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PROPHETIC PULSE: WILL THERE BE ANCHORMAN SITTING IN STUDIO SEAT WHEN EVENTS INTENSIFY?

When the truly major events arrive, we may not see the familiar visage of a network anchorman looking to a screen for a report as a correspondent provides details -- scanning the horizon from afar, as it were. For when events occur, there may be no reportage by the likes of Brian Williams and NBC or CBS or Fox or anyone. Might it be that when those times arrive, the anchormen will be absent -- whether due to logistical crises, a technological breakdown, or government intervention?

It's difficult to say, but it seems like the norms of media could well dramatically change -- whether by the events themselves or, perhaps, due to censorship. We rarely contemplate how utterly chaotic it would be if for example a sun flare downed our electrical grid and meanwhile, since September 11 there has been a strong movement in the direction of monitoring and controlling Americans; of late the pace of this has only accelerated.

There is the prospect of a national ID card, there are the microchips in passports, there are cameras at many intersections (automatically recording traffic transgressions), there are security cameras all over urban areas (the average citizen is now on video tape many times in the course of a day), there are face-identification devices, pay systems using fingerprints, there are "photo-enforced" stretches of highway (even on the lookout for "aggressive driving"). In the news last week were attempts by the Transportation Security Administration to block certain websites from the federal agency's computers, including halting access by staffers to any internet pages that contain "controversial opinion" -- and even talk of closing major aspects of the internet with a "kill switch" in the event of "cyber-terrorism."

The concern, obviously, is that what seems like "security" can turn into control and "Big Brother." There is little doubt that we're in times that are so dynamic from the standpoint of the economy, natural disasters, and terrorism that the government could justify a sudden leap in control of the populace and most particularly the media, which is now focused on the internet.

If the government moved to control controversial opinion, it would not be the first time.

Few realize, as one author points out (John M. Barry, in a book called The Great Influenza) that during World War One, the U.S. government compelled conformity and controlled speech in ways not known in America before or since -- shocking ways.

"Soon after the declaration of war," writes Barry, "[President Woodrow] Wilson pushed the Espionage Act through a cooperative Congress, which balked only at legalizing outright press censorship -- despite Wilson's calling it 'an imperative necessity.' The bill gave Postmaster General Albert Sidney Burleson the right to refuse to deliver any periodical he deemed unpatriotic or critical of the administration. And, before television and radio, most of the political discourse in the country went through the mails."

In short, the U.S. government already once moved to closing the main source of commentary.

Of course, we are not anywhere near that. Even reinstating the Fairness Doctrine for radio (mandating two sides of political discussions, which is not very radical) is too hot for the government to currently handle. They are not even moving on this. But that could all change if there was a major catastrophe such as a terrorist's suitcase nuclear bomb or a plague (for example, of influenza).

We foresee this: a time when events move so quickly and dramatically that there will not be a Brian Williams or Katie Couric able to calmly sit in a broadcast booth overseeing developing events, nor perhaps even able to get to the studio, if events continue to quicken. Meanwhile, Mr. William himself carried a report just weeks ago, speculating that all Americans may have microchips under their skin by 2017 [see video].

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