“Hi-ho, this is Kermit the Frog here, reporting for the Sesame Street News.”
Kermit
I’ve lived in Japan for 20 years. I often read the daily The Japan Times or The Daily Yomiuri which is cheaper and worse….I’ve often wondered why I read them and I think it’s partly because they are fairly entertaining and to find out how much and what they are deliberately not saying.
I believe that the mass media is an accomplice of the capitalist system in crimes against humanity.
Above the name of the paper The Japan Times it says: ALL THE NEWS WITH(OUT) FEAR OR FAVOR.
“I don’t get it”
Bert of Sesame Street
Today, it’s Monday, April 19, 2010. The Japan Times has 16 pages.
I’ll start from the back.
Pp. 16, 15, 14 Sports.
P.13 is the TV page.
P. 12, the “opinion” page, the opinion page where you never see opinions by, say Arundhati Roy, Robert Fisk, John Pilger, N. Chomsky…or some labour union member, social justice activist, a single mother, a representative of the unemployed or the homeless….anyway, I think you get the picture of what I mean.
P.11, business insights, some article about the US, Swiss and UBS.
P.10, news analysis/topics, almost the whole page about the Vatican’s pedophiles and a much smaller piece on scientists and the Antarctic.
P.9 today is called American perspectives. There is an article about the fundamentalist Westboro Baptist church (half the page). And the other half is about journalists embedded with the US military (I told you it was fairly entertaining).
P.8…too is American perspectives, almost the whole page is about Florida’s governor Charlie Crist. The rest of the page is about N.Y. cops tackling terror in the tunnels.
“It’s good to shut up sometimes.”
Marcel Marceau
P.7, classified/ads
P.6, World
Iceland volcano/A new young king in Uganda/Poland (Kaczynski’s funeral)/Another article at the bottom about an American firm cashing in on bunker space for those anticipating apocalypse and on the side of the page, 3 in brief pieces: LBJ daughter may have rare disorder/US woman claims Powerball jackpot/Washington owes N.Y. library fees.
Pp. 5,4, World
A piece about Queen Noor al-Hussein of Jordan on getting rid of nuclear weapons/Ahmedinejad being ridiculed for asking the USA to ditch warheads first/Saudi Arabia planning center to develop nuclear renewable energy/Somalis fleeing radical Islamists/Iraqi al-Qaida starts using house bombs/Tea Party movement and Ross Perot (pretty big article)/Former US Rep.Eric Massa and his denying paying aide/Karzai on “reforming Afghanistan’s electoral system” (ha,ha,ha) and on the side again some in brief: white supremacists rally in L.A./Man shot at US border crossing/Discovery heading home from ISS/Advocates light up at marijuana expo.
“It’s not fair. It’s just not fair!”
Bert of Sesame Street
P.3, Asia Pacific
An article about a massacre that took place on Nov.23 of 57 people, among them 30 journalists, in the Philippines/The red shirts in Thailand/Something about an epic Polynesian voyage relived by descendents/Earthquake survivors in Tibet and in brief about a suicide bombing in Pakistan,/The reopening of an Aussie immigration detention center/A rare leopard spotted in Malaysia.
P.2, National
Japan falls fast from Obama’s list of priorities/A launching of a new political party in Tokyo/A missing Nepalese student in Fukuoka, Japan/Retailers gear up for 3-D TV launch by Panasonic/World expo song halted by plagiarism row/Cameraman slain in Bangkok honored at funeral/Medical procedures pitched to foreign tourists.
The front page
European flight ban stays among chaos (Iceland volcano)/Poles mass to lay president to rest/An article about the relocation of a US base in Japan/A piece about British Liberal Democrats.
Throughout the paper there are 12 advertisements of which one is on the front page, bottom right corner. It’s for a lecture. It says: A new civilization begins. The emergence of the World Teacher and the role of UFOs.
“Journalists are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.”
George Bernard Shaw
That’s it.
I picked today for no reason…it was random…there was no real need to think.
It’s pretty much the same everyday….shallow and hallow.
“The first law of journalism: to confirm existing prejudice, rather than contradict it.”
Alexander Cockburn
Is this information? Is this news? Do we feel informed? Does it make us think?
My picking The Japan Times was also random. They are more or less the same; empty, shallow and hallow. The Japanese dailies are even worse. It’s so empty that you actually start feeling as if there were something.
Most of the sources for and in the articles come from government officials, the police, people in some or other kind of power. Simply put, it hardly ever comes from a person who’s actually directly affected by the problem.
It is always some “expert” or “official” speaking for the person affected.
The “opinion” page (p.12) is all by men. There is (almost) never a woman.
“It’s not fair. It’s just not fair!”
Bert of Sesame Street
You will also notice the waste of space.
On Fridays this paper has 22 or 23 pages. The additional pages are all about art, films and more sports.
Anyway, it’s not only about what’s written in dailies of this kind. What really sticks out is what is deliberately omitted.
And that’s what makes of these dailies a muzzle owned by the rich and powerful for the voiceless, the ones who really need and have something important to say.
“Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.”
Joseph Goebbels
Brkic Sulejman
22/4/2010
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