{"id":42137,"date":"2025-01-25T07:10:52","date_gmt":"2025-01-25T03:10:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/?p=42137"},"modified":"2025-02-03T16:07:49","modified_gmt":"2025-02-03T12:07:49","slug":"making-the-breaking-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/making-the-breaking-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Making The Breaking News"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Anil Madan<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it comes to the past, everyone writes fiction.\u201d \u00a0— \u00a0Stephen King, Joyland. <\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Stephen King was perhaps even more on to something than he realized. Take the expression \u201cHistory is written by the victors.\u201d This is frequently attributed to Winston Churchill, but a search reveals an article in Slate <\/em>claiming that there is no recorded instance of his having ever uttered the aphorism although he did say that some things were best left to history and that he proposed to write it. The Slate <\/em>article goes on to explain that in the movie ‘The Report’ there is an argument about whether the phrase originated with G\u00f6ering, the Nazi general, who at the Nuremberg trials said in essence: \u201cThe victor will always be the judge; the vanquished, the accused.\u201d So, whence does the saying originate? The Slate<\/em> article mentions a French source, without identifying it, from 1842 as the earliest: (\u201c[L]\u2019histoire est juste peut-\u00eatre, mais qu\u2019on ne l\u2019oublie pas, elle a \u00e9t\u00e9 \u00e9crite par les vainqueurs\u201d<\/em> or \u00a0\u201c[T]he history is right perhaps, but let us not forget, it was written by the victors\u201d).<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span>Billionaire tech bros. Pic – The Guardian<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

As Trump’s inauguration rolled around, CNN\u2019s Chief Executive Officer Mark Thompson is said to have told reporters and anchors to \u201cshow deference\u201d to the President and not advert to his varied past transgressions. According to Oliver Darcy, the author of the article, Thompson told CNN\u2019s anchors that they should not prejudge Trump and that he did not want CNN\u2019s \u201ccoverage to relitigate the past.\u201d The stink of this conscious burying of the past adds to the lingering redolent aroma of X\u2019s and now Meta\u2019s announcements that they will abjure fact checking.<\/span><\/p>\n

Is this a conscious decision to allow unchecked falsehoods, and what we have come to know as fake news? Trump himself sought to rewrite history when he issued a blanket pardon to some 1,500 January 6 rioters convicted for various transgressions at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, including 169 who had pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers, and commuted the sentences of 14 others. Just eight days before inauguration day, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance said: \u201cIf you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn\u2019t be pardoned.\u201d In response, the Trump MAGAs (the moniker for diehard supporters of Trump who have bought his \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d chants) went after Vance. One Trump supporter convicted for a January 6 crime declared that Trump had sent them to the Capitol and since he got away with it, ALL those convicted should too. There is a certain perverse logic to this.<\/span><\/p>\n

One can, therefore, see that Trump needed to rewrite the history of that day, not to absolve those he sent into the valley of death as in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, but to absolve himself. The irony is that in just commuting the sentences of 14 and letting their convictions stand, he let the truth speak sub silentio<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

There was another inexplicable — unless you accept that a person who has just taken the oath to preserve, protect, and defend the country should engage in pettiness — act by Trump when he (presumably) ordered a portrait of General Milley removed from a wall at the Pentagon. The portraits of all other Chiefs of Staff hang on those walls. But history is written by the victors, and they get to write the footnotes as well.<\/span><\/p>\n

This brings me back full circle to attempts to rewrite current history as did CNN\u2019s Mark Thompson. We have all read stories of how the Russians, Iranians, Chinese, and indeed Americans, have tried to influence elections in the US. And we have read about the persecution of Russian citizens who dare to call Putin\u2019s Special Military Operation what it is: a war. And we have seen the prosecutions against those championing free speech whether in China, Iran, Turkey, Belarus, and too many places to count.<\/span><\/p>\n

CNN\u2019s Tucker Carlson was notorious for showing selected video clips of the January 6 insurrection to convey the false impression that it was not an insurrection at all, but a peaceful protest and went as far as to claim:\u00a0 “These were not insurrectionists, they were sightseers.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Before the election, Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post<\/em> killed an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris. And Los Angeles Times<\/em> owner Dr \u00a0Patrick Soon-Shiong said that his decision not to offer readers a recommendation — to vote for Harris — would be less divisive in a tumultuous election year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Perhaps these endorsements wouldn\u2019t have made a difference anyway. Perhaps Bezos and Soon-Shiong were simply prescient and knew that Kamala Harris had no chance. Perhaps it was a good bet to risk her wrath if she won rather than face his vindictiveness when he did.<\/span><\/p>\n

Today, we are faced with several billionaires, many of whom control major publications and online platforms that channel and spread the information on which we make our decisions about our leaders and how to maintain a civil society and civil discourse. We have been divided to the point that civility is considered a weakness. Sadly, we don\u2019t see the lack of civility and dignity in our leaders as a weakness, but rather as qualities to be admired.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two of those billionaires, Zuckerberg and Musk, have eschewed fact-checking.<\/p>\n

The example of TikTok is another case in point. In an interview on the CBS weekly program 60 Minutes, Tristan Harris, a former Google employee who advocates for social media ethics noted that the Chinese version of the TikTok app offers users, particularly children, an entirely different experience from the one that the US version offers. He suggests that the Chinese seem to know that technology can and does influence the development of children. He likened the Chinese version to a \u201cspinach\u201d version and the US version to an \u201copium\u201d version. In China, the kids are shown science experiments that they can do at home, and visits to museum exhibits and educational videos. And Chinese children are limited to 40 minutes per day on the app.<\/p>\n

American children are shown the sewage that permeates the Internet.<\/p>\n

A survey of children using TikTok revealed that the most aspirational career choice of American kids is social media influencer, for Chinese kids, astronaut.<\/p>\n

Perhaps, once one is a billionaire, there is no point in caring about the nation that let you build that wealth. But we do need a moon shot from our billionaires, and I don\u2019t mean just the launching of rockets by Musk and Bezos.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Cheerz\u2026
\nBwana<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 24 January 2025<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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