Over the recent past I've noticed an interesting trend in this newly freed media of ours, where the media as a conjoined entity seems to float new issues every now and then which are suspiciously reflective of the mood in the parliament, the military establishment, and other high echelons of power.
If we just go back a few weeks we find that the media had been railing and ranting about how the Kerry Lugar Bill puts the country's sovereignty at stake, about how our politicians are in cahoots with the US, and how the military wants the KLB, but without conditionality. If I were to pick a source for the views that seemed to be emanating from our media establishment, then my best guess would be that this was the military's take on the KLB, and an effort to build public consensus against the bill.
Well the buzz hyped up to a climax as Hillary Clinton came and went (pun not intended!). The US State Department essentially asserted that no changes needed to be made to the bill even before Hillaria had broadcast her hillariaty into the airwaves. And less than a week later.. **poof** no more whining over the KLB, the issue went to rest all of a sudden, almost magically.
Now the TV channels obviously need to sell airtime to their much loved corporate sponsors so they need viewers like you and me, and since lounge-room politics bashing is pretty much our national sport, they can't really afford (in the strictest sense of the word) to have an issue-less vacuum suffocating the longish sets of their talk-show hosts; so what do they do?
The issue factory churns and grinds, and **boom** a new issue is produced for the masses to lament on, curse at the government, and whine at their dismay: Behold the NRO!
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