Never said it was about Obama, its just obvious everyone has their own interests to push.

Out of the current presidential candidates, who would be least likely to send out propaganda agents to stilt the medias message? Or is this just something you can assume will continue indefinitely? Would CNN say, accept a anti-war propagandist from the government or is this type of question preposterous from the beginning?

http://nytimes.com/2008/04/21/business/media/21barstowqa.html

Q & A With David Barstow

Q. Thanks for this one Mr Barstow. I guess if I have a question it's: What took you so long?

A. [...] the Defense Department refused to produce many categories of documents in response to our requests under the federal Freedom of Information Act. We ultimately sued in federal court, yet even then the Pentagon failed to meet several court-ordered deadlines for producing documents. Last week, the judge overseeing our lawsuit threatened the Defense Department with sanctions if it continued to defy his deadlines for producing additional records.

[...]

Q. While this is an excellent piece of reporting in covering the relationship between the networks' star military analysts and the Pentagon, the networks themselves essentially get a free pass. [...] Why did you not dig more deeply into the network side of this story?

A. We did dig into the network side of this story. Two networks, CBS and Fox News, declined to answer any questions [...] the question you raise – why didn’t the network news executives try to “close the gap’’ between what journalists were reporting and what some analysts were saying – is a good one. One possible answer: Several analysts said in interviews that network news officials tended to defer to their experience and expertise in military matters.

[...]

Q. Your article refers to the fact, on several occasions, the various network "handlers" are unaware of the liaison the "military analysts" enjoy with Pentagon staff. How can that be? Are they that naive?

A. In interviews, many military analysts said the same thing -- that the network officials they deal with the most (the bookers, producers and anchors) had only the vaguest idea of the frequency or subject matter of their interactions with the Pentagon. In part, this is because the sessions were almost always kept "off the record" or "on background," and some analysts interpreted this to mean that they could not even disclose these sessions to network news executives. [...]

- - David Barstow responding to NYTimes readers' questions

Would CNN say, accept a anti-war propagandist from the government or is this type of question preposterous from the beginning?

Yes, preposterous from the standpoint that lack of war is generally not something you have to pursuade the public to accept.

Unless I'm misunderstanding you?

Your long term memory is too short if you don't at least go as far back as Lippmann, Creel and the CPI.

Sid Blumenthal did an article here back in october. It's actually his afterword for the reissue of Walter Lippman's "Liberty and the News".

Lippmann had ferried from the offices of The New Republic, located in New York, to the White House, where he helped work on speeches for Woodrow Wilson. After the entry of the United States in the world war in 1917, Lippmann enthusiastically accepted an appointment as the U.S. representative on the Inter-Allied Propaganda Board, with the rank of captain. But Captain Lippmann soon crossed swords with George Creel, chief of the Committee on Public Information, an official federal government agency that whipped up war support through jingoism. When Lippmann submitted a blistering report in 1918 on how the committee manipulated news to foster national hysteria, Creel sought his dismissal — and Lippmann quit his post to assist the U.S. delegation at the Versailles peace conference. The year following the war, 1919, began with Wilson greeted as a messiah and ended with him politically broken and physically paralyzed. His collapse personified the wreckage of Progressive idealism. Lippmann focused his attention on the part played by the press.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2007/10/25/walter_lippmann/

"Disco *still* sucks . . ."

That may be so. I still cringe thinking about Starsky & Hutch, and shudder when I think about The Dukes Of Hazzard (btw -- the old series was brilliant compared to the remake -- but that's America -- I mean jaysus, Britney Spear's cover of Satisfaction is reason enuff to burn down the house)

But if I had to choose amongst disco, American Idol, or hip-hop, I'd be more than willing to dig out Saturday Night disco suit . . .

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mS4wHMCc57k

He also attacked MoveOn. Oh well.

But Hannity and Limbaugh aren't the issue; "regulating" them? More realistically, they're clowns; they should be treated like clowns. It's show business. Ennertainment. Cough.

These guys pass on propaganda, no doubt they originate some of it. Part of their job description, what they get those big bucks for. But their devotees are falling away. Their numbers are slipping. They've discredited themselves.

http://freepress.net/pentagon_pundits

It may interest you to know that the Constitution was not created by an "Invisible Hand." In truth, neither were writing, history, journalism, fiction, non-fiