[SawbasyWrab]

It hit me again yesterday while writing another OP just how egregiously unethical the media, both left and right, have behaved in their coverage of recession suffering.

Considering how many Americans must be greatly suffering in the recession (and I say "must be" because I'm not getting any media reports about the obviousness of it based on the numbers and the people with whom I personally come in contact who are suffering in it), it certainly couldn't have escaped the media's attention .. yet we get no size and degree justified natured reporting commensurate with the true nature of the matter!

For instance ..

.. The U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics reported in their "November" 2010 reports (prior to temp Xmas jobs) that 15,119,000 people in America (nearly all of whom are Americans) were "officially" unemployed from the second week in September through the first week of October, and that an additional 5,832,000 million people were "unofficially" (but just as painfully and undesirably) unemployed during that time .. bringing the true unemployment count to nearly 21 million Americans.

In the same report, the BLS reported another 27,337,000 Americans wanting to work full-time were stuck in part-time jobs, most not in their career-trained profession, working at a much, much, smaller rate of hourly pay than previously in their full-time job, you know, like the carpenter previously earning a living wage who is now "lucky" to get a part-time job at Home Depot as a minimum-waged "associate".

That brings the total number of Americans last fall suffering great wage loss or under-incomed status, many who have suffered for 10 or 20 months or more, to nearly 49,000,000 people!

Now, considering that there are statistically around 2.5 people "per family" greatly affected by the loss of a family worker's living wage, that would mean nearly 123,000,00 people in America are greatly suffering in the recession last fall.

That's 123 million people, nearly 40 percent of our country's population who were and are, according to a rational application of the sheer numbers, most likely still greatly suffering in the recession's wake, suffering that most certainly includes homlessness, poverty, starvation .. and premature death!

That makes this catastrophe much larger than the Asian tsunami of a few years ago, the Haitian earthquake of last year, the recent Chilian mine disaster, and on and on and on regarding other stories that stayed in the news throughout their occurrance and whose visceral pain of devastation was accurately reported in the media commensurate to the degree of that suffering.

Yet, as the number of homeless in America rapidly rises, and everyone knows someone(s) who is greatly suffering in the recession, to the degree they are challenged to feed their family, I can't help but ask: Where is the continued media reporting on this horrific catastrophe reflecting its accurate numbers and true visceral pain of devastation throughout its ongoing continuing horrific occurance?!

The media, both left and right, has all but abandoned accurately reporting the continued size and degree of suffering of this gargantuan catastrophe in America.

And .. I couldn't help but wonder .. why.

So .. I inquired .. of a media source I know who, ironically and amusingly, asked that I protect my source's anonymity .. and she said it was simply this: "Our sponsors and advertisers don't want us to present the accurate 'doom and gloom' of the issue commenserate to its true nature because the public doesn't want to read bad news and they won't buy newspapers if we do tell the truth of it, and our sponsors and advertisers understandably won't be happy if no one buys a newspaper .. and we would then be out of business.".

Okay .. so where is the integrity? Where is the honor? Where is the ethics? Where are all of the laudable moral fibers of responsibility that go hand and hand with the freedom of the press?

It appears they are being held hostage to the almighty dollar.

And thus, truly, the, in effect, cover-up of suffering in the recession is a ransom being paid by the media to corporate America .. for the media paycheck.

Yeah, sure, business owners in general like an up-beat public, beacause an up-beat public possesses loose pursestrings, and they don't want the public to be accurately depressed into tightening those pursestrings from receiving news of how depressing things truly are for so many scores of millions of Americans right now.

But there's another edge to this sword, in that by suppressing the press from telling the visceral and extensive nature of the truth in this continually occuring ongoing matter to the public .. the public who, if they were truly informed by the media, would then in turn scream loudly at Washington to Do something NOW!!! .. nothing instead gets done to end the recession suffering .. and it's business as usual in D.C. .. while more Americans keep suffering more greatly, likely scores of thousands unto their premature death .. about which no media person is saying a word.

I simply find this media cover-up of the suffering in the recession totally reprehensible, to say the least.

The next time someone in the media screams "Freedom of the press!" in response to some perceived restriction, I'll just want to fire back "Responsibility of the press, first!".

The American media need to tell the whole and complete truth of the recession and its suffering, viscerally and extensively commensurate to the true size and nature of the recession's continuous ongoing suffering in America, if we are to indeed have any hope of motivating Washington to do something about it now.

The entire media, across the board, should be publically condemned for their terrible, terrible, in effect, lying to the American public about the true nature and degree of the suffering in the recession, and their thus complete disrespect for the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.

I'm wondering if anyone else here feels the same.