Posts categorized "Censorship"

May 14, 2008

Brian Williams' "Truthiness" in Advertising

Posted by Brad Jacobson

For some time now, MSNBC has been running commercials touting their election coverage team's commitment to providing information that better enables Americans to make informed choices at the voting booth. But in context of the unfolding Pentagon TV war analysts scandal, one of these promos (which I believe is new) stood out for its particular hypocrisy.

To a melodramatic background score that's one part patriotic sentimentality (scene in Mel Gibson movie after character's army triumphs), one part childhood wonder (kids riding bikes in the sky to silhouette of the moon in E.T.), and one part lovers reuniting after a long separation (archetypal open-armed sprint across verdant meadow), this is the TV promo's content:

TEXT GRAPHIC: Decision 2008

TEXT GRAPHIC: Why Do People Care About Politics?

IMAGE: "VOTE HERE" sign with people standing in line behind it.

BRIAN WILLIAMS VOICEOVER: This is a participatory democracy.

TEXT GRAPHIC: Know

IMAGE: Black and white shot of people voting in the foreground; full-color American flag hanging prominently in the background.

BRIAN WILLIAMS VOICEOVER: I think you owe it to your democracy to know as much as you can about what's going on.

IMAGE: Old man (again in black and white), holding an American flag (again in full color) and seated on a bench, is gazing out toward the New York harbor.

TEXT GRAPHIC: That's Why You Care

TEXT GRAPHIC: That's Why We Cover It

IMAGE: Brian Williams' face, then the major faces of MSNBC election coverage.

TEXT GRAPHIC: MSNBC Decision 2008

TEXT GRAPHIC: MSNBC The Place for Politics

To this day, however, Brian Williams and MSNBC, along with CNN, Fox News, ABC, CBS and NBC, have failed to respond to a PBS NewsHour request for an interview about The New York Times exposé, which revealed ex-generals-turned-TV war analysts, shilling directly for the Pentagon, appeared regularly on their programs. (Yesterday, Media Matters published a study that found "since January 1, 2002, the analysts named in the Times article -- many identified as having ties to the defense industry -- collectively appeared or were quoted as experts more than 4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR.")

Williams, who in that MSNBC promo says, "This is a participatory democracy" in which "you owe it to your democracy to know as much as you can about what's going on," has, along with his network colleagues, prevented millions of people from knowing what's gone on in the run-up to the war in Iraq and over the course of the occupation. Williams champions our participatory democracy in MSNBC's ad yet fails to share with his viewers any information about what President Eisenhower, in his farewell address, presciently predicted would be the single greatest threat to our democracy - the "military-industrial complex."

On January 17, 1961, Eisenhower - a Republican president, former lifetime military man and war hero - explicitly cautioned: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together."

Yet here's Williams only acknowledgment of his network's involvement with these Pentagon-shilling TV war generals - not from behind his anchor desk but on his NBC Nightly News blog The Daily Nightly (April 29, 2008):

Continue reading "Brian Williams' "Truthiness" in Advertising" »

May 06, 2008

Bob Schieffer, Company Man

610x_5

Posted by Brad Jacobson

Bob Schieffer's coverage during the George W. Bush years, weighed against his hushed compromising relationship with the president, belies the CBS newsman's projected image as an unimpeachably principled journalist and typifies the way our media class operates.

In a Sunday post on Crooks and Liars, under the headline "Schieffer Wakes Up to Life in the Bush Administration," Nicole Belle wrote: "I don’t know where Bob Schieffer’s been these last seven years, but he thinks that the White House might have an credibility problem." She was reacting to Schieffer's Face the Nation commentary on the Lurita Doan scandal:

SCHIEFFER: I saw a story in the Washington Post the other day, where a reporter granted a government official anonymity in order as the newspaper put it, ‘for the government official to speak more candidly.’ Well, that made me wonder. Do we no longer expect government officials to tell the whole story if they must take responsibility for what they say? Even worse, do we believe that is acceptable?

