- In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously
ruled for Fox News, saying no rule or law prohibits distorting or falsifying
news.
-
- Just as Wall Street, war profiteers, Big Oil, Big Pharma,
and other corporate favorites steal with impunity, it's OK for America's
media to lie.
-
- The ruling pertained to a 1996 Jane Akre/Steve Wilson
Fox affiliate WTVT, Tampa reports on bovine growth hormone (BGH) dangers,
Monsanto's hazardous to human health genetically engineered milk additive.
-
- At first, the station loved them. Later, however, Fox
executives and their attorneys ordered its reporters to admit falsifying
evidence and produce bogus reports on BGH safety.
-
- They refused, threatened to inform the FCC, were fired,
and sued. A district court jury decided on their behalf, awarding Acre
alone $425,000 in damages.
-
- Fox appealed and won, the Appellate Court saying Acre
wasn't protected under Florida's whistleblower statute, loosely interpreting
it to mean employers must violate an adopted "law, rule, or regulation."
-
- In other words, Fox simply followed "policy"
entitling its stations to lie - whether on product safety or falsifying
facts about anything, including 9/11 truth.
-
- In 2005, Project Censored chose this story among its
top 25 most important, titled "The Media Can Legally Lie," and
lie they've done about 9/11 from that day to the present.
-
- Those old enough to remember won't forget, including
how media distortions turned it into perhaps the most hyped ever spectacle,
especially on television.
-
- For days, images of planes hitting the twin towers and
their collapse were aired repeatedly.
-
- A personal note. I was in a doctor's waiting room with
others watching events on television. When the South Tower collapsed, everyone
audibly gasped, unaware as I was how or why, let alone what lay next.
-
- When the North Tower collapsed 30 minutes later, unsettling
thoughts crystallized enough to make me sense much more was involved than
met the eye or what news reports claimed.
-
- It was almost anti-climactic when WTC 7 collapsed at
5:21PM. Notably, BBC's Jane Standley reported the event at 4:54PM New York
time, 27 minutes in advance.
-
- Later she claimed she didn't "remember minute-by-minute
what she saw," or perhaps (like BBC's management) doesn't want to
explain how she could report an event before it happened without advance
knowledge.
-
- Earlier in the afternoon, I smelled a rat and wrote my
brother, saying: "They're drinking champagne in the White House tonight,"
precise words I'll never forgot. Yet they failed to imagine the horror-filled
decade to come.
-
- Back then, the whole world watched the horrific spectacle,
including planes hitting the towers, both bursting into flames, desperate
people jumping out of windows to avoid incineration, and then collapse
at near free-fall speed, later proved (but unreported) by controlled demolitions.
-
- A 2002 HBO film titled, "In Memoriam" called
9/11 "the most documented event in history," stopping short of
revealing what really happened or why.
-
- It provided a collage of images produced by news crews,
filmmakers, amateur videographers and photographers, some of them risking
their lives by so doing.
-
- For three or more days, US television covered the event
and its aftermath nonstop commercial free. In the process, they hyped war
hysteria belligerently.
-
- On October 7, 26 days later, it began against a nation
having nothing to do with the attack. However, falsified reports held Osama
bin Laden responsible. Later, the FBI admitted no evidence linked him to
the incident.
-
- Nonetheless, Washington demanded Taliban authorities
extradite him. They, in turn, rightly wanted proof of his culpability.
-
- None, of course, was provided to let the Bush administration
go to war on false pretenses. March 2003 against Iraq followed.
-
- Both wars rage today, besides Obama's naked aggression,
notably against Libya - another nonbelligerent country America and its
NATO allies systematically destroyed, butchering tens of thousands of Libyans
on the pretext of protecting them.
-
- America's post-9/11 decade is best called its visible
fall from grace, waging permanent wars on humanity for wealth and power,
never for falsified hyped reasons everyone needs to understand and condemn.
-
- But don't expect America's media to explain. They're,
in fact, complicit by regurgitating official lies, vilifying Islam, and
resonating war fever discourse for intervention, featuring one-sided reports
and commentaries.
-
- Absent was critical debate. Vital questions weren't asked.
Militarism instead was promoted as the solution to "global terrorism."
-
- For days, political and military officials and spokespersons
shared air time with so-called national security state experts and various
crackpots, ranging from right-wing to hard-right to the lunatic fringe.
-
- The common theme argued was that America was at war with
Islam, Samuel Huntington's racist "clash of civilizations" notion,
"good v. evil," "freedom (and our) way of life" against
"forces of darkness."
-
- Bush administration officials used cowboy metaphors,
including wanting bin Laden "dead or alive," calling its campaign
a "crusade" until criticism forced its change to "Operation
Enduring Freedom," and vowing to "smoke out and pursue"
barbaric evil doers.
-
- Their underlying theme was fear because it sells, even
when cause for it doesn't exist.
-
- At the same time, Bush's "war on terrorism"
didn't mention democracy, instead emphasizing his fighting for "freedom"
mantra, no matter the human toll or illegitimacy of the Big (9/11) Lie,
permitting America's war on the world to follow.
-
- Inaugurated on January 20, 2001, his nationally televised
address to Congress declared war on terrorism, describing a conflict between
"those governed by fear (who) want to destroy our wealth and freedoms"
and others wanting to defend it.
