On the Failing Media

Well...it's Monday.  And what am I talking about?  Not what I want to talk about, that's for sure (though I suppose it is rather morbid that I want to talk about abortion).  However, I feel that it is absolutely necessary that as many people as possible talk about what is happening in America and the world.  I have this eerie sense that not many people are aware of what has happened in the aftermath of the Benghazi attack.

You see, when the attack in Benghazi occurred back on September 11th, the president referred to it as "terror" in his remark the next day.  That would be the last time for a week, when the official narrative would try to eliminate any and all references to the attack being a pre-planned act of terrorism.  The following week, after Ambassador Susan Rice was trotted out on all of the Sunday political talk shows to repeat the claim, the White House abruptly changed its story.  Most notable was Press Secretary Jay Carney, who went from claiming that the White House didn't know enough to claiming that it was "self-evident" that the attack was terrorism (thereby implying that it was obvious).

Despite such a dramatic shift in messaging, the media ignored it.  Back then, amusingly, the administration could have plausibly denied having sufficient information to make a judgement call on Libya.  Granted, the claims of a "mob protest getting out of hand" were, at best, silly, since the act being terror was "self-evident."  It didn't help that it had been determined that there was no mob outside of the consulate.  The organization and armament of the attackers did not help much either.

Then last week, it came out, first from The Daily Beast and then confirmed by Fox News Channel, that intelligence agencies had determined the assault a pre-planned terrorist attack within twenty-four hours.  This, unfortunately, suggests one thing: the administration's original narrative was known to be a lie from the beginning and they intentionally attempted to deceive us, the American people, by blaming the video and abridging the freedom of speech of its maker.

How did the media react to the blatant lying and rights violation?

Why are so few people asking how this could happen?

Well, actually, it didn't.  Silence on the networks that weren't Fox News.  No big cover stories on major newspapers.  The only reporting last week on the new information regarding the Benghazi attack came from Jake Tapper of ABC.  The mainstream media deceived us.  It did not lie, per se, but it failed us by not informing us of truth of the administration's actions.  This is a betrayal of the highest order in a land where the media is free.  They are willingly self-censoring themselves with such omissions.

So, what do we do about it?

In the past, we believed that the media would filter information for us.  They wouldn't tell us stories unless they were true and factual.  That they would tell us the truth when there were people in high places that needed to be held accountable.  That they would keep us informed of the world around us.

Not anymore.  Now it is up to us to be our own filters.  It is up to us, as American citizens, to discern and learn the truth for ourselves.  If the mainstream media is complicit in its attempts to deceive its viewers, then they don't need us reading or listening to them.  We must learn the truth for ourselves from sources that may be unorthodox.  However, orthodoxy is not important in the struggle to be informed and learn the truth. For it is your responsibility to learn the truth and learn that which the media hides from us with its silence.

We live in a dangerous time when our sources of information willingly ignore and obfuscate the truth.  It threatens our freedom when we are not told the truth about the actions of those in power.

Yet, we must always remember that we have the freedom to not bow to the deception.  We must be vigilant and demand the truth, seeking it out ourselves when necessary.  To do any less would be to surrender our rights as American citizens to those "above" us.