FBI gets its own propaganda show
FBI Director James Comey announced a forthcoming television series focused on his agency. The show, the FBI chief hopes, will positively influence “what people think of us.”
“Inside the FBI: New York,” is set to premier on the USA Network on April 27. And if you enjoy government propaganda, you’re certainly in for a treat.
The show was created by Dick Wolf, whose 20-season Law and Order television series exists in a reality where the power of the state is always right and good and the occasional assault on liberty is justifiable in the ongoing battle against a world full of dangerous degenerates. Of course, there is the cynical Detective John Munch (played by actor Richard Belzer) who, prone to conspiracy theories and crippled by a zonky libertarian streak, serves as a counterweight to the rest of his fictional colleagues’ guilty until proven innocent mentalities. In the interest of law and order, he’s usually brought to heel.
For his real world FBI series, Wolf promises to give Americans a “never-before-seen look at the lives and work of the FBI agents who keep Americans safe.”
In other words, we probably shouldn’t expect much a very critical assessment of the agency.
Considering how Comey describes the series, it’ll play more like an episodic television commercial to assure all Americans that the agency never sticks its nose where it doesn’t belong.
“We did a lot last year that confused people, because they’re seeing the world…through sides,” Comey recently said. “We don’t see the world that way. We are not on anybody’s side. We really don’t care. We’re trying to figure out what’s true, what’s fair, that’s the right thing to do.”
Comey’s interest in helping Americans get to know the FBI through a highly-polished television series seems heavily focused on cementing notions that only an unhinged conspiracy theorist, or a dangerous criminal with something to hide, would question the agency’s motives or methods.
But don’t take my word for it.
“We have to care what people think of us because the faith and confidence of the American people is the bedrock that allows us to be believed, and by being believed, to accomplish the good that they try to do in this country,” he said.
The FBI director added: “We want to find as many different things as possible to show people what we’re really like. And especially in a hyper partisan country, which is what we are right now, to understand we are not on anybody’s side.”
A few things that probably won’t come up:
FBI probing of conservative media for allegedly publishing fake news to harm Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign…
Politically-motivated surveillance leaks…
All the “subversives” the agency has harassed…
Methods of scaring Americans into accepting unconstitutional surveillance…
You get the idea.
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