Idiocracy: Why the Media Is Not Protecting the People
If you have not seen the movie Idiocracy, you should. The dumbing down of the masses is a problem in this country and it's the only real way to keep Americans etherized. We all know who benefits from that -- monarchs and dictators. But why isn't the press helping to wake us up? Here's a story that might help you understand.
I was in my kitchen listening to the radio when the headline made me drop both my mouth and the pre-packaged meal in my hand: "The World Health Organization said today there is concern that a new form of drug resistant tuberculosis is spreading across the country and the world."
As a journalist who worked for a large media corporation, I had tried to warn people of this possibility for the previous two years. I knew TB positive and TB infected elephants were one reason there was a drug resistant strain of TB. I also knew why the story was kept a secret, and the reporter (me) had been silenced. The corporation potentially spreading the tuberculosis is considered "an American Institution." That corporation, Feld Inc., owns Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus and at least 25 other corporations, including part ownership of Disney on Ice.
As far back as 1993, an endangered Asian elephant owned by Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus was diagnosed with tuberculosis, the same kind of tuberculosis humans contract. Since tuberculosis is unheard of in the wild, humans had to give the Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M-TB) to the elephant. Five years later, Ringling's own documents indicate the herd was devastated by M-tuberculosis. All had been exposed, so all had to be treated. Ringling did not act swiftly according to USDA documents. I know of at least 30 of these exotic creatures who were diagnosed with tuberculosis after their deaths -- even after years of treatment. Here stands the elephant in the room. It's impossible to tell if Asian elephants have TB until they die and the necropsy is done. There is no definitive test and of course X-raying the lungs is not possible. These are animals weighing up to ten thousand pounds!
All the evidence indicates that for the last 14 years TB positive and TB infected elephants have been traveling the country and performing in closed arenas full of little kids holding cotton candy and squealing with delight. People with compromised immune systems and the elderly are circus patrons. It's a family tradition in some homes to go to the circus when it's in town.
For epidemiologists, here's the most frightening fact, and the reason I nearly dropped my pre-packaged meal that night. Many of the elephants became drug resistant. Resistant to the same drugs humans take to try and cure tuberculosis. The World Health Organization and other partners launched are spending billions to tackle drug-resistant TB.
I called the CDC to inform them of this. I never got a call back, but on one occasion I did manage to talk to a researcher there who told me that the CDC had never considered a connection between circus attendance and people who contract TB.
I know of five Ringling Bros. elephant trainers who have tested positive for TB, and the head of the Health Department in Los Angeles County Dr. Patrick Ryan says "any elephant ever tested positive for TB should never, ever be around crowds."
So, I called every "agenda setting" media in this country and told them. They were amazed. They could not believe I had the documents to back this story up. So I showed them. The media -- charged with protecting the public -- ultimately refused to publish this public health story that could potentially save lives.
Ringling Brothers is owned by Kenneth Feld, who by all accounts is a nefarious guy. For example, when one reporter tried to tell his family's story, he hired the former head of covert operations for the CIA to stop her, and he did. After nine years of legal wrangling, her case has still not come to trial. (See "The Greatest Vendetta on Earth" by Jeff Stein, Salon.com, 2001)
Americans wonder why these stories aren't told. In my case, Feld's attorneys flew in, made threats and my story was killed. The story about tuberculosis in his elephants is potentially devastating to his multi-million dollar profit making enterprise. That commercial money paves the way for silence. Kenneth Feld spends millions of dollars to hide a public health story that the press has a responsibility to tell. So, if you wonder why your local news is no good anymore, this is why. Enough money appears to be able to stop any story, even one regarding public health. I still laugh when people refer to the Liberal press!
I was threatened; my corporation was threatened and I was referred to in court documents by Ringling attorneys as incompetent. He and his attorneys try to ruin the careers of reporters who attempt to speak truth to power and do their jobs.
When no one is looking, bad things happen. In the end, Truthout.org published the story. Bravo for them. They don't take corporate money, so they can actually report the news.
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COOOOOOOOO
I must apologize profusely for equating you to the wing nuts, you’re not a wing nut.
I gotta tell you though, I laughed so hard at your response.
You are certainly passionate about your subject. (I guess I should have called you passionate instead of breathless, or how about, “you were a bit too melodramatic”? No, I guess these would scream of sexism also… to some anyway.) My point is that passion, or breathlessness, or melodrama doesn’t elevate the relevance of a story.
