Media Cover-up -Leading Journalists Expose Major Cover-ups in Media

[kpete]

Media Cover-up
Leading Journalists Expose Major Cover-ups in Media
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The riveting excerpts below are from the revealing accounts of 20 award-winning journalists in the highly acclaimed book Into the Buzzsaw. These courageous writers were prevented by corporate media ownership from reporting major news stories. Some were even fired or laid off. They have won numerous awards, including several Emmys and a Pulitzer. Join in building a better world by helping to spread this news across the land.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jane Akre—Fox News. After our struggle to air an honest report , Fox fired the general manager . The new GM said that if we didn’t agree to changes that the lawyers were insisting upon, we’d be fired for insubordination in 48 hours. We pleaded with to look at the facts we’d uncovered. His reply: “We paid $3 billion dollars for these stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!” Fox’s GM presented us an agreement that would give us a full year of salary, and benefits worth close to $200,000, but with strings attached: no mention of how Fox covered up the story and no opportunity to ever expose the facts. we were fired. (click for more)

Dan Rather—CBS, Multiple Emmy Awards. What's going on is a belief that you can manipulate communicable trust between the leadership and the led. The way you do that is you don't let the press in anywhere. Access to war is extremely limited. The fiercer the combat, the more the access is limited, access to information. This is a direct contradiction of the stated policy of maximum access to information consistent with national security. There was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. In some ways the fear is that you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. That fear keeps journalists from asking the tough questions. I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism. (click for more)

Monika Jensen-Stevenson—Emmy-winning producer for 60 minutes. Robert R. Garwood—14 years a prisoner of the Vietnamese—was found guilty in the longest court-martial in US history. At the end of the court-martial, there seemed no question that Garwood was a monstrous traitor. Several years later in 1985, Garwood was speaking publicly about something that had never made the news during his court-martial. He knew of other American prisoners in Vietnam long after the war was over. He was supported by Vietnam veterans whose war records were impeccable….My sources included outstanding experts like former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency General Tighe and returned POWs like Captain McDaniel, who held the Navy’s top award for bravery. With such advocates, it was hard not to consider the possibility that prisoners (some 3,500) had in fact been kept by the Vietnamese as hostages to make sure the US would pay the more than $3 billion in war reparations. American POWs had become worthless pawns. The US had not paid the promised monies and had no intention of paying in the future. (click for more)

.............

Greg Palast—BBC. In the months leading up to the November <2000> balloting, Gov. Jeb Bush ordered elections supervisors to purge 58,000 voters on the grounds they were felons not entitled to vote. As it turns out, only a handful of these voters were felons. This extraordinary news ran on page one of the country’s leading paper. Unfortunately, it was the wrong country: Britain. In the USA, it was not covered. The office of the governor illegally ordered the removal of felons from voter rolls—real felons—but with the right to vote under law. As a result, 50,000 of these voters could not vote. The fact that 90% of these were Democrats should have made it news as this alone more than accounted for Bush’s victory. (click for more)

much more at:
http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?opedpg=http://www.wanttoknow.info/mediacover-up&opedid=24912

[mmonk]

1. Thanks for that.

[babylonsister]

2. Thank you, kpete. Very damning. Nom. nt

[Sydnie]

3. Kick so more will see this!

I have a sore neck these days from shaking my head as more and more stories like this come to light.

[pberq]

4. kick and nominated

[Peggy Day]

5. You mean we don't have a free press?

I just emailed nbc about MJFox. I don't even know why I bother anymore.

[Peace Patriot]

10. We have to do it all, Peggy Day. We have to write letters, call and

scream and yell at corrupt corporate news monopolies and deaf governments, AND fight to restore our right to vote which has been destroyed in so many ways--the worst being Bushite electronic voting corporations now "counting" all the votes with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls--so that we can recover the POWER to bust the corporate news monopolies and to demand change in government policy. As long as the Corporate Rulers have direct control over election results, as they do now, we don't really have a democracy. But we must never stop exercising what rights we have left including the right to speak out on injustice, distortion and lies. You never know what a drop of truth might do in the river of lies. Think what a protest letter might do to give a bit of hope to a courageous reporter or editor under siege from their Corporate bosses. It might buck them up. It might lay the groundwork for future good work. It might plant a seed. Always have faith in the human mind, which is infinitely creative, and which ever struggles against shackles and longs for the truth. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, they never gave up on people. It is ALWAYS possible for human beings to change. And they also were not naive about power, and fought for the real, practical, active powers of the people against their oppressors: the right to vote, the rights of equality, the right to economic self-determination, the right to self-government. They used both modes: the right to speak out and try to change hearts and influence policies directly, through written and spoken communication, AND the struggle for practical empowerment of the people--which, in our case, in our battered democracy, would be the RE-empowerment of the people, through restoration of TRANSPARENT vote counting, and the right of every citizen to vote.

