Friday, April 08, 2005
Yellow Journalism
Okay, can we finally dispense, once and for all, with the myth of the liberal media? It is a corporate media, driven by profits rather than accuracy of information, and we all know that corporate-friendly ideologies are conservative, not liberal (especially with our current CEO president).
"RECENT REVELATIONS that the Bush administration has been fabricating news stories, secretly hiring journalists to write puff pieces and credentialing fake reporters at White House news conferences has infuriated the news media.
Editorials profess to being shocked - shocked! - by the government's covert propaganda campaign in which, as The New York Times revealed March 13, at least 20 federal agencies have spent $250 million creating and sending fake news segments to local TV stations."
From embedded reporters in Iraq acting as conduits of Pentagon spin to the fake news stories on medicare to the staged audiences at Social Security events (where those who disagreed with Bush's plan were thrown out of these taxpayer funded events), this administration is doing an unbelievable job distributing government-supplied propaganda.
Here's the part of the story I agree with most and find most troubling (especially after arguing with ill-informed Bushites):
"The first casualty of this taxpayer-financed misinformation campaign is the truth.
Mr. Bush must have been delighted to learn from a March 16 Washington Post-ABC News poll that 56 percent of Americans still thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believed Iraq provided direct support to al-Qaida.
Americans believe these lies not because they are stupid but because they are good media consumers."
And here I thought they were just plain stupid.
baltimoresun.com - Americans deserve media that won't bow to Bush
"RECENT REVELATIONS that the Bush administration has been fabricating news stories, secretly hiring journalists to write puff pieces and credentialing fake reporters at White House news conferences has infuriated the news media.
Editorials profess to being shocked - shocked! - by the government's covert propaganda campaign in which, as The New York Times revealed March 13, at least 20 federal agencies have spent $250 million creating and sending fake news segments to local TV stations."
From embedded reporters in Iraq acting as conduits of Pentagon spin to the fake news stories on medicare to the staged audiences at Social Security events (where those who disagreed with Bush's plan were thrown out of these taxpayer funded events), this administration is doing an unbelievable job distributing government-supplied propaganda.
Here's the part of the story I agree with most and find most troubling (especially after arguing with ill-informed Bushites):
"The first casualty of this taxpayer-financed misinformation campaign is the truth.
Mr. Bush must have been delighted to learn from a March 16 Washington Post-ABC News poll that 56 percent of Americans still thought Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believed Iraq provided direct support to al-Qaida.
Americans believe these lies not because they are stupid but because they are good media consumers."
And here I thought they were just plain stupid.
baltimoresun.com - Americans deserve media that won't bow to Bush
