Lions for Lambs -- America in Need of Reporters

Lions for Lambs and a velvet censorship exposed

The movie Lions for Lambs damn near brought on the Post-Traumatic- stress that is someday inevitable for most reporters. Our eyes have to comprehend images that can never be erased and any sane person would never commit to a job that includes witnessing targets of tragedy and hate on a daily basis

We learn to cultivate ice in our veins until the PTS rolls in like fog. But Lions for Lambs doesn't drift, it jolts. As jolting as sticking a tongue into a light socket. My hair felt as if it was on fire, and the heartburn in my stomach moved into my throat. My daughter sitting next to me kept asking, "Mom is this the way it was, is this the way it is?" I bowed my head, felt the ice in my veins melt and began weeping.

Finally someone understood and put on record "America's velvet censorship."

Tear ducts aren't anatomy parts used much by reporters. Crying is debilitating, inconvenient and unprofessional. If one is unlucky enough to be an anchor as well as a reporter, it makes the eyes and nose red, and viewers are ruthless with rumors. "Could she be stoned, perhaps she's an alcoholic?" Cruelty is an epidemic in America today. You've read the tabloids, its ugly out in the open. Everyone's taking a shot.

Now that Lions for Lambs is on HBO, enough time has passed, and I believe I can write about it while avoiding too much sappy sentiment.

I don't always wait for credits after a movie, but when Lions for Lambs ended, sitting in a deserted theater in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, I could not leave the chair. I was dumbfounded. Considering all that I had witnessed in the last seven years since 9/11, I sat with my mouth open in a catatonic cantaloupe stupor. I could not move from the chair if I had wanted to. I needed to honor Robert Redford, and I needed to see who wrote it. I had to commit the name to memory. "Fire!" my daughter said playfully trying to get me to move. I would not budge.

Lions for Lambs was written by Matthew Cornahan and produced and directed by Robert Redford who reaches into the depths of human nature and knows how to pan the fool's gold from the nuggets that are real. He is a keen observer of human nature, and he was brave to do this film. The Bush administration is vindictive. The older Redford gets, the deeper he is drawn into the heart of any matter. And this film matters.

When I got home, after a menopausal outburst in the shower(as not to frighten the kids,) I pulled it together and Googled Matthew Cornahan. I could not find out much about his personal background. Was he a politician? Was he a reporter? Was he a college Professor? Could he have been a soldier? How did Cornahan and Redford understand every nuance of what a velvet censorship is like? Had Carnahan lived under a dictatorship?

Meryl Streep played the part of the seasoned reporter who wakes up to find she has to chose between stenography and propaganda, and writing what she knows from her experience to be true. I will not tell give the ending away, but the reporter Streep plays has a choice to make. Does she do what she is trained to do, or does she regurgitate a press release and let the manipulators put more lives at risk?

Matthew Cornahan and Robert Redford 's knowledge of the events following the invasion of Iraq is nothing less than brilliant. "The Velvet Censorship" was a complicated erosion of values and the turning points are right there on screen to witness.

Now that the film is out on HBO, I took a deep breath and decided to watch it again.

As I did, I thought of the journalists who recognized the censorship and refused to play a role in it. I thought about the corporations running newsrooms today and how they censor by encouraging infotainment. I thought about today's reporters who don't know their history and are incapable of helping viewers put things in perspective. I thought about the corporations who now own once great newsrooms -- corporations who curry favor with the White House to keep gobbling up more Television and Radio stations. I thought about the courage it took to speak up knowing it could cost careers.

Fear is a powerful sedative, but there are many town criers (reporters) who refused to report only what the White House told them to. This is for them. They are American heroes.

Helen Thomas: Who would have thought after all those soft ball questions all those years lobbed at every President since John f. Kennedy, she would turn out to be a pit-bull? I am ashamed I did not see it before. I want to thank her for insisting the President tell the American people what he was up to. She never did get many answers, and she certainly fell from grace at the White House, but she showed more gumption than anyone else in the White House Briefing" room. "Mr. President what is the mission?" "Mr. President how did Afghanistan turn into Iraq?" " Mr. President the military still hasn't captured Bin Laden." On she went with countless questions which turned the President's face crimson.

I will forever call her Mt. St. Helen now.