I know that feeling: "I don't even know why I bother anymore." That's certainly what the Corporate Rulers want us to feel. We should resist it for that reason. I think demoralization and disempowerment of people like you and me, and the people in general, is their only propaganda success. (Look at all the poll numbers! Has their propaganda for Bush and his heinous war--or for any of the Bush Junta's fascist policies--succeeded? But the one thing they HAVE succeeded at is making a lot progressives feel like they are part of a minority!). I think that SOMETIMES that inner despair could be pointing you to some other form of action that is needed, or some deeper target of your activism. Maybe you should be fighting Diebold voting machines down at your local/state election offices, instead of NBC. Maybe. It's aways worth examining those inner whisperings for what hidden wisdom they might have. But on the whole I'd say, look at the reality: NBC is not just a corporate news monopoly, it is a WAR PROFTITEERING corporate news monopoly. And it is a monolith and a megalopoly--a financial monster, which is structured to be impervious to the views of the people in a democracy. "They" don't care what you think. "They" don't even care what you buy. "They" and the other news monoliths DICTATE what you CAN buy, and they at least think that they can dictate what you WANT. It is meant to be an impervious system. However it does consist of human beings, at the employee level, who are like you and me, who are trying to get by, and live their lives, and do their jobs, in a tyrannical system, and who may or may not buy into the lies and deceit that are promoted as "news." If you're going to write them letters, have faith that SOME of those people--or even just ONE of those people--might be affected by it, in ways that you may never know. Truth has RESONANCE. It is a powerful weapon against tyranny precisely because the human mind innately desires truth. That's why tyrants ever devise methods of suppressing it--with our Corporate Rulers' methods being among the cleverest ever perpetrated upon a subject people. But, clever as they are--and devious--they simply cannot control the human mind and the human soul. Have faith in yourself. And have faith that other human beings--whatever claws and talons the Corporate Rulers may have in them--are LIKE you, in essence, and ALSO desire the truth. And hang in there. Find your power as a member of the great progressive American majority--the nearly invisible majority--and utilize whatever methods are suitable to you, and whatever goals you feel are worthwhile, for re-establishing democracy.

[chill_wind]

6. Here's one they left out

New York Times - William Broad, Andrew Revkin, John Schwartz

Senior editors killed their 04 Bush wired debate investigation.



"

(...)Times science writer William Broad, as well as reporters Andrew Revkin and John Schwartz, got to work on the story, according to Nelson, and produced a story that he says they assured him was scheduled to run the week of October 25. "It got pushed back because of the explosives story," he says, first to Wednesday, and then to Thursday, October 28. That would still have been five days ahead of Election Day.

An indication of the seriousness with which the story was being pursued is provided by an email Schwartz sent to Nelson on October 26—one of a string of back-and-forth emails between Schwartz and Nelson. It read:

Hey there, Dr. Nelson—this story is shaping up very nicely, but my_editors have asked me to hold off for one day while they push through a few other stories that are ahead of us in line. I might be calling you again for more information, but I hope that you’ll hold tight and not tell anyone else about this until we get a chance to get our story out there.

(...)

much more: January/February 2005

The Emperor's New Hump
The New York Times killed a story that could have changed the election—because it could have changed the election

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2012

[FredStembottom]

7. It's the yellow journalism.......

The Captive Media.

The entire neo-con dive to the bottom of the cesspool is ONLY possible through almost total media complicity. And they have that.

Jusy try to go ANYWHERE anymore and be confronted by a flat-screen TV every 100 feet tuned to CNN.

Orwell's world is here.

[chill_wind]

8. The control of Congress may soon change, but the control

of corporately owned media will not..

