SO WHERE IS OUR OUTRAGE? - Memo To the Mainstream Media
FPF-fwd.: excellent news source AxisofLogic.com - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/4jrhw
Memo To the Mainstream Media, From the Mainstream Media:
The Time for Us to Stand Up and Fight Is Now !
[Concerns: - History's warning regarding compliant media: Hitler - An Officer And A Gentleman? - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/3eepa]
THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS BEGINNING TO RISE UP IN SELF-DEFENSE.
OR HALF OF IT, AT LEAST.
By Advocate Staff
That half which is sick and tired of being sick and tired, which sees sailing by an America in which the Fourth Estate was one of the nation's most valuable institutions.
That half which knows it has lost the respect and admiration of the public not because of what it says in print, but because of what it refuses to say in print, for reasons having nothing to do with patriotism or journalism and everything to do with fear and convenience, day after day after day.
A rebellion has begun from within the Fourth Estate, and let the annals of history reflect that it was the bizarre, almost unbelievable story of a gay prostitute in a conservative Republican White House which made it happen.
Witness the following, from the venerable Chicago Tribune:
If America's mainstream media really were as liberal as conservatives claim we are, we would be ballyhooing the fiasco of James D. Guckert, also known as Jeff Gannon, with Page 1 banner headlines and hourly bulletins. Sure, Guckertgate may seem like a tempest in a teapot, at first.
But so did the Whitewater land-development deal. Yet conservative commentators and editorialists, aided by their allies in Congress, rode that Arkansas pony until it ended far afield from a land deal with the impeachment of a president for lying about sex.
....
I thought the last straw was the unprecedented herding of reporters covering this year's inaugural balls into pens from which they could only venture to interview ball guests if they were escorted by "minders" in the fashion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Tell me again: What was that war about? Oh, yeah: freedom and democracy. Great. I'd like to see a little more of that back here at home.
Unfortunately, this administration and its supportive chorus are getting away with less accountability, more secretiveness, partly by demonizing the media. If they succeed in intimidating us from watchdogs into lap dogs, they will have succeeded where previous administrations from both parties failed -- Clarence Page, The Chicago Tribune
PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING COMMENTATOR LEONARD PITT
Or this excerpt from an editorial by Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator Leonard Pitt, Jr., whose admonition and chastisement seemed as much directed at his colleagues in the press as at workaday Americans: Weeks later, I'm still waiting for a good explanation of what Jeff Gannon was doing in the White House. And for you to be upset about it.
....
These are the folks who pay pundits to say nice things about them. The ones who pressure scientists to change science that conflicts with political goals. The ones who ignore their own experts when confronted with information they'd rather not believe. And this is a president whose news conferences occur with only slightly more frequency than ice storms do in Key West, who ducks hard questions posed by actual reporters, preferring to bat slow pitches tossed by average citizens pre-screened for their support.
So planting a party stooge among the real reporters hardly seems out of character.
The thing is, a government that is not scrutinized by an energetic and adversarial press is a government that is not accountable for its actions. A government that is allowed to create its own reality is a government that can get away with anything.
SO WHERE IS OUR OUTRAGE?
Frankly, the only thing more galling than the brazenness with which the White House abrogates the public's right to know is the sheeplike docility with which we accept it, with which we become complicit in our own hoodwinking.
When the history of this era is written, people will wonder why we didn't challenge its excesses, why we didn't know the things we should have. If you're still around, remember the uproar you do not hear right this moment and tell them the truth. -- Leonard Pitts, Jr., The Seattle Times
How about the Emmy Award-winning co-editor of CBS's "60 Minutes," Lesley Stahl?
I do not understand, having covered the White House for as long as I did, how he [Gannon] got, I just don't get it, how he got a press pass on a false name, on an alias, I don't know how that happened. You have to be cleared through the Secret Service in order to get a press pass, which you have to wear at all times.
I mean, there's something behind this story which hasn't come out, clearly. My God!
....
How did he get a Secret Service press pass? How did that happen? Okay, someone leaked stories, and of course we won't have an investigation of that, will we? But, how did he get a Secret Service press pass? With an alias? I mean, really, I cannot figure it out. -- Lesley Stahl, Real Time With Bill Maher
Or how about this gem from the New York Observer:
Proof that "the liberal media" is but a figment of right-wing mythology has now arrived in the person of one James Guckert, formerly known as Jeff Gannon. Were the American media truly liberal--or merely unafraid to be called liberal--the saga of Mr. Guckert's short, strange, quasi-journalistic career would be resounding across the airwaves.
