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https://ericzuesse.substack.com/p/cbs-news-reports-that-america-is

https://theduran.com/cbs-news-reports-that-america-is-deeply-corrupt/

CBS News Reports that America Is Deeply Corrupt

5 August 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1413293593335557

“Reporter’s Notebook: Beating the system”

CBS EVENING News, John Dickerson, July 28th, “Reporter’s Notebook”

“Bad Customer Service Can Lead to Moral Collapse”

“That’s the moral collapse. An inflexible system trains you to lie.”

[At 0:47 in the facebook video are photos of the bank statements, but NOT showing the name of the bank. The name of the bank was hidden throughout, because CBS News doesn’t want to be sued by — or to lose — a major advertiser or prospective advertiser.]

The instagram version of this news-report and commentary introduces it by saying: “cbseveningnews Reporter’s Notebook: When a bank fee went unexplained, @jdickerson tried everything to reach a human on the phone, until only a false claim worked. What does it say when the system makes lying the only way forward?” Of course, the answer to that question is that this is rewarding lying, and that it’s therefore increasing the amount of lying in that society: America. The instagram version also includes viewer-comments, and some of those go much deeper into the matter, in ways that a mainstream news-report — and reporter, such as Dickerson — would never do, because to do so would hurt the corporation’s bottom line; and here are some of those comments:

mdkinla

Amazing!

Now name the bank.

jemcd1

Another reason why CFPB [Consumer Financial Protection Board] should not have been shut down [which Trump did].

faurocious_

That’s brilliant! I never thought of saying “Change of address”.

elenakic12

Wow that’s depressing and honest … welcome to America

miafarrago

Love this one so much. Been there, done that, screamed into the abyss so many times. That's time I'll never get back, along with not getting the service I wanted, or the fees refunded. This is why I started following blackout the system. Banks are one of the many things he mentions. Keep on calling out this unfair stuff the oligarchs are doing to us.

The youtube version also has viewer-comments, plus (as usual) it provides the transcript:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AgIvoevA98

“Reporter's Notebook: Bad customer service bots”

0:01

Bad customer service can lead to moral

0:04

collapse. I know. Here's why. My bank

0:07

charged me a fee, but didn't want to

0:09

explain why. I sought answers from the

0:12

chatbot on the bank's website. I asked

0:14

about the fee in my checking account,

0:16

and the chatbot asked me if I would like

0:19

to open a checking account. Also, did I

0:22

want to respond to an offer in the mail?

0:25

Did I want wiring instructions? I

0:27

assumed the next option was whether I

0:28

wanted a ham sandwich, but I stopped

0:30

reading. I called customer service.

0:32

There was no menu option for a question

0:34

about a fee, but you knew that already.

0:37

When I tried, either by pressing the

0:39

number or saying it out loud, the

0:40

automated system gave me my balance.

0:44

That was the answer. My balance seemed

0:45

to be the answer to any question I

0:47

asked. I tried asking for an agent. I

0:50

got my balance again. If you pronounce

0:53

the word agent very clearly into a

0:55

system not designed to give you an

0:57

agent, you will not get an agent. Still,

1:00

we know that behind the vibrating glass

1:02

of offices and dwellings across the

1:04

land, our neighbors and loved ones are

1:06

screaming agent into their phones like a

1:09

war cry. I hung up, did some research,

1:12

then I called back and told the

1:13

automated voice, "Change of address."

1:16

That worked. I was routed to a real

1:18

human. Why? Because in this regime, when

1:21

you need something, the bank has no

1:23

incentive to help. But when the bank

1:24

needs something, your current address

1:26

for marketing, suddenly humans become

1:29

available. So I lied. I didn't need to

1:32

change my address. That's the moral

1:34

collapse. An inflexible system trains

1:36

you to lie. This is a parable of what

1:38

exactly? Well, our options have changed.

1:41

Press one for corporate indifference.

1:42

Press two for the withering of humanity.

1:45

Press three for why people are

1:47

frustrated with government. Press four

1:50

to scream into the void.

Notice that he DOESN’T blame the designers of that automated chat-box and automated phone-system, nor the bank-executives who hired them, nor the billionaires who control the corporation and derive the extra profits from the added fees that had provoked Dickerson’s attempts.

Among the viewer-comments is

@samuelculper4231

This is all the proof you need that we do not have a free capitalist market. If there were actually any competition, these corporations would be history! FYI I am young - not a baby boomer

That person has it backward: Trump is NOT violating capitalism, he is not adding regulations to corporations, but the opposite: he is REMOVING regulations (such as by eliminating the CFPB). This is libertarianism/neoliberalism — extremist capitalism, extremist free-market. “@samuelculper4231” had that exactly wrong. And he was assuming that the better-value product or service is always going to be more profitable to the corporation’s owners than a lower-value competitor’s is to theirs, but that assumption has been contradicted by much, if not most, of the relevant empirical data — it is nothing more than a hope; it isn’t a fact. It is wishful thinking. There is little, if any, reason to believe that adding value (lowering the price and/or increasing the quality) to the consumer, is profitable to do. If anything, it usually decreases the profitability.

And when John Dickerson said “Bad Customer Service Can Lead to Moral Collapse” and “That’s the moral collapse. An inflexible system trains you to lie,” the truth was instead that an oligarchically-controlled Government is no democracy but instead a dictatorship by and for the super-rich, who control the corporations that control the Government and that serve the owners of — the investors in — those corporations, at the expense of those corporations’ customers and employees. They didn’t force Dickerson to lie there, but they did require him NOT to explain honestly to the public WHY this is happening to the public. It is happening because this is a dictatorship by and for the super-rich. And THEY are the people who are forcing American society to become more and more ruled by, and encouraging of, lies, and liars, and lying. It is they who are responsible for “the moral collapse” of America.

So: the CBS Evening News reports that America is deeply corrupt, but not how and why, which are forbidden to be reported, except in media such as this one.

—————

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.