Dear editor: The cumulative effect of accounts headlined by various news media during the first week of August left me feeling exhausted.
Although the purpose of the news is to inform and educate, seemingly news media identifies topics of dubious content with the primary goal of arousing us emotionally.
An August 3 headline referenced repetitive claims made over several years by Alex Jones on his website and broadcast “Infowars” that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a government hoax created with the underlying intention of taking away Americans’ guns.
The parents of one of the twenty 6- and 7-year-old victims had asked the jury to award $150 million in compensation for defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress due to harassment and death threats made by followers of Jones. Now, with his company having filed bankruptcy midway through the damages trial, Jones testified to acknowledging the event as being “100% real” after meeting with the parents. The jury awarded over $45 million in punitive damages to those parents in response to Jones’ false claims.
A competing headline also from August 3 stated “10 Career Criminals Arrested Nearly 500 Times Since NY Bail Reform Began”. According to statistics compiled by the New York Police Department and reported by the NY Post, the purpose of bail reform enacted on January 1, 2020, was to reduce the number of people held in jail while awaiting trial because of an inability to pay the bail. With more crimes having become bail-eligible and judges having more discretion to release criminals on their own recognizance, persons arrested for perpetrating assault, robbery, or gun possession find themselves back on the streets within hours after their arrest. The most notable career criminal identified by the NYPD has been arrested 101 times with 88 since bail reform was enacted. With a skyrocketing recidivism rate, NYC Mayor Eric Adams was quoted as saying “Our criminal justice system is insane.”
On August 7, another pair of headlines competed for our attention. With VP Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote, the Senate passed the Inflation Reduction Act, a budget reconciliation bill that will attempt to tackle climate change by growing renewable energy infrastructure, reducing the high costs of prescription drugs, and lowering the deficit through taxes on corporations. We’re told by Democrats that the bill will halt inflation while Republicans argue the new spending will exacerbate inflation.
As the Senate was not resting that Sunday, it also approved nearly $80 billion to further fund the Internal Revenue Service with $45 billion allocated to “enforcement”.
As the Treasury Department is hiring approximately 87,000 new and replacement personnel, the IRS Commissioner stated those resources will not increase “audit scrutiny on small businesses or middle-income Americans”. Opponents of the measure believe IRS enforcement will indeed affect everyday citizens.
These and other storylines lend to my recollection of Tim Burton’s 1989 movie Batman where, at the end of the parade scene, the character Jack Napier turned into the Joker and asked the citizens of Gotham, “Who do you trust?”
Seemingly the news media identifies crises to dramatize news while the government presents the appearance of responding to crises. Often the crises appear to be joint fabrications. The press often reports on the propaganda of competing interests while sacrificing the substance of the issue in the conflict. Too often the result is the public being misled and manipulated, and I resent that.
Peter Wibell Rutledge