California has a runoff between the two highest vote getters in an open primary election in the spring, which I view as inherently flawed- even though the actual extent of the problems might not show up right away.)
THANK YOU for this very thorough commentary, DC! I wasn't getting the incremental effect you outline. Two lines that really stuck home for me:
"All my life, the system has conditioned my vote on fears about the opposition."
"Most often, they take my vote and ignore their own party platforms."
I've expressed exactly these sentiments on several forums lately. The first one has been universally ignored. The second one has drawn unanimously negative replies, ranging from anger to vicious attacks. From Dems. You're absolutely right that candidates build platforms and make promises to get your vote, then all the promises go by the wayside, because Congress, or the budget, or reasons.
Bernie was supposed to be the "'second choice" that pushed Biden to the left, but we saw that his influence was minimal. Perhaps if someone with his views were to consistently receive, say, 10% of the votes, in an official, designed-to-be-that-way system, the pressure would eventually effect change. I like your approach!
Wow. Thank you for the Banfield lecture. The voice of reason. She says at one point "I am fascinated to know how we are going to work out the situation in Iraq" this just after Mission Accomplished.
Yes, Clif. She could see the disaster that was coming because she'd been there on the ground with her eyes (and mind) open.
I added the Landen Lecture to my playlist and will listen to it tomorrow.
This is why I wrote over a year ago about a desperate plea to unplug from corporate media, as well as convincing your friends and family to do the same.
https://www.indiemediatoday.com/p/our-new-mission-unplug-from-corporate-media?r=539iu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=comment
Yes, fair point about CCM (corporate controlled media) versus MSM. CCM is much more accurate.
Thank you! There has been a cottage industry of corporate-backed "independent" media which makes it much harder to see the line. Being vigilant about the motivations of your news sources is the only way to feel comfortable that you're not being sold a bill of goods for someone else's agenda. Appreciate the commentary!
Thank You, Bill, for introducing me to Ashleigh Banfield. Reading and learning about her, i was led to wonder what she had to say about 9/11. And discovered this…:
NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield Remembers Covering 9/11 Attacks by Caitlyn Shelton / NewsNation 11 Sep 22
(NewsNation) — We all remember where we were and what we were doing when tragedy struck the country on September 11, 2001. The same can be said for journalists who were on the ground covering the attacks, including NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield.
21 years ago, Banfield was covering the attacks in New York for MSNBC. Looking back on video clips of her coverage, she says she hears terror in her voice.
“Everyone calls me so brave for having been there that day. The truth is, I was absolutely terrified,” Banfield said on “NewsNation Prime.”
Despite the chaos, Banfield felt like she needed to keep covering what was happening to the U.S. She said there were many moments that have stuck with her all these years, but there’s one in particular she will never forget.
“The one moment that I really take with me is the time when I was broadcasting live, it was in the evening sometime, and it was after 9/11. So it would have been on the 12th or 13th, or maybe even 14th. A woman came up to me while I was on the air with her poster, because everybody had their posters asking ‘Have you seen my loved one? My husband, my wife, my daughter, my son, everything?’
“And she said, ‘Have you seen Lindsay Herkness?’ Lindsay Herkness was my friend. Yeah, so I didn’t know it at the time. And Lindsay died. So that hit me live on the air,” Banfield said. “I just had to really kind of figure that one out, you know, and there’s no pamphlet, blueprint. There’s nothing to help you as a journalist kind of get through something like that. That one stays with me.”
In the video above, Banfield describes more of her experience reporting on 9/11 and how she remembers the tragic day each year.
Source: https://www.newsnationnow.com/prime/newsnations-ashleigh-banfield-remembers-covering-9-11-attacks/ .
Great piece. I do think, however, that the tide is slowly starting to turn. Dana Bash practically called Netanyahu a liar to his face on CNN, and then Nancy Pelosi came on and confirmed Netanyahu wasn't telling the truth about food shipments to Gaza.
The Democrats are going to try to pin all of the blame for the Gaza Genocide on Netanyahu, and that breaks the unified wall of pro-Israel reporting from American media. Let's all do our bit to make sure they can never rebuild it.
Scapegoating Netanyahu is deliberate and by design. We have fed Netanyahu with every bomb he has dropped and now that he is becoming radioactive to the cause, it’s time to dump him and anoint the next Netanyahu. This is not a crack in the wall, it is the wall shedding a weak brick.
And thank you, Bill, for your honesty, integrity and courage; and for bringing Ms. Banfield to our attention.
... it's hard changing the world, trying to make it better, when you're only getting one-sided information-propaganda-coverage... we need be better than that otherwise status-quo prevails, and we all keep loosing
...and tnx to you too, roger, for the approbatory feedback. i'm more accustomed to receiving censorious macerations and lacerations from the vulgate, particularly the US/UK/EU/canada fopdoodles and cattywumpuses in their respective armadas of angry ants and disputatious donnards who luxuriate in that misguided pantheon of pampered pricks. conciliatory saphrosynes they are not! concomitantly, they are immune to absorbing parrhesia [truth-telling].
b/c i'm a hopeless sumpsimus, please take pity on my OCD, and manumit me to correct the catachreses in my quondam comment... videlicet, "nyangi's" should be "nyangi", and the phrase "significantly more extensive than nyangi island's footprint" should be enisled in brackets. your patience w/ me is appreciated. i must absquatulate to more salubrious endeavours before i go off the rails entirely!
tnx dennis and toma. am dubious it will be possible, but am keen to remain a living life form long enough to witness the behemoth island of plastic trash, significantly more extensive than nyangi's island's footprint-size, be tossed by those monstrous storm-driven seas in the north pacific gyre back onto land, preferably onto the coastal and even upland cities, states, megalopolises, and provinces from which they 'provenanced'. a pox on their demesnes!
Let's also remember that today is Julian Assange's possible judgement day.
Pretty cruel in the way they decided to dispose of her! Always liked her on CNN before I switched to only Live Streaming of my News @ present...
All main news media must run their stories past IDF censors.
Ray: "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." President John Adams