Dear Media: Your Advertisers Want More Money

I had the most ridiculous conversation with my mom last night on the phone. I asked her if she had heard about the interview with the former Deputy Director of the CIA where he admitted that Dick Cheney lied when he said Iraq had reconstituted nuclear weapons. My mom didn't believe me. And do you want to know how she knew that I was not telling her the truth? She didn't want to hurt my feelings so she implied first that I must have misunderstood the interview, then she reasoned with me, and I quote, "Angie, if that happened, why wouldn't it have been on the news?" Great question mom! I don't know. I don't know why they don't bother to cover a lot of things that are newsworthy but find it necessary to open every hour with a story about a deflated football or some pseudo-patriotic bullshit that an asshole politician decided to say on their campaign today.

I find myself still exhausted by that call today. Of course, I am not the only American who is pissed. I am not the only one of your consumers who is being ignored daily. I have decided that this time I will forward my letter on to your biggest advertisers, too. It seems that you want us to constantly be mindful of the fact that you are a money making venture whose concern for the actual information you are meant to be relaying to us is secondary to the profits you can turn. (We can tell because of how much time you spend hyping and telling the same stories that are more worthy of tabloids than actual news coverage). So I will let your advertisers know that if you covered a story like this, you could certainly be making them a lot of money. People would tune in. More people. More than the ones you just want to come back every day, but the people who don't even watch the news.

Ewww... are you drooling? Wipe that. Now listen.

Two nights ago the former CIA Deputy Director, Michael Morrell, was on Hardball with Chris Matthews. Morrell admitted that, even though Cheney told America that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted nuclear weapons, this was not true. The information Cheney offered to finally get America behind going to war in Iraq, even though we knew that the attacks on 9/11 were from bin Laden, was a lie. This was not reported anywhere. Why? How?

The sad part is that last night when he closed his show, Matthews was actually upset, you could tell, by the fact that Cheney had lied. The rest of us were surprised to have heard it verified on live television, but no one who has been paying attention was really surprised that it was true. Matthews has such a sweet and pure heart. His love for politics and America is so sincere that he often doesn't see through the rhetoric a lot of us do. Because he is that type of person, it should have been even more important that this story be covered nationally. No one reporting on it (who is in a legitimate news organization) could question whether or not there was anything untoward about the story having come from Chris Matthews. And, lest you forget, you certainly have no problem relaying absolute nonsense you hear from the Fox cable channel with the word 'news' in its title.

America united after 9/11. We were one country. I stood behind my leadership and ignored the fact that they were of another party. I didn't care. I was an American. My country was attacked. And with that unity and with our excitement for retribution, our Vice President created information to take us into a war that would benefit he and the Bush family. And its only costs have ever been felt on the families of those lost and injured and the economy of the country that was so anxious to offer its misdirected trust.

Just think, not only could you let America know tonight that you had a story about how we fought a war that we are still paying for, and, more importantly offer the cost in the numbers of lives lost, because Dick Cheney told lies, but then you would have many night of follow up stories. The kinds of stories that are actually newsworthy. You would have real American stories to tell. About how Americans feel after having been betrayed. And about the myriad circumstances we now find ourselves because of those choices. You could go back to remind us about how Cheney commissioned a story to report on his lies. And then he offered those lies to Congress. There would be real goddamned substance in your reporting. It sounds glorious, doesn't it?

It is your job to bring the information to the country. It is your job to remind us of what we had been and help us to heal so we can find our way back there. At present, we have leaders who are trashing the name of America every day. They demand her exceptionalism while condemning the majority of Americans for not having met their very narrow definitions of those who are exceptional. You give them validity when you give them a voice. As was true in  2003, is true today, you are perpetually complicit in where we are finding ourselves. It is time to bring America back to a place that is unified and healthy. And it needs to start today.