#//the woman who went to Kahndaq and helped found a media empire in order to showcase the global atrocities and goodness of the world

[pulitzerpanther]

Miss Grant...why did you become a reporter?

This question and Cat Grant’s answer were taken from the monthly-quarterly ‘Nine Lives Left’ column featuring CEO Cat Grant and editor of ‘The Trib’ Lucas ‘Snapper’ Carr. The column features questions towards both regarding journalism, ethics in the news industry, and–from Cat–fashion advice for the wilting middle-age ‘walking bearclaw’ editor taking said questions. 

While originally edited in format and featured in the article, the below blurb was taken from the podcast posted on CatCo-.Co with the title of the same name.

So, Cat, everyone always wonders–I know, I know, we get asked this often–and I know we’ve discussed it over the years.

“Oh, of course, I love repetitive questions. If I hear it enough, it’s like the dulcet, soothing tones of Donald Trump.” 

Why did you become a reporter?

“Hmm, yes, well–I’m sure you expect a wholly different answer, given the fact that I technically started in gossip.

Is there more to Cat Grant than high heels? 

“If there wasn’t, you wouldn’t work here. Fine. A similar answer was in my excellently-written memoir, Cat Got Your Tongue released in 2002, but, in order to take you on a journey of me, Snapper, we’d either have to get you a fashion sense, or gussy up a handy little time machine and skip that awful hair-teasing, leopard print phase of the 90′s to go back to the book-worm days of my youth and, namely, the news as an influence–or lack thereof–of my formative years.

Below is the excerpt written by Cat Grant for the ‘editorial’ column, read and featured on both podcast and Trib header.

My father was a particularly knowledgeable man–a great man who had this air of regal mystique about him, or so it might seem to a young girl who had a habit of tiptoeing around the corners of an old, two-bedroom apartment in the bustling playground of Metropolis, before skyscrapers built like towering trees in the ground would become a far more commonplace playroom than my father’s study. But when I was a little girl, I enjoyed that air of ‘fine things’ that he seemed to carry–suits and cigars; mystical brief cases with work-related things in them. It’s all very fantastical to play make-believe with, if you’re ambitious, and while my age is a carefully-kept secret (soon to be given away by this article like an old CIA agent in a bar) there was a time when I did enjoy that long-forgotten art of playing. 

As I tell my son, creativity is important–creating a rocket ship out of a box is the fundamental mind-set that will, one day, create a company out of thin air. It should never be repressed in a child, and I often found myself tempted by the utter adulthood of my father’s study like a creativity landmine. 

The door was always locked save for Sunday mornings, his coffee creating a fine brown ring along whatever ever-present newspaper had found its way to mahogany that morning–the business and politics sections the first read and neatly folded to the side. Saturday morning cartoons were not something my radical mother appreciated in the mornings, but both of them could be seen feverishly discussing current events over the sounds of a crackling, small television in the corner. Only on Sundays, of course, they were feverishly discussing far less important things every where else at much louder–far more grating–volumes everywhen else. 

It wasn’t uncommon to hear the soothing sounds of Walter Cronkite (prior to Dan Rather and Connie Chung’s overruling domain in my mother’s household) in my youth and this particular day, there was one singular, titular program on the television. 

Fortunately–as is an American right–the magnitude of war was lost on me at such a young age, and I had the benefit of merely being fascinated by war like it was some distant, fantastical teleproduction. Like H.G Wells was narrating events, materialized with sensationalism and haunting faux-realism–like I was always one step removed from its horror, because I was.I wasn’t aware of this at the time–what little girl would be?–but Nixon and Johnson ordered the bombing of the Eastern Cambodian line in order to usurp the then-communist Vietnamese strongholds. I wasn’t aware of the impact this would have, ultimately, on the American population–peace signs and drugs and love not war notwithstanding–but also on the Cambodian people.

For four years, with as many visits as an estranged aunt appearing solely for family functions that no one particularly wanted to invite her to, but she just obnoxiously showed up anyways–similar to Joan Crawford, the later years, at a party or Joan Rivers at your wedding (three times)–only to make one small, forgettable appearance, I learned of my first taste of media’s role in education the masses–

By learning that media was not educating the masses. 

From the time I was nine to the time I was thirteen, the Khmer Rouge regime, under the daunting, fanatical leadership of Pol Kot, committed the systematic genocide and elimination of approximately three million Cambodian people under the name of Democratic enstatement in the country. I heard the word Kampuchea (the government created by this regime after the slaughter) feverishly whispered around my father’s coffee mug like a dirty word–like that salacious affair my mother heard about the neighbor having with his nanny–and never understood the impact of it. It wasn’t discussed in my school and, save for a quickly-buried news report every week or two, it was lost, like some lack-luster movie hitting the box office, watched by a hundred thousand people never to be heard of again.

It was a transient sensationalist story. I didn’t understand the gravity of what occurred until college and the magnitude of such a death toll never truly touched Western newspapers save for blurbs. Not even in 1999, when Nate Thayer and Nic Dunlop interviewed a member of the regime’s command still awaiting trial. The story was picked up, ran once, and everyone’s fickle minds forgot about it come Monday, while the weight of the death toll was still being felt by the country to this day.

It was a systematic oppression of the people–a slaughter of a race and religion–and in my twenties, when someone mentioned it, as historical fact, an event that cost the lives of millions, I furrowed my brows like it was a word I couldn’t quite remember on the tip of my tongue.

Lost.

In the 90′s, I was far more educated and politically forward–I was nicknamed Hanoi Cat by a few particularly close friends (one of whom is on the ballot for president this year and should think wisely about the things that a girl might remember to blackmail her with)–and it wasn’t uncommon for me to be enraged by the cruel, cruel state of the world. 

Oh, I taped myself to trees in political outcry, usually hungover and in fabulous heels on a budget, before my palette for social change and fashion had both fully refined. I screamed at rallies and bemoaned the effect of war on the world while sleeping in my thin dormitory mattress that I thought toughed my spine into steel. I was war-torn and affected by the weight of the world’s decisions, unlike my unassuming friends and colleagues.

I’ve since grappled and come to terms with the fact that complacency within a world is a fallacy: ignorance of people assuming the blame doesn’t lie on their shoulders; ignorance of people assuming the blame solely does. Change is not as simple as strapping yourself to a tree and screaming about indignancies.  

I’ve also since made it a point to buy better mattresses. A girl needs her beauty sleep to change the world, after all. 

The Rwandan massacre was far more documented, at the time, than the Cambodian massacre was in the 70′s. But To some of you, who are about to swiftly make my own point about a disassociation of connection and responsibility for me, you might have furrowed your brows and wrinkled your nose at this very paper. 

I’m sure it’s a fabulous look on you. 

Perhaps you saw the movie with Don Cheadle in the early thousands–Hotel Rwanda–where the gripping dramaticism of it all might have dampened the weight of the events with Hollywood flare–provided a sense of detachment that comes with all things sensationalized.  After all, how do we, as a society, come to terms with the deaths of a million people? Another genocide and, though the emergence of electronic media made it far more televised, this one became just as forgotten. 

For a minor history lesson–don’t worry, I’m sure many of you have that hot for teacher fetish–let’s recap the events of the Rwandan conflict in a short, small, haunting blurb that does nothing of justice to the weight or impact of what occurred: in 1994, due to the loss of a political leader, over one hundred days, an approximate million Rwandans were killed by militias and the military under order of the interim Rwandan government.

The coverage of the event was minimal, at best, and the focus of most media outlets–save for a steadfast Perry White who I will credit with having a great focus on human rights, even if the Planet is a subpar paper in every way to ours thanks to one Lois Lane’s lackluster writing–was more on evacuating government officials than on the genocide.

Questionably as appalling as the genocide–in a moral way that, to a journalist, rivals the death of a people–was the treatment of the genocide after the fact. The Rwandan Patriotic Front followed the interahamwe and the Hutu-dominated military into Zaire (what is now called The Democratic Republic of the Congo) and pillaged–that’s slaughtered and raped for those unfamiliar with coy terminology–their way across the eastern part of the Congo. Two years later, Zaire was once again invaded and a puppet government was installed. When that government crumbled, the government once again ransacked the country like some sadistic Santa Claus stumbling in through your fireplace to devour all of your cookies. With a hint of a Krumpus flair.

These actions caused a total death-count of around five-million congolese people.

None of these actions were adequately covered in the news.

So what does all of this have to do with me being a journalist? Oh, I have a point–trust me, I always have a point. Maybe I’m still a writer, through and through and it might be lost in the superfluous overzealousness of my ideas, but there’s always a point. 

I became a reporter for one simple reason: to find truth.

Were there news stories surrounding these events? Of course. Coverage might have been ill-focused during the time–far more for the Rwandan genocide than the Cambodian, though that could be attributed to the times and the lack of such a fine political conscience that Americans carry with them, today–but it was covered. But these moments are forgotten. 

Lost in history. 

A girl with knit eyebrows, forgetting the effect of war and conflict in a country so far away from my own.

Not only were these events transient in the media–not only did I watch them fade underneath the fickle eye of the current press with no lasting coverage or true understanding of the events that took place–I watched the media effectively suppress information.

Stories need to be told and information cannot be suppressed. What do both the Cambodian massacre and the Rwandan genocide have in common? The same thing any government needs in order to systematically commit atrocities against the Geneva Convention–the same thing anyone needs to commit a crime against humanity, big or small: silence. 

Cooperated silence. 

These governments silenced the media within their countries. They controlled the information flow so tightly that there was only one story that was ever told and a lasting embargo was placed worldwide over these events to not endanger the lives of any officials left in the war zone.

No one was talking about it. 

The moment a government starts oppressing speech–the moment the government takes away a people’s voice is the same moment they ultimately take away their humanity. 

Their tie to the world is cut.

How would you feel? In the land of the Great, if we were slowly starting to be distorted–cut off from news, from information flow. If stories of truth turned to ‘stories that the government told us’ which, ultimately, lead to global news of stories of what the government said, since there’s no other form of information available…would you feel safe? Would you feel safe being involved in a ‘He Said’ ‘He said’ with Big Brother? 

Oh, I can hear the rackling shackles of Republicans even while I’m writing this, but it’s not political–it’s human.

What would have happened if one voice in a sea of millions fought for their right to be heard–fought for their right to exist? Is it likely that millions of people might be alive, due to one voice? Oftentimes, political stressors are overwhelming–we’re led to believe that we’re cogs in a system, barreling out of control. 

No. Oh, no–no. Fake. News.

I’m one woman and I have, a will continue to make a difference, and so can you.

That is why it is so important that we have not only a global conscience–but a global presence in the world–humanity is not just a contained problem that happens on the other side of the globe. It is not just a number on a scale of millions dead. It is a problem that could someday affect us and already should simply from the ethical position of allowing it to happen, in the first place.

I don’t say all of this to endlessly guilt you. I believe there’s nothing wrong with taking joy in the finer things in life–in indulging in the good things, instead of just entrenching yourself in the bad–and, like I’d earlier informed you, I do have a nice mattress. I’m not a pauper constantly toiling away underneath the stress of the hedonism of humanity. 

But I do stay informed–I think it is my duty to stay informed, just as I think it’s yours–and, furthermore, it’s my duty to inform you. To tell you the truth with integrity and steadfast objectivity. 

It is my job to ensure that you cannot be blinded by the ‘fake news’ of the world.

Perhaps I don’t tie myself to trees anymore, and my heels are far more upclass, but there’s still a fire of injustice within me. I think there is for anyone who’s masochistic enough to persue the truth of the world because, oh, it can be cruel. And it can be abhorrent. And human nature can be so bone-crushingly haunting that it aches–it leaves a hole within you where humanity used to be–but there’s a brightness to it, as well. 

There will always be people who fight, if you give them a cause–there will always be hope to survive; to push past; to assist those who have been faced with atrocities–and that’s why I became a journalist. To give them a voice. To give them a light.

To give them a choice to fight.

I became a reporter to give a voice to places that no longer have a voice–to make these stories have a lasting impact of relevance and to question not only my own complacency with silence, but to challenge the world’s. It is far easier to ignore the atrocities of the world. It’s far easier to pretend that war is non-existent and that we hold no part in it, if it’s not on our soil we don’t have to handle the short and long-term effects as someone in the country might.

But humans haven’t survived because we’ve had it easy–we’ve survived by building communities. Fostering innovation and pushing together, ultimately, as a society. 

Any cruelty the world faces, I will do my best to ensure that people don’t furrow their brows in forget a few years later–instead, we can all rise up against them, history that steel in our spine molded by information, not a rusty old college dormitory bed, and proudly proclaim: 

Not again. 

This article was published and hosted by CatCo Worldwide Media; edit et al: Lucas Carr; feat: Cat Grant; CatCo WW M - 2015.