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made-up scenes showed, for instance, former national security advisor Sandy Berger hanging up on a CIA official at a
crucial moment in a military action and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright allowing Osama bin Laden to slip
away from capture. Albright told Disney, ABC's owner, that the miniseries "depicted scenes that never happened,
events that never took place, decisions that were never made and conversations that never occurred."41
Kean was unapologetic. According to the New York Post, "he was all right with the made-up scene even though the
video is being peddled to high schools as a teaching aid."42
Remember the voices of Chinese citizens struggling to make sense of their own recent history and getting it
heartbreakingly wrong. How can they know otherwise?
Now listen to Tom Kean introduce a new epistemology into American discourse: An ordinary lie distorts or hides the
truth; the fascist lie is the assertion that truth is not a marker anymore. "I don't think the facts are clear whether Sandy
Berger, if the CIA [hung up] or if the line went dead," Kean said. "But they [the producers] chose to portray it this
way. My memory is that it could have happened any number of ways."43
"It could have happened any number of ways."
When part of Animal Farm's mission statement is erased.
All the animals remembered passing such resolutions: or at least they thought that they remembered it-----Squealer ...
assured them that the resolution against engaging in trade and using money had never been passed, or even
suggested. It was pure imagination, probably traceable in the beginning to lies circulated by Snowball. A few animals
still felt faintly doubtful, but Squealer asked them shrewdly, "Are you certain this is not something you have dreamed,
comrades? Have you any record of such a resolution? Is it written down anywhere?"44
"A little girl Rambo." Pat Tillman's heroic death. John Kerry's Purple Heart. The Iraq War death toll.
Are you certain this is all not something you have dreamed, my fellow Americans?
Once you accomplish this flooding of the plain of discourse with lies, you are much closer to closing down an open
society. If citizens can't be sure you are telling the truth or not, you can manipulate people into supporting almost
anything the state wants to undertake; and it is also much more difficult for citizens to advocate or mobilize on their
own behalf: How can they be sure what is right and what is wrong?
At a time such as this, it is up to U.S. citizens who are not part of the formal media world to publish online, research
aggressively, check facts assiduously, expose abuses, file Freedom of Information Act requests, publish 'zines, write
op-eds, and take ownership of producing as much of the news and information stream as they can. Above all, you
need to push through the laws proposed by the American Freedom Agenda and the American Freedom Campaign, so
that journalists will be shielded from threats and prosecution.
Blogging has to lead the way, because this is the access point for citizen journalism. But bloggers must take their
impact far more seriously, becoming warriors for truth and accountability: Citizens have to start to produce reliable
samizdat. Opinion is important, but opinion alone is totally inadequate when the ground of truth itself is under assault.
Bloggers must become rigorous and fearless documentarians and reporters not just to critique the news, but also to
generate the news. Citizens in every venue must now apply to their work the accuracy and accountability that news
editors have traditionally expected of their writers and researchers. The locus of the power of truth must be identified
not in major news outlets but in you. You not "they" must take responsibility for educating your fellow citizens.
It was librarians, schoolteachers, booksellers, and small publishers who helped to push back dictators in countries
where speech was under attack. Journalists are in the line of fire now; but history shows that these producers and
distributors of free speech are next in line.
In the Revolutionary era, farmers, artisans, and small shopkeepers read and wrote pamphlets, distributed broadsheets,
gave speeches at town assemblies, and ripped essays from the presses in order to debate with one another the points [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]