eaglebonewhistle.com
The Great American Print and
Broadcast Media Hoax
"I wrote this as an open letter to American Print and Broadcast Media - around the Ides of March. Looking back today through eleven days of catastrophic massacre, leading to more of same it seems as relevant now as it did then, so I decided to post it. Without the lie campaign of American media, our people would never have tolerated this. Violence sells papers - it's the old yellow journalism formula. Fits perfectly with the Bush Big Lie."
SBIf the Bush Administration, in violation of international law, carries out a pre-emptive war against Iraq it will be to no small extend due to relentless war mongering on the part of the US Press.
America and the world deserve better. Half the people in America oppose this war. Half of mainstream media coverage should be devoted to anti - war work, theory and actions.
Stop running stories peppered with faux news and undocumented reports based on comments from unnamed sources that would get booted out of Journalism 101. Broadcast journalists routinely mistake Iraq for Al Qaeda, Bin Laden for Hussein - then cough or quickly try to recover from misspeak. The lies flow so fast, broadcasters can't keep up with them.
Hours stacked on hours of news time are devoted to regional crime to ratchet up our fear quotient - an anglo child missing, escaped convicts, kids on the freeway - against the backdrop of a huge silence about the largest rip off of the century, Enron, or the second largest rip off of our time, World Com. What about the military/industrial coup which at the moment runs our government and the war machine? We don't hear much about that. Why is no one investigating voter fraud? Who buried the NY Times report on the Florida debacle? Bush didn't win Florida. I find that newsworthy.
There is hardly a peep in broadcast media when two ex-presidents speak against war on Iraq - Jimmy Carter and the George Bush, Sr. It isn't newsworthy when the father of the President of the United States, himself an ex-president, says in a public address at a major university that unilateral action against Iraq is bad idea?
It isn't important that in the last week 100 Palestinians have been murdered in their homes, and offices, scores have been injured. Israel has violated ten times as many UN resolutions as has Iraq. We hear about it when some poor Palestinian teenager blows him/or herself up though. Palestinians are terrorists Israelis are victims. Doesn't anyone check the numbers? North Korea is firing missiles into the sea, missiles that could deliver weapons of mass destruction to the West Coast of the United States. What are American diplomats doing to keep these people at bay? Is this not more newsworthy than what kind of instant food Americans will pack into the desert when they invade a defenseless people, or the details of a celebrity trial?
There is famine in Africa. The people of Zimbabwe will tell you it's not just about Mugabe's incompetence. Choice is about to go round the bend in the US Congress. Why have you not informed the public of this? Medicare is about to be privatized. Environmental protection legislation is being gutted. America is a big family of uninformed bone heads lately, and it's not our fault. Our media - that magnificent tool for mass communication, that vast resource for information, research - the paragon of free speech in the world - has been completely squandered. All that anthrax came from the home land. Homeland security alerts pop up when the Administration wants us to be distracted. These alerts send me scrambling for alternative and world news to discover what is really going on.
Ten percent of the annual US military budget according to UN estimates would provide for the basic needs of every human being on the planet for a year. That sort of waste is fascinating to me. How does the US get away with it? You won't find out in the American press. Millions of people all over the world are against a US invasion of Iraq. In a year and a half the President of the United States has managed to make himself less popular with the people of the world than a ruthless, maniacal dictator in Iraq. You won't hear that in the United States Press. How could that possibly have occurred?
Maybe George Bush believes the weird world view pumped out by US media. Unfortunate.
And the spin game - what a joke. A reporter for NPR from the Boston Globe who was in London for the Feb 15 march against war on Iraq said of the million and a half people who turned out, "It would be a mistake to think all these people are against war." It was just a coincidence so many people went for a walk, carrying their anti-war signs, all at once?
Or the shout out shows - two faces going at each other about when to invade. But not a word from millions of people who say why invasion should not occur. Expert idiots shouting about false issues.
And the equal coverage scam - equal time to a million marchers and three pro-war guys on Harleys with "Go Back to I-RAN" signs. After months of pro-war network tirades that go on and on, on and on. And on.
It is hard to imagine a more biased media than we have in the United States. You should turn in your pay checks, go read alternative and world news on the internet. That is how the people of the world find out what is happening. With a very few exceptions - Moyers, Kopple, the NY Times (occasionally), the LA Times (more often), sometimes the Chicago Tribune - American mainstream media is a hoax.
Susan Bright, poet
Austin, Texas
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