[Peace Patriot]

12. The way to bust the corporate news monopolies is:

a) To elect any and all progressive Democrats, or even "centrist" Democrats with some progressive tendencies, to put more pressure on the FCC to do its job in the public interest, to re-write laws to that purpose, and to respond to public pressure on what's needed;

and, very importantly

b) To break the Corporate Rulers' newly acquired direct control over election results, through the cancerous spread of corporate-controlled electronic voting systems, run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls.

This latter will not solve all problems, but TRANSPARENT vote counting is the fundamental, step one, priority one condition for change--and we have lost that vital condition. We MUST get it back.

We cannot address the filthy campaign contribution system, and the filthy corporate lobbying system, and the anti-democratic corporate monopolies of both news and government welfare, without TRANSPARENT vote counting. NON-TRANSPARENT vote counting, controlled by Bushite corporations, is not only keeping fascists in power, it is determining OUR choices in OUR primary elections! Think about THAT!

The MONEY--the Corporate Ruler erosion of our democracy by outright purchase of our political representatives--started destroying our power as a people long ago. Bear in mind that it was Bill Clinton, not Bush, who signed the Telecommunications Act that enhanced the mega-growth of corporate news monopolies. So the problem goes w-a-ay back. We are at the bad end of the problem. And we have a whole lot of work to do to get our democracy back.

Since that time--the era of Clinton and his pro-Corporate policies--on news monopolies, the outsourcing of jobs and other matters--and with the onset of Bush fascism, SOME Democratic leaders have begun to see the grave problems with Corporate Rule and deregulation. In California, deregulation destroyed the Democratic governorship (Gray Davis) and California got robbed of $9 billion by Enron. With the spread of corporate news monopolies, the Democrats' voices cannot heard, and they are suffering from "swiftboating" and marginalization by the MINORITY rightwing, to whom the corporate news monopolies have given a BIG TRUMPET way out of proportion to their numbers. So progressive and semi-progressive Democrats would be inclined to reign their bastards in by busting monopolies and re-regulating them. However, we the people, are being PREVENTED from having majority representation in Congress and in the White House, by the Bushite-controlled electronic voting systems and other methods of Democratic vote suppression. So we MUST re-gain transparent vote counting, as a beginning condition for change.

That's something else that our own Party has been wrong about. They voted FOR corporate electronic voting--albeit under a reign of fear in the Anthrax Congress. Now we're seeing the result. 70% of the country against Bush, and still it is in doubt whether the Democrats can get even a thin majority in the House. And we all know why it's in doubt. BUSHITE electronic voting corporations have the CAPABILITY to steal it, outright, across the board. It's as easy as pie, with these electronic voting systems, and it is virtually undetectable--except by inferential evidence (such as the polls)--because many states don't even have an audit of e-voting systems, and the best states--the best!--do only a 1% audit (wholly inadequate). The "smoking gun" is buried in the black box--in the secret code--and no one--not even our secretaries of state--are permitted to review it! An utterly outrageous situation.

But I think the people--ordinary people--are showing the way. There has been an enormous increase in Absentee Ballot voting. It is up to 50% and 60% in some places, and it has increased exponentially in direct proportion to the spread of these election theft machines. The big increase in Absentee Ballot voting is an indigenous PROTEST against the machines. These voters are giving a massive "vote of no confidence" in non-transparent electronic voting machines. They may not realize that the Bushite-controlled central tabulators are ALSO run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, and that often the Absentee Ballot votes are just scanned into this rigged system, without a hand-count and posting of the results first. But they DO know what they WANT: PAPER BALLOTS, HAND-COUNTED. And they DO know what they DON'T want: secret vote counting, that nobody can see and verify.

This huge Absentee Ballot protest has the potential to force reform, if only election reform activists will seize the day, and USE IT as a club over election officials. Voters are FLOODING election officials with AB votes--WHY? The corporate news monopolies are spinning it as voter "convenience." But AB voting has ALWAYS been convenient, say, in California. Why this huge increase NOW? And why is it BIGGEST in California, where Diebold scandals are rampant, and where Diebold and brethren are making big inroads via Schwarzenegger and his APPOINTED Sec of State. I think it's as plain as day. IT IS A PROTEST. It is an outcry by the voters for TRANSPARENT vote counting.

