JRRZZ Blog

I’ve had it. Really. I’m a Dutch and European citizen. I’m not American. I’ve never been American and I’ll never be American. Keep your abomination you call democracy to yourselves. Go home, iron your stars and stripes, polish your chevy, hit your wife, read your bible, fire your rifle and above all – stay there!

During the election period, and well before that even, Dutch media have been reporting daily updates about the American elections. Yeah, sure, the U.S. president is an important figure internationally, but I can’t vote for the guy. Why the hell should I know that the republicans have trouble keeping their party together, or that Sarah Palin has a pregnant teenage daughter? I can, however, vote for the European parliament this year. There has been nearly zero news coverage about the subject. It’s only six months until the elections are being held. Six months prior to the American elections we had already met several presidential candidates, seen background information and so on. There was at least a weekly coverage of the U.S. election related events. Hell, most Europeans don’t even know there’s going to be elections held six months from now. They don’t even know how the parliament is constructed. I’ve done some quick calculations based on RSS feed archives I’ve got. The American elections have had 350% more media coverage by the Dutch media than our own national elections. The European elections haven’t even been mentioned as a headline yet. Some people aren’t doing their jobs properly.

The European media seem eager to report news exactly like their American colleagues do. Like newly unhatched birds they squeak and yell with their mouths wide open until some corporate news source vomits new material into their gullets for them to gobble and swallow without asking a single question. Isn’t that what journalism is all about, asking questions? Wasn’t free press once the safeguard for a proper democracy? Don’t the journalists have the single duty to inform the people about important subjects and related events? Apparently not. Why do you think corruption in western governments thrives these days? The media have been dysfunctional for decades and continue to deteriorate each year. Sensation is winning from integrity. Today I had the questionable honor of watching the entire Obama concert composed of the very worst MTV could throw at you. On state sponsored television. Instead of cultural programming the channel was originally created for, we get to endure an overhyped media spectacle directly aiming for the other U.S. states across the ocean, in a region called Europe.

While I was checking my RSS archive, something occurred to me. The Dutch media are copying verbatim from large media corporations. It’s frightening to see the parallels between Associated Press, Reuters and NOS (the Dutch national news broadcasting organization). It gets even worse. The Dutch coverage usually is a direct translation of an AP or Reuters article. There’s no verification what so ever. Do your own damn research, you asshats! I’ve written a small Ruby script, just for fun, which fetches the AP and Reuters feeds, translates them to Dutch and prints the articles like an autoqueue. This little gem can predict fairly well what the news anchor will say in the next news broadcast.

Damn. The Netherlands have one of the best legislative constructions to ensure the freedom of speech. Why don’t you people use it, before it’s too late and that right is taken away from you?