The film Boondock Saints is about two brothers almost killed by mafia goons. The pair become vigilante avengers ruthlessly executing criminals and sinners and saying prayers over their bodies. The climax has them perform an execution of a powerful mob boss in a packed courtroom, bellowing fire-and-brimstone pronouncements about cleansing the world of evil.

The film’s end is reporter-on-the-street interviews with average everypeople about the brothers--dubbed “The Saints”-- with responses varying from The Saints needing to be stopped to outright praise.

One respondent points out that the media are empowering The Saints by broadcasting so much attention about them to so many millions of people, making it apparent that the media were not just passively observing, but were having a direct and enormous effect on the phenomenon regarding which they were supposed to be neutral.

This is happening in the USA and Canada today. Regardless of right and wrong, George W. Bush needs public support to continue his war. He is getting it via the media. Why do news programs have flashy animations between segments, blazing “War in Iraq” logos, and endless footage that does little to enhance the reporting of facts? Why does war coverage feel less like fact and more like a sporting event? Because every news program and channel is competing for viewers.

The “news” should be an unadorned, indifferent relaying of facts and information, a service that people decide to seek out, not a saleable product that is seeking out as many consumers as possible. If the top priority is getting us to watch, and not getting us the facts, what are we to think of the quality of these facts? If they want us to watch, will they not tell us what we want to hear? If so, then we must conclude that what we “learn” from the news depends on what media megapowers think we want to learn. But the facts should not depend on anything.

US Senator Hiram Warren Johnson said that “When war is declared, truth is the first casualty.” How many people know that after the polls closed for the latest American Presidential election, before all of the votes had been counted in Florida, John Ellis, the man in charge of Fox’s election coverage, and cousin to Bush, declared Bush the winner before the election was over. (See Stupid White Men, by Michael Moore, HarperCollins.)

The most telling event regarding war coverage today is that award-winning journalist Peter Arnett was recently fired by NBC and National Geographic for saying on Iraqi state-run television that the American military’s “first plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another plan," and that there is a "growing challenge to President Bush about the conduct of the war and also opposition to the war."

That same day he was hired by London's Daily Mirror, which ran as a headline "Fired by America for telling the truth". Former New York Senator Alfonse D'Amato said of Arnett, "He gives aid and comfort to the enemy," a crime of which the US military is clearly innocent. On Monday, US soldiers killed seven Iraqi women and children at a military checkpoint, opening fire on a van which failed to stop at the checkpoint and which ignored a warning shot.

The bottom line is that America has not matured from its Salem witch-hunt days, nor from the McCarthyism of the 1940s and ‘50s. Hopefully though, the rest of the world has learned from those events.

For further perspective on the future of mass media, read George Orwell’s 1984, or see the film Series 7.