ON THE FORCE OF FARCE

BLURRY LINES

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has a tongue-in-cheek letter to Iranian President Ahmadinejad, purportedly written by the Head of Iranian Intelligence. 

It's a hypothetical and farcical take on what such a correspondence would report about U.S. policies and directions. 

Most of it was just ho-hum until it came to this little bit:

"We have to note that obtaining open-source intelligence in America has become more difficult, because traditional news shows have become more comedic and more comedic news shows more authoritative.

For instance, CNN’s nightly business report is hosted by a man named “Dobbs.”

Real journalists come on his show and present transparently propagandistic stories about immigration and trade and then he fulminates about them, much the way our ayatollahs used to do about “Satanic Americans” on late-night Iranian TV.

So viewers have no real idea what’s happening in the U.S. economy.

Meanwhile, at 11 p.m., something called “The Daily Show,” which appears on Comedy Central, has fake journalists presenting what turns out to be the real news."

Ironic that an op-ed piece written in jest also hits the nail on the head when it comes to the state of our news media.

Comments

[alex tolley]

And the irony that Friedman doesn't get is that he is firmly in the "traditional" news business and pitches propaganda, or more correctly, silly pieces of drivel.