For sure, the White House won no prize for candor last week; it gave the outgoing head of the General Services Administration, Lurita Doan, a big send off by thanking her for making government buildings more energy-efficient or some such, when in truth, she was forced out. She was the object of multiple investigations, suspicious dealings on government contracts, and asking government employees what they could do to help political candidates, which is, of course, against the law. Even the government’s watchdog agency recommended she be disciplined to the fullest extent. Yet the White House spokesman declined to say if her resignation had anything to do with any of that. From the White House came only thanks and confirmation she was gone. The government saw no obligation to say why, which leads me to this: have decades of secrecy, spin and stonewalling conditioned us to accept less than the whole story from the government? Is telling the whole truth no longer a given? Frankly, I’m not sure. What I do know is more and more people seem skeptical of everything the government says and does. What we saw last week may be one reason why.

Belle then pointed out the underlying absurdity:

The Lurita Doan scandal is such a minor one relative to all the other lies, spin, incompetence and outright negligence of the Bush administration that it’s tragically laughable that this is the one that Schieffer thinks exemplifies why the American people are skeptical to what comes out of the White House.

This also epitomizes Schieffer's reporting on the administration, which has treaded between muted criticism and outright fawning. It's no wonder after Dan Rather's departure from CBS Evening News, President Bush gladly granted Schieffer an exclusive interview. Something he never afforded Rather.

In a March 2003 interview, Schieffer was asked "if the Pentagon's decision to allow reporters to embed with troops" will "make it difficult for journalists to remain objective?" His answer was telling:

BOB SCHIEFFER: No, I don't think so at all. I think it was a very good decision. I must tell you on this one, I'm sort of like Ronald Reagan who used to say of the Soviet Union, "Trust but verify." I take them at their word at the Pentagon, if they're going to let these reporters go along and give us a view of this war if it does come. But I'm going to wait until the shooting starts until I give a final opinion. So far, they are saying all the right things. I give them the benefit of the doubt. I think they're going to try to do the right thing. But we'll see once the shooting starts if they follow up. If they do what they say they're going to do, it would be a very good thing. I also think it's not just good for the American people to have independent observers along, I think it's also good for the military. Had there been a reporter along with Lieutenant Calley when he massacred those people in Vietnam, I think that probably wouldn't have happened.

The truth is, however, in covering the Bush administration, Schieffer has been overly willing to trust and, whenever discrepancies between administration claims and the facts are verified, ever reluctant to hold anyone accountable. The ideal company man. Affable and avuncular yet trusted and above the fray. Walter Cronkite without that pesky willingness to speak truth to power. In the end, Schieffer might as well replace "trust but verify" with "ask but don't follow up."

Throughout his January 2006 interview with Bush, Schieffer responded "Um-hmm" and "Okay" and jarringly changed topics when the president's absurd answers demanded further inquiry. His misplaced deference lent credence to Bush's specious, unconstitutional explanations on everything from wiretaps, speaking with our enemies, the state of Iraq, Katrina, healthcare and energy independence. Moreover, Schieffer's final three questions were embarrassing softballs: "Has the presidency changed you, Mr. President?"; "What has been the worst part?"; and "What has been the impact on your family?"

Continue reading "Bob Schieffer, Company Man" »

May 03, 2008

If Only He Were Yankin' Our Cheney

Posted by Brad Jacobson

Unfortunately, he's not (h/t Raw Story):

The world is a better place because of George W. Bush's presidency, Vice President Dick Cheney assured Oklahoma Republicans on Friday evening.

"When the history is written, it will be said this is a safer country and more hopeful world because George Bush was president," Cheney said.

I won't state the obvious and run through the litany of death, destruction and misery these two despotic war criminals have unleashed during their watch. But, surprisingly, the shameless mendacity of these two thugs still shocks at this late date.

Here's our freedom-loving president discussing his own future:

"I'm interested in promoting ... the whole philosophy behind the freedom agenda. I think it's going to be very important to be kept in the forefront of American philosophical thought. And I'm going to build a presidential library at SMU — it's where Laura went to university, there in Dallas. And I'd like to have a think tank. This isn't a political precinct, this will be a place where we get the thinkers from around the world to come and write about and articulate the transformative power of freedom, abroad and at home."

Paging Dr. Orwell. Dr. Orwell, please pick up:

"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'" - George Orwell, 1984

"Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary." - George Orwell, 1984

So who's future will it be? Who's past? Who's present?