NOTE: California's deadline for requesting an Absentee Ballot is OCTOBER 31. Still plenty of time. Check local rules for other states. (The CA deadline for registering to vote is already past, but if you're registered, you can still get an Absentee Ballot.) JOIN THE REVOLUTION! VOTE BY ABSENTEE BALLOT! If enough people BOYCOTT the election theft machines, we can get rid of them!

To reiterate: The two most important elements for busting the corporate news monopolies are TRANSPARENT vote counting, and electing progressive Democrats.

Imagine a future with a free press and with the people of this country in control of their government once again. Imagine it, and work to make it happen. Don't get mired in despair that such and such will never happen. Look to the MECHANISMS of power that CAN and WILL make it happen.

We CAN bust these corporate news monopolies. But we must first recover our power to do so.

[Stand and Fight]

14. Thank You!

REAL DISCUSSION!

If we are to insure that we get a free and responsible press in this country again, we have to start discussing this issue among ourselves and trying our damnest to enlighten people in our everyday lives. God knows that the average American is under-informed. While part of this is due to intellectual laziness, another part of it has very much to do with the media failing to hold those in power accountable. We have to change things if we're going to get our country back on the right track.

[Hugin]

9. Cover-ups all around...

Well, I can't say I didn't suspect as much... It's nice to have confirmation, tho.

[mom cat]

11. Supurb! Thank God they were not silenced forever!

[Stand and Fight]

13. This is very important? Where's the real discussion on DU?

I have come here for nearly four years now -- I spent a good deal of it lurking -- because of the discussions that occur on DU. However, when a fine member like kpete posts something like this we can only get token replies. I have to wonder what is going on lately. Especially with an issue like the media. An issue that many DUers often lament as part of the reason our country is going down the tubes. Now we actually have accounts, from the inside no less, that detail how ugly things really are and why the truth continues to elude so many of our countrymen. If ever there was an issue of critical importance, this is the one, because where are we if we do not have a fifth estate? Ask yourselves, "Why are things getting worst and why are Americans not hitting the pavement?" It has to do with the media. For instance, I found the following passage from kpete's link particularly illuminating:

Expensive investigative journalism—especially that which goes after powerful corporate or national security interests—is discouraged. Idiotic or largely irrelevant human interest/tragedy stories get the green light for extensive coverage. These are cheap, easy to cover, and they never antagonize those in power. The mass media companies claim they are responding to demand. (p. 445)

Does this not explain a great deal?

[KoKo]

17. Many here know about this already and have discussed and discussed

but until we have a "voice" in our Government...there's little we can do except write, fax, phone and keep complaining.

When Rush Limbaugh can still have the power to trash a disabled person...a celebrity, no less...then what is there left to discuss until we have power to change the situation?

Thousands of e-mails to the FCC to stop Media Deregulation a few years ago made little impact. Even when we Progressives for Media Change were joined by the Gun Lobby! Little was changed...we just managed to hold off a few of the more agressive deregulation for a little while longer.

We just have to keep supporting the Indy Media out here on the Net and do our own investigating and reporting. :shrug: There's not much else to discuss...

[earth mom]

20. Is DU part of the problem?

IMO, yes. Far too many people here cling to the corporate media as if they are the last and final word for the truth. How often have any of us here posted links to information that is not found in the corporate media and for that matter will never will be found in the corporate media because it's too explosive, too damning, too unprofitable for them to handle-only for that information to be either censored or trashed immediately by someone here on DU because that information is not "mainstream".

Earlier today, I got into a discussion with another DUer about boycotting the corporate media which he didn't want to do. I just don't understand that kind of attitude. Why would anyone knowingly continue to allow the corporate media to blatantly lie to their face and not be outraged or want to fight back?! To me it screams DENIAL. Some people just can't accept the fact that all those smiling faces on T.V. are actually stabbing all of us in the back all for the sake of the almighty dollar.

To that we should all say HELL NO!

[DaveT]

26. We need to disempower the corporate media

but only a tiny minority within our ranks even yet grasp either the dimensions of the problem or have any conception of a solution. I get this queasy feeling every time I hear or read some eloquent progressive advocate's forlorn disdain for "our" media that won't "do its job."

