Truth...you can't handle the truth: the abdication of any semblance of journalism...

This is not a political rant...it is a rant against banality and/or mediocrity in the press. The trigger is this week's Newsweek cover around the world (via Rising Hegemon). You will note that in pretty much every other section of the globe (Asia, Europe and Latin America) the "news journal" Newsweek has a cover story title, "Losing Afghanistan" with a photo of a Mujahadeen soldier on the cover.

In the US, this week's cover story is "My Life in Pictures" with a photo of Annie Leibovitz and kids. Now don't get me wrong, I like AL's photos a great deal. She is talented and worthy of recognition...but the cover of NEWSWEEK!!!

Has the media so abdicated their roll in this country as a purveyor of "news"? Has the media guzzling general public become so thin skinned and rose-tinted in thier ability/willingness to absorb "real news" that they must be sheltered from the darker bits? Has mainstream news become so cowed by the current administration's aversion to...well...the truth? Has truthiness really won the proverbial war?

I would expect such things from People, Esquire, or the Enquirer. Newsweek, however, really SUPPOSED to be about, well, NEWS. I am more annoyed because they *know* what the real news is...and have given it a front page placement everywhere else on Earth. Sadly, the US market can't, apparently, accept the news...as it were.

Print media used to be where the public could turn to get depth and meaning to the stories and issues in play. Broadcast media long ago abdicated the roll...exchanging it for the growing "infotainment" version of the news where propaganda and corporation created sound-bites are presented in 30 second bursts...no challenge at all for the average American to absorb between swigs of beer and bites of twinkies. As has been said elsewhere, "there are lies, damned lies and Fox News" (Expressen: Räven går i Rosengård Behrang Kianzad). But have we really come to the point where a Newsweek cover-story on Afghanistan is too "political" to run in the US...it must be replaced with a puff peice on a photographer...

I started, years ago, to read most of my day to day "news" from foreign sources (primarily the BBC and the Economist because I liked to compare it to what was being fed the US market. Several years ago, I pretty much stopped following US news feeds completely...save the occasional snip via googlenews. Most, I know, are not bitter and cynical enough to have followed this path, for better or worse. I feel sorry, however, for a nation seeking news who think the best Newsweek has to offer is "My Life in Pictures." Maybe Newsweek and the population deserve each-other...I like to think that people would want to know the truth...the "news"...if it were actually offered to them. Screw it. I'm going to go buy a People and stop thinking.