Politics - Faux News And The Drums of War

Yay, Bernie Sanders! Yay Robert Greenwald!


Finally, someone has the guts and the brains to take on Teh Mighty Wurlitzer - the Republican Party media machine that guarantees only certain voices and viewpoints are heard, the Fairly Unbalanced shrill conservatives who mindlessly echo this misadministration's talking points until ordinary citizens come to believe those voices in their heads are their own. From AP:

MONTPELIER, Vt. - Condemning the Fox News Channel as a warmonger that's agitating for a U.S. attack on Iran, documentary filmmaker Robert Greenwald and independent U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders announced an "online viral video campaign" Wednesday calling on television news organizations "not to follow Fox down the road to war again."

Greenwald, the director behind "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" and "Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price," has compiled a new three-minute video that mashes clips from Fox's coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its aftermath with recent coverage of possible U.S. military action against Iran.

The video and an accompanying "open letter" to ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC and CNN — viewable at http://www.FoxAttacks.com — urge news organizations to ask tough questions about administration policy on Iran and say citizens should pressure them to do so.

I don't suppose I need to add that the journalistic establishment, as represented by one Bob Steele, the Nelson Poynter Scholar for Journalism Values at the Poynter Institute school for journalists, is sniffily dismissive of the whole thing. So, so new media, y'know.

Personally, I'd rather hearken to the likes of Christiane Ahmanpour, who is quoted in the story and the clip, pointing out that the misadministration and its thugs at Faux News have worked to intimidate the press as much as they can. One of the reasons we no longer have a free press, in Teh Greatest Democracy In Teh World.

Quote from Sanders:

"We have got to put pressure on the mass media not to play the same craven role they played in Iraq, when they effectually collapsed and became a megaphone for Bush's policies," Sanders said. "What Robert is saying here is that the leader of that effort is Fox News, which in many ways is simply a propaganda machine for the Republican Party and the Bush administration."

He's only saying what those of us with a fucking grain of sense have known forever. Yay, Bernie! Long live the Free State of Vermont.

Vermonters, you now have official permission to look down your noses at the idiots in Connecticut and Maine, who elected feebs like Joe "BlowdaPrez" Lieberwhore and that Susan "KneepadsForBush" Collins.

Stumble It!