ABC Allows Narrative to Replace Storytelling

An example of how TV shows subtly back the approved version of events

A while back I briefly mentioned “Alaska Daily” in the comment section and suggested people give it a shot. The show revolves around Eileen Fitzgerald (played by Hillary Swank), an investigative reporter from New York who publishes an explosive story involving the soon-to-be Secretary of Defense. When her only source mysteriously disappears amidst pushback from the government, Fitzgerald and her editors spar over a retraction of the story — and ultimately Fitzgerald quits because she knows her story is true and won’t back down.

That’s the type of reporter she is. A throwback to “old-school” journalism of putting powerful people in uncomfortable situations. The type of person that you (used to) think of when you thought about a reporter. Without steady employment, Fitzgerald is lured to Alaska to work on a story about missing indigenous women, uncovering a web of corruption and indifference from government officials along the way.

Fuck ‘em, publish the truth and get ‘em fired. That’s the Eileen Fitzgerald way.

Maybe my favorite example of Eileen’s attitude comes from the show’s fourth episode, in which rookie reporter Gabriel Martin (Pablo Castelblanco) takes on his first “real” assignment — and gets a lot more than he was expecting.

Gabriel: So we ask him if he's planning to build a bomb?

Eileen: That's exactly what we do. This is when it gets fun.

Gabriel: That doesn't seem like fun.

Eileen: It's a certain type of fun.

Over the episodes, “Eileen does what she wants” is an underlying tone of the show. When the now Secretary of Defense shows up in Alaska, she defies direct orders so she can confront him directly. When she uncovers the fact the government knew one of its fighter planes was unsafe before a fatal crash, she immediately blasts the information out to the world.

Eileen Fitzgerald is the honey badger of journalism. She attracts very powerful enemies because she breaks important stories that powerful people don’t want told.

So it’s no surprise that after a few episodes, Fitzgerald finds herself in the crosshairs of a mystery detractor. The threat lingers in the background for a few episodes, but last week we finally got a confrontation………and it’s everything wrong with today’s media outlook.

We start the scene with the gunman in his truck, watching the other reporters of the paper leave. While he’s waiting, we hear this from his radio:

The truth is, we're the ones being bullied by the media. That is what's happening in our public discourse. Disagree with anything they say, and you're labeled fascist, racist, homophobic.

That's bullying.

They're using language like a cudgel to get us to submit to their moral subjectivism.

Trust me, I know. I used to work at the snowflake factory...

[Man exits truck]

Okay, I understand this is a work of fiction. The story isn’t real and the writers need to come up with a plot for the episode and a motive and all of this, but………it’s a work of fiction. This wasn’t chosen as the “fictional” narrative by accident. The writers chose to make this the motive and they chose to play those words on the radio. They’re transparently trying to tie “right-wing” radio to real-life violence. A right-winger said something over here, and that made this other person carry out an attack over here. This is exactly how they blame Trump for “inciting” January 6th.

The show glosses over why the gunman targeted Fitzgerald in the first place. (He accused her of being a corporate shill, in contrary of everything we know about her. I expect that is ALSO intentional.) It doesn’t say what sort of “misinformation” he was subjected to that “caused” the attack — only that a “blogger” (former reporter) who “ran a website” called Fitzgerald a cancer (also for unclear reasons).

Here’s the end-of-episode “article” written by Fitzgerald:

Last night, a man broke into the newsroom of The Daily Alaskan and threatened to end my life because he didn't like the way I did my job.

I was shocked, of course.

But sadly, I was not surprised.

Several months ago, a well-respected investigative reporter was stabbed to death outside his Las Vegas home by a corrupt politician he exposed.

Physical attacks on members of the press have risen dramatically in recent years.

One only need to turn on the TV to understand why. It's become fashionable for people in power, right up to those in the White House, to delegitimize print journalists by calling what we write “fake news” and designating reporters as "enemies of the people."

There are armies of talking heads and bloggers, in the mainstream and on the fringe, echoing that message, not just demonizing reporters, but dehumanizing them, too.

These attacks put a bullseye on our backs, and if we don't stand up against this as a society and remind our harshest critics that liberty depends on a fair and free press, the bullseye will wind up on the back of democracy itself.

Pursuit of a common truth is a responsibility I cherish and will never, ever, abandon, even if you put a gun to my head.

Well obviously I took a little bit of offense to the entire storyline, which basically insinuates that only legacy media can be trusted, and everybody else is out there peddling dangerous misinformation that’s going to lead to violence.

Yet the “angry blogger” was completely correct that any disagreement with the narrative (also conveniently the media “consensus”) is labeled some sort of hate speech. He was completely correct that the media uses language as a cudgel.

I’m picking on ABC here because the show runs on ABC and therefore ABC is the one preaching at me about the spread of “dangerous misinformation”.

But how would Eileen Fitzgerald have reacted to the 1/6 tapes? Would she have meekly stood by — like ABC News — while the government cherry-picked its own narrative for the day, or would she have found a way to get the 1/6 tapes and blown up the whole narrative like Tucker just did?

Would Fitzgerald simply parrot what Moderna and Pfizer want her to say — like ABC News — or would she be diving deep into the data these companies wanted hidden for 75 years?

Would she be ignoring the Twitter Files and Lockdown Files — like ABC News — or would she be busting her ass trying to get the Inslee Files and the Cuomo Files?

Would she have printed endless stories about Russiagate — like ABC News — or would she have uncovered that the key players knew it was a fake the whole time?

Would Fitzgerald ignore Hunter’s laptop or call it misinformation — like ABC News — or would she have done the (incredibly easy) work of verifying the contents and blasting out the story?

If attacks on journalists are so important to democracy, would Fitzgerald sit by — like ABC News — while the Biden administration demands a list of reporters who have access to Twitter’s internal records?

And just like that, “Private companies can do what they want” isn’t a thing

Bill Rice Jr. likes to point out that recently, near-ZERO mainstream reporters wrote articles contrary to the ongoing narrative. We both understand that this is because the reporters aren’t in charge of what stories get covered — or even how they cover them. Those decisions are made far, far above the newsdesk.

Media, it’s really easy — if you want to stop being called fake news and an enemy of the people, stop printing fake news and being an enemy of the people. I’ve said over and over that the reason I started this was because the “mainstream” media kept ignoring important stories (many of which I list above). Now I think I have better ratings than half the networks.

So before you lecture me about “misinformation”, ABC News, tell me — where is your “real-life” Eileen Fitzgerald? Where is the bold reporter willing do anything to get the truth out to the people? (Honestly, she probably got fired 6 years ago and is on Substack now.) Why do we see nothing but the approved narrative, all the time? As the Lockdown Files proved, all it takes is ONE reporter willing to do the right thing. Why is it that NONE of your reporters seem capable of that?

Don’t preach to me about the importance of real journalism when the best reporter on your network is fictional.