Dr. Martin Luther King said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." A comforting thought. But our leaders today and many members of our media, acting as their mouthpieces, have worked to obliterate the idea of a moral universe.

Consider this: we have a media that expresses outrage over a teen star showing too much skin in a photo shoot, but universally yawns and fails to report studies that estimate over 1 million Iraqi citizens have died because of the 2003 US invasion.

If the US continues on this path, who's to say Cheney won't be right about how President Bush's legacy is viewed ten, twenty, thirty years down the road?

Feds vs. Siegelman

Sorry folks, I have been recouping after finishing Part VI of the PRM. But here is a quick update on Don Siegelman.

"Federal court officials acknowledged Friday that they erred this week in classifying former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman as a special offender who required an extra layer of approval before traveling to New Orleans.

Probation officials in Alabama and Louisiana mistakenly applied rules governing offenders who are on probation. Siegelman is not on probation; he is free on bond pending appeal, said Karen Redmond, spokeswoman for the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts.

"They made an honest mistake," Redmond said. "They were giving him conditions for a special offender under probation. He's not. He's pretrial."

Siegelman, a Democrat who was convicted in 2006 on corruption charges, complained this week that he had been placed under new travel restrictions after appearing in several national media outlets and traveling to Washington to criticize his prosecution, which he claims was politically motivated.

He said the new rules were aimed at slowing him down or preventing him altogether from stating his case to the public."

I tend to agree with the Governor, because at this point, the officials handling his case have given me every reason to doubt them.

April 30, 2008

Don Siegelman hit with travel restrictions...

Well America, it has come to this. If you don't know who Don Siegelman is, I suggest you start HERE. Now for the news update:

"WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman has been barred from traveling without getting prior approval.

Siegelman tells The Associated Press that he was informed by his probation officer Tuesday afternoon that he was being classified as a special offender for travel purposes. The classification means he must get approval from the judge overseeing his case and from the district where he seeks to travel.

The Democrat was sentenced to more than seven years in prison on corruption charges and was recently released pending his appeal."

Just in time to deny Siegelman the right to travel to Washington for his Congressional testimony?  Or is it simply that Karl Rove has thrown a temper tantrum and called in the Stasi to make Siegelman fall out of circulation? What country is this?

April 29, 2008

"Not Just Unethical But Illegal"

Posted by Kathy

Interesting, from PR Watch:

Pentagon Pundit Scandal Broke the Law

The Pentagon military analyst program unveiled in last week's exposé by David Barstow in the New York Times was not just unethical but illegal. It violates, for starters, specific restrictions that Congress has been placing in its annual appropriation bills every year since 1951. According to those restrictions, "No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress."

<snip>

The Target Is You

A tantalizing window into Donald Rumsfeld's motives for creating the military analysts program can be find in a transcript that the Times obtained of one of his meetings with them. In it, he complains that he has been warned that his "information operations" are "illegal or immoral":

This is the first war that's ever been run in the 21sth Century in a time of 24-hour news and bloggers and internets and emails and digital cameras and Sony cams and God knows all this stuff. ... We're not very skillful at it in terms of the media part of the new realities we're living in. Every time we try to do something someone says it's illegal or immoral, there's nothing the press would rather do than write about the press, we all know that. They fall in love with it. So every time someone tries to do some information operations for some public diplomacy or something, they say oh my goodness, it's multiple audiences and if you're talking to them, they're hearing you here as well and therefore that's propagandizing or something.

This comment shows that Rumsfeld knows about the law against information operations that propagandize U.S. audiences. Although it is illegal to target propaganda at the America people, the law does not forbid propaganda -- even covert propaganda -- aimed at foreign audiences.

Rumsfeld has been warned, however, that in today's world with "bloggers and internets and emails," even information operations overseas reach "multiple audiences" including U.S. citizens who are "hearing you here as well and therefore that's propagandizing." The irony, of course, is that Rumsfeld made these comments in a meeting with military analysts whom he had recruited specifically for information operations targeting U.S. audiences.

If Rumsfeld knew that there were legal concerns even about operations targeted at foreign audiences, he certainly knew that it was illegal to target the American public. Yet he went ahead and did it anyway, and in another part of the transcript, he explained why. In fighting the war on terror, Rumsfeld said, the "center of gravity's here in Washington and in the United States."