I'm sorry, but that formulation is preposterous and the sooner we face that fact, the sooner we can make some progress on addressing the problem of corporate logic defining the news as a "product." The "job" of reporters working for the handful of predominant news platforms is to do what they are told by their editors -- whose job is to do what they are told by their publishers --whose job is to do what they are told by the CEOs of the conglommerate corporations who own ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, Time, Newsweek and the Wall Street Journal.

Throughout American history, there has never been a Golden Age of "truthful" journalism -- the great muckrakers of the Gilded Age, for example, were marginalized just as Greg Palast is today, or I.F. Stone was a few decades ago.

I think the current self-serving media myth of the courageous Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman nailing Tricky Dick with dogged determination, an exotic secret source and the courageous backing of a crusty but courageous editor has a lot to do with the incessant pining for an honorable big time journalism. Even within the text of this ludicrous received story, shouldn't it make you wonder why they needed so much courage to just "do their jobs?"

In 1973, there was ample evidence available to show that Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were murderous liars and that the Vietnam "peace" agreement was a sham that made a mockery of the twenty thousand dead bodies that they had cynically added to the list that eventually adorned that black wall in Washington. But even as Woodward and Bernstein were digging up the hard news that eventually led to Nixon's forced march back to San Clemente, the Mainstream Media of the day was celebrating "Peace With Honor" while the bulk of the "political" press corps was laughing its collective ass off at the notion that Nixon could ever have any real trouble over Watergate.

I read a lot of the Watergate and impeachment books written at the time -- my favorites were from Jimmy Breslin and Frank Mankiewicz (sp? -- McGovern's campaign manager in 1972.) What got Nixon were legal proceedings by Judge Rodino, the Special Prosecutor's office and the House Judiciary Committee that produced hard evidence of criminal misconduct. You can make an argument that without Woodward and Bernstein putting the issue "in play" that none of those legal proceedings would have ever been initiated -- but that is hardly vindication of the idea that the "media" as a whole in those days "did its job" to inform the public about high crimes and misdemeanors.

The Woodstein Myth can't have it both ways -- if everybody in the media of the early 70s really were "doing their jobs" of speaking truth to power, what was so damned courageous about printing their Watergate stories?


The power of money is never going to go away. Major corporations can help themselves make money by adding TV networks and nationally distributed news platforms to their holdings. It is a nice dream to imagine a revived FCC enforcing tough diversity and fairness regulations while antitrust legislation forces divestiture of media monopolies in local markets. I certainly support these legalistic political goals and I honestly believe that we will see at least some of that kind of reform in our lifetimes -- but do you really believe that GE will ever cease to be powerful or that NBC will cease to augment that power?

No, you cannot really reform anything from the top, down.

But this website and thousands like it are inexorably eating at corporate media power from the bottom, up. Even as we post our messages here, though, I think the majority of us do not understand what is going on. People denigrate themselves and their own voices by assuming that unless an idea is espoused on Television it doesn't mean anything.

I get this same queasy feeling when I see people getting SO excited about Keith Olberman. I appreciate his work, too, but he is not saying anything that tens of thousands of internet bloggers and random posters on sites like this one haven't been saying for years. Yet I have had exchanges with lefties who really believe in their hearts that seeing that same message about Bush come out of the idiot box somehow validates the message.

You will never find a more pristine case of disempowering yourself -- your ideas don't count unless you see them on TV.


I submit that the message we should share with each other is to laugh at the patent absurdity of the mainstream media. Within the idiot box, Stewart and Colbert are doing exactly that.

I am 53 years old and I remember the atmosphere on college campuses during the Vietnam War. There was no reverence for Walter Cronkite -- nothing like the comfy myth that when Walter turned on the war after TET in 1968 that the American people therefore turned on the war. Nope. Underground radio and the underground press sprung up as a community based antidote to the obvious lies coming from CBS and the rest of the corporate media.

In the former Soviet Union, an underground movement circulated a similar antidote to the governing lies using the technology of the mimeograph machine.

The current low poll numbers that the Bush Regime is suffering through is all the validation we need. Obviously tens of millions of Americans who were at least receptive to the media created image of Bush The Churchillian Leader have changed their minds in the last few years. It sure as hell was not the Main Stream Media's reportage that created this reaction.

