posted
i watched this show yesterday. BUYING THE WAR:
it's long but it's worth the time... it poses the question: How did the mainstream press get it so wrong?
it explains in great detail the how and why of what happened in the supposed liberal media during the leadup to the Iraq war.
bottom line? the white house quietly released info from carefully selected sources and then affirmed the info 'on the record" when journalists were trying to verify the "rumors"...
BILL MOYERS: WHEN AMERICAN FORCES WENT AFTER THE TERRORIST BASES IN AFGHANISTAN, NETWORK AND CABLE NEWS REPORTED THE CIVILIAN CASUALTIES.THE PATRIOT POLICE CAME KNOCKING.
WALTER ISAACSON: We'd put it on the air and by nature of a 24-hour TV network, it was replaying over and over again. So, you would get phone calls. You would get advertisers. You would get the Administration.
BILL MOYERS: You said pressure from advertisers?
WALTER ISAACSON: Not direct pressure from advertisers, but big people in corporations were calling up and saying, "You're being anti-American here."
BILL MOYERS: SO ISAACSON SENT HIS STAFF A MEMO, LEAKED TO THE WASHINGTON POST: "IT SEEMS PERVERSE" HE SAID, "TO FOCUS TOO MUCH ON THE CASUALTIES OR HARDSHIP IN AFGHANISTAN."
REPORTER: There's a body up here.
BILL MOYERS: AND HE ORDERED HIS REPORTERS AND ANCHORS TO BALANCE THE IMAGES OF CIVILIAN DEVASTATION WITH REMINDERS OF SEPTEMBER 11TH.
BILL MOYERS: NEWSPAPERS WERE SQUEEZED, TOO. THIS ONE IN FLORIDA TOLD ITS EDITORS, "DO NOT USE PHOTOS ON PAGE 1A SHOWING CIVILIAN CASUALTIES... OUR SISTER PAPER ...HAS DONE SO AND RECEIVED HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF THREATENING E-MAILS ..."
AND THEN THERE WAS FOX NEWS: WHOSE CHIEF EXECUTIVE - THE VETERAN REPUBLICAN OPERATIVE AND MEDIA STRATEGIST ROGER AILES - HAD PRIVATELY URGED THE WHITE HOUSE TO USE THE HARSHEST MEASURES POSSIBLE AFTER 9/11...
posted
No one gives Moyers the credit he deserves, particularly the right-wing.
I cannot imagining him, when he had that position, giving in and telling the lies that has now become so commonplace that we assume anything insisted on by a presidential news guy to be false or a cover-up of some grievous ill by the Administration.
Those who are out there now slinging insulting names and hate at Olberman and insisting he started this assault on the Bush lack of honor and honesty clearly never bother to dial over to public TV and listen to Moyers state the case and even more clearly haven't bothered to hear him roll out the details with the references and dates and quotes and so on that prove his case.
Moyers is not one that was guilty of looking the other way or failing to ask pertinent questions early on when it might have helped prevent the invasion of Iraq or, thereafter, when it might have prevented the shameful acts in Abu Ghraib and other atrocities in Iraq and Afganistan.
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
What I despise the most about this current bunch that claims to be the republican party is that it has probably destroyed for at least a generation any hope of other than the die-hard Party first loyalist allowing much chance of credence to anything but hatred coming from the republican or the right.
Then, that in turn, has eliminated the openness and freedom of discussion of and, in turn, the opportunity of most constructive debate and dialog on the real problems of the Nation. It has turned what should have been possible to use as earnest study and education about such topics as the budget and the economy and even actual and truthful consideration of national security into sessions of name calling and false accusations about patriotism, while laying false importance to what should be near whimsical side issues that don't actually amount to more then minimal political differences between the parties or factions.
This Country won't live or die on the question of immigration, but it very well could die because we allowed an over hyped war, wanted by the Administration, to cause us to squander irrational and vulgar sums of dollars from the treasury or borrowed from foreign sources. (just like what really happened to the U.S.S.R).
Posts: 11304 | From: Fort Worth, Texas | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
And the new guy is seriously acting toward overturning the Bush influenced efforts to circumvent efforts to counteract and denying the existence of what probably is far far more serious to human existence than Al Qeada or any other coven of terrorist, including that one that is the neo-cons of America.
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