http://www.prwatch.org/node/7990

"Dan Abrams, the chief legal correspondent for NBC News who recently lost his prime-time cable news show, is forming a consulting firm that he hopes will connect a global Rolodex of media experts with businesses that need strategic advice," reports Brian Stelter. "The firm, Abrams Research, may resemble a narrowly focused version of 'expert network' firms that connect investors to industry experts. Journalists and bloggers retained and paid by the firm could consult with corporations, conduct media training sessions, or conduct investigative reporting for corporate clients." Abrams Research says it has also "established strategic partnerships with major PR and media strategy firms" including Dan Klores Communications and the Abernathy MacGregor Group. As Alan Murray of the Wall Street Journal points out, "This is about as clear a violation of our conflict of interest rules as I can imagine. Journalists shouldn't be advising companies about how to game their own organization." Similar concerns have been expressed by journalists at CBS News and others. However, NBC seems to think that Abrams can continue to work as both a professional flack and as one of their journalists. "NBC News could not have been more accommodating throughout this process," he told TVNewser, adding that he would be "staying on as the Chief Legal Analyst for NBC News and hope to remain with NBC for many years to come."

This is a blog entry of mine from 5-11-05

http://dailydoubt.blogspot.com/2005/05/tom-ridge-on-terror-alerts.html

In an article for USA Today, former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge asserted that the color-coded terror alerts were raised against his wishes on many occasions. This raises the issue of why the alerts were raised when Ridge believed the intelligence did not justify it.

"More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it," Ridge told reporters. "Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don't necessarily put the country on (alert). ... There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?'"

Good thing journalists don't pay attention to fringe crazy views like mine, or they might end up uncovering facts that reflect poorly on the government, and that would make them into fringe left-wing America haters, too.

Besides allegations (and fairly obvious evidence as demonstrated by Keith Olbermann's Nexis of Politics and Terror segments) of the political manipulation of terror alerts, the most monumental news worthy item that our press yawned at was back when the Downing Street memo came out (May, 2, 2005 -about the same time as the Ridge statement I quoted from USA Today.)

We had leaked minutes of a high level British cabinet meeting, with the head of Britian's intelligence service expressing the view that the Bush administration was "fixing" the intelligence around Iraq to sell a predetermined invasion and the US media yawned, claiming either that the memo constituted old news or was just hearsay. Obviously, potentially impeachable behavior on the part of the President isn't something worth looking into.

We can all just subsribe to the Chuck Todd philosophy: holding a president (at least a Republican president) accountable for his actions is just typical partisanship, we don't want to set a bad example to other nations by holding our President accountable for lying the country into an illegal war with a non-threatening nation, and we need to concentrate on the future by ignoring the past, cause, you know, the future will be better than the past if we just forget it.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1917525,00.html

How can you sustain a democracy if one of the two major political parties has been overrun by nihilists? And another question: How can you maintain the illusion of journalistic impartiality when one of the political parties has jumped the shark? [...] Hyperbole and distortion certainly exist on the left, but they are a minor chord in the Democratic Party. It is a very different story among Republicans.

Well, it's easy. You become a journalistic relativist, labeling those who call lies, corruption, war crimes, torture, chaotic war exactly what they are shrill, leftist ideologues unwilling to consider "political realities" or some other nebulous concept used to rationalize derelection of your journalistic duty.

You look the other way while crimes are being committed, while democracy is being subverted, and accuse critics of those actions of being ideologues. When those crimes and lies become undeniable, you pretend you knew it all along yet then label persons who want accountablity for them shrill, leftist ideologues only interested in partisan politics because we should be concentrating on the future.

And then when the past repeats itself you repeat step 1.

I just want to go on record noting how absolutely disgusting and morally bankrupt I find it that the political director of NBC News (Chuck Todd) can describe opposition to this sort of torture as being ideological and partisan.

I would also like to note that I find it bewildering that someone who considers himself a journalist is unable to connect the dots between the use of this kind of juvenile, watched too many Hollywood movies, amateurish interrogation methods and the systematically false intelligence that the Bush administration routinely used to sell its policies.