My Summer Lair Chapter #116: Is It Too Late Or Is Change Still Possible?
“America is now too dumb for TV news. It’s our fault. We in the media have spent decades turning the news into a consumer business that’s basically indistinguishable from selling cheeseburgers or video games. You want bigger margins, you just cram the product full of more fat and sugar and violence and wait for your obese, over-stimulated customer to come waddling forth.”
That’s a Matt Taibbi quote from his 2017 book Insane Clown President: Dispatches from the 2016 Circus (on page 100). That eloquent quote was tumbling about in my head as I watched The Corporate Coup D’Etat the latest documentary from director Fred Peabody.
Corporate Coup is Fred’s follow up (and as he wisely puts it in the interview an extension) of his previous documentary All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception, and the Spirit of I.F. Stone. That doc called for investigative and adversarial journalism because the mainstream media has let us down and is failing to informing us of what the elites are doing (which is described in Corporate Coup). Taken together they form a bleak picture of American life yet sparks of hope remain as do options for change perhaps even progress.
In the middle of the interview I’m joined by Phillip Martin a Senior Investigative Reporter for WGBH News and one of the individuals profiled in Corporate Coup. In the doc Martin grapples with a Donald Trump presidency as he traverses the rapidly fading landscape of Youngstown, Ohio. Youngstown once a shining beacon of American industry is now on death row following the closure of steel mills…the infamous Rust Belt Hillary Rodham Clinton ignored at her peril.
Also joining me and Fred is Corporate Coup’s producer Jeff Cohen who also produced All Governments Lie. Together the 3 gentlemen offer a mix of activism, demand greater accountability for journalism and a passion for change. In life when there is a fire we call 911 and wait for the fire department. Only this time…we’re the fire department. How are we gonna put all these fires?
That remains to be seen.
The Corporate Coup d’État Trailer:
