- The anticipated and much longed-for corporate establishment
mainstream media's self-examination promised in the PBS broadcast this
past Wednesday evening, April 25th, didn't really disappoint. In fact,
and quite frankly, the segment of "Bill Moyers' Journal" entitled
"Buying the War" was quite good and basically enlightening.
For those who missed the segment, a fair amount of "Googling"
will bring you up to basic speed.
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- The Moyers' collage was comprised of a variety of journalist
interviews, opinions and observations, and left no doubt that something
had gone radically wrong with American journalism relative to its coverage
of the Bush administration's drumbeat leading US to a war with Iraq. This
deviance required an answer to the basic question begged: "why?"
The slipping subscription numbers of newspapers, this time around those
including the seemingly invincible New York Times, is not merely indicative
of the growing prominence of the Internet's alternative media [AM], but
points to the rapidly disintegrating trust the American people are beginning
to evidence in terms of relying upon our so-called free and independent
press.
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- Moyers' effort was launched upon a totally acceptable
and realistic assessment of the emotionally generated reaction of the American
press; namely, the shock, horror and awe that was 9/11. The report conceded
that all Americans, not just members of the press, were charged to rally
around the flag to bring to justice those alleged and conniving conspirators
in a cave far, far away that forever changed and transformed our protected
and cushioned American way of life. Moyers made clear that the vulnerability
of the members of the American press, a vulnerability based upon the very
same emotions that unleashed the general anger of the American people,
the "sleeping giant," was an intellectual weakness they displayed
as well.
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- So, there were no surprises in the "go-along-to
get-along" complicity of the MSM. They were in it for both the justice
and the victory America and Americans were so rightly deserving of. But
then, at some point during the sequence of events, Moyers discloses that
the American press, especially those immune to reality and stationed inside
the Beltway, began to worship and align themselves with the battle cries
of the Bush administration. He pointed out how an objective American MSM
became hopelessly entangled with the success of the Bush regime's military
operations to rid the world of global terrorism.
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- Moyers, and CBS "60 Minutes" journalist Bob
Simon, along with Knight-Ridder Bureau Chief John Walcott, and the latter's
two excellent birddog reporter-investigators, Warren Strobel and Jonathan
Landay, expressed their shocked reactions to the incredulous and highly
absurd allegations and moronic contentions offered by the Bush regime in
joining together proven and known total political opposites: Saddam Hussein
and bin Laden and his al Qaeda. As CBS' Bob Simon pointed out, allying
bin Laden and Saddam Hussein constituted the height of absurdity.
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- But it is this basic absurdity, and the failure of the
"American" press to expose this important fallacy of the Bush
regime's propaganda, that serves as the primary and underlying deficiency
of the "American" press' effort to expose the Bush regime's lies
that sanctioned the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It is this failure,
which the Moyers report points out, that in a roundabout away, "explains"
away the mass media's complacency and professional downfall and therefore
its complicity in the Bush regime's crimes. The question now becomes:
Is this a believable answer, or is this just an excuse and an exit strategy
to allow the mass media's mea culpa?
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- In defense of the mass MSM's abandonment of its professional
principles, we have the Moyers' report exposing the real culprits in the
"press" that have capitalized upon both the press' emotional
vulnerability, as well as the emotional vulnerability of the American people:
William Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, William Safire, Jim Hoagland, and
the greatest journalistic fraud responsible for the over three thousand
deaths of our military, the 25,000 casualties America has suffered, and
the unjust deaths of approximately 655,000 Iraqis: The New York Times'
Judith Miller.
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- As has been offered innumerable times in this space,
The New York Times and its totally undeserved journalistic polish is now
forever tarnished by its support of Zionist Communism via the 1932 campaign
for former Soviet dictator Josef Stalin's mass murders covered up and protected
by Times "journalist" Walter Duranty in 1932; and the Jayson
Blair falsehoods and propaganda to advance gun control in 2003; and then
the Judith Miller propaganda campaign for the criminal Bush administration
which enabled it to launch the invasion and criminal occupation of Iraq.
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- Moyers showed clips of the Bush regime propagansters:
FoxNoise's chief empty-skulled loudmouth Bill O'Reilly, and lemon aficionado
Charles Krauthammer, and of course, the happy connoisseur of human mass
butchery and murder, William Kristol. Moyers pulled no punches in identifying
these purveyors of mass human misery and suffering. The report focused
on the astonishingly dimwitted posture of O'Reilly in proclaiming that
those who do not support the criminal Bush regime's unjust, unconstitutional
and inhumane and illegal mass murders perpetrated upon a society of innocent
men, women and children, are traitors to America's very founding principles.
