Many TV “anchors” evoke keel-hauling as appropriate recognition for their work. Algorithm-picked by WASPy bean counters, they spell out infantile scripts and ask idiotic, loaded questions that pander to their proprietors’ whims, betraying their ignorance and bias whenever their interviewees stray off script.
In the absence of paid, real journalism opportunities, it’s understandable that journalists accept such jobs. However, we do not give Emmy’s to “resting” actors for their recitation of the day’s specials, and so we should also restrain our adulation for those who front wannabe news programs.
A notable exception is Ali Velshi, who like his predecessor, and fellow Canadian, Peter Jennings, has a knowledge of world affairs and the strength of character to avoid pandering to herd-think. Ironically Velshi arrived to take up his CNN position as the 9-11 bombings brought down the twin towers, which inaugurated the redoubled era of doublethink in the media that we have never recovered from.
Speaking from experience, it was career-halting thoughtcrime to mention that there was no evidence at all for Saddam Hussein’s involvement, let alone to mention previous US support for the Afghan fundamentalists who transitioned from “freedom fighters” to “terrorists, when they switched their “primary contradiction” from the USSR to the US.
At the 66th floor of the World Trade Center the FPA invited Velshi to tell us about his new book, Small Acts of Courage It is an entertaining and informative work that ties his extended family history to geo-politics and exemplifies how journalists should look at the world. Velshi’s family history does not determine his world view, but it certainly informs and illustrates it.
Velshi’s life is a cross section of British Imperial history. His family were originally from (British) India and involved with Gandhi in the struggle for civil rights for Indian subjects in South Africa. It is indicative of Ali’s objectivity that he carefully notes that that struggle did not then extend to rights for black South Africans.
The family’s political activity was a good try, but Apartheid was developing nonetheless, and squeezed out of its property, they moved on to British East Africa, and then on to British North America, or Canada, which, under the premiership of Pierre Trudeau had become the effective the spiritual head of the Commonwealth, establishing standards of genuine multicultural cohabitation both internally and internationally. The UK itself of course had retreated into the xenophobic isolation from which it has only occasionally emerged.
In recognition of Velshi’s exemplary journalism, his book and his “purple heart,” for the rubber bullet he took when covering a “Black Lives Matter” in Milwaukee, the FPA also presented him with its “Sharp Pen Award.”
Ali brought genuine journalism to the small screen, with CNN, Al Jazeera, and MSNBC. He even took screen financial journalism to a new level above stock pumping.
Again cutting out from the lemming flow, when he went to Minneapolis to cover the protests about Floyd, he did not lazily and pejoratively call them “riots.” He was covering what he stresses was a non-violent demonstration when a police rubber bullet hit him in the leg and brought him down to the enthusiastic applause of Donald Trump.
Maybe TV anchors should start wearing splints on their legs in emulation of the MAGA’s cultists’ ear bandages? In his conclusion, he prescribes “Citizenship is something you have to practice. It’s a muscle that atrophies if you don’t use it, and if it does, other people will be willing to take advantage of its weakness.”
To pastiche an imperial poet, if you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs, then you might win the FPA’s Sharp Pen Award.”
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