ABUSIVE POWER OF MEDIA FREEDOM BY T.S. Khanna, august 20,2019.

Foundation For Better Government,

Bettergovt.blogspot.com

 Abusive Power of Media Freedom

 By T.S. Khanna, August 20, 2019.

Every human being is born with an innate desire for power to accomplish something or destroy something.  The destructive instinct creates our dark side: paranoia, jealousy, revenge, anger, and sadism.  Our dark side induces xenophobic tendencies causing fear of those not like us or less like us.  The less informed or the more misinformed we are, the more fearful we are of others.

We start imagining hostility and enmity in those not like us.  Such stance becomes self-fulfilling to shape those fears into reality.  As we project our own fears and hostilities on imagined enemies, we also become gullible to well planned frauds and hoaxes.  This weakness then becomes a fertile ground for exploiters in politics and businesses, especially so for media.

Media is supposed to serve public by providing factual, accurate, and unbiased news.  However, in practice, journalists, quite often, transgress their bounds under the temptation to exploit our dark side.  Under the Constitutional freedom of speech, media seems to have enjoyed the tradition of exploiting public with impunity.  Here is a glaring example:

On Sunday, October 30, 1938, the CBS Radio (TV was not invented then) decided to enact a novel written in 1898, “The War of the Worlds” by H.G. Wells.  This novel is a description of an imagined short-lived conflict and destruction of our world by the imagined inhabitants of the world of Mars.

To make the enactment effective, regular program was intercepted by increasingly alarming news flashes from Grover Mill, N.J., imagined ground zero of the attack by Martians.  By the time people discovered that the news was fake, only dramatizing the subject novel, many people, all over the country, fled their homes in terror from the attack that was only in their imagination.  Considerable physical and psychological damage was caused by the CBS, fully protected under the Constitutional freedom of speech.  The CBS suffered no damage.

Some examples of the CBS’s false announcements and public reaction are noteworthy:

. CBS Announcements;

1.     “Ladies and gentlemen, I have a grave announcement to make.  Incredible as it may seem, both the observations of science and the evidence of our eyes lead to the inescapable assumption that those strange beings who landed in the Jersey farmlands tonight are the vanguard of an invading army from the planet Mars……”

2.     “In view of the gravity of the situation, and believing that radio has a definite responsibility to serve the public interest at all times, we are turning over our facility to the state of militia at Trenton”.

3.     “ Ladies and gentlemen, …..I hardly know where to begin, to paint for you a word picture of the strange scene before my eyes, like something out of a modern Arabian Nights……the thing, directly in front of me, half buried in a vast pit. Must have struck with great force.  The object does not look like a meteor.  It looks more like a huge cylinder.

Public Reaction;

1.     Near Grover Mill, NJ, ground zero for the imagined Martian invasion, the panic was most immediate.  The Fire Chief of Cranbury, five miles away, received dozens of calls reporting fires in the woods set by Martian heat rays.  The fire department kept responding to non-existing fires by non-existing aliens.  Armed farmer were roaming around their homes to shoot Martians.

2.     A couple drove off in a rush, tearing off their garage door, to quickly get to their family in another town.  Husband assured the wife that the torn garage door will not be needed any more.

3.     In Newark, people under conniption, raced their cars around; faces covered with wet towels to protect themselves from the imaginary poisonous Martian gases.

4.     Quickly, the panic spread all over the country.  The power of suggestion to cause hallucination, showed its force;

(a)   Some people saw Martian machines poised on the Jersey Palisades to attack New York,

(b)   Some people reported smelling Martian gas, while others felt the heat of approaching fire.

It was a display of the gullibility of “feeble-minded jitter-bug softies”, in response to the clever dramatization of “The War of the Worlds” by the CBS to uplift its rating.

Irate over this scary dramatization, Judge A.G. Kennedy wrote to the CBS rep:

    “Your radio performance Sunday evening was a clear demonstration of your inhuman instincts, bestial sensuality and fiendish joy in causing distress and suffering……..you doubtless reveled in fiendish delight in causing death to some, and great terror, anguish, and suffering to thousands of helpless and unoffending victims of your hellish designs.

    Your contemptible, cowardly, and cruel undertaking, conceived by a demon and executed by a cowardly cur, is doubtless in keeping with your sense of humor.  When you are faced with the enormity of heinous crime and are liable to prosecution for your atrocious conduct and that you are morally guilty of murder, if not legally guilty………. 

   I would not insult a female dog by calling you a son of such an animal……..

  I also propose to use the radio in appealing to the American people to boycott the Columbia Broadcasting System in an expression of their disapproval of your disgraceful, fraudulent, atrocious, malicious and illegal performance.”

Under the present Constitutional freedom, media has enormous power to abuse freedom to their benefit at the cost of citizens whom they are supposed to serve.  Modern media is smarter in their presentations and weaker in their ethics.  They have been misleading and confusing the public on several significant issues:  Russia, Racism, and Immigration.  They specialize in advocacy journalism, no longer in unbiased accurate reporting of facts.  They have been wrongfully disgracing our elected public officials and creating obstruction in performance of their duties. The journalists concoct “juicy stories” to feed the dark side of people.  They are professionally adept in pitting persons and groups against each other and draw benefits by escalating the diverse opinions or beliefs.  The psychological damage they are causing to the Nation is beyond measure.  They are splitting the society.   Such damage would be easier to prevent now than to repair later.

We strongly recommend that the unbridled freedom of speech by media or by individuals now must require responsibility and accountability. (Details on request).

(Ref. ‘Invasion From Mars” by Hadley Cantril, 1940; “The War of The Worlds” by Brady, Bova, Callaway, 2001).

-->