-
- Thereafter, the major media hyped fear, promoted revenge,
and defended falsified notions that Washington wages wars for freedom and
democratic values by ridding nations of dangerous tyrants, especially ones
threatening Americans.
-
- In other words, wars of aggression are liberating ones.
Civil and human rights are suppressed for our own good, and patriotism
means going along with lawless governments, committing crimes of war and
against humanity against one country after another.
-
- Bin Laden and Al Qaeda replaced "the evil empire."
Terrorism became the new mantra. Manichean good v. evil notions were hyped.
Fear and hate overwhelmed sanity and defending right over wrong, as well
as holding venal politicians accountable for acting lawlessly with impunity.
-
- An earlier article explained that when America goes to
war, managed news follows, spreading rumors, half-truths, misinformation,
and willful deception about targeted nations, regimes, leaders, and other
enemies, whether despots of democrats.
-
- John Pilger said "Journalism is the first casualty"
of war. "Not only that: it has become a weapon of war, a virulent
censorship (and willful misreporting) that goes unrecognized in the United
States, Britain and other democracies; censorship by omission (makes all)
the difference between life and death for people in (targeted) countries...."
-
- It suppresses debate, substitutes fiction for facts,
filters out truth, and cheerleads in lockstep with government policy, right
or wrong.
-
- As a result, it supports America's right to be judge,
jury and executioner, as well as get victor's spoils because that's why
all wars are fought, never for falsified reasons, regurgitated on air and
in print ad nauseam.
-
- Because America's business is war, supported by its major
media, war profiteering is a growth industry, and as famed comedian Jimmy
Durante used to say:
-
- "Everybody wants ta get inta da act," and they
do.
-
- In addition, not telling the truth and holding venal
politicians accountable for taking America to war on false pretenses lets
them do it again with impunity.
-
- At best, damage control tactics follow, including Bush
officials relying on 9/11 Commission liars to let them off the hook by
sanitizing policy and concealing facts.
-
- David Ray Griffin brilliantly exposed them in his book
titled, "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions."
He explained that Bush officials "deliberately" failed to prevent
the attacks or, in fact, were "actively involved in (their) planning
and execution...."
-
- His introduction calls his book important because of
the significant consequences of 9/11, taking America to war on false pretenses,
and its major media lying about it supportively.
-
- His reasons for wanting to examine the 9/11 Commission's
report included:
-
- -- to determine if Bush's "war on terrorism"
response to 9/11 was appropriate;
-
- -- to learn if the Commission's account was "definitive;"
and
-
- -- "whether the success of the attacks would have
been less likely if the recommended structural changes had already been
in place."
-
- A fourth reason was the "possibility of a cover-up,"
and indeed that's precisely what happened. Instead of "provid(ing)
the fullest possible account of the events surrounding 9/11," damage
control suppressed them.
-
- The Commission, of course, was hardly "nonpartisan,"
"impartial," or "thorough," especially with Philip
Zelikow as executive director, a Republican Bush administration member
at the time, appointed to assure whitewash, not full disclosure.
-
- In his exhaustive account, Griffin brilliantly, "painstaking(ly)
and devasting(ly) demoli(shed)" the Commissions findings, according
to Peter Dale Scott.
-
- Though Griffin didn't address America's media, he nonetheless
exposed its complicit role. They regurgitated Commission lies as truth,
the way they always represent powerful interests at the expense of good
journalism, commentaries and full disclosure.
-
- To this day, 9/11 mythology remains official dogma on
air and in print. As a result, most Americans remain unaware of the biggest
lie of our time and its horrific consequences, touching their lives directly.
-
- A Final Comment
-
- Sunday marks the 10th 9/11 anniversary. This writer plans
two more articles about the big lie and its aftermath to be published on
or about the date.
-
- On September 10 and 11, the Progressive Radio News Hour
will feature more discussion on it, especially its horrific consequences.
-
- Expect America's media also to react. The Washington
Post already features "Full coverage: Remembering 9/11," with
features headlined:
-
- "After 9/11, security guard on high alert,"
against what wasn't explained.
-
- "Brought together by catastrophe," focusing
on marriage vows exchanged, not 9/11 truth.
-
- "Twin misses his other half," killed in the
attack on the Pentagon, instead of explaining the toll on millions of dead
Afghans, Iraqis, and their families, their countries destroyed by US lawlessness.
-
- "Trying to find the new normal," about a wife
coping in the aftermath of her military husband's death, again ignoring
a global catastrophe because of America's post-9/11 wars.
-
- On September 4, New York Times writers Jeremy Peters
and Brian Stelter headlined, "Media Strive to Cover 9/11 Without Seeming
to Exploit a Tragedy," saying:
-
- Coverage of its 10th anniversary will walk "a fine
line between commemoration and exploitation. Mindful of this, television
networks and magazines and others planning special coverage....are approaching
it differently," some commercial free.
-
- Unfortunately, freedom from truth already is featured.
Neither writer explained, instead saying news outlets will vary in their
approach with special print and on air specials.
-
- As on previous anniversaries, they'll cover everything
except what Americans most need to know - the truth.
-
- Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
-
- Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and
listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive
Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central
time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy
listening.
-
- http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
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