The intrinsic media interest of the Guckert/Gannon story should be obvious to anyone who has followed his tale, which touches on hot topics from the homosexual underground and the investigation into the outing of C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame to the political power of the Internet.
But our supposedly liberal media becomes quite squeamish when reporting anything that might humiliate the Bush White House and the Republican Party.
....
Such questions are evidently of little concern to our liberal media outlets, whose leading lights prefer to deliver prim lectures about the unwarranted invasion of Mr. Guckert's private affairs and his victimization for his conservative views. In fact, everything known about him comes from material he posted on public Web sites, but that's beside the point.
Imagine the media explosion if a male escort had been discovered operating as a correspondent in the Clinton White House.
Imagine that he was paid by an outfit owned by Arkansas Democrats and had been trained in journalism by James Carville. Imagine that this gentleman had been cultivated and called upon by Mike McCurry or Joe Lockhart--or by President Clinton himself. Imagine that this "journalist" had smeared a Republican Presidential candidate and had previously claimed access to classified documents in a national-security scandal.
Then imagine the constant screaming on radio, on television, on Capitol Hill, in the Washington press corps--and listen to the placid mumbling of the "liberal" media now. -- Joe Conason, The New York Observer
THE NEW YORK TIMES
And what self-flagellating "firing squad in a circle" would be complete without the involvement of The Paper of Record?
It [the Bush Administration penchant for "script" and "propaganda"] is a brilliant strategy. When the Bush administration isn't using taxpayers' money to buy its own fake news, it does everything it can to shut out and pillory real reporters who might tell Americans what is happening in what is, at least in theory, their own government. Paul Farhi of The Washington Post discovered that even at an inaugural ball he was assigned "minders" - attractive women who wouldn't give him their full names - to let the revelers know that Big Brother was watching should they be tempted to say anything remotely off message.
The inability of real journalists to penetrate this White House is not all the White House's fault. The errors of real news organizations have played perfectly into the administration's insidious efforts to blur the boundaries between the fake and the real and thereby demolish the whole notion that there could possibly be an objective and accurate free press.
-- Frank Rich, The New York Times
Good Lord!
Was it widely known that the media had been "herded into pens" and forced to walk around with "minders" during the inaugural balls?
Or is this another example of a self-silencing media (something in the vein of, "you don't distribute pictures of your shackles," or "you don't sh*t where you eat"?)
No wonder Greg Gatlin of The Boston Herald has written an article entitled, "The News Is Broken: Journalists Find Scandals, Image Eroding Credibility." Consider this quote:
That the public thinks journalists are only slightly more believable than used-car salesmen may not come as a shock, given scandals that have damaged media credibility in recent years. What's more sobering to some media observers is that the hits continue to come...[a]n online media watchdog group and several bloggers revealed that conservative reporter Jeff Gannon, who'd been asking softball questions at White House news briefings, was actually named James Guckert and has ties to gay porn Web sites.
Into the midst of this mainstream media uproar over--well, really, its own incompetence and cravenness--comes a threat from Jeff Gannon/James Guckert, one aimed squarely at the "new" media: progressive internet news outlets.
What, did someone in the Republican Party tell Gannon that the blogosphere would pack up and go home--or, better still, be herded into pens--in the same way the mainstream media has allowed itself to be stymied by the present Administration?
WELL, TO QUOTE ONE GANNON HERO: BRING IT ON!
[end item]
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/4ar5e
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/6v8ru
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl
The Dutch author this far has worked abroad 4 decades for international media as a foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East. - At present'Persona non Grata' in Holland :-)
Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism!
He who travels far will often see things
Far removed from what he believed was the Truth.
When he talks about it in the fields at home,
He is often accused of lying,
For the obdurate people will not believe
Inexperience, I believe,
Will give little credence to my song.
'Journey to the East' - Hermann Hesse
Colin Powell: 'It is not anti-Semitic to criticize the policies of the state of Israel' - as 'US Secretary of State' in a speech at the 'Conference on Anti-Semitism of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe' - German Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Berlin - April 28th - 2004 - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/22p6c
Former PM Wim Kok and other Dutch Govt's war criminals in Court: - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/662pp - It can and must be done!
Help the troops come home! Url.: http://www.bringemhome.org - We need them badly to fight our so called 'governments' - Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/
HR
-0-
Memo To the Mainstream Media, From the Mainstream Media:
The Time for Us to Stand Up and Fight Is Now !