Dan Rather: The last of the big boys. He is one tough Texas SOB. CBS and Viacom needed to win favor with the White House and Rather, who breathed life into CBS for years, and earned -- EARNED -- America's trust was thrown out like yesterday's garbage. He is now suing CBS. Rather refused to join the George W. Bush PomPom Brigade, he lost his job and now says he cannot get another one. We are talking about Dan Rather here folks. Then came the accusations against him. I cannot wait to hear his version of how CBS sabotaged his career after he criticized George Bush. I hope he has the fortitude to keep plugging. The world needs to understand what CBS did to him and how the "Tiffany" network is forever tarnished. Dan Rather is an American hero.

Paul Steiger was managing editor of The Wall Street Journal until Rupert Murdoch bought the paper. Steiger has formed an independent- non-profit- news organization called Propublica with some of the best reporters in the country on board. Steiger plans to deliver news to Americans without fear of retribution from commercial interests. He is a journalist in the true sense of the word. He is a stellar example of a man who still believes in the "Fourth Estate." Without it, citizens are uninformed and there is no democracy. Steiger is a patriot.

I thought of mark ash, the director of Truthout.Org. His on- line news service has been subjected to every shenanigan imaginable. His paper has been re-directed to subscriber's spam boxes with alarming consistency and his fortitude fighting to deliver alternative views to the American people is makes him a present day revolutionary. When this "velvet censorship" is over Mark Ash should be honored.

I also thought about the dozens of journalists from all over the country who have written me with stories such as this one: "There's a military base right across the street from our television station where soldier's bodies are brought home. We were told never to point our cameras in that direction or ask questions about what's going on there."

Lions for Lambs is for those journalists -- not who tried to stop the war -- but who tried and continue to try to get truth about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the public. There are many, many others. Perhaps you can make your own list. The names of those -- many black listed today -- who refused to become stenographers or spread propaganda -- no matter how much we all want the lies to be true.

Seven years after 9/11, and a little more than two weeks before Memorial Day not much has changed. The mission in Iraq is still unclear. With few embedded journalists there, there is no way to know for sure who is telling the truth. PBS' Frontline recently did a story featuring one platoon who video-taped themselves doing their duty just in case the American people had forgotten them.

See: here

If only journalist would be allowed to do their jobs again, Hollywood, soldiers and others would not have to.

There are many journalists who have refused to cheer for the administration and read its press releases without checking for facts. But perhaps this film will help American citizens recognize manipulation and think twice before keeping quiet.

lesliegriffith.org

Comments

[latinopride]

It's like trying to convince cult members that their leader is harming them, there is no point. Journalists have been relegated to mere entertainers. Those brave few who have stood up to the establishment did and continue to do so without realizing that the true culprits here are not just the corporate elite or fox news but the American people who pick and choose which "truth" they want to hear, and it's overwhelmingly of the fascist variety. Why haven't there been riots concerning Bush's blunder in Iraq, or our transportation meltdown, or income inequality? It is hard to deny that Americans have been completely indoctrinated and let us not forget that apathy equals consent. Unfortunately the United States can not afford to run itself into the ground a couple more times, voting for a few more Bushes or McCains would unleash consequences for this country and the world may be too much to tolerate. Maybe the Europeans could liberate us, the same way we liberated them from fascism!

[RoseMerry]

We are at war. The first war where more Americans are lost to suicide than combat. It stains all a black spot of evil.

Tears are so appropriate. And anger. Open and shameless, let tears flow and voice scream.

"Lions for Lambs" is the most patriotic film I have seen in recent memory. Not a nationalistic piece of "my country, right or wrong" proproganda but a film of true love for our country and the vision is dares to dream to be, and a hard, hard look on how it has fallen so very short of that vision.

And even if you hate, Tom Cruise (and I meet so many people who do), know that he gives a great and subtle performance as a young Senator who may even believe his own...proproganda. You will love hating him. Me, I believe the man displays an abundance of talent, holding his own with the great talents of Redford and Streep.

Never could I imagine a film that could honor our woman and men in uniform and yet exposed the corruption and evil of our leaders at the same time.

It is a great achievement and a must see for all citizens of the Empire who pray for a return of the Republic. And you are not with me on that, I'm am sorry, you just too damn stupid to understand.

Just thinking about it makes me cry - after only seeing it once at the theater.

I will own this film.

[littlepuffycloud]

Great article...I also love love love Helen Thomas...she continues to show up for the Chimp's press conferences, and once in a while the camera behind His Chimpiness shows the seating chart and reporters' names. Helen's is always marked out with a big red X. She holds up her hand throughout the entire farce, and of course is invisible.

