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    Re: Behold the breathtaking weakness of the Empire! Archived Message

    Posted by John Monro on May 3, 2019, 3:22 am, in reply to "Re: Behold the breathtaking weakness of the Empire!"

    I'm not entirely sure. I think the apparent genuineness of their offended reaction when challenged is quite revealing. I think Noam is mostly right. Yes of course there are many reporters and journalists only too happy to reflect the "received perspective" and are quite right wing themselves. Kuessenberg would likely be one and anyone who works in the Murdoch empire must be, by definition, a right winger and at the very least, mildly sociopathic . And many, if they're successful, probably lose perspective on the way to their success. I am just trying to formulate a reason why this should be so. After all, the BBC is regularly denounced by right wingers as being a leftist clique or cult. For all you know, BBC journalist get denounced by right wingers just as much as by left wingers in which case they may even have a defence, if you continue to examine things in simplistic political terms.

    But I think my comparison with the attempt by journalists to give "both sides" of the global warming story, as a futile search for "fairness" is a more apt comparison. In this case it's throwing scientific reason and facts under the "fairness" bus. I was trying to suggest that in many political matters, it's throwing a fundamental moral perspective under the same bus. A strong moral backbone would not allow those supporting Saudi Arabia to escape unscathed for instance or as I mentioned, the Israelis.

    I mean, the questioning of Elliott Abrams did reveal an interviewer who was prepared to challenge, but it was so inadequate. It was inadequate I believe because it failed to reflect the moral indignation that any humane person, understanding the predicament of humanity in Venezuela, should have developed.

    I mean at its simplest, if a country is in trouble, and its citizens facing a crisis, would a humane reaction be for someone, or a neighbouring country to try and help the people through their problem? Or is a humane reaction to try to ferment a civil war?Didn't that happen in N Ireland? So why aren't the interviewers posing this very simple moral question. It's basically unanswerable. I believe they're not because developing a moral perspective, a degree of moral absolutism, has been drummed out of them either in university courses or along the way through the career. And if this simple moral question was refused to be addressed, the interviewer would ask, why was the efforts of Spain for the last couple of years in mediating in Venezuela rebuffed, on the instructions of the USA to the opposition in that country? I've never heard a single interviewer ask this.

    Goebbels was a politician. He might deserve attention because of the position he held, but no moral journalist should treat the views of Goebbels with any respect because there is no moral equivalence between him and the wider, humane society. It should be the same with dealing with Trump and his henchmen, and the same with many politicians in the UK. They don't have a moral leg to stand on.

    I think if journalists examined their morals and ethical response to what is happening in the world, rather than a simplistic political right vs left "fairness" then we might get some better reporting, and an effective dissection of the toxic politics that presently seem to rule so many. Isn't that why we admire people like John Pilger, Julian Assange and Glen Greenwald, it's not their politics so much, but their strong moral and ethical backbone? It's what allows them to reduce what might be seen as complicated issues to really straightforward ones, the question that always needs answering,, - is it moral, is it fair, is it just, is it humane?

    Anyway, that's my opinion, for what it's worth. It's very easy to be a cynic, but simple answers for complicated issues of human behaviour can be misleading.

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