News You Are Not Seeing or Hearing in the U.S. Media

An unidentified Bush administration official was so upset about the chaos unleashed last week over Orange Alerts, duct tape, and plastic sheeting that he blurted out the unthinkable: that the people in charge need a terrorist attack in order to maintain their credibility.

After a week of warning Americans to get ready for an imminent terrorist attack, a chagrined Bush administration now admits a key source of information for that attack was fabricated by a captured al Qaida operative.

"We've wondering just how much egg we have on our face," says one unhappy White House source. "Right now, the worst thing that could occur for the administration's credibility is that nothing happens this weekend. I know that sounds terrible but we've got a lot riding on this."

Bush League

Who is this person?

It is better to be excessively vigilant and alert than insufficiently. If the attack happened and people were unprepared, there could be more casualties, than when the people are ready, and master some basic survival rules.

Just watched a Rumsfeld press conference. Very interesting. The press is beginning to ask questions now, instead of being bowled over by Rumsfeld the star.

And the reports in the paper about Bush's remarks on the millions of world-wide demonstrators turn out to be revealing. Although Bush agrees that freedom allows demonstrators to protest, they are wrong and he is right, because only the leader is qualified to know how to take the right security measures. This leader sounds like he and Rumsfeld and some of the others are becoming unhinged.

They pin their hopes on all the world becoming friendly to their cause after they have successfully vanquished Iraq, ignoring the fact totally that a stress about the importance of disarmament does not mean going to war with a country that has demonstrated no war-like actions.

They also seem to harbor this idea that the US will be welcome in their "liberation" of Iraq. In the face of our having to buy out an imoportant part of our plans - Turkey - at their price, we don't seem to have a willing allied band at all. The head of Latvia came to the WH, but the, it's a free trip to the US.

We are going to loose this war big time and 100s of young men and women will die but they, the Bush administration, do not care they think they are right and that they are better than anyone else in the world. All I see is that the US has lost its title as leader of the free world and more.

The problem with the Bush alerts are, he has no more idea when to issue them than we do.

Joanne, I am not so much pessimistic as you are regarding results of the war and number of the U.S. Army casualties. Iraqis are fed up with Saddam not less than Mr. George W. Bush is, and their army will become AWOL in several hours after the beginning of the American military operation. If some of their top brass is adequately bribed, they will bring Saddam alive to the HQ of Gen. Thomas Franks.

Well, Iraquis may be fed up with Saddam, but not all share your opinion, although, steissd!
An American attack on my country Iraq would bring disaster, not liberation!

Here is some more, PDiddie.

Perhaps you'll find this news more to your taste.

http://www.uruklink.net/eindex.htm

Maxsdadeo, the site makes an impression of being an Iraqi official one. I cannot, therefore, give full trust to the things that appear there. Just as I would never trust Voelkisher Beobachter during the WWII, neither would I take seriously broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw.

That was max's crippled (and apparently intoxicated, if he is to be believed in a post on another thread) attempt at irony, steissd.

This is an interesting take on why our media is corrupt:

It's war. The nation's president is mad with imperial delusions. There is a burgeoning anti-war movement whose message of morality and peace screams for just a smidgen of fair attention from the media. Liberties face vicious attacks from the very leaders who have sworn to defend the Constitution; the press responds with yawns and shrugs. Courageous dissenters stand up against the power of the administration, and are derided or ignored by disdainful columnists and TV chattering heads...

"It's more than just embarrassing to reveal that news organizations cover the news with venal financial interests in mind," says Reese Erlich, a California journalist and author of the just-published book Target Iraq. "To expose that would undermine any reason the public has to pay attention to and believe the media."...

After World War II, the United States was keenly aware that government dominance of the press had enabled the Axis dictators to press unchallenged toward war. With writers such as George Orwell providing a forward roll on totalitarianism -- Big Brother was merely a media mogul on steroids -- American leaders wisely put limits on communications ownership. No newspaper could own broadcast properties in the same city... The number of TV and radio stations a single company could own was limited.

During the 1990s, the FCC began dropping the limits on the number of stations companies could own. As the FCC deregulated TV and radio outfits, the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership prohibitions remained. But that has been changing. The FCC -- where, ominously, Colin Powell's son Michael is Bush's capo -- is considering dropping the final restraints on media consolidation. This has become the holy grail of Big Media, whose lobbying and influence-buying rival that of any industry in sleaze.

Scuttling the cross-ownership ban will see the end of competition at a local level. One boss will dictate each city's content in the daily newspaper, the major TV stations, the billboards, the major website -- and quite possibly, your alternative weekly. Meanwhile, on the national (and world) scene, fewer and fewer juggernaut companies will control content, programming and distribution of both entertainment and "news" (Flash! Read, see, click on to the latest about Michael Jackson!).

