Letters to the Editor
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It's not Pravda...
I know some people consider it hyperbole to compare the behavior of our establishment press corps to Pravda, and sometimes that is hyperbole
Everybody knows that in the USSR, the Government owned the media and thus was able to disseminate propoganda.
Here in the USA it's the media that owns the government so its completely different!
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Head for the hills!
How does one combat this? I've spent the past 7 years hoping people were too smart to be taken in by the fourth-grade rhetoric the major news outlets have been spewing. The advertisements for renewing the PAA have been running in our telemarket here in Upstate New York but, in keeping with the generally higher level of education up here, they've been very toned down and sound almost reasonable. This worries me...
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Re: Pravda
Glenn Greenwald... I know some people consider it hyperbole to compare the behavior of our establishment press corps to Pravda, and sometimes that is hyperbole. But if the Brezhnev-era Soviet Communist government were attempting to convince Russian citizens that they needed more domestic spying powers or greater protection for pro-government corporations, and they wanted to use Pravda to achieve that end, what would be different? Be specific.
No self-respecting, sentient and self-aware Soviet citizen would have paid any attention to Pravda. They'd have been relying on Samizdat, the blogs of the era.
"During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said their spokesman, “that we were astonished to find, after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were, by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don't have that. What's the secret? How do you do it?”
-John Pilger's address, Columbia University, 2006
http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=267
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samizdat
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The Needle and the Damage Done
In this interview, John King acts like every Cheshire grinning weatherman on local news, glancing worriedly at the icon for an upcoming storm (5% chance of rain) but happily referencing sunny days ahead, if only we watch again tomorrow. He's one of the reasons I do not spend much time in front of CNN or any MSM outlet.
McConnell: what a dangerous and duplicitous man. Who better to trot out the company line than someone intimately familiar with how far this illegal lawbreaking has taken this administration?
No time soon is King going to educate himself enough to ask the kinds of questions he needed to bring along to that interview. And even if he did, the issue would remain: would CNN allow the hardball (pardon the reference) questions to air that needed to be stated? I don't think so...
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Isn't that what producers are for?
We all know that the good-looking anchors on TV are ill-informed, but I thought that's what producers were for, those hard-working, behind-the-scenes people who check facts and generate questions and continually whisper in the anchors' ears if an interview is going astray.
Are the CNN producers on strike or something? Lately, the political interviews and the so-called news interviews have been increasingly devoid of any substantive questions.
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O/T What's with the "buzz up" button?
N/T
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Didn't you learn?
Didn't you remember anything with your last run-in with Mr. King in which he educated you that it's all about Access? I for one am glad that all of these news organizations are so careful to make sure Important People will still come on TV and tell us how we can be more Safe. Imagine if news people didn't know their power and duty under the Constitution, how misinformed Americans would be - provided any of us were still alive!
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"this is highly detailed stuff that's pretty hard to follow"
This little snippet speaks volumes, especially in light of Glenn's observation regarding the video of King making this statement that: "a smirking King actually appears to delight in joyfully admitting how confusing and disorienting he finds the subject matter".
I think that smirk also is inviting everyone else to quickly decide that the issue is too complicated for them to follow as well. I consider this entirely calculated and evidence that King is simply taking part in the propaganda campaign.
We can't have "the masses" thinking for themselves on these matters. We must bring in the beneficent, apolitical masters who spend all their time protecting us from the brown hordes and allow them to do our thinking for us.
King perhaps could be forgiven if he were merely stupid. I don't think that is what is happening. He is readily engaging in the selling of an evil idea and deserves to suffer the consequences when this criminal administration and its enablers are finally brought to justice. A nice long prison sentence would look good on him and take care of that smirk for eight to ten.
After all, as Glenn points out, this is not difficult at all to follow. The telecom companies broke the law, at the urging of the government. One of the primary law breakers is now part of the government and is actively involved in trying to obtain a "get out of jail free" card for himself and his friends in both industry and government. The only chance for this to succeed is to keep the population in the dark about what really happened in the details.
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John King....
... is less a reporter than some sort of vulcanized rubber muppet/mannequin dreamed up by the folks at Spitting Image to parody vapid American television presences.
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Fox, CNN
What's the difference? A least Fox's claims to be unbiased are glaringly tongue in cheek (or other GOP orifice). I used to be a fairly regular CNN viewer until after the Iraq war. I will only watch it now during unfolding events. with the TV on mute.
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Pravda and Izvestia
As the names of the main Communist newspaper and the main Soviet newspaper, Pravda and Izvestia, meant "the truth" and "the news" respectively, a popular Russian saying was "v Pravde net izvestiy, v Izvestiyakh net pravdy".
(In the Truth there is no news, and in the News there is no truth)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda