When is Boehlert going to acknowledge that he protested the innocence of someone who just pled guilty to aiding Islamic Jihad?

Salon in 2002, byline by Boehlert:

http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2002/01/19/bubba/index.html

*The prime-time smearing of Sami Al-Arian*

By pandering to anti-Arab hysteria, NBC, Fox News, Media General and Clear Channel radio disgraced themselves -- and ruined an innocent professor's life.

Huffpo in 2005, byline by Boehlert:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-boehlert/sami-alarian-the-terror_b_11835.html

*Sami Al-Arian: The Terror Verdict TV Networks Ignored*

"... Raise your hand if you think the nets would have covered the trial's conclusion if the jury had returned with a guilty verdict in what the government had hyped as a centerpiece to its War on Terror."

Raise your hands if you're surprised that weeks later, neither Salon nor Eric Boehlert have said anything about this:

http://news.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBU23G11ME.html

Published: Apr 14, 2006

TAMPA - Sami Al-Arian has agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to provide support to a terrorist organization under a deal with the government in which Al-Arian will be deported and the rest of the charges he faces will be dropped, according to an attorney involved in the negotiations.

What's the point of this article? We have obsessed enough and no one is willing to do what is necessary, confront the lies and abuses of power in Washington. No, the press still panders to the administration and still allow right wingers to shout them down.

If we lose our democracy it will be directly attributable to the Democratic party's inability to structure a message that resonates in truth and conviction and a cowardly press corps that refuses to confront power but merely conforms to it.

Don't forget that the MSM was bribed by the Bush administration with favorable treatment on licensing waivers allowing newspapers and media comanies to own more than the number of local broadcast outlets proscribed by law. The beneficiaries of these payoffs are many and include even the New York Times, Washington Post and almost every other media chain.

Then the FCC commissioner Michael Powell ginned up a scare campaign over indecency which levied large fines as a way to further tighten the reins by the administration.

Right wing radio became a juggernaut with the mammoth cornering of the AM radio market by Bush-career-sponsoring Clear Channel Radio, a company which was originally set up by Bush financiers using the inflated profits from the resale of the Texas Rangers after taxpayers in Arlington County, Texas built them a stadium. Clear Channel seemed to have second thoughts about putting all of their eggs in the GOP basket after 2004 and switched many low performing sports stations to a hybrid Air America format, but even this may be a dirty trick as an affiliate set up by CC's President which bought the Ed Shultz radio show is now making a run at Air America's flagship NYC station.

Air America is the only broadcast network toehold liberals have gained against the mammoth GOP AM radio disinformation operation which is responsible for the right's complete takeover of the USA.

If anyone at the Times is reading this, could you please put in a word for someone, anyone to fire that useless waste of space Elizabeth Bumiller?

Her Boo-f***ing-hoo quote here is just utterly pathetic: "I think we were very deferential because ... it's live, it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you' re standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war."

Hey lady! You're a reporter! For the Times! Grow. A. Spine.

Let's not forget, Salon friends, that it was this same Elizabeth "Oh-golly-it's-scary-to-actually-do-the-job-I-was-hired-for" Bumiller who wrote that piece of crap Times article about the White House Correspondent's dinner, utterly airbrushing out any mention of Colbert's performance. Before, of course, the "blogosphere" went bat-shit angry about gutless articles like hers.

That's right, I said gutless. Cowardly. Craven. Sad.

Elisabeth, you are the face of the Gutless MSM.

Please, quit the Times and go into PR. Or lobbying.

PS: NY Times. . . when we finally have a Democratic government, I suppose THEN you'll suddenly find your courage?

Of course, we all already know all this. I knew on September 12, 2001 that Bush was going after Saddam, and so did everyone else. That the Bushies have the MSM in their pockets is transparently obvious, and has been for years. And while Eric's excerpt is notable for the statistics and specifics, it's not surprising or news. Mostly I feel sadness that, during the ramp-up to the war, all of our frantic protesting was done in isolation. If we had just been given equal coverage...

I don't watch or listen to or read mainstream news, and haven't since monica-madness. Not even NPR is free from propaganda anymore. I depend on a handful of websites to get my news, and so far, the timeliness and accuracy has been far superior, on most topics I care about, than MSM.

I really suggest that you all do the same, and take time out to communicate to the MSM business offices why you are cancelling your subscription, or failing to tune in, or even, not rejoining public radio. A large-scale boycott is actually possible, and desirable. Advertisers will notice. All these sons-of-bitches bleed when you cut them at the bottom-line. Then we'll see some change.

I applaud Boehlert for his detailed recounting of the dropped balls, miscues, and outright negligence that accompanied the marketing and delivery of the Iraq debacle. However, even more glaring examples of the willful ignorance displayed by the media and its consumers were untouched in this piece. To wit: there has been a near total media blackout regarding the abject failure of the so called "war on terror" to bring to account those responsible for the WMD attacks which actually took place in the aftermath of 9/11. I refer to the mail attacks employing weaponized anthrax that sickened 19 and killed 5. The letters did not result in widespread casualties (widespread panic is a different story), but the policy of the US government has always been that WMD include ANY biological, chemical, and nuclear devices (remember the scary dirty bombs, which are radioactive, but not fissile). Thus, the anthrax-filled letters constituted a genuine, if relatively ineffective, WMD attack.

The anthrax attacks fizzled, but there have been no charges filed, no indictments secured, no proclamations issued, and no preemptive wars launched despite a genuine WMD-related terrorist inicident on American soil. Why? Because the source of the weapon was an AMERICAN bioweapons research program, the only credible suspects are Americans, and because there is nothing to be gained politically by this administration in keeping the investigation on the front burner. Emphasizing it would only highlight the fact that for all the infringements on civil liberties, unconstitutional power grabs, cross-border kidnappings, treaty violations, and various high crimes and misdemeanors perpetrated by Bush et al. in furtherance of their market-driven "war on terror", we are by definition no safer with regard to terror attacks than we were on September 10, 2001. After nearly 5 years, Osama bin Laden and the perptrator(s) of the anthrax attacks are at large, and the media have been resoundingly silent on both points. Talk about lapdoggery. There is no question of legal interpretation or political maneuvering behind the unwillingness to label these failures as such. It is an objective fact that the "war on terror" has failed to account for those responsible for the principal terror attacks against America, and the administration has gotten a pass from network and cable TV news, radio, and print media.

In Colbert's masterful upbraiding of the media's submissive posture, he pointed out the real reason the administration has been allowed to get away with so much, which is that it makes us uncomfortable as citizens to know that we as a country are culpable for the actions of our leaders. Media consumers don't want the truth, they just want reassurance that as Americans, we are unaccountable to the world, and that nothing will threaten our cozy consumerist cocoon (henceforth CoCoCo).

"We didn't want to know what Bush was doing, and you [the Media] were kind enough not to try and find out" - Steven Colbert

"What did [Nixon] know, and when did he know it?"- Howard Baker