The Media. Fourth Estate or Fifth Column?

The movie, “Good Night and Good Luck” reminded all of us, that there really was a time when our American Press actually did the job that our Founding Fathers gave them. The Press was given Constitutional Protections, because our Founding Fathers knew that there is no way for a people to become or remain free without all of the information being presented to them. Along with that Protection came Responsibility. They were to be the watch dogs of the Government, to inform the American People truthfully, without siding with one party, one person or a group of people in power, even if you are a member of that group.

But since The Watergate era, we have lost most of those Patriots. Those reporters who dug deep, did not take someone’s word and certainly were not just stenographers for a political party. Many of those who still were doing their duty, were silenced.

The apex for the “skeptical journalists” came in the mid-1970s when the press followed up exposure of Richard Nixon’s Watergate scandal and disclosure of the Vietnam War’s Pentagon Papers with revelations of CIA abuses, such as illegal spying on Americans and helping Chile’s army oust an elected government.

The press corps’ new rallying cry was the public’s right to know, even when the wrongdoing occurred in the secretive world of national security.

But this journalistic skepticism represented an affront to government officials who had long enjoyed a relatively free hand in the conduct of foreign policy. The Wise Men and the Old Boys – the stewards of the post-World War II era – now faced a harder time lining up public consensus behind any action.

This national security elite, including then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush, viewed the post-Vietnam journalism as a threat to America’s ability to strike at its perceived enemies around the world.”

One early turning point in the switch from “skeptical” journalism to “patriotic” journalism occurred in 1976 with the blocking of Rep. Otis Pike’s congressional report on CIA misdeeds. CIA Director Bush had lobbied behind the scenes to convince Congress that suppressing the report was important for national security.

But CBS news correspondent Daniel Schorr got hold of the full document and decided that he couldn’t join in keeping the facts from the public. He leaked the report to the Village Voice – and was fired by CBS amid charges of reckless journalism.

“The media’s shift in attention from the report’s charges to their premature disclosure was skillfully encouraged by the Executive Branch,” wrote Kathryn Olmstead in her book on the media battles of the 1970’s, Challenging the Secret Government.

“Mitchell Rogovin, the CIA’s counsel, later admitted that the Executive Branch’s ‘concern’ over the report’s damage to national security was less than genuine,” Olmstead wrote. But the Schorr case had laid down an important marker. {Source}

And here began the threat to those journalists who did their jobs. With the help from the policy makers now known as the neoconservatives, the government developed a way to keep the message from getting out, described internally as “perception management”. This included targeting journalists who wouldn’t fall into line. The fall of our Media was ready to be implemented in full with the Reagan administration.

Most of them did not go after the truth of all the unlawful acts which Reagan and his jolly band of traitors to the Constitutional form of Government did. They did not follow the story and the money to find out and report to the American people the crimes which they were doing around the world.

“So, when New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner reported from El Salvador about right-wing death squads, his accounts were criticized and his patriotism challenged. Bonner then infuriated the White House in early 1982 when he disclosed a massacre by the U.S.-backed Salvadorian army around the town of El Mozote. The story appeared just as Reagan was praising the army’s human rights progress.

Like other journalists who were viewed as overly critical of Reagan’s foreign policy, Bonner faced both public attacks on his reputation and private lobbying of his editors, seeking his removal. Bonner soon found his career cut short. After being pulled out of Central America, he resigned from the Times.

Bonner’s ouster was another powerful message to the national news media about the fate that awaited reporters who challenged Ronald Reagan’s White House. (Years later, after a forensic investigation confirmed the El Mozote massacre, the Times rehired Bonner.)” For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege or Lost History. {Source}

I remember at the moment of Mr. Reagan’s swearing in, the plane with the hostages taking off from Iran and I said, “Oh what a perfect Hollywood production”. This whole lapse of the media reporting the truth, allowed Mr. Reagan to be elected. I wonder if the American people had known that the hostages were held in captivity those extra months, just so President Carter would not get the credit for gaining their release, so that Mr. Reagan could be President, if they would have so willingly voted for this Actor. Hostages for Arms had just begun. Why did it take so long for the U.S. news media to uncover the secret operations that later became known as the Iran-Contra Affair, clandestine arms sales to the Islamic fundamentalist government of Iran with some of the profits (and other secret funds, including the CIA using money from the sale of illegal drugs) funneled into the contra war against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government?

