Delivered, bound hand and foot

In every province of human life, and in that of reporting truthfully principally so, we have a right to demand a living sympathy of mind with mind. It is clearly not only about getting the highest circulation in the media establishment; the press is charged to inform, to entertain, to enlighten and sometimes to swim against the official tide without inciting and playing to the most backward sentiments of society. It is expected of the media to speak out of the fulness of genuine conviction and emotion to the minds and hearts of those who hear and read. Through all variations of mood and tone the media should keep in mental touch with society.

I have always believed that false sentiment may pass muster in the privacy of the editorial chambers, but it will always be betrayed by its own unveracity when it is spoken aloud before listeners whose minds are sane. The hollow ring will be detected. It offends. No prestige can possibly redeem reportage which lacks a living sympathy of mind with mind. The US media has embraced one consuming ambition: become cowed and serve the master of unreason.

The world and the two occupied countries particularly, have lived, for the last decade or more, the most terrible nightmares imaginable. In this, the US media is nothing but a servile and willing accomplice. It severed, deliberately, that living sympathy of mind with mind in relation to the tens of millions of the American people by spreading distortions, outright lies and half-truths. Today, entire cities are razed and not a single piece of investigative reporting can be found in the arsenal of America’s media.

Not a single one of America’s media bosses can rightfully ever claim to be an aloof spectator, gazing out across life at midnight from a lofty attic, musing on the mingled joys and sorrows, hopes and miseries of millions upon millions of human beings, exclaiming at last “I sit above it all, I am alone with the stars.” This makes me ponder over a youthful outburst I met with while reading a newspaper on a park bench in Wimbledon once: “You know there can’t be any truth in that paper, Steven. In your heart you must know that. You are a discerning individual. You read and think. Well then, ask yourself: how can there be truth in there if it reports about this war but there’s nothing of the truth of this war in it?”

The American media establishment has been delivered, bound hand and foot, to the service of the American bourgeoisie. Shame on them!