Moral spine

A news­pa­per colum­nist writes about the way cheaper prices at Wal-Mart result in fewer bene­fits for Wal-Mart staff. Wal-Mart calls the paper’s editor and says Wal-Mart will no longer carry that paper in the store… but if the editor fires the colum­nist, well, we can talk about it. Thank­fully, the editor tells Wal-Mart to go stuff them­selves, but this is the kind of power that cor­por­a­tions have to supress neg­at­ive stor­ies about the neo-con­ser­vat­ive global eco­nomic model. With­draw the dis­tri­bu­tion chan­nel. With­draw the advert­ising fund­ing. And while this editor has spine, the little self-editor in journ­al­ists takes note, every time and writes a little bit less harshly in case it’s their story that causes the furore. Gov­ern­ments are open tar­gets: outing the latest polit­ical scan­dal is fine, because, at least in Amer­ica, free­dom of speech is pro­tec­ted… just don’t say nasty things about cap­it­al­ism. [Full Story]

It ties into some­thing else too: Avi Lewis said yes­ter­day he’d heard Sey­mour Hersh speak recently in New York. And Hersh said, “You know, when I broke the My Lai story, it was the turn­ing point of the war. Sud­denly, people were out­raged. Sud­denly, the protest move­ment was mobil­ised and they star­ted demand­ing the troops be brought home. When I broke Abu Ghraib, abso­lutely noth­ing happened. No one *did* anything.”

So we have a sad indict­ment of media here. Ser­i­ous polit­ical scan­dal that should pro­voke reac­tion no longer has a gal­van­ising effect on action – why? because every­one is too cyn­ical? because they don’t care any­more? they feel help­less? – and mild polit­ical cri­ti­cism of the social reper­cus­sions of cor­por­ate policy pro­vokes sanc­tions against the media outlet.

Mean­while in Eng­land, cops are shoot­ing inno­cent men because they live in the same block as a sus­pect, are swarthy with intent and fail to lie down and cower quickly enough. Oh, and the media report that with little sur­prise and a lot of weasel justifications.

Which leads back to my eternal ques­tion right now: what is the best way for me per­son­ally to con­trib­ute to a fun­da­mental shift in the world? I have no answers yet, but I’m work­ing on it.