“Mr. Reagan’s breaking of the law in dealing with Iran over the hostages. In late 1986 and early 1987, there was a flurry of Iran-Contra coverage, but the Reagan administration largely succeeded in protecting top officials, including Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

The growing conservative news media, led by Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times, lashed out at journalists and government investigators who dared push the edges of the envelope or closed in on Reagan and Bush.

So, when President George H.W. Bush sabotaged Walsh’s probe by issuing six Iran-Contra pardons on Christmas Eve 1992, prominent journalists praised Bush’s actions. They brushed aside Walsh’s complaint that the move was the final act in a long-running cover-up that protected a secret history of criminal behavior and Bush’s personal role.” {Source}

The lies had started and the reporters begin the slide down into being nothing more than people keeping their paychecks, of being controlled by the government and the Republican owners of the media, of not doing their job.

It continued and became worse under Bush one. This man could not open his mouth without saying “New World Order”. (Reminds me of his son, who can not open his mouth without saying September 11, 2001). Did he ever tell the American People exactly what that “New World Order” was? Well, you are seeing it happening right now in America. The beginning of Fascism is here. Remember that G. W. Bush’s grand-father was the banker for the Fascist Party in Germany, dealing with the Nazi’s well into the 1950’s.

You think that is too harsh?

Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
~Benito Mussolini~

The death of our 4th Estate was in it’s final stage during President Clinton’s term in office. They did not do the digging to find out who was behind this “Hunting of a President”. All the lies told about Mr. Clinton that were front page news, until they were proven to be untrue.

The continual lies about Mr. Gore, put out by the Republicans and repeated over and over again, without any proof needed and even when these statements were proven to be absolute lies, they never covered that story. The press did not inform America and let us decide. Their masters made the choice.

They turned into soft “news,” really barely more than gossips. How many days and weeks were the titillating stories of M. Jackson, O.J. , the Run-away Bride on every news channel?

They did not do the job they were hired to do, they were given freedoms and Rights by the Constitution.

And now, they were ripe to become part of G. W. Bush’s “good old boy’s team”. We come to a man running for President who has so many problems in his history that if the reporters had been doing their duty, upholding their responsibility under the Constitution, it would have kept him from being elected to even Dog Catcher in Crawford, Texas. No questions have ever been allowed to stand, to make Mr. Bush answer for his behavior, his lack of fulfillment of his duties, for his arrest records, the list goes on and on. The messenger is always shot and Mr. Bush skirts away.

In November 2001, to avoid other questions about Bush’s legitimacy, the results of a media recount of the Florida vote were misrepresented to obscure the finding that Al Gore would have carried the state – and thus the White House – if all legally cast votes were counted. (See So Bush Did Steal the White House)
In 2002, as Bush shifted focus from Osama bin-Laden and Afghanistan to Saddam Hussein and Iraq, the “patriotic” journalists moved with him.

Some of the few remaining “skeptical” media personalities were silenced, such as MSNBC’s host Phil Donahue whose show was canceled because he invited on too many war opponents.
In most newspapers, the occasional critical articles were buried deep inside, while credulous stories accepting the administration’s claims about Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction were bannered on Page One.

The rout of “skeptical” journalism was so complete – driven to the fringes of the Internet and to a few brave souls in Knight-Ridder’s Washington bureau – that the “patriotic” reporters often saw no problem casting aside even the pretense of objectivity. {Source}

And now even that one Bastion to truth (Knight-Ridder) has been bought out and it’s many newspapers which tried to get the story out will be sold off.

It is a sad dereliction of duty to the American People, that they did not do any digging until the very last couple of weeks, when one of them came up with his DUI. By then, it was too little, to late. And the Bush groupies could just push it away. “It really wasn’t anything important, it was years ago, look what the Democrats will do, dirty politics” they said over and over again.

The papers with the facts were out there for any reporter who wanted to do their job. The facts about his Military Service, his doing public service for what crime? His DUI’s ect. The American people were not informed about any of this. How could they vote intelligently when they were not given all the facts.