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- "Bill Moyers Journal" was a smashing success
in terms of a true and basically balanced disclosure of the terrible failure
of the American press in its "Buying the War" offering. It served
as an excellent basis for Americans to question their "watchdogs"
observing the political expediency-based incursions of our government into
our precious freedoms. It was a basic introduction for the uninformed,
as well as the ill informed members of our society, specifically those
who waste their time and money buying and reading newspapers, as well as
those watching the crap presented on network and cable TV news.
-
- The most important and socially relevant benefit provided
to Americans by the Bill Moyers report is not the exposure of media's go-along-to-get
along compliance to support an American war effort, nor their misdirected
patriotism in doing whatever it takes to avenge the horrific and untimely
deaths of Americans victimized by so-called global terrorism. Those familiar
with the efforts undertaken in this space should by now be acutely aware
of my complete and total rejection of the regime's contention that 9/11
was an "outside job."
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- The real benefit of the Bill Moyers effort is that it
serves as an important benchmark. That benchmark etches in granite a starting
point that offers the "American" mass MSM an opportunity to both
police and fix itself. If the media was simply misled into an unfortunate
role of complicity with the criminal Bush regime, that role is now fully
understood and can be unconditionally forgiven by the American people.
The crux of the Moyers piece is this: The benchmarked complicity of the
American MSM will now become verifiable in terms of all they do from now
on.
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- I would much prefer that Moyers' assessment is correct,
the gist of which is that the mass media fell into an unprofessional stupor
based on an overpowering emotional need for justice for the innocent victims
of 9/11, and justice also for the potentially greater numbers of innocent
victims that could have been possible on that horrible day. I would prefer
to believe that the extreme emotional reactions did cloud the American
press' judgment and analytical edge. But the proof of the pudding is the
demeanor of the "free and independent" press subsequent to the
9/11 horror.
-
- How are the members of our free and independent press
presenting themselves professionally in terms of the Alberto Gonzales government
attorney firings now ongoing? Isn't their "newspaper mentality"
still on display? Aren't they continuing to downplay the real issues relative
to the Gonzales attorney firings? They are aiding and abetting the administration's
non-sequitur position that the executive branch has a right to hire and
fire its staff as it sees fit; but that's not the issue. Another invalid
argument is that conversations between the President and his advisors are
privileged information; again, no argument here either. The issue is that
President Bush obstructed justice in denying security clearances documenting
his direct involvement in the internal affairs of the DOJ that were clearly
off limits. And his actions defied an inquiry initiated by Congress.
-
- Yet the MSM continues to tout the Bush crime party's
line. Where now is this emotional shock and awe that initially blindsided
the MSM? Even Con-Da-Looser Rice is now flipping off the Congress and
threatening to ignore its subpoena. CBS' Bill Scheifer danced all
over her on this Sunday morning's "Face the Nation." Playing
the role of a hard-nosed journalist, he made her squirm by indicating repeatedly
that she wasn't answering his questions, specifically as relates to the
charges by the gathering George Tenet storm which alleges she ignored Tenet's
warnings about an impending 9/11. Scheifer made it, oh so easy, to see
she was lying. It reminded me of Al Gore's heavy breathing in his TV debates
with Bush.
-
- And then of course, there's the Rosie O'Donnell flap.
I'm sensitive to the fact that some of my colleagues in the Internet's
AM have roughed me up a bit for daring to charge that Rosie took the money
and ran. But I also was specific in my having expressed her sincere courage
in doing so. The owner-operators of the TV-based MSM have consistently
demonstrated a towering hatred for fact and truth; why should Rosie's persecution
and the outcome thereof be any different? Charlie Sheen was silenced;
Cindy Sheehan has been virtually silenced; Ed Asner has been silenced;
and the 9/11 Scholars for Truth have all but been silenced in their efforts.
The facts were, and continue to be, on my side of the observation. Only
time will tell who's really right!
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- The Moyers report takes the position that our media is
merely a bad shepherd, a guide and protector that strayed because of the
influence of powerful stimuli and resultant reactions that any of US would
display in light of a horrible premeditated tragedy. The explanation offered
is that these reactions may be unprofessional, but nevertheless human and
therefore both understandable and forgivable.
-
- But I'm sorry; I'm not buying that for a moment. Please
remember the suppression of the Murray Waas account that Bush was notified
on September 21, 2001, by his own CIA, that Saddam and Iraq had nothing
to do with 9/11. Please remember our MSM's suppression of the Downing
Street Memo. And what ever happened to those high-fiving, jiving members
of the Mossad with traces of explosives in their Urban Moving Company Van?
And why did the four-part Carl Cameron series on the 200 or so Israeli
art students disappear from FoxNoise's archives? Are these all emotional
weaknesses, or were they planned and deliberate machinations attributable
to the mass media's "newspaper mentality?"
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- I suggest and opine; now you decide!
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- © THEODORE E. LANG 4/30/07 All rights reserved
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- Ted Lang is a political analyst and freelance writer.
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