The only loser will be: you.

Every day, the (media) are loaded with uncritical war boosterism -- from never ever giving an honest critique to the Bush, Cheney, Powell & Co.'s endless progression of deceptions, distortions and scare tactics (how many rolls of duct tape did YOU buy?) to barely blinking at the transformation of this democracy into an empire.

That's an important thought. Empires are not built by democracies. A free, aggressive and competitive press is anathema to authoritarian (we're almost there) and totalitarian (the next stop is in sight) governments. Ergo, if you want to go empire, you've got to control the press...

The big challenge for the media is to run a sufficient number of military puff pieces to ensure that its reporters are "embedded" with our troops -- which means you will get only the news the government wants you to get.

Meanwhile, you're not going to read much on the Bush administration's turbocharging the media monopolies via the FCC deregulation. For AOL Time Warner, GE, Viacom, Fox, Hearst, Gannett and the other media heavyweights, there's a pile of cash at stake. If you figure out what's happening, it could cost the press magnates some major money.

"The whole media industry has urgent matters before George Bush's FCC," New York media critic Danny Schechter says. "Of course they're neutralizing the news about the war. It's business."

The full story is here.

"On the streets of New York I saw the kind of freedom George Bush has vowed to give to Iraq - menacing squads of riot police. In an attempt to sabotage this deafening chorus of disapproval, blue helmeted officers backed by horses confined pockets of protesters to Manhattan side streets. At the corner of 24th and Sixth, 30 blocks from the rallying point, I watched incredulous as around 200 baton wielding police set about a group of 100, feverishly tearing down their banners. The provocation? Not staying on the pavement. Saddam's goons would have been proud."
--Richard Wallace, New York Says No, mirror.co.uk

The American Revolution has about come full circle.

scary. and infuriating.

Latest 'New Scientist'. Both Australia and Great Britain are planning to introduce the use of tasers (electric-shock weapons). It would appear that the rationale behind it is not their use in law enforcement (non-lethal subduing of crims), but their effectiveness against protesters. They avoid the embarassment of media footage of people being clubbed and they are particularly effective against 'passive protesting' where protesters hold onto something or someone without actually grappling with police. Considering our PM's antipathy for demonstrators, I don't see this as a coincidence.

Grrrrrrr

Love your new avatar, though, Mr. Stillwater. The teeth were making me nervous.

"Our stake in maintaining the myth and the attendant self-image that we (the media) are doing a great job is every bit as great a fiction as that of the American Congress serving the people. The gravest threat to the truth today may well be within our own profession."
-- Carl Bernstein, Town Hall Lecture series, Sarasota, Florida, 02/19/03

PDiddie

I thought you may be interested in this link. I watched this interview on Channel 4 in the UK this week. This is a transcript. The final question and answer, would be the most relevant to this thread, so I have done a little cut and paste for anyone too lazy to use the link!!

The interview was with....

'Saudi Arabia's new ambassador to Britain, Prince Turki al-Faisal, a senior member of the ruling Royal family and one of the most influential voices in the Desert Kingdom, has given his first major interview on British television to Channel 4 News.'

http://www.channel4.com/news/2003/02/week_3/20_ambassador.html

Q. 'The aim of this war is to reduce global terrorism. If an American general sits in Baghdad presiding over a temporary Iraqi government, given that Osama bin Laden's gripe with you is that you have Americans on the ground in Saudi Arabia, do you think the consequences will be a reduction in global terrorism?'

A. 'I don't think it will (prevent terrorism) I think as a matter of fact it will increase terrorism worldwide. Osama bin Laden's contention with the presence of American troops in the kingdom is another matter. Now we have those troops in the kingdom as a result of the Safwhan agreement which you remember occurred after the end of the fighting in 1991. Well of course terrorism will increase in my view.'

Mr. Still Water:

Is that a mouse or a sperm?

Mark Crispin Miller, author of "The Bush Dyslexicon" and a professor at NYU, has become the intrepretor for those who feel horrified at the path George W. Bush, with the assistance of a compliant media, is leading us all down. He shares his view at Buzzflash.com. Here's some excerpted:

MILLER: Life feels ever more surreal in these United States, where the media system trumpets outright lies, hypes endless trivial bullshit: J-Lo's wedding, Michael Jackson's face--and meanwhile tells us nothing that we really need to know. And the air is always thick with the most hateful vitriol.

