MEJB MUSINGS: Speaking the Truth


Jim Andersen

Jim Andersen
Saltspring Island BC
Canada
Email: sevenunion77@shaw.ca

A "Talking Soul" Speaking the Truth

"More powerful than any bomb, more powerful than any missile is the media…The responsibility of a journalist is to give a voice to those forgotten, forsaken, beaten down by the powerful."
Amy Goodman

Here in Canada it is a story we have had a ringside seat to watch, but it is something that is also happening in our nation. A small handful of rich and powerful have seized the opportunity to capture dominant control of the media in the United States. And with that seizure and control the face of information, and what is said, heard, read and seen over the airwaves has undergone a radical change. Free and un-biased media reporting and an ageless tradition of investigative journalism, dissent, dialogue and truth-seeking has disintegrated into a world of sensationalism, "talking heads", embedded journalism and a "veil of distortion, lies and misrepresentation and half truths that obscure reality." An entire culture is careening into the agony of fear, corruption, deception, subjugation and draconian inhumanity. There are vast numbers of people who have disappeared from media attention. Those disenfranchised, marginalized, deep in economic suffering, hunger and poverty. Desperate and forgotten, unreported and unheard. No health care. Foreclosed. Bankrupt. Lost in the silence.

It is those vulnerable, downtrodden and helpless people that long ago Amy Goodman undertook a lifelong obligation to free from the tyranny of injustice and to tell their story to the world. As a child, forged in a bastion of love and freedom, urged to eloquent expression, the championing of ideas and inspired and fearless discourse she, her family and her beloved brother David, (World famous in Bayshore, New York as a youth for his "Dave's Press" and later as a respected journalist for Mother Jones), gathered around that immortal kitchen table to discuss the world. And in that irrepressible and incomparable childhood cocoon her future as an independent journalist was set. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Tuning in to Democracy Now!, you get what has disappeared from our media today, and perhaps what has never really been seen with so much clarity before. You get the raging dynamic discourse and the ribald controversy of dissent, the cogent idea and comment, the unvarnished truth and always the stark and irreverent snapshot of human pain and suffering, torture and tyranny…but never without a glimpse into the valiant human spirit and soul within us all.
Amy Goodman is a warrior, and she exists in the ruthless world of sound bites, doublespeak, heartless deception, and macabre dehumanization. She has an ocean of "survivor blood" inside her. Somehow she manages to counter intimidation, subterfuge, and calculated deceit with an uncanny ability to strike to the heart of the matter with somber and didactic truth and always with exquisite and legendary eloquence. Branded by the indomitable decency, compassion and courage of her parents, she has been bathed and nurtured with a deep faith and respect in her fellow human beings. She and brother, David, truly believe in and have chronicled common people, librarians, psychologists and simple working folk, who when confronted in those "magic moments" have "stood up" to injustice, tyranny and brutal oppression. And in that simple act of common courage have defined the course of history.

At the center of all those who believe, like Amy Goodman that an independent free media and access to the truth will change our world, there is another deeper faith. Believing that if people in this world could see the faces, hear the voices, see the true image of suffering, torture, sorrow and the mangled, shattered victims of war… that we will as one say "War is not the answer to conflict in the 21st century", is actually deep down a belief in something much more. It is a faith in us. A solemn faith that no matter how much human beings have been desensitized, dumbed down, victimized and dehumanized in this savage world that inside us still beats the heart of our civilization… the heartbeat of truth inside us. The heartbeat to truly care for each other, and to believe in ourselves again. Something to stand up for. And make history. Hand in hand, together.

© 2011 by Jim Anderson
Jim Anderson is a writer living on Saltspring. He is working on publishing his two major works: "Saltspring Soliloquies", a collection of essays and photos in collaboration with Sandy Poystila, and a manuscript entitled "The Primal Perspective: Metamorphosis of the Human Mind."