April 28, 2008

Look how cute, the bigots cry racism...

Leave it to Shiksa Malkin to once-again stand-up against racism - something she only does when she can actually distort what is being said by anyone left-leaning in order to then use those paid-for talking points to help the GOP machine. Here is what Malkin writes this morning about Rev. Wright's speech:

"Good morning, people. I’ll be on Fox and Friends at around 8:15am to talk politics. Today’s engine-starter is The American Digest’s post on Jeremiah Wright’s racial brain theories.Do you remember nutball racialist professor Leonard (Blacks are “sun people,” whites are “ice people.”) Jeffries?
<snip>
As I noted yesterday, Wright acted out the differences between black and white marching bands.
<snip>
If he’s this comfortable mocking black/white differences in front of media cameras, I can only imagine what he says in private to his faithful black liberation ideology adherents."

Well Michelle proves finally what I have always suspected. The right-wing brain does not see complexity nor does it understand metaphor. It does, however, appear to hate rather well and so this sudden race to defend black America from a popular black pastor leaves me baffled.

After all, is this not the same bigot who argued in defense of Japanese concentration camps? Is this not the same bigot who routinely attacks Muslims and Islam? How very strange that this bigot would suddenly care about black America being insulted by what she now is trying to spin as racists slurs of a black minister. Quite simply put, what Malkin does not get is everything and what she is paid to parrot is garbage.

Let me just say what I got out Rev. Wright's speech. What Malkin points to as white-left brain theory is really what is generally referred to those who study the brain as creativity and emotion vs. logic and how the brain controls both. To say someone is creative is not to say they are unintelligent. By the same token to say that someone is logical does not make them intelligent. But Wright is NOT talking about intelligence in this regard.

Wright is appearing to use this as a metaphor to emphasize how the culture of the American black community is one of storytelling and song from a slave-history in which those were the only tools of expression and documentation available to an enslaved people. He discusses how those traditions have been attacked as  matters of intelligence, when they are in fact matters of culture.

Why is that so difficult to understand for Shiksa and the other brain-dead that walk among us? What Wright appears to be saying is that the Euro-centric way of speaking and expression is acceptable no matter how crude, illogical or how un-artistic, while the black-centric way of speaking and expression is seen as a deficiency that must be remedied, even if not remotely crude and entirely logical and artistic.

He shows how an opera singer conveys story through song and also how stories are expressed in black folk music and blues. In other words, what Wright is saying is that the black culture is itself being judged as deficient by a society that views intelligence not based on culture, but on test scores. Now does that sound remotely racist to anyone with any sense? No, it only sounds racist to a bigot.

I urge you to watch the speech in its entirety and not just the snips culled for sale by paid propagandists.

Now for another example of bigots running to defend black America. This one is from the mental-all-star Ed Morrissey:

"This sounds oddly similar to claims made in The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein, a book that created a firestorm of controversy with claims that race made a difference in IQ scores, among other claims. The two authors got reviled as racist enablers and their work became denigrated among a wide swath of researchers for seriously overreaching the science on which they relied for their conclusions. Bob Herbert wrote in the New York Times that The Bell Curve was “a scabrous piece of racial pornography masquerading as serious scholarship,” and that the book was “just a genteel way of calling somebody a n****r.” The American Psychological Association dismissed the racial differences hypothesized as “unsupported”."

Now see, this is really interesting. I have read the Bell Curve - because I had to for a debate class in which I argued against its assertions (which were not all that difficult to debunk). The fact that Morrissey can compare Rev. Wright's metaphor to the racist drivel of the Bell Curve indicates that Morrissey has never read the book, but simply Googled around for something "intelligent" to say.

The Bell Curve argued that certain "races" (as though the human race is actually a variety of different species or something equally idiotic and bigoted) were more intelligent than other races. The authors of this piece of shite were white "intellectuals" for starters, which made their message that much more offensive. More importantly, the authors, Charles Murray and Herrnstein are conservatives, with Murray as a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.  In other words, these fine bigots come from the same side of the bigotry isle as Ed Morrissey and Shiksa Malkin.