Listening to Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly and Ann Coulter, among many other rightist media stars, you feel you've been transported to Berlin in 1938. The cultural atmosphere no longer feels American. In fact, it doesn't feel at all like a democracy...

In the mainstream there is almost no free press. Although our media spectacle is certainly a whole lot livelier than it is in Baghdad, say, or than it was in Moscow under Stalin, it's really no more edifying or credible. Despite the Founders' excellent intentions vis-à-vis the US press, we have a media system that has failed us absolutely. Whereas the US press was meant to help us govern this democracy, it's nothing but a p.a. system for the White House and the Pentagon.

So daily life has taken on the quality of nightmare. We look on at horror after horror; protest en masse, and watch the world protest, to no avail; see utter mediocrity exalted, moral idiocy flaunted, fraud and thievery rewarded; hear black called white and white called black. No one in power says anything that makes a lick of sense. And then you flip on CNN, where everybody's acting like it's normal. Well, it isn't normal. And I think the majority of people in this country know it. They're the majority that voted against Bush-some 53%. So it's very strange, and painful, to be made to think that you're alone in your perceptions...

BUZZFLASH: What do you have to say about television news?

MILLER: It's "television news" (an oxymoron in this country) that lets the (administration) manipulate the truth as if this were a closed society.

If you go on the Internet, or tune in to short-wave radio, or just read lots of newspapers from start to finish, you can find out what's happening. But all the most important stuff is not allowed into the limelight. TV keeps it well outside the frame of what is "real" and "true."

Here we have an electoral system in shambles, with electronic voting machines now being used to steal the vote; and, in the fine print of the recent anti-terrorist legislation, an outright blueprint for the devastation of democracy; a no-fly list, preventing at least a thousand US citizens from boarding airliners--and on and on, yet none of it gets mentioned on TV. This has the effect of concentrating everyone's attention on what isn't true, just as effectively as in Mao's China or Pol Pot's Cambodia, where there was nothing out there on the margins.

BUZZFLASH: Do you offer any hope that the mainstream media, particularly television, can be turned around? Or is it just hopeless?

MILLER: Things are bleak, but never hopeless. They are as hopeful as we dare to have them be, by standing up and saying "no." As for the media, there are in fact a lot of good reporters out there, some struggling for employment, some at work for dailies, news weeklies, TV stations, even cable networks. More and more of them know very well that what they're forced to do each day is a betrayal of their craft and training. What we need is media reform, as soon as possible.

We also need to vary the monotony of rightist media with strong alternatives. We need Democrats and Greens, socialists and genuine conservatives (most of what is broadcast now is not conservative), to have their voices heard, not only on the margins but right out in front, so folks can hear some truth for once. The latter change--the introduction of some ideological diversity--is on the near horizon. The former change--true media reform--will take a lot of work. But it will be a whole lot likelier once we can hear some people speaking honestly about it. It may seem like a long shot, but it had better happen if we want to turn the US into a democracy.

BUZZFLASH: Have we reached a point, a perfect storm of propaganda on television news, when corporate ownership and celebrity news/entertainers have combined to be an extension of any Republican administration that encourages the consolidated corporate ownership of the media?

MILLER: Absolutely. The media cartel is on its knees for Bush, delivering him an endless blow job far more scandalous and dangerous than anything that ever happened between Bill and Monica. The parent companies will give Bush what he wants for many reasons: because he's giving them big-time deregulation, because of the successful propaganda drive against "the liberal media," because the media stars themselves make too much money to be good reporters, and because the White House goons are very, very good at muscling journalists. Not that the media system was any great shakes under Clinton. If Gore had been allowed to serve, he also surely would have had to cater to the likes of Murdoch. Clinton's record on the media system was as bad as Reagan's -- a reflection on the deep corruption of both parties. But while the media cartel would not have had much reason to complain if there were Democrats in charge, the fact is that the GOP is even better for them -- and, therefore, even worse for all the rest of us.

BUZZFLASH: In an age of visual media, can we ever restore politics to being about substance over image? Or are we condemned to forever be ruled by "image" presidencies with color-coordinated backdrops and messaging?

MILLER: That's a tough one. On the one hand, TV lies more easily than print, because the image often lies without the viewer quite knowing it. And yet television also tells some truths that print cannot convey. Certainly the truth about George W. Bush is readily apparent on TV: his short fuse, his pathological rigidity, his lunatic self-righteousness, his boundless ignorance. Every medium can tell us something, if it's honest with us. Although TV will always take us in, the audience can also learn to watch it with a certain healthy skepticism. This tends to happen when there is a great disorienting gap between the world around us and the world as televised. Which is to say that it is happening now. Fewer and fewer people buy this president, or what TV has to say about him.