You’re long on the dramatic telling, albeit with proof, of the evils done by B&B and Feld, but short on any evidence whatsoever that B&B Circus elephants are responsible for the spreading of TB throughout the US.
Quite simply, you have not shown a scintilla of evidence that there’s a cause and effect between Barnum and Bailey elephants and the spread of TB in this country. Zip. Zero. Zilch. You’ve made the beginnings of a case that should be investigated, but that’s all.
Without that proof, how is your story more important than the countless other scandals that aren’t being covered by the MSM? Therefore, the fact that your story isn’t picked-up by the national MSM lends no credence to the argument that the “Media Is Not Protecting the People”.
That’s alls um sayin.
Note: A word about you’re “sexist” allegation. Any time someone voices an opinion different than the Republicans, they are attacked as unpatriotic. The fact that you’re a woman did not inform my opinion of your screed as breathless and goofy.
Actually, if we had to categorize the adjectives, goofy and breathless, I think “goofy” is much more of a masculine term. After all, isn’t that Disney character a male dog?
And, I may clinch that sexist label here, but I kind of assume those breathless, goofy, idiotic, pseudo patriotic, wing-nut emails I receive are invariably written by men. White men. Very conservative, white men. (That guy Michelle Malkin, excepted)
Keep up the good fight!
My complete admiration for a journalist who has the guts to stand up and say "the emperor has no clothes."
The Feld Corporation is apparently in cahoots with Rick Berman and CCF.
As I remember, CCF (an anti-consumer lobbyist for big business that includes corporations that abuse animals, among other things) solicited people like dog breeders to get prizes by submitting posters promoting Ringling propaganda and by posting Ringling propagana links on boards and forums.
(You would not believe how many of these groups work together to promote their profiteering!)
CCF has spent big bucks taking out ads in major newspapers like the New York Times to spew fatuous propaganda.
Is this one reason why the media looks the other way when Feld/Ringling is involved in a situation like this disease issue? Those much-needed ad dollars providing protection.
But even more important, is the CDC the lapdog of Ringling and CCF in this tuberculosis issue?
How far does this go?
Thanks Leslie for trying to expose Feld and Ringling Brothers.
Ringling Brothers has also gone to great lengths to silence animal protection advocates concerned about the way the elephants, lions and other animals are abused during training and travel.
Their practices harm both people and the animals in their care. It's appalling enough that asian elephants are kept in captivity at all, and especially horrific that they are treated as cruelly as they are. A few years ago, a Ringling lion died of heat exhaustion while he was being transported on a train in the desert. They've been fined a few times by the USDA, but not nearly enough to deter them from abusing animals again. Next time Ringling comes to your town, find a more humane (and TB-free!!) way to entertain your children.
Corporate influence/pressure in the newsroom isn't new. I felt it occasionally as a newspaper reporter in LA and the Bay Area 20 years ago. But it seems to have gotten much worse. Thanks, Leslie, for bringing the issue to light and showing how corporate influence destroys real journalism.
How sad that the author of this revealing piece, a revered broadcast journalist with more than twenty years under her belt, had to quit her job to get this crucial story told.
If you grew up in America, you likely went to see a circus at some point in your adolescence. I remember being six years old sitting amongst moms, dads and their mesmerized and giddy kids. I thought I was the luckiest kid in the world when a circus employee picked me and a dozen or so other kids to go up on stage and pull a cord that released a bucket of green slime on the resident clown. Turns out I, and anyone else who came into the range of transmission of TB-carrying elephants, wasn’t so lucky.
This piece by Griffith deserves national attention. Wouldn’t you want to know if a friend or family member was exposed to a potentially fatal disease at a seemingly innocuous venue? Wouldn’t you be livid if you knew that the producers of the venue (Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus, owned by Kenneth Feld, in this case) knew they were putting people in danger, but did it anyway because they were motivated by money and fame?
This problem of disease and inaction by the very people who could stop it, if they only cared, has been festering for well over a decade. It’s extremely disheartening, if not totally unexpected, that a major player in the number six media market in the country was scared enough by some men in suits to refuse to air this story. And it’s mind-boggling that they were scared enough to lose the anchor of their esteemed nightly newscast.