[ckdogs]

When our gov't. allowed the consolidation of media ownership - I thought it was the beginning of the end. I, too, cheer the heroes who fight back against the "man".

[Merlin7]

Leslie is naive. The role of the modern media is to "manage" information, not just disseminate it. Managing information often means withholding it, to keep the public from becoming too restive and demanding real change that would upset the status quo. That's why the TV networks endlessly rehash the same trivia instead of systematically educating people about how the U.S. is really governed and what's really happening in the world. If they did the latter, people would literally be up in arms. The upshot is that acts of journalistic courage are increasingly rare, as the mainstream media cooperate with our corporate and government leaders to give us only enough information to allow us to trudge to the polls and vote in some new corporate puppet.
P.S. Three years from now, regardless of who wins in November, any suggestions of universal health care, complete withdrawal from Iraq or Afghanistan or real campaign finance reform will be greeted with giggles and guffaws in Washington. But a new crop of politicians will be lining up to make the same empty promises all over again.

[knighthowl]

Merlin7, how sad to be you. While I agree with much of your commentary about the media, I cannot agree with your conclusions. If you are correct, how sad to be me.

[Merlin7]

Let's print this out and see who's right in three years. I hope you are.

[Gma11]

Leslie is honest. I'm thankful for naive progressives.

[Karen80]

Who says the role of modern media is to manage or withhold information?
It's often managed or withheld in an effort to not upset and thus lose the advertisers. I'm sure you realize that.
The modern media are not true journalists interested in exposing the truth. Their interests lie elsewhere, such as in the area of extravagent profits.

[Herrington]

As compelling as these last 7.5 years have been, the war was joined so much earlier. At 56, I can remember nothing more constant in politics other than the tension between conservatives and liberals.

Bush's war was a battle lost because the war against the forces that created him was lost, long ago. It was a war between the totalitarian extremes of communism and capitalism. No notice was given to the fact that it was really between freedom and totalitarianism of either socioeconomic persuasion.

Perhaps macro politics is subject to micro ambitions. Fearing the oppression of journalism under communism abreacted to create acceptance of capitalist totalitarianism. This in turn, after having contributed to the discrediting of communism, has created an environment now sensitive to fear of capitalist censorship.

Marx was fundamentally right. Lenin and Stalin, Hoover and Bush 2, have proven the principle. But micro career choices for journalist still provide cover for the poor choices of society now and for far longer even than the century just passed.

The concentration of media ownership was dealt a blow today in Congress. This is the best news I have heard in thirty years.

[kira181]

Excellent article!!!!!! Thanks.

[Desiderata]

"Where is everybody?" Helen Thomas scornfully asked of her fellow reporters few weeks ago in the White House Press Room. Dana Perina had just tossed more Bushspeak. Only Helen tossed the crap back .

How righteously ashamed she must be of what those pups have done to soil her profession.

And how ashamed of ourselves should we be that so many of us jumped on the dump Dan Rather bandwagon. The entire CBS news division should have walked out with Dan and told Mooves to take his pimping of their profession and stuff it where the sun don't shine.

We are now being led to believe Katie is an empty vessel when we know better. Her weak ratings brings on the corporate swiftboating chartered by Mooves. Truth be told, Charlie Gibson is so impressed with himself that those who prop him up have no time for anything else.

Brian Williams does comedy better than he does news.

And may I add to your list of profiles in journalistic courage Keith Olberman. Watching a piece of clear White House written news reporting while awaiting a plane, he made the fateful decision to turn Countdown into a critical care unit for truth in journalism. When the histories of these times are written, the moment the tide began to turn back from reading lies of the powerful to exposing those lies to a nation hungry for truth will be traced to that airport that day, that hour; that minute.

[AlexHidell]

The White House reporters dinner where Bush gave the infamous 'Where's the WMD's ?" joke was full of reporters who all laughed along with our Harvard MBA President.

Complicit, all of them.

Watch it on 'What's So Funny' at Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0TnqUlB4Gg

Leslie is right on the money. She isn't one of the guilty, though.

[hughbetcha]

I hope you are all just as eager for a tough press corps when Obama becomes president. Somehow I imagine you'll change your tune then.

[Notapathetic]

We might take note that Lions for Lambs was pooh-poohed as boring, as a Tom Cruise/United Artists failed effort, as a film that had too much "talk" and not enough action. For the people who really watched it in its deepest nuances it is a great American work that hits the truth like a dentist's drill.

I predict that the film will become a classic.