<i>"The Name of Our Country is América" - Simon Bolivar</i> The Narco News Bulletin<br><small>Reporting on the War on Drugs and Democracy from Latin America
 English | Español August 15, 2018 | Issue #62


Making Cable News
Obsolete Since 2010


Set Color: blackwhiteabout colors

Print This Page
Comments

Search Narco News:

Narco News Issue #61
Complete Archives

Narco News is supported by The Fund for Authentic Journalism


Follow Narco_News on Twitter

Sign up for free email alerts list: English

Lista de alertas gratis:
Español


Contact:

Publisher:
Al Giordano


Opening Statement, April 18, 2000
¡Bienvenidos en Español!
Bem Vindos em Português!

Editorial Policy and Disclosures

Narco News is supported by:
The Fund for Authentic Journalism

Site Design: Dan Feder

All contents, unless otherwise noted, © 2000-2011 Al Giordano

The trademarks "Narco News," "The Narco News Bulletin," "School of Authentic Journalism," "Narco News TV" and NNTV © 2000-2011 Al Giordano

XML RSS 1.0

“We are sending our love down the well”

An Episode of The Simpsons and the School of Authentic Journalism


By Hugo Ramírez
School of Authentic Journalism, Class of 2010

November 19, 2009


Hugo Ramírez
For anyone still unsure if you’ll send a donation to The Fund for Authentic Journalism, through which the School of Authentic Journalism – and scholarships for its students – will be made possible, I’d like to remind you (or tell you about it if you didn’t see it) an episode of The Simpsons.

In this episode Bart, using a transistor radio, pretends he is “Timmy O’Toole,” an innocent child who falls down a well. In sum, the episode involves the formation of a large solidarity movement guided by a song titled “We’re Sending Our Love Down the Well” and the disillusion of the people of Springfield upon finding out that it all was a prank.

Bart then falls down the well trying to get back his radio, while everybody in town loses any interest in rescuing him. The repudiation caused by his lie leads everyone in town to turn their backs, including Kent Brockman (the TV news anchor) who ignores the story – now real – of Bart in the well and decides instead to feature a story about “a squirrel that looks like Abraham Lincoln,” a squirrel that later would be assassinated, causing the media to follow the story “all night long if need be.”

My proposal to you, kind reader: Send your love down the well! Think about the mass media, every day farther and farther from reality, and about the traditional journalism schools that mainly work so that the media’s preconceptions are complied with again and again.

I know that many times we have been tricked and disillusioned by the commercial media and I promise that they will continue deceiving. However, that should never become an excuse to stop loving and believing in our ideals. Better to send our love down the well, with the hope of backing the things we believe in, than to stop loving while using the excuses of disillusion and hopelessness.

Don’t fall in the trap. Don’t believe that commercial journalism is invincible and that the realities untold by the big media chains will never be told. Send your love down the well, and maybe you won’t have to keep watching stories from your home like that about a squirrel that looks like Abraham Lincoln.

Donate today, online, at this link:

http://www.authenticjournalism.org

Or send a check to:

The Fund for Authentic Journalism
PO Box 241
Natick, MA 01760 USA

Thank you,

Hugo Ramírez
School of Authentic Journalism, Class of 2010

p.s. Publisher’s Note: You can donate directly to Hugo’s scholarship by clicking this button:

Share |

Lea Ud. el Artículo en Español

Discussion of this article from The Narcosphere


Enter the NarcoSphere to comment on this article

Narco News is funded by your contributions to The Fund for Authentic Journalism.  Please make journalism like this possible by going to The Fund's web site and making a contribution today.


- The Fund for Authentic Journalism

For more Narco News, click here.

The Narco News Bulletin: Reporting on the Drug War and Democracy from Latin America