All I Want for Christmas is More Consolidated Media

FreePress has this pdf report as well: 10 Facts Kevin Martin Doesn’t Want You to Know About His New Media Ownership Rules.

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Dan Rather Suit Against CBS

Last night Dan Rather was on Larry King (excuse me for watching) and is accusing CBS of scapegoating him in the Bush "forged documents" story. But, he said if this lawsuit can do anything it will be to restore the news business to what it should be - insuring democracy - instead of corporations making decisions for the news. He spoke about how they sat on the Abu Ghraib story because of the corporate lawyers "upstairs" wanted to be cautious. And the Bush story he wanted to continue investigating but an "outside panel" co-chaired by Dick Thornburgh, former Republican Attorney General for Reagan said the story was badly flawed and shut the investigation down.

Rather still believes the story to be true and the documents to be authentic. He also says a former FBI agent who began investigating the story for CBS found "helpful and supportive" information for Rather, but shut the story down anyway.

Our democracy is in trouble when corporations are making decisions based on their bottom line or their connections to stories rather on what is best for our democracy. I applaud Rather for this attempt. Check out the clip above from the Insider when CBS shuts down a huge story on Big Tobacco because of the mother corporation. This is a true story and Lowell Bergman quit CBS over it. If you have not seen this movie it is a dandy. The clip gets good around the first minute.

NSA Wiretapping Program Only Part of the Surveillance Program

When will we find out the full extent of the Bush administration's encroachment into our civil liberties? When will it be important to ask these questions? In response to Arlen Specter's call to explain the perjury by Alberto Gonzalez Mike McConnell, the director of National Intelligence revealed that the NSA wiretapping and data mining programs are only part of a series of surveillance programs issued under one executive order by the President.

Rawstory reported on the story this morning:

Bush's executive order authorized "a number" of intelligence activities. The name created by the Bush team -- 'Terrorist Surveillance Program' -- applied only to "one particular aspect of these activities," McConnell wrote.

"This is the only aspect of the NSA activities that can be discussed publicly, because it is the only aspect of those various activities whose existence has been officially acknowledged," McConnell said.

The Post did not say that the only reason warrantless wiretapping was acknowledged in the first place was due to a groundbreaking article by James Risen, that exposed the program in the New York Times.

"News reports over the past 20 months have detailed a range of activities linked to the program, including the use of data mining to identify surveillance targets and the participation of telecommunication companies in turning over millions of phone records," Eggen adds. "The administration has not publicly confirmed such reports."

When is illegal illegal with these guys? To try and clear Gonzalez from Perjury, the administration offers up more illegal programs. And the press just blinks like robots.

Gunmen Killed Another Journalist in Iraq; he was 23.

Gunmen killed an Iraqi journalist from The New York Times as he drove to work Friday, the third staffer of a Western news organization to be killed in the past two days. In his last moments, Khalid W. Hassan called his mother on his cell phone and told her he had been shot.

CNN Covers CNN Covering Paris Hilton

Wolf Blitzer broke from an interview with Bill Cosby talking about inner city poverty to cover Paris Hilton entering CNN studios for an intervew with none other than Larry King. "CNN ran a full segment catching viewers up with what Hilton had been doing since getting out of jail yesterday (holing up at home; giving an exclusive interview to People for $300,000 (undisclosed terms)...a magazine which also happens to be owned by Time Warner, just like CNN. Oops, they didn't mention that."

The Huffington Post reported this story and said "Wolf Blitzer, looking like he wished he were somewhere else and then said: "how many most trusted name in news' jokes can you make before it makes you sad? Hilton, shot from outside heading into the building, was lobbed from one camera to another as she walked into the building, wearing a feminine lace-edged dress and smelling — get this — a white rose passed to her by her handler. The camera tracked her to the elevator, but if you happened to miss that, well, Costello confirmed it: "You see her going up the elevator to meet with Larry King, to talk to him before the interview." Embarrassing

Wolf Blitzer then says: "Thanks for that" supposedly not breaking his pledge to never utter the words "Paris Hilton" on his newscast. And I say news mockingly.

