Note to Libby Trial Principals: Stop Hurting America

By Rory O'Connor, AlterNet. Posted February 6, 2007.

Remember way back in 2004-- those halcyon days before thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis lost their lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars were poured down the ruinous rat hole of occupation?

That was the year Jon Stewart was hailed for going on a now-defunct CNN program called 'Crossfire' and denouncing that silly show and its hosts, Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson, telling them point blank that the problem with programming line that was "not so much that it's bad, as it's hurting America."

Here's a transcript of the interchange [VIDEO]:

STEWART: So I wanted to come here today and say…

(CROSSTALK)

STEWART: Here's just what I wanted to tell you guys.

CARLSON: Yes.

STEWART: Stop.

(LAUGHTER)

STEWART: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America. See, the thing is, we need your help. Right now, you're helping the politicians and the corporations. And we're left out there to mow our lawns.

BEGALA: By beating up on them? You just said we're too rough on them when they make mistakes.

STEWART: No, no, no, you're not too rough on them. You're part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks.

I was reminded of that odd moment of television truth last week while sitting in the media room of the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal District Court in our nation's capital -- watching the cream of the crop of America's political and media elite serially embarrass themselves, their professions and their country. From Vice President Cheney to his former chief of staff Scooter Libby, to present and former top officials in the State Department, CIA and White House communications operation, to once-prominent journalists from such well-endowed, (and once well respected) mainstream media outlets as Time magazine and the New York Times, a parade of the powerful have now been exposed as little more than "partisan, what do you call it, hacks," to use Stewart's perspicacious phrase. Evidence was entered that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that our hack partisan political operatives are being "reported on" by hack journalists who can't take proper notes, remember quotes accurately -- or even recall crucial meetings with some of the most powerful individuals on the face of the earth…

So whatever else the confusing, calamitous and corrosive perjury and obstruction of justice felony trial of Scooter Libby may be about -- war, power, death, destruction, lies, manipulation, you-name-it -- it's first and foremost a trial of the media, by the media and for the media… or to be more precise, the mainstream media in the world's most powerful democracy. And what the trial has told us thus far about America's big-time media is that it's hopelessly, helplessly broken -- perhaps even beyond repair.

See more stories tagged with: media, jon stewart, libby

Filmmaker and journalist Rory O'Connor writes the Media Is A Plural blog.

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