Thomas Friedman has a column in the New York Times today which every American, and especially everyone who thinks of himself as a journalist, should read. It uncovers, with help from Anderson Cooper on CNN, how a rumor was started that President Obama’s trip to India would cost 200,000,000. dollars per day. It was all fake. Nonetheless, it was repeated by Limbaugh, Beck and many others, with no corrections after the fact being issued. Here is Friedman’s point, which I have made repeatedly here on the TerryReport:

When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, we have a problem. It becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues as deficit reduction, health care, taxes, energy/climate let alone act on them.

This is really something new in American journalism, politics and public discourse. We have always had rumors, we’ve always had large segments of the population who will believe almost anything about someone they don’t like. What is different now is that these rumors are repeated on major outlets before millions of people without any fact checking or even modest follow up. And, if it turns out to be dead wrong, so what? Beck’s program is a “fusion of entertainment and enlightenment”. Take your pick as to which part you hear tonight.

The event that promoted Cooper to look into the 200,000,000 dollar rumor was Congresswoman Michele Bachman coming on his show and, when asked where she would cut the federal budget, spilled out the rumor/lie about the Obama trip. She had details, too. How many people were going, how many rooms were being booked. She sounded like she knew what she was talking about when, in fact, she was acting as a brain dead mouthpiece for lies.

I have said for years that the Republicans would like to push the country into a position like the middle-east, where there are no facts, only rumors and wild conspiracy theories (some of which turn out to be true). We are being continually shoved in that direction and it threatens the survival of our democracy. Nothing less. If we can’t speak to each other, if we have no common set of facts with which to deal, it’s over or will be before long.

The immediate past election cycle is an outstanding example of the triumph of propaganda over everything. It started, in 2008 and 2009, with the rumor that Obama was not born in this country and was a member of the Muslim faith. This undermined him in the eyes of millions of people, who could not look at him therafter without seeing these false truths. These lies helped to set up the lies that followed.

Lest you assume that I am suggesting that the Republican victories were all based on lies, you would be wrong. We will never know how many seats in Congress the Republicans might have won without the negative propaganda campaign against Obama and the Democrats. Who knows, maybe they would have won more? What I am saying is that widely broadcast lies can never make a firm foundation for public discussion and debate. As a technique for destroying a president, it seems to be working. For anything else, and the rest of us, it is a disaster in the making of the first order.

Doug Terry, 11.17.10

The website PolitiFact ran a detail refutation of the 200 million dollar per day figure one day before Anderson Cooper did his debunking on CNN There are inaccuracies in that story, too, but it is much better than just making a bald, unsupported claim.

THE

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By the way, all of the public should be aware that the news media pay for their own transport  (at first class rates), hotels, food and other expenses. The White House press operation supports the news media with briefings and, on occasion, hires a local bus to take reporters to a news site. Those charges, too, are generally factored in to what reporters, producers and camera people pay. Covering the president during travel is very expensive and many news organizations, especially newspapers, have cut way back.

A big foreign trip to a place such as India brings all of the American commercial  networks, the cable news outlets, the remaining major newspapers and a lot of foreign based media which join in the party. Customarily, there are at least two chartered aircraft for the news media, with technicians and other production personnel often arriving days ahead of the rest.