[Concerns: - History's warning regarding compliant media: Hitler - An Officer And A Gentleman? - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/3eepa]
THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS BEGINNING TO RISE UP IN SELF-DEFENSE.
OR HALF OF IT, AT LEAST.
By Advocate Staff
That half which is sick and tired of being sick and tired, which sees sailing by an America in which the Fourth Estate was one of the nation's most valuable institutions.
That half which knows it has lost the respect and admiration of the public not because of what it says in print, but because of what it refuses to say in print, for reasons having nothing to do with patriotism or journalism and everything to do with fear and convenience, day after day after day.
A rebellion has begun from within the Fourth Estate, and let the annals of history reflect that it was the bizarre, almost unbelievable story of a gay prostitute in a conservative Republican White House which made it happen.
Witness the following, from the venerable Chicago Tribune:
If America's mainstream media really were as liberal as conservatives claim we are, we would be ballyhooing the fiasco of James D. Guckert, also known as Jeff Gannon, with Page 1 banner headlines and hourly bulletins. Sure, Guckertgate may seem like a tempest in a teapot, at first.
But so did the Whitewater land-development deal. Yet conservative commentators and editorialists, aided by their allies in Congress, rode that Arkansas pony until it ended far afield from a land deal with the impeachment of a president for lying about sex.
....
I thought the last straw was the unprecedented herding of reporters covering this year's inaugural balls into pens from which they could only venture to interview ball guests if they were escorted by "minders" in the fashion of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Tell me again: What was that war about? Oh, yeah: freedom and democracy. Great. I'd like to see a little more of that back here at home.
Unfortunately, this administration and its supportive chorus are getting away with less accountability, more secretiveness, partly by demonizing the media. If they succeed in intimidating us from watchdogs into lap dogs, they will have succeeded where previous administrations from both parties failed -- Clarence Page, The Chicago Tribune
PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING COMMENTATOR LEONARD PITT
Or this excerpt from an editorial by Pulitzer Prize-winning commentator Leonard Pitt, Jr., whose admonition and chastisement seemed as much directed at his colleagues in the press as at workaday Americans: Weeks later, I'm still waiting for a good explanation of what Jeff Gannon was doing in the White House. And for you to be upset about it.
....
These are the folks who pay pundits to say nice things about them. The ones who pressure scientists to change science that conflicts with political goals. The ones who ignore their own experts when confronted with information they'd rather not believe. And this is a president whose news conferences occur with only slightly more frequency than ice storms do in Key West, who ducks hard questions posed by actual reporters, preferring to bat slow pitches tossed by average citizens pre-screened for their support.
So planting a party stooge among the real reporters hardly seems out of character.
The thing is, a government that is not scrutinized by an energetic and adversarial press is a government that is not accountable for its actions. A government that is allowed to create its own reality is a government that can get away with anything.
SO WHERE IS OUR OUTRAGE?
Frankly, the only thing more galling than the brazenness with which the White House abrogates the public's right to know is the sheeplike docility with which we accept it, with which we become complicit in our own hoodwinking.
When the history of this era is written, people will wonder why we didn't challenge its excesses, why we didn't know the things we should have. If you're still around, remember the uproar you do not hear right this moment and tell them the truth. -- Leonard Pitts, Jr., The Seattle Times
How about the Emmy Award-winning co-editor of CBS's "60 Minutes," Lesley Stahl?
I do not understand, having covered the White House for as long as I did, how he [Gannon] got, I just don't get it, how he got a press pass on a false name, on an alias, I don't know how that happened. You have to be cleared through the Secret Service in order to get a press pass, which you have to wear at all times.
I mean, there's something behind this story which hasn't come out, clearly. My God!
....
How did he get a Secret Service press pass? How did that happen? Okay, someone leaked stories, and of course we won't have an investigation of that, will we? But, how did he get a Secret Service press pass? With an alias? I mean, really, I cannot figure it out. -- Lesley Stahl, Real Time With Bill Maher
Or how about this gem from the New York Observer:
Proof that "the liberal media" is but a figment of right-wing mythology has now arrived in the person of one James Guckert, formerly known as Jeff Gannon. Were the American media truly liberal--or merely unafraid to be called liberal--the saga of Mr. Guckert's short, strange, quasi-journalistic career would be resounding across the airwaves.
The intrinsic media interest of the Guckert/Gannon story should be obvious to anyone who has followed his tale, which touches on hot topics from the homosexual underground and the investigation into the outing of C.I.A. agent Valerie Plame to the political power of the Internet.
