Monday, April 23, 2007 @2:57 PM
To: Senor Dave Shiflett, Bloomberg News
Thank you for the article included below and sharing it online.
I believe that in the last several years many of us who have the luxury of being online have gotten daily and actively involved in progressive online groups via Yahoo and other online service providers. We share news articles, analyses and other news items amongst each other when time and circumstances permit us to do so and many of us are also local activists in our local communities.
In many ways, on a collective cumulative basis online groups have proven to be a vital means of getting the truth out about events in Iraq-nam, about attacks on humane rights ~including attacks on immigrant rights~ and have helped to expose the attacks by the Bush Rogue Regime against humane rights in general, in essence, reporting the news to its online members and letting the central kernal truths of these vital issues spread out to the general public. These many many online progressive groups together have brought about a new kind of citizen's media.
Plus, as time goes by there are more and more blogs that are related to online groups. Thanks to the Power of the Internet there have been great strides among world citizens to provide the truth about vital matters that are important to masses of people worldwide and we are only scratching the surface of Internet technology-based media. We are not dependent only on the corporate media and its gatekeepers. We learn daily and exponentially.
We world citizens will continue to uphold the truth as we see it, be open to valid caring criticism and always be receptive to new facts as circumstances change, develop and expand along with our own humane consciousness.
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." ~~ John 8:32
Humanely Yours ~
Peter S. Lopez {aka Peta}, Group Moderator
Sacramento, California, Aztlan
Links to Related Online Groups and Related Blogs:
http://humane-rights-agenda.blogspot.com/
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Moyers Shows How Media Backed Bush Plan for Iraq:
By Dave Shiflett
April 23 (Bloomberg) -- A journalist's worst enemies may be the replay button and the clip file.
Bill Moyers reminds us that Fox News was hardly alone in beating the war drums during the run-up to the Iraq invasion in ``Buying the War,'' which airs April 25 on PBS at 9 p.m. New York time.
Forget Brit Hume. Here's Dan Rather on the David Letterman show six days after 9/11: ``George Bush is the president, he makes the decisions and you know, as just one American, wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where.''
Rather, one of several journalists Moyers interviewed for the 90-minute program, insists he was speaking as a private citizen, not a journalist. Yet Rather admits that ``in the main there's no question that we didn't do a very good job.''
Moyers supplies extensive evidence to back up that view.
The Washington Post, for instance, did some 140 front-page pieces between August 2002 and March 2003 ``making the administration's case for war'' and only a handful raised serious questions about the policy, says Post media critic Howard Kurtz.
The New York Times, USA Today, PBS, the New York Daily News and a vast number of regional publications sang variations on the same theme, as did a large chorus of conservative and liberal pundits.
Among the few skeptics were Bob Simon of ``60 Minutes'' and John Walcott, Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay, whose work for Knight Ridder (later acquired by McClatchy Co.) questioned the presence of weapons of mass destruction and the alleged link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
Powell Speech
Simon, posted in the Middle East at the time, didn't buy that link for a second. Saddam, he notes, was a ``total control freak'' and to ``introduce a wild card like al-Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do.''
Yet these views found little resonance, especially in Washington, where officials including Dick Cheney quoted news stories based on administration leaks. Colin Powell's war- justifying speech to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003, was swallowed whole, producing headlines such as ``Irrefutable'' in the Washington Post and ``Damning Evidence'' in the Arizona Republic.
The insistence that Iraqis would hail troops as liberators was similarly embraced; Oprah Winfrey assured a guest there was no guesswork involved: ``We're just showing you what is.''
Former CNN Chief Executive Officer Walter Isaacson said ``big people in corporations'' also offered editorial guidance, and the network was accused of being anti-American when it aired stories about civilian casualties in Afghanistan.
The show names many journalists who declined to discuss their positive spin on the prewar buildup, including Judith Miller of the New York Times, Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, pundits Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Friedman and Bill Safire, and Fox News chief Roger Ailes.
McClatchy's Walcott argues that press scrutiny doesn't undermine the troops and isn't unpatriotic. ``Are we really behind them when we fail to do our jobs?'' he asks.
(Dave Shiflett is a critic for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.)
To contact the writer of this story: Dave Shiflett at dshifl@aol.com .
Last Updated: April 23, 2007 00:16 EDT
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