No, unofficial information has been percolating throught he culture, under the radar of TV and the national news magazines. Bush's performance as President has been SO horrible that the TV crapola has lost its credibility and the underground information coming through the internet and word of mouth has filled the void. We should take heart in this process and never pine for a return of media "credibility."

That would be an unmitigated disaster, in my opinion.



However Bush leaves the scene, corporate control of the Mainstream Media is going to continue for the forseeable future. Unless we want them to create a kinder, gentler and less stupid version of the same War Profits Forever paradigm, it behooves us to come to a consensus about network TV news.

The consensus should not be -- "Hey, guys, would you please be honest?"

The message should be -- "Turn it off."

[earth mom]

34. Excellent Post!

Deserving of it's own thread! :applause:

[DaveT]

35. Done -- Please check out the responses

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2493921&mesg_id=2493921

[jwirr]

33. While boycotting the media is what they deserve I would ask

how are we going to know what they are writing if we do not read them? To fight them we need to know what they are doing. Many posts here on DU are for that purpose and not because we are buying into what they are saying. I censor my own use of TV, radio and newspapers and I am sure many others are doing it to.

[harlinnchi]

40. Maybe I can speak for one or two kinds of DU'ers who can't offer a more...

...considered analysis of the topic. There's just no time! I have barely time enough to go to the site, get disgusted, inform myself about specifics that might be usable in conversations and get my kids in bed. Maybe later I can get back and say something of substance.

The other reason is that what other posters said, yourself included, exceeds that which I would expect from myself. This post concerns many of the reasons why this country may cease to exist as it did and still does in my memory.

Thank you all for letting me learn from it.

[ronnie624]

43. All of the items in the OP's link

have been posted here numerous times, and they never seem to spark much interest. In fact, mentioning the consolidation of the corporatist media, and their obvious complicity through misinformation in the implementation of neo-fascist policies and laws, can provoke accusations of "looking for conspiracies".

Perhaps the implications of a monolithic source of information, where a single entity controls everything we see and hear, are just too frightening to contemplate. I know it scares the hell out of me. We're not quite there yet, but such an eventuality is well on its way, and there is no doubt there are those who plan just that.

[Stand and Fight]

15. Stunning Figures! US=5% of World Population, 25% of World's Prisoners!

The rate of incarceration has more than doubled since the late 1980s. The US now has five times more prisoners per capita than Canada and seven times more than the whole of Western Europe. The US has 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. Nearly 90 percent of prisoners are jailed for nonviolent offenses, often casualties of the so-called drug war. It is a debate among Democrats and Republicans over who can be “tougher” on crime, hire more police, and build more prisons. Almost overnight, the prison-industrial complex has become a big business and a powerful lobby for public funds. (p. 448)

Wow... Just wow. Nearly 90 fricking percent of those jailed are incarcerated for NONVIOLENT violations! Is it possible that we have a new form of concentration camps in America and we've never even noticed it? Maybe we should not be as alarmed by Halliburton building detainment camps in remote areas of the US, as we should be more alarmed by the amounts of people imprisoned in the so-called land of the free? Just a thought... Trying to get discussion going.

[Marie26]

16. K&R. nt

[Ian_rd]

18. The book is called "Into the the Buzzsaw" I highly recommend it.

It will knock your socks off, especially if you don't believe in a secretive government and cowardly, complicit media.

[Uncle Joe]

19. Damn!, This will not let me recommend twice!

Thanks for posting kpete, I will definitely purchase this book.

Kicked and recommended

:kick:

[emulatorloo]

21. Then I will Kick and Recommend for you n/t

[Uncle Joe]

24. Thanks emulatorloo

:hi:

[mojowork_n]

22. Facsinating!!! Thanks kpete!

Wow, there are some really interesting, fantastic stories among your major "media cover-ups". I think this might be a book I go out and buy, to proudly display on my bookshelf.

You only included 20% of the total -- 4 of 20 individual journalists--in your posting sample. I followed the links and then had to do more reading to confirm the possibility of what's being alleged, in that 3rd example, Monika Jensen-Stevenson's account...

