In 1994, John Bolton, nominee to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said the following about the institution he now seeks to join:
“The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost 10 stories today it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”
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New Public Broadcasting Chief Wants Conservative Viewers
“Does public television belong to the Democrats?” he asks.
Sam Donaldson On Network News: “I think it’s dead.”
“…if someone shot the President, which network would you turn to? It will be cable, the Internet–something other than General Hospital being interrupted.”
Future of American Media Caucus
…six Members of the U.S. House of Representatives today announced the formation of the Future of American Media (FAM) Caucus.
GM Pulls Ads from Los Angeles Times Over Coverage
“We recognize and support the news media’s freedom to report and editorialize as they see fit,” [?]
Military Reporters Demand Rumsfeld Lifts Press Restrictions
“The danger of such restrictions should be obvious and must be fought…”
Fake Letters-to-the-Editor
After publishing hundreds of letters from a former Republican operative, California papers crackdown.
With the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger as the new Pope, The Vatican is announcing the launch of PopeTV. This new media venture will exploit the assets of existing television news networks by piggy-backing on their programming. They have already demonstrated the effectiveness of this business model with their application of the ubiquitous VaticanCam.
Fox, CNN, and MSNBC, featuring the VaticanCam inset smokestacks.
The Republican Party pioneered this strategy by attaching itself to the Fox News network. They have been expanding their reach in the last few years to other networks, but now will find themselves competing directly with the Vatican for screen space.
Amongst the recent milestones for PopeTV, is that coverage of the election of the new pope logged more on-air time than did coverage of the election of the new US President.
The confidence exhibited by the Vatican in launching this enterprise at this time illustrates their faith in their ability to compete against other media heavyweights. The aforementioned Republicans, Michael Jackson, the war in Iraq, and minor players like Tom DeLay and genocide in Darfur, are all vying for attention in this sparsely populated media wasteland marketplace.
It remains to be seen who will prevail, but insiders warn against underestimating the Vatican. The corporations that dominate and control the media are motivated largely by cash. The Vatican, of course, has plenty of that.
With the passage by Congress of the Terri Schiavo law, we have successfully completed our transformation from a nation of free citizens to a collection of Politi-borgs whose most personal and private affairs will now be dictated by government institutions.
The feeding tube is securely fastened and the capital drips are gushing. The media environment is plugged in and transmitting soothing platitudes by day and fear-inducing threat-level warnings by night. We can now all rest easier while we tremble in our paranoid stupor.
God Bless Amerika
By declining to hear the appeal of a Pennsylvania publisher last week, the Supreme Court let stand a ruling that may allow a newspaper to be held liable for defamation simply for reporting the news.
In 1995, the Daily Local News in West Chester, PA., published an account of borough Councilman William T. Glenn Sr. as “strongly implying” that council president James B. Norton III and Mayor Alan M. Wolfe were “queers and child molesters.” Norton and Wolfe denied the charges and filed suit against Glenn for defamation. The suit also named the Daily Local who had merely reported factually that the exchange took place and included Norton’s and Wolfe’s denials.
After finding that Glenn had defamed Norton and Wolfe and awarding them damages, the jury found that the Daily Local was not liable, partly due to the doctrine of neutral reportage. That doctrine permits recounting a public figure’s comments as long as they are reported neutrally and accurately. In other words, if the Mayor calls the Governor a lush, the newspaper can report what the Mayor said without being responsible for his veracity. However, the jury’s verdict with regard to the paper was reversed on appeal and the lawsuit against it reinstated. Now the paper must defend itself on the grounds that it had exercised no actual malice.
The neutral reportage privilege is a perfectly reasonable first amendment protection for the media when it is informing the public about events that actually occur. The public should have the right to assess facts that are fairly presented. They also should have the right to be fully informed about public figures who make outrageous and untruthful public statements. The appellate court, in finding that the neutral reportage privilege does not exist in Pennsylvania or federal law, puts the press in the position of being unable to report events in the news if the events happen to contain potentially defamatory charges. These events, or as I like to call them, political campaigns, would have to forego almost all media coverage. Maybe this isn’t such a bad thing after all.
As a consequence of the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up the case, we are left with the following scenario from the example above: The press could not report what the Mayor said without first ascertaining that the Governor is, indeed, a lush. If the Governor is a teetotaler, the press could not report the exchange at all without exposing it self to a possible lawsuit. The public would then never hear from the press how the Mayor made an ass of himself. So much for a free press.
It’s been two years since the onset of the Bush administration’s mis-adventure’s in Iraq. By now, everyone knows that the tales spun by an obediant media into a gullible public about weapons of mass destruction were, indeed, lies. The masquerade continues.
The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilitites of the United States Concerning Weapons of Mass Destruction (PDF) was released on March 31, 2005, and seeks to affirm an accounting of events that deftly avoids any material accountability.
Prewar claims by the United States that Iraq was producing biological weapons were based almost entirely on accounts from a defector who was described as “crazy” by his intelligence handlers and a “congenital liar” by his friends ….. Despite persistent doubts about his credibility, Curveball’s claims were included in the Bush administration’s case for war without so much as a caveat.
Anyone who thinks that Curveball was a lone actor in this passion play is criminally naive. He supplied CIA and DIA operatives with data that was described as having “remarkable specificity”. It was later discovered that he was not even in Iraq at the time he was purportedly gathering data. How, then, was he able to be so specific? The commission also points out that:
The reports triggered a flurry of escalating U.S. intelligence assessments on Iraq, even though the DIA “did not even attempt to determine Curveball’s veracity,” according to the report.
So, in the run up to a pre-emptive invasion of another country, our intellegence professionals didn’t consider it necessary to verify whether or not the only source of information we were relying on was telling the truth. This leaves the American people (and the world) to decide whether our government is dangerously inept or maliciously dishonest.
In the end, all we have to go on is the report of a Presidential Commission that lays the blame on a single informant that no one in U. S. intelligence has ever met and was described as a crazy alcoholic by his German handlers. The media, of course, regurgitates the commission’s report in accordance with their role as PR agency for a rogue administration.