But our supposedly liberal media becomes quite squeamish when reporting anything that might humiliate the Bush White House and the Republican Party.
....
Such questions are evidently of little concern to our liberal media outlets, whose leading lights prefer to deliver prim lectures about the unwarranted invasion of Mr. Guckert's private affairs and his victimization for his conservative views. In fact, everything known about him comes from material he posted on public Web sites, but that's beside the point.
Imagine the media explosion if a male escort had been discovered operating as a correspondent in the Clinton White House.
Imagine that he was paid by an outfit owned by Arkansas Democrats and had been trained in journalism by James Carville. Imagine that this gentleman had been cultivated and called upon by Mike McCurry or Joe Lockhart--or by President Clinton himself. Imagine that this "journalist" had smeared a Republican Presidential candidate and had previously claimed access to classified documents in a national-security scandal.
Then imagine the constant screaming on radio, on television, on Capitol Hill, in the Washington press corps--and listen to the placid mumbling of the "liberal" media now. -- Joe Conason, The New York Observer
THE NEW YORK TIMES
And what self-flagellating "firing squad in a circle" would be complete without the involvement of The Paper of Record?
It [the Bush Administration penchant for "script" and "propaganda"] is a brilliant strategy. When the Bush administration isn't using taxpayers' money to buy its own fake news, it does everything it can to shut out and pillory real reporters who might tell Americans what is happening in what is, at least in theory, their own government. Paul Farhi of The Washington Post discovered that even at an inaugural ball he was assigned "minders" - attractive women who wouldn't give him their full names - to let the revelers know that Big Brother was watching should they be tempted to say anything remotely off message.
The inability of real journalists to penetrate this White House is not all the White House's fault. The errors of real news organizations have played perfectly into the administration's insidious efforts to blur the boundaries between the fake and the real and thereby demolish the whole notion that there could possibly be an objective and accurate free press.
-- Frank Rich, The New York Times
Good Lord!
Was it widely known that the media had been "herded into pens" and forced to walk around with "minders" during the inaugural balls?
Or is this another example of a self-silencing media (something in the vein of, "you don't distribute pictures of your shackles," or "you don't sh*t where you eat"?)
No wonder Greg Gatlin of The Boston Herald has written an article entitled, "The News Is Broken: Journalists Find Scandals, Image Eroding Credibility." Consider this quote:
That the public thinks journalists are only slightly more believable than used-car salesmen may not come as a shock, given scandals that have damaged media credibility in recent years. What's more sobering to some media observers is that the hits continue to come...[a]n online media watchdog group and several bloggers revealed that conservative reporter Jeff Gannon, who'd been asking softball questions at White House news briefings, was actually named James Guckert and has ties to gay porn Web sites.
Into the midst of this mainstream media uproar over--well, really, its own incompetence and cravenness--comes a threat from Jeff Gannon/James Guckert, one aimed squarely at the "new" media: progressive internet news outlets.
What, did someone in the Republican Party tell Gannon that the blogosphere would pack up and go home--or, better still, be herded into pens--in the same way the mainstream media has allowed itself to be stymied by the present Administration?
WELL, TO QUOTE ONE GANNON HERO: BRING IT ON!
[end item]
FOREIGN PRESS FOUNDATION
http://tinyurl.com/4ar5e
Editor : Henk Ruyssenaars
http://tinyurl.com/6v8ru
The Netherlands
FPF@Chello.nl
The Dutch author this far has worked abroad 4 decades for international media as a foreign correspondent, of which 10 years - also during Gulf War I - in the Arab World and the Middle East. - At present'Persona non Grata' in Holland :-)
Seeing worldwide that every bullet and every bomb breeds more terrorism!
He who travels far will often see things
Far removed from what he believed was the Truth.
When he talks about it in the fields at home,
He is often accused of lying,
For the obdurate people will not believe
Inexperience, I believe,
Will give little credence to my song.
'Journey to the East' - Hermann Hesse
Colin Powell: 'It is not anti-Semitic to criticize the policies of the state of Israel' - as 'US Secretary of State' in a speech at the 'Conference on Anti-Semitism of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe' - German Ministry of Foreign Affairs - Berlin - April 28th - 2004 - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/22p6c
Former PM Wim Kok and other Dutch Govt's war criminals in Court: - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/662pp - It can and must be done!
Help the troops come home! Url.: http://www.bringemhome.org - We need them badly to fight our so called 'governments' - Url.: http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/
HR
-0-
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