A popular government, without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives.
~James Madison~

Since he got away with it , he and his gang knew they could lie with impunity to Congress, the U. N. and more importantly the American People. They have lied us into war, they have lied to us over Medical Insurance, Social Security………….. the list goes on and on.

The continual lies about Mr. Kerry, put out by the Republicans and repeated over and over again, without any proof needed and even when these statements were proven to be absolute lies, they never covered that story. The press did not inform America and let us decide. Their masters made the choice. (Yes, you read this before, just changed the name).

The lies and distortions which were never investigated and reported on during the 2004 primary and election cycles were staggering in the deficiency of the radio, TV and print media. It borders on traitorous behavior.

The Swift Boat liars, when each claim blasted over the media was shot down by the truth and those on the Internet willing to do the research and report it, were never fully covered by the media about the truth of the subject. The fact that these Swift Boaters were liars. The picking off of Democratic candidates by the bias reporting of all forms of the media.

The playing over and over again of Howard Dean’s speech to his supporters, where he could not be heard by those in the front row, but with directional mics, the powers in the media could make him seem like a madman. When this was finally pointed out by the Internet, it was barely picked up and reported by the media.

The sickness and cold shivers, like someone just walked on my grave, which came over me when the Media gave Governor Dean upon his withdrawal from the race, a T-shirt which said “WE HAVE THE POWER”! (meaning the media). Which is exactly the opposite of what Mr. Dean was saying: Which was “THE PEOPLE HAVE THE POWER” or at least, that is what our Founding Fathers and all the American Military dead fought and died for and our Constitution says.

Not that anybody would know it, the US Senate is holding a hearing regarding Bush’s illegal domestic spy program. Peek in on the so-called news channels, and one is more likely to find them covering streaking pigs, than they are to find coverage of the hearing. This news “black-out” of Bush’s illegal domestic spy program isn’t unexpected - it doesn’t after all, involve something newsworthy as a President’s sexual transgressions. No, this particular Senate hearing is about the hum-drum, boring, anti-sexy, and apparently, for America’s news channels, the unimportant topic of a President violating the Constitution and citizen’s civil liberties.

Also, not surprising, though not many American people will be made aware, Republican Senator Arlen Specter, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, immediately declared the Attorney General wouldn’t be sworn in before giving testimony. As the Democratic Senators pointed out, Gonzales had been sworn in during his two previous appearances before the committee. Though, for the news channels, Gonzales not being sworn in wouldn’t be important - the fact of the matter is that, last time Gonzales was questioned before the Senate, he lied.

In the not so distant past, there was a time in the United States that the media would have considered a hearing into whether or not the President broke the law and violated the Constitution, to be important. Every network including the news channels would have had wall-to-wall coverage of the hearings. Those days are now, long gone. {Source}

On February 6, Alberto Gonzales testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the unconstitutional illegal wiretapping programming that he had a big hand in creating.
Gonzales will tell the Judiciary Committee that the program was entirely legal. He will be the loyal consigliere. He has no choice; he helped create the program. According to the New York Times, even right wing whacko and infamous anti-Clinton cheerleader, former Congressman Bob Barr says, ‘’Clearly, people know his testimony reflects the same view as the White House counsel, and that it’s not so much reflecting anything approaching an independent legal analysis. He’s there as a lawyer for the president, as opposed to being an advocate for the Constitution and the laws of the country. It’s a fine line, and I’m not so sure in his current capacity he has a great deal of credibility.'’

“Nothing in Al Gonzales’s public statements, legislative proposals or anything else suggests that this is an individual who operates outside of the political gyroscope of President Bush,'’ said Bruce Fein, an associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, according to the Times. {Source}

The withholding of the news of Mr. Bush and his gang of law breakers wiretapping on American’s without a warrant, which by the way is no burden to get. The original law stated that the President had 24 hours to get this warrant. Mr. Bush went to Congress and said that this was just too little time and he requested 72 hours. They gave that to him. But, that was not good enough. It’s just too burdensome to obey the laws. This gang could go ahead and begin wiretapping and take up to 72 hours (that’s 3 days folks) to go to court for the authorization. The New York Times withheld this by request of the very group which was breaking the law, before the 2004 election. By today’s polls, you know this would have made a difference in how the American people voted.

