Category: Media

“The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.” –Thomas Jefferson

A Free Press is one of the foundations of a free country. But as with all freedom, it comes with responsibility. The press, the media, in America has not just abrogated that responsibility, they have thrown it on the ground and urinated on it. With very few exceptions, they have become more of a public relations arm of the government than the absolutely vital component of democracy it is their duty to be. The Fourth Estate, they were once called, in effect the fourth branch of government itself, the keepers of truth, the arbiters of honesty, the last resort against corruption. A great objective equalizer, the conscience of the nation.

Journalism was once a sacred and noble trust. Newsrooms were once sacrosanct chapels of Truth. Now they are an industry. Now they are little more than pimps for fast food…and fascism.

I am thoroughly appalled and disgusted that the President of the United States of America admits publicly to approving an entire network….a entire segment of OUR government paid for with our taxes….to torturing, raping, and killing often innocent HUMAN BEINGS…..human beings no different than you, or your children or your parents (regardless of their place of birth) …and todays media treat it as just anther ‘product’ for their ‘industry.’ They have the power to emphasize and pound this home to the American People, the power to serve justice and the Truth ….but… They. Do. Not.

As with the Democrats in Congress, the Free Press has failed America. Tragically so. To the point of betrayal. I condemn them from the bottom of my heart.

I urge all of us in the Blogosphere to do so daily as part of our regime of taking back our failed society. Failed by the President, Failed by Congress, Failed by the Judiciary, and Failed by our Free Press. Take it back, We the People. Take it back. It is up to us, now, that sacred trust of Freedom. We are all that is left of the Dream of Democracy.

But hey! Let’s look on the bright side! At least the Fourth Estate is not actively cheerleading for torture as they did for the invasion of Iraq.

Reposted with permission from Booman Tribune

I’ve just Read Clammyc’s diary,  This is Not Torture. First, let me say I was disgusted by what I read there. Even though I have read many similar stories before about the torture that was condoned and authorized in our names, to protect our freedoms, such descriptions never fail to make me physically ill. Beyond the sheer immorality of these acts, and their illegality under American and international law, we know that there was simply no justifiable reason for these “activities” — no ticking time bomb, no great or imminent terrorist threats that were exposed. It’s mostly been practiced on people with little or no connection to Al Qaeda.

So, what do we do? The media won’t cover this issue. Congress won’t hold impeachment hearings. McCain will likely continue the same pattern of deceit regarding the abuses at Gitmo, and at American bases in Iraq, Afghanistan and other “detention facilities” if he is elected President. He certainly won’t make it a priority to investigate the crimes of the Bush administration since he believes we are legitimately fighting the terrorists in Iraq, and he would like to fight the terrorists in Iran, too, for that matter. As for our Democratic candidates it likely won’t be a priority for them, either, unless we can raise public consciousness of the issue.

As the story of a America President torturing in your name quickly fades from the ludicrously small prominence it managed to achieve, Bittergate rages on. The candidate frenzy as well. A sad testimonial on both the traditional media AND the Blogosphere. Very sad. Though it’s been said many time, many ways….our media is a collection of clueless hacks. To them it is ‘just a job’ and not a ‘sacred’ responsibility to be taken seriously.

What can we do about it? StevenD has one suggestion over at Booman Tribune. There are two other things I can think of. One, keep writing essays/diaries, to keep it visible in the blogosphere, (which I will be doing) the second is, as the title implies, Alert The Media.

There are only two responsive entities in the media right now, Olbermann  ([email protected])

and Jack Cafferty at CNN

Please e-mail them, and if you don’t know what to say, sending them the ACLU/C&L petition (included below the fold) is not a bad way to go. Oh ad pleae go sign and send it too!

cross post from the GOS

Just got done listening Rachel Maddow [humorously] tear into John McCain for his apparent inability to distinguish between Shiite and Sunni, Baathists, criminal gangs and the ever nebulous ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq’. McCain’s continued need to ensure Iranians are somehow implicated in every action – even if it’s Baathists or common criminals committing them is yet another part of the narrative, echoed by Petraeus and Crocker today in Senate testimony.

Even with public prompting from Lieberman aside, these ‘errors’ being made by McCain are being buried by the traditional media in the US at every turn. The links to show ‘Iranian influence’ are tenuous at best, but yet continue to be offered for everything that has gone wrong in Iraq.

McCain [and the Bush administration] need the traditional media to keep burying these supposed “gaffes”. I say supposed, because I think McCain and these administration shills are doing these ridiculous conflations quite on purpose.