It is Nice to See Real Journalism for a Change

See this article that somehow escaped my viewing. A story by CBS' Lara Logan on the treatment of Iraqi special needs children in an orphanage. The boys were laying naked on the grounds with flies all over them, some tied to cribs while brand new clothes are in wrapped plastic bags ready to be sold to an Iraqi market. American soldiers came to the rescue of these young children and the director of the orphanage is currently on the run.

See Lara Logan discuss the incident and the trouble she had actually publishing the story. See it on Crooks and liars. She then answers a question on the coverage of the war that is a lesson to any journalist now covering Iraq or our government in any capacity. She is a credit to journalism. Some of the images are shocking, but the story ends well and her "lecture" to journalists and Americans is worth every second.

Fatah v Hamas

“We cannot stand idly by and let a free and democratic people decide (yes, DECIDE) to go communist.” - Henry Kissinger-

A post this morning at the Huffington Post (actually June 16) made my blood boil regarding the recent civil war in Palestine with the Fatah party and the democratically elected Hamas party. I will summarize this article and the Robert Fisk article at the UK/Independent on the crisis. You should read them for yourself, but they are almost opposite sides of the spectrum and what I see in the Thatcher article repeating the same old arguments is a refusal to accept Palestinians as humans.

The article by Zachary Thatcher criticized the New York Times for criticizing Israel. He attacks the Times for siding with the Fatah party over Hamas because it accepts Israel's right to exist. Thatcher (as wish washy and pale yellow as the Times editorial is) does not accepts this and says that: "Who started the second intifada after Arafat's refusal for an agreement in the Camp David Accords of 2001? That was a pure Fatah play, with Hamas as wary participants. Why have thousands of missiles rained on Israel from Fatah-controlled territory in Gaza for the past several years...Sadly, it isn't hard to imagine Fatah eagerly invading Israel, should it be military weakened from an attack by Syria or Iran. Attacks they openly acknowledge planning and which the West is powerless, or unwilling, to halt."

Basically, Thatcher argues Israel is at the will of the terrorist state of Palestine, a ridiculous argument that is repeated over and over and over and over...by American journalists. This line of thinking is akin to religious thought when one tries to have an intellectual discussion on the actual existence of God. And we are told merely to just believe. In this instance we are told not to investigate what exactly is going on in the West Bank and could a people under such subjugation be engaging in the only resistance they know how - electing the people who actually represent their interests.

Robert Fisk is the preeminent journalist on the middle east, much to America's chagrin. He writes, first we demand the Palestinians elect a democratic government. They "embrace" democracy, but elect the wrong party, Hamas. The U.S. won't negotiate with a party that does not accept Israel's right to exist. So, now Hamas wins a "mini-civil war and presides over the Gaza strip.

Palestinians have the right to ask a question Fisk argues: "No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of “Palestine” still left to negotiate over ?"

So, our goal is to not accept the government of Palestine, but to recognize the previous one that the Palestinian people threw out. They did not do so because they wanted an Islamic state, they did so because of Fatah and its corrupt leadership and the rotten nature of the Palestinian Authority. But they voted for Hamas, which declines to recognise Israel or abide by the totally discredited Oslo agreement. Welcome to the Middle East.

We do so in almost every country we are involved with Fisk says. We love Harmid Karzai with his war lords and drug barons, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt who tortures the opposition (why would the U.S. have a problem with that) and has the support of George Bush, Muommar Khadafi of Lybia, King Abudullah's "unconstitutional" goverment in Jordan, these men all dictators in their own right with distinction.

It is NEVER about Democracy, it is about control Fisk asserts. What will happen in Palestine now? Will we ever have the stomach to criticize our ally Israel and restore a real two-state solution where both states exist with autonomy. Or are we moving down a road where we will now support the "reoccupation" of Palestine and be done with diplomacy. Palestine just does not know how to elect the right governments. If only we could teach them the right form of democracy.

After all Americans are doing such a great job of electing the right government.