Here's what it says on the MsNBC "Encarta" encyclopedia website, regarding reparations to Vietnam:

"...Nixon promised $3.25 billion in reconstruction aid to Vietnam, but the aid was never granted. Neither Gerald Ford, who became president after Nixon’s resignation, nor Congress would assume any responsibility for the devastation of Vietnam. Instead, in 1975 Ford extended the embargo already in effect against North Vietnam to all of newly unified Vietnam. In the Foreign Assistance Appropriation Act of 1976, Congress forbade any assistance for Vietnam or Cambodia.

President Jimmy Carter attempted to resume relations with Vietnam in 1977, declaring that “the destruction was mutual.” Talks broke down, however, over the issue of American MIAs and over the promised reparations, especially after the Vietnamese released a copy of Nixon’s secret letter of 1973, which promised aid “without any preconditions.” Fearing that reparations would amount to an admission of wrongdoing, Congress added amendments to trade bills that also cut Vietnam off from international lending agencies like the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Normalization of relations was suspended, deepening the economic crisis facing Vietnam in the aftermath of the war’s destruction..."


But then I went to Amazon's site to check out the reviews of Monika Jensen-Stevenson's books, and it turns out she and her co-author/husband apparently wrote some checks to settle a libel suit, out of court, filed by a POW named Kushner. But then... the accounts of individual Vietnamese provide competing evidence, on the topic of never-repatriated POW's and MIA's...

[mojowork_n]

23. Oh, and did I mention it was also "Fascinating"? (I thought not.)

OK, call it a typo. Sorry...

Hey, speaking of things that are absolutely riveting, and deserving of fullest attention, does any one know how Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s

Qui Tam

lawsuit is going?

My 1st guess is that there must be a whole bunch of fat guys, in sweaty polyester industrial uniforms, scattered across a giant carpet, keeping the whole thing, "under the carpet". Not sure who those guys are, non-metaphorically speaking, but maybe it'll be coming out, some time...

[civildisoBDence]

25. Much of this timidity is due to 9/11

Media organizations fear being labeled unpatriotic.

They also fear being cut off by an administration that uses intimidation and threats of lost access to cow reporters.

Remember DUUUUHbya calling an NYT reporter Adam Clymer a "major league asshole"?

Bush and his goons are BUSH league public servants, and world class assholes.

Newsprism

[malaise]

27. Kick

No surprise.

[rosesaylavee]

28. K & R + story

Was talking with a colleague from another company yesterday. He just learned about the Military Commissions Act - and he reads two area newspapers everyday and has staff that reads other papers for the firm. He was shocked that he didn't know about it not only last week but that there was even a possibility that it would be abolished prior to the pResident signing the document.

I reminded him about getting on DU at least every other day if not every day to find out what is going on ... I think he will now be doing so. This is a very very red county in which we live and the papers are pretty much 'rah rah aren't we grand here' sort of narcissistic stuff and not much on the national news.

[kpete]

29. Had to check in and say

This is why I do what I do - replies on this thread have been awesome, serious and relevant.

Thanks, sometimes I worry no one is listening.

You have proved me wrong...kpete

[ArmchairMeme]

30. Web is my main source of information

As DaveT said

"I submit that the message we should share with each other is to laugh at the patent absurdity of the mainstream media. Within the idiot box, Stewart and Colbert are doing exactly that."

I went to the web early after the current administration came to power because I wanted to find an alternative perspective. I found a source of information that has enabled me to shut of the t.v. news.

It appears that the M$M is running scared. The networks are cutting back due to declines in "readership?" that is a clue to me that there is a shift in where people are finding their information as it is no longer at M%M.

I think a lot people are seeing that t.v. news is merely entertainment.

When I do turn it on I see 20% sports, 20% weather, 20% celebrity info an what is left over is news.

I can look out the window for weather, I don't need sports or celebrity - what's left? zero!

[Coexist]

31. .

[Time for change]

32. Into the Buzzsaw is a great book - All Americans need to read it

[IWantAChange]

36. let's see if Olbermann and Stewart bring it to the airwaves....

wouldn't that be interesting???

[Ignis]

37. WOW! Too late to rec, but here's a kick for a great story! (nt)

[Supersedeas]

38. When will the American people wake up to the filthy media manipulation of political

news

[mhatrw]

39. Great post! n/t

[The Straight Story]

41. Kicking it up a notch, great article and glad to see it here! (nt)

[helderheid]

42. KICK