Tuesday, Nov 04th
Last update08:24:43 AM GMT
Journalism Glance
The regulator's heavy-handed response to a media revolution is injurious to a free society
We are in the middle of a tremendous and welcome shift in power - from elites to individuals and communities. For the media, that means a shift from content controlled by a few to that created, adapted, or distributed by a multitude.
TVNL Comment: A key comment in this article is "content controlled by a few!" That is how media deception is conducted.
In the fall of 2002, week after week in debates televised on MSNBC, I argued vigorously against invading Iraq. I used every possible argument that might sway mainstream viewers - no real threat, cost, instability. But as the war neared, my debates were terminated.
There was no room for me after MSNBC launched "Countdown: Iraq" - a daily one-hour show that seemed more keen on glamorizing a potential war than scrutinizing or debating it. "Countdown: Iraq" featured retired colonels and generals, sometimes resembling boys with war toys as they used props, maps and glitzy graphics to spin invasion scenarios. They reminded me of pumped-up ex-football players doing pre-game analysis and diagramming plays. It was excruciating to be sidelined at MSNBC, watching so many non-debates in which myth and misinformation were served up unchallenged.
On April 24, 2008, The Arizona-Republic, published a hit piece on Sen. Karen Johnson, who currently serves in the Arizona State Legislature. This piece of drivel is titled, 'Drinking the 9/11 Kool-Aid.' As you can see by reading it, the author believes that no elected official should question any aspect of the Bush Administration's fairy tale of the events of September 11, 2001. This has been the prevailing attitude of the so-called mainstream media, including cable "news" networks since that day. Anyone questioning the hoax perpetrated on the American people is a Kool-Aid drinker or worse.
It's a regular staple of the millionaire right-wing echo chamber to use the explicit or implicit language of violence. In fact, the entire "frame" of everyone from Sean Hannity to Bill O'Reilly to Rush Limbaugh is to convince their listeners that people who don't agree with these "pundits of patriotism" are the enemy and dangerous to America.
In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.
The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
Fake Videotape used by CNN
The report presented by CNN's Beijing Correspondent John Vause focussed on the Tibet protests in Gansu province and in the Tibetan capital Lhasa.
What was shown, however, was a videotape of the Tibet protest movement in India.
Viewers were led to believe that the protests were in China and that the Indian police shown in the videotape were Chinese cops.
America produces some world-class journalism, including coverage of the Iraq War by men and women as brave as Ernie Powell. But I still wish we had a professional Hippocratic Oath of our own that might stir us in the night when we stray from our mission. And yes, I believe journalism has a mission.
Page 101 of 103
