Our newspapers are most informative
For people who've learned how to read them.
They alert you with arcane messages,
If only you know how to heed them.
You start off with all the conclusions
You figure they want you to reach,
Then ignore everything that supports them,
And take careful note of the breach.
When there's been a significant outrage
And the newspapers tend to say little,
Then you know someone from the state
Must be sitting right there in the middle.
So it was with that Idaho family
Done in by the FBI,
And the decades-long depredations
Of the bank known as BCCI.
Notice their scant observations
Of the Foster case forgery
And how little of substance they tell us
Of what happened in Lockerbie.
Within hours over Oklahoma
Scores of newspaper people were crawling,
So where are the first-hand reports
You know that they must have been scrawling?
Then there's the too-tragic story
Of the murder of Tommy Burkett.
Because of the state-imposed silence
I doubt that you've heard of it yet.
Don't tell me our daily newspapers
Are shoddy and superficial,
They really impart lots of news,
But the bulk of it's interstitial.
David Martin
|