Unlike Rev. Wright, Murray and Herrnstein were not using metaphors.  They were claiming actual scientific proof of the intelligence of the various "races," based on so-called "scientific" studies they had conducted.   And what did they base their findings on? Well, they gave tests to immigrants, uneducated migrant workers, the poor, natives of various tribes, and university students and such (among the larger testing pool).

Do you think they tested black university students and white university students from the same type of socio-economic background as well as other similarities that would ensure that the research was not skewed toward a particular group of people or a particular definition of intelligence?

Nope. They tested highly educated whites against the same measurements they applied to uneducated blacks and from this they got the results they claim as proof.

In addition, cultures that had better educational models, like Japan, were identified as genetically and inherently  "more intelligent", as though the quality of the system of education had nothing to do with the level of intelligence measured subsequently. But even we take the quality of the education system of the equation and look simply at all poor people in the US, regardless of gender, "race" etc., would these authors have found a better testing method? No. Because they also don't seem to account for cultural variants.

When testing indigenous people of various African tribes, what types of "intelligence measuring" tools did they employ?  Right, the types of measurement tools that don't apply to the culture. In some cultures, for example,  the measurement standard for intelligence is in the ability of the person or group to organize the food supplies and resources for an entire tribe. In this country, we cannot seem to manage that even though we have all of the wealth and resources that should make such a task much easier.

Bell Curve does not make that distinction, Rev. Wright does.  In other words, Wright argues precisely against what the Bull Curve asserts. So how did Ed Morrissey happen to confuse this? Well, as I have said, he likely did not read the Bell Curve, but simply Googled for something inflammatory to use in his swift-boating of Rev. Wright.

Finally, why are bigots feeling so insulted by something that has nothing to do with them? Let the black community express their feelings on the matter. Shiksa Malkin tries to do this with topics related to Jews and Israel, despite her not being a Jew or a citizen of Israel. Why? How does this in any way affect you, Michelle? Oh wait, I forgot, they get paid to be part of the nationalistic swarm that is released to help swift-boat someone or something that their handlers fear.

April 26, 2008

Project Censored: Top 25 Stories of 2008

From Project Censored:

April 23, 2008

Senator notices the "catapulting [of] the propaganda"

Remember the NYT blockbuster on the Bush administration's use of the military human-machine to catapult the propaganda? You know, the scandal none of the major outlets would cover beyond a nanosecond of required reportage? You know, the scandal that Podhoretz claimed was a "non-story?" (Incidentally, I have learned that J-pod spent a great deal of time in high school wearing headphones that did not plug into anything).

Well now, looks like the scandal has gotten Congressional (if not  mass media) attention:

"Sen. Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he was sending Defense Secretary Robert Gates a letter urging him to make "sure access to the media is even, is not selective, they're not picking people for favorable treatment." The New York Times on Sunday reported that retired senior officers received private briefings, trips and access to classified intelligence to influence their comments about the Iraq war on television networks. "It's a very, very significant disclosure of the New York Times," Levin told reporters"

What is that phrase... let me think... oh yeah, CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

April 20, 2008

I thought domestic propaganda was illegal?

An excellent article in the NYT today illustrates our continued march toward the marriage of corporate and state interests, otherwise known as fascism:

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

Um, excuse me, were these flights funded by tax dollars?

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

<snip>

Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley.

In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access.

A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

Propaganda at Fox News? No? Really? I am shocked... shocked I tell you.

Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.

Um, I thought domestic propaganda was illegal? Just to summarize, military analysts presented as experts on media outlets delivered government propaganda that benefited military contractors these so called experts had a financial gain in. That about cover it? It's time to bring out Immortal Technique's The 4th Branch. The video is not made by him, rather, by a fan of his and posted on YouTube:

 

Continue reading "I thought domestic propaganda was illegal?" »

My Photo

Piggy Bank

tip jar for AL

Tip Jar

Books by AL Writers

  • Larisa's upcoming...
  • Jeff Huber's Upcoming ...

Get at-Largely via Email

  • Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

Pictures from the muck

  • Pertyyyyyyyy
    Pictures of me working on various stories, of actual stories and locations, of random musings, of pure and total nonsense.

Help Support at-Largely

Reporters Under Attack

Raw Story News

Click, Click

BuzzFlash News

DAILY CARTOON click to enlarge
ANDERTOONS.COM ENTERTAINMENT CARTOONS

Categories