Monday, September 18, 2006

The Media: A Stream of Lazy Deception

Links and Downloads: Media Matters, the great site that keelhauls the neocon American mass media, has now added Eric Alterman to its stable of writers. Click the graphic to be sent to Eric's first post at MM. And while you're at it, you might take a moment to write MSNBC and let them know how you feel about their cowardly firing of Alterman.

Here at Daily Rev, we have Monday with McKenna as a download today (Word doc, 668kb). Terry offers his personal reflections on 9/11, with graphics and links that are well worth a look. It's the sort of document that a blog's space cannot do justice.

Terry has also done today's cartoon—click to enlarge.


Frank Rich's column is available to Times Select readers (even if you don't want to pay for it, just get a trial subscription); and his new book is also out: The Greatest Story Ever Sold. The opening of Rich's column points up an alarming coincidence of deception:


RARELY has a television network presented a more perfectly matched double feature. President Bush’s 9/11 address on Monday night interrupted ABC’s “Path to 9/11” so seamlessly that a single network disclaimer served them both: “For dramatic and narrative purposes, the movie contains fictionalized scenes, composite and representative characters and dialogue, as well as time compression.”

No kidding: “The Path to 9/11” was false from the opening scene, when it put Mohamed Atta both in the wrong airport (Boston instead of Portland, Me.) and on the wrong airline (American instead of USAirways). It took Mr. Bush but a few paragraphs to warm up to his first fictionalization for dramatic purposes: his renewed pledge that “we would not distinguish between the terrorists and those who harbor or support them.” Only days earlier the White House sat idly by while our ally Pakistan surrendered to Islamic militants in its northwest frontier, signing a “truce” and releasing Al Qaeda prisoners. Not only will Pakistan continue to harbor terrorists, Osama bin Laden probably among them, but it will do so without a peep from Mr. Bush.


If you're beginning to see a theme here, it is no accident: the American mass media have not progressed a single step toward the practice of actual journalism since the exposure of Jeff Gannon. In fact, it's gotten worse—a daily diet of spin, lies, and unabashed deception, from the very people who are paid and trusted to uncover the truth. That's why we carry Media Matters' daily feed in our sidebar; why we recommend that you visit Alterman's blog and bookmark it; why Terry drew that cartoon as he did; and why Frank Rich's book and column must deal at such length with the lies of this administration and the mass media's zomboid repetition of same. After all, there's a lot to cover—a quotidian stream of lazy deception.

Finally, on the same topic, Jon Stewart weighs in with a little piece about how to turn a question into an accusation. Watch it.

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Fortunately, millions of people around the world weren't watching the news this weekend...they were asking the leaders of this benighted world to finally show some leadership, and act to end the slaughter in Darfur.

Here are a few more links on the most urgent human disaster facing us now:

The dismal reality of Darfur
How to help
Oxfam
Let your Congressman know that you want Darfur to be a top-priority issue for this government.
Finally, demand that the media do their job and report the truth, every day, about what is happening in Africa.

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