Bravo to this site and others not controlled or financed by conservative white men for having the guts to give people such as Griffith, a scrupulous and excellent journalist, a platform on which they can tell it like it as.
Lead in kids’ toys produced in China is front-page news. Why not this??
I saw a great documentary on our Public Access channel about George Seldes. He ran into similar circumstances, events covered up in the name of the rich and powerful. Seems our press has never been noble.
Leslie is a true journalist who is greatly respected by other meida professionals. I am shocked that more is not being done to protect the public and these elephants. Thank you for keeping the public informed.
Always good to know Ringling bros. employees are reading my work. What you did not read was the original article in Truthout.o
I wrote this in hopes of someday getting the government agencies - who are responsible for protecting the public and the endangered Asian elephants - to do their jobs. At the very least the CDC needs to ask people who are diagnosed with t.b. whether they've been to the circus lately. One other breathless note--Asian elephants are extremely suseptable to t.b. All Asian elephants in any circus have this same problem. Sorry I'm out of breath and tired of trying to convince people who have other agendas to listen. By the way, your comments are not only wrong, they are sexist. No mans writing would be called "goofy and breathless
I have a big problem with this story. The style Griffith uses to write this is the same I see from conspiracy theorists and the wing nut emails I get. You can tell by the way they're breathlessly written that they’re rather goofy, and her style of writing smacks of the same.
I googled “drug resistant tuberculosis is spreading across the country and the world.", and did not find anything unusual. There were plenty of references to various drug resistant TB strains spreading around the world - it seems that they’re fairly common.
She writes of the evidence that she has shown to various news organizations about which they refused to report, but this proves little in support of her premise.
Consider that millions have died recently from TB. The World Health Organization says, “In 2003, nearly 9 million people had active TB and more than 1.7 million died as a result”. These 9 million people sure as heck weren’t infected by Barnum and Bailey elephants!
I agree that Griffiths story is relevant, since the fact that Barnum and Bailey could be exposing Americans to TB is an outrage. But, it simply isn’t the blockbuster she purports, nor is it evidence of the MSM’s failure to report important news.
The MSM would sell their souls to publish her story, one definitively showing cause and effect of circus elephants infecting humans, or one proving they were responsible for an insidious strain of drug resistant TB, if true.
There are countless examples of the MSM failures. However, I have to conclude that Griffiths premise that “The Media Is Not Protecting the People”, at least in this one case, is a load of elephant dung!
How"goofy" to comment without actually reading the article. This is all public record, just because you can't find it does not mean it does not exist.
I would try harder to educate you, but I'm just too breathless. Play nice.
I just read your Truthout piece. This is very sad and criminal, but completely unsurprising to me. It wasn't too long ago that I couldn't imagine myself ever saying something like that; I've become a complete cynic about our "Free" -wink, wink, nudge, nudge- Press.
Good luck with your book; you just sold me a copy.
Really great article.
Leslie, thanks for bringing this horrifying story out in the light of day. It is becoming more and more unbelievable how blatantly the media has disregarded their role as guardians of the public good over the past 20 years. It has been especially acute after the onset of the Bush regime and the supposed War on Terror. I hope you'll keep telling it like it really is - these kinds of stories will never be seen in the MSM.
Leslie, thank you for speaking out about your experience with censorship. You have an important voice and I hope you continue to post on HuffPo.
Actually, the "dumbing down of America" is precisely one of the goals of many of our Founding Fathers, particularly those from the former Virginia Colony. Those leading lights were unalterably hostile to public education, fearing the education of the lower classes would challenge their hegemony. We see the same sentiment in today's so-called "conservative" movement.
It's as American as apple pie.
This is shocking, a public-health crisis. Why won't the CDC do something? Is all of our public health infrastructure so politicized now that citizens can't be warned about this?
With Bush in charge, everything is politicized.
I read your post and was somewhat dismayed, not at the news but that anyone would be shocked by it.
This is the same media that will gladly report on Britney Spears or Paris Hilton? The same media that watches as American civil liberties get trampled, but suddenly cares when it involves a reporter going to jail? The same media that will take time to report about itself, over virtually any other topic? The same media that is owned and operated by the richest 5% of the country? Ha!!!!
An even funnier thing would be to expect something different. For the most part, the media doesn't want you to know because you'll find out how irrelevant they are to every day life, then they all might have to go out and get real jobs.
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