Column By John Young
If you take this as a media critique, you’re missing the story.
This is a citizenship critique.
Not the citizenship that comes with a Social Security card. Let’s discuss the kind of citizenship that demands devotion beyond a flash of attention – say, every four years — with a rudimentary trip to the polls.
That’s called inattention.
The kind of inattention, for instance, that brought on orange-face value the claim that tariffs don’t cost consumers.
The kind of inattention that let a presidential candidate get away with a laughable claim that he was so rich he’d pay for his own campaign.
The kind that would let him spout nonsense like, “I alone can fix it,” and not get laughed out of a debate stage. And don’t forget the hyper-racist lie, “They’re eating the pets.”
Again, no media critique here. However, it was news coverage, or news placement, that got me thinking of a new term we need, which is “mis-citizenship.”
I thought of it the other morning when I happened to see what CNN.com, among other online outlets, had as its top story:
“NBA stars arrested in massive mafia-linked gambling probe.”
Sounded massive, except that a bare handful of NBA stars were arrested along with a bunch of nobodies.
You’d think it bigger than massive, though, to see what it bumped off the top of CNN’s home page:
“U.S. strikes two boats in Pacific, expanding attacks on alleged cartels.”
(Coverage, to the credit of the news media, continues to emphasize the “alleged” part of that. Too little is focused, though, on the heinousness of delivering death by hunch.)
Also demoted from “our top story”: the president’s pardoning of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, a man with the keys to the crypto kingdom by which our leader has raked in billions. It’s what you’d call a grievous coin-flict of interest, as if these things matter to the coin man in the White House.
So much else below the fold:
Ah, there’s the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, something we assumed to be community property until occupied by a man who never saw a norm he couldn’t smash.
Don’t worry. Supposedly, it’s paid for by big-bucks favor-seekers. That claim is supposed to soothe us.
I hope you, as a citizen, enjoy using the ballroom.
More really big news got bumped down the line by jocks who cheat, like the fate of the Affordable Care Act — specifically, subsidies that actually make it affordable. It’s the whole reason Democrats are refusing to play along with brutal budget games while our president builds ballrooms.
If you were to rely on the local TV news, I see, you’d assume this whole shutdown is just about the crossing of “t’s” and jockeying over semicolons.
In an age of misinformation, we also have “missed information.” Too many Americans are missing a lot.
It’s worth pointing out that good info is there for anyone who gets his or her nose out of TikTok. You just have to look below the fold.
Some of that information is truly staggering.
Take the New York Times report of the $2 billion deal with a United Arab Emirates official in exchange for AI-capable microchips, which, we were to assume, had “national security” written all over them.
The $2 billion went to the crypto company that the president helped make “tremendous” by virtue of being president and ever holding his hand out to benefactors buying influence.
The guy who, along with the president’s help, founded that crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, is Steve Witkoff. He just happens to be the U.S. emissary to the Middle East. Nice job if you can buy it.
Witkoff’s son Zach is World Liberty Financial CEO. I bet he worked his way up from the bottom.
Yes, that all seems like illegal stuff that used to end political careers – but, hey, what about those betting ballers? We sure hope they face the blunt end of the law.
You see, lots of more important stuff than that is out there for you to know if you care, dear citizen.
This ends our media critique.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email him at jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