Also, Mr. Bush had started wiretapping American’s in 2001. Before September 11. Which proves that wiretapping of Americans does not keep us safer.

The media is suppose to inform us and let us make up our minds. Not play Big
Daddy to us, deciding what we should know and when we should know it. “Father Knows Best” attitude should have gone away a long time ago. Between Mr. Bush and the NYT’s, we did not get our Right to make an informed decision.

And here is another example of the “news media” rewriting the truth:

New GOP Fed Chair admits conservatives lie about the minimum wage Conservatives have long claimed that having a minimum wage supposedly reduces employment. They argue this even though statistics have long shown that’s simply not true. And this week, under intense questioning, new Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke appears to have admitted that conservatives are lying. He stated under intense questioning by Congressman Bernie Sanders.

That’s right, in his testimony to the House Financial Services Committee, Bernanke had an exchange with Independent Congressman Bernie Sanders (VT) where Bernanke admitted as much.

SANDERS: ……does it have any employment effects? That is, do higher wages lower employment of low-wage workers?

SANDERS: And your response is?

BERNANKE: My response is that I think it doesn’t lower employment.

The transcript from Congressional Quarterly on Lexis-Nexis - widely relied on as the official transcript of such hearings - that Bernanke said the minimum wage “doesn’t lower employment.”

Now, let’s hear from the Media. Another one of those don’t believe what you see, hear or read, We will tell you what the truth is!

Reuters has reported it differently, saying he said he believes the minimum wage “does lower employment.” {In Depth}

The First Amendment also protects freedom of the press. That freedom has not been eliminated, per se, but it has been effectively neutered beyond effectiveness. Between the White House intimidating most of the press, co-opting the rest, stonewalling information requests, planting stories in the American and foreign media, and buying off journalists, today’s mainstream media has too often become a pathetic megaphone for White House lies, and that includes those supposed bastions of liberalism, the New York Times and the Washington Post. Bye-bye First Amendment. {Source}

A democracy cannot be both ignorant and free!
~Thomas Jefferson~

A new Case study of the truth about Fair and Balanced Reporting, which use to be the law.

In fact, as this study reveals, conservative voices significantly outnumber progressive voices on the Sunday talk shows. Media Matters for America conducted a content analysis of ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, and NBC’s Meet the Press, classifying each one of the nearly 7,000 guest appearances during President Bill Clinton’s second term, President George W. Bush’s first term, and the year 2005 as either Democrat, Republican, conservative, progressive, or neutral. The conclusion is clear: Republicans and conservatives have been offered more opportunities to appear on the Sunday shows - in some cases, dramatically so.
Bush’s first term, Republicans/ conservatives held a dramatic advantage, outnumbering Democrats/progressives by 58 percent to 42 percent. In 2005, the figures were an identical 58 percent to 42 percent.

In Bush’s first term, however, the Republican advantage was 61 percent to 39 percent — nearly three times as large.

In both the Clinton and Bush administrations, conservative journalists were far more likely to appear on the Sunday shows than were progressive journalists. In Clinton’s second term, 61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush’s first term, that figure rose to 69 percent.

In every year examined by the study — 1997 - 2005 — more panels tilted right (a greater number of Republicans/conservatives than Democrats/progressives) than tilted left. In some years, there were two, three, or even four times as many right-tilted panels as left-tilted panels.

Congressional opponents of the Iraq war were largely absent from the Sunday shows, particularly during the period just before the war began.

In short, the Sunday talk shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC are dominated by conservative voices, from news makers to commentators. The data from the Clinton years indicate that the disparity cannot be explained simply by the fact that Republicans currently control the government. {Source}

As Maureen Dowd, the best and only really worthwhile columnist on the boring New York Times, observed this month, Bush “believes in self-determination only if he’s doing the determining … The Bushies are more obsessed with snooping on Americans than fathoming how other cultures think and react.
Everyone in the Middle East rewrites history, but never before have we had a US administration so wilfully, dishonestly and ruthlessly reinterpreting tragedy as success, defeat as victory, death as life - helped, I have to add, by the compliant American press. {Source}

These owners of our Media have joined with those who are out to destroy our Constitutional Republic!

Yes, this has turned out to be both a tragedy and a farce.

Where is our 4th Estate? It has joined the 5th Column!

Traitorous!