A Startling Foray into Broadcast Journalism 101
And a shoutout to Ayman on alternative media
Just when I thought corporate news was dead, or at least euphemistically irrelevant, a pulse was detected during the MSNBC Ayman telecast last weekend. To tell you the truth I never would have picked up on its rarified pulsation if I hadn’t caught the Useful Idiots podcast this morning. Hosts Katie Halper and Aaron Maté were likely as surprised as I was at Ayman Mohyeldin’s stunning, anti-IDF monologue to open his show.
In just 8 minutes, long-time NBC journalist and foreign correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin exposed the Israeli government and the IDF military for the monsters they are, complete with their deliberate attacks on schools, ambulances, hospitals and homes, including an unflinching report of an Israeli strike on the Al-Ahli Baptist hospital in Gaza City. On Palm Sunday, no less, his commentary was buried so deep in the news cycle, even AIPAC might have missed it. The slaughter of Palestinian civilians is now so common that it barely gets any media attention, but I was gobsmacked on Rumble.
Mohyeldin even closed his monologue with a dose of Hannah Arendt’s Banality of Evil to contextualize the normalization of the slaughter in Gaza, and it was a long-overdue mic drop:
The banality of evil is the idea that evil does not have the villainous appearances that we might think it does. Evil doesn’t have horns and a tail, rather evil is perpetuated when immoral principles become normalized over time, becomes commonplace, the norm, something that happens every day, slowly becoming acceptable…and ordinary people going about their everyday lives, becoming complicit actors in this system that is perpetuating this evil.
Well-played, Ayman.
Hannah Arendt had the “terrifyingly normal” Adolf Eichmann as her template but argued that systemic oppression and the gradual normalization of evil can occur at anytime, anywhere. How much longer corporate news can maintain a 21st century illusion of normalcy, cloaked in complacency and desensitization - with critical thinking no longer a part of the viewership equation - is up for debate. But the curtain has been drawn, thanks to alternative media.
Katie Halper adds:
Honestly, so much respect for Ayman for this segment…actually it’s infuriating and sad it’s so exceptional. These are stories that everyone should be showing.
While his op-ed framing and analysis was exceptional, according to Halper, it’s rarely, if ever expected from corporate news. However, “the content is expected from everyone…It’s the least that they could do.”
Now, if Ayman Mohyeldin is gainfully employed next weekend, I might be tuning in, or rather streaming. I gave up on cable news several wars ago.
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