MEDIA AND POLITICS
Guardians of the Narrative
The Most Essential Command: Never believe your eyes and ears
These days, I find myself thinking about the final days of Leonid Brezhnev, the former head of the Soviet Union until 1982.
As Brezhnev approached the end of his life and his long career, he was plagued by increasingly burdensome physical and mental disabilities that made it impossible for him to travel abroad and politically imprudent for him to appear in public. Brezhnev’s infirmities, combined with a system where the replacement of the executive was virtually impossible, ultimately created a situation in which the Soviet Union was in a leaderless downward spiral for several years.
Though all of this is apparent in hindsight, at the time, Brezhnev’s decline was hidden from the public by state-controlled media that carefully edited photos and videos to make it seem like the country’s leader was energetic, sharp, and engaged. Journalists, well aware that Brezhnev was not the one running the country, filed rosy reports with claims that Brezhnev was as sharp as ever, putting in long hours behind closed doors. As all USSR journalists knew then, reporting the truth could very well cost them their careers and possibly their freedom.
Media Ethics: Fact or Fiction?
Thank goodness such a thing could never happen in the U.S., right?
A highly ethical mainstream media, in concert with the all-seeing eye of social media and the 24-hour news cycle, ensures that our elected officials are held to the highest standards of physical fitness and integrity.
Right?
Keen watchdogs or docile lapdogs?
Today we find ourselves in an eerily similar situation.
President Joe Biden, once known for his sharp wit and quick comebacks, now often stumbles through speeches, loses his train of thought, and appears visibly fatigued. Yet, the U.S. mainstream media, much like the Soviet state media of old, goes to great lengths to assure us that everything is just fine. Biden is as energetic, sharp, and engaged as ever, they say.
It’s almost as if we’ve entered a time warp where the old Soviet propagandist playbook is now being revived by today’s U.S. media. Any suggestion that Biden might be experiencing a decline is met with fierce resistance, labeled as misinformation or simply ignored. Even photo and video evidence of Biden’s apparent cognitive decline is dubbed “cheap fake” by Administration minions and their cheerleaders in the press and Silicon Valley seats of power.
Journalists who once prided themselves on speaking truth to power now seem more interested in seeking power through propaganda. But that isn’t journalism at all; it’s public relations.
The very media that scrutinized and critiqued every syllable uttered by the previous president now plays the role of protector and defender of some political orthodoxy. It’s as if the watchdogs of democracy have been transformed into lapdogs of the elite.
Orwellian Echoes: Reject Reality
The parallels between Brezhnev’s Soviet Union and the current state of the U.S. media are hard to ignore. The U.S. public is constantly being told to ignore what they see and hear, and trust interpretations and narratives crafted by those in charge.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” — GEORGE ORWELL, 1984
In the end, this erosion of journalistic integrity doesn’t just harm the media’s credibility; it undermines the democratic process itself. When the truth becomes a casualty of political allegiance, the public loses its only real tool for holding leaders accountable.