Top officials target media shield act

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Michael Mukasey and three other top Bush administration officials are weighing in against legislation that would allow reporters to protect the identities of confidential sources who provide sensitive, sometimes embarrassing information about the government.

The Free Flow of Information Act proposed by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, could harm national security and would encourage more leaks of classified information, the four officials wrote in letters to senators made public Thursday.

The legislation gives an overly broad definition of journalists that “can include those linked to terrorists and criminals,” wrote Mukasey and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

“All individuals and entities who ‘gather’ or ‘publish’ information about ‘matters of public interest’ but who are not technically designated terrorist organizations, foreign powers or agents of a foreign power will be entitled to the bill’s protections,” Mukasey and McConnell stated.

Journalists, press freedom. How quaint. What an old fashioned idea.  

Continuing a long pattern of decline, Fox News once again underperforms its competitors. The first quarter of a presidential election year can generally be expected to boost viewership for news networks. For CNN and MSNBC this has been markedly apparent. For Fox News…not so much.

This new ad by McCain seems to imply that the other candidates are not American, somehow.

The voice-over is very dark, insistent and nearly foreboding in tone.

A quick dive into it, the implied contrasts here give a clue to the tone of this campaign.

“That she [America] is worth protecting, it’s people, honorable”

The implied smears against Barack Obama are loaded up, and ready to go. If we think we’ve seen nasty so far, just wait “my friends”. We’ll be swimming in innuendo up to our eyeballs.

But it’s that tone, the announcer’s voice that drives home the implications that ‘there’s something not right with the other candidates’.

The announcer in this ad, Powers Boothe played Jim Jones in the story about Guyana, in the made for TeeVee movie in 1980.  

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00…

Yes, there are degrees of separation here, but somehow it seems fitting in a way this guy who made his mark in Hollywood portraying an insane cult leader who led over 900 people to kill themselves should be doing voice overs for McCain.

One other thing about the announcer; he seems to think that getting an Emmy is more important than honoring a SAG union strike line

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S…

Fascinating, what’s behind the scenes at these ads at times, ain’t it?  

He certainly had the examples of what to do by the Nixon administration he adored from puberty.

History is being repeated with almost identical methods, and unfortunately so are falling for them that if we don’t expose them it may cost us the General election!

In a 1996 The Washington Post article By George Lardner

Buchanan Outlined Plan to Harass Democrats in ’72, Memo Shows

Rove stated that he IS an adviser to the McCain campaign, he also works for FOX news.

Republican presidential candidate Patrick J. Buchanan strongly favored a plan of “covert operations” to harass and embarrass Democratic contenders in the heady days at the Nixon White House before the Watergate scandal.

Buchanan laid out his ideas in an April 10, 1972, memo looking ahead to that summer’s Democratic National Convention

On the memo’s last page — one never turned over to Watergate congressional investigators — Buchanan and his top aide recommended staging counterfeit attacks by one Democrat on another, fouling up scheduled events, arranging demonstrations and spreading rumors to plague the rival party, all the while being careful not to run afoul of the Secret Service.

In the days leading up to the March 4 primaries in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island, millions of residents of those states (and of America) saw a now infamous advertisement from Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Brought to you by…

News Corpse

The Internet’s Chronicle Of Media Decay.

Somebody tell me why Tucker Carlson still has a television show. Seriously! Is there anyone at MSNBC reading this? I want an answer. I just can’t figure out what’s going through their heads.

Tucker has been the worst performing program on the MSNBC primetime lineup for as long as he’s been on. And he rarely notches anything above last place versus his competition. That record of defeat has predictably repeated itself for February 2008.

Brought to you by…

News Corpse

The Internet’s Chronicle Of Media Decay.

John McCain’s image, as propounded by his spinners (aka: the Media) is that of a maverick who shuns political opportunists and slaps the hands of greedy, special interest self-promoters. It’s an image that gets projected repeatedly by pundits and lazy journalists whose writing seems to be on auto-pilot. They reason that if it was said it about him last year (or last century), it must be true this year as well. This flawed logic even extends to government watchdog groups.

The Austin American- Statesman reports that McCain is circulating a letter from Public Citizen that attests to his commitment to good government:

“We are compelled to note something that has been lost in the recent criticism of Sen. McCain’s association with lobbyists: Regardless of how many lobbyists are working on his campaign or raising money for him, John McCain fought for 14 long, hard years for reforms that seriously limit lobbyists power.”

“Regardless of how many lobbyists…” ??? That’s an awfully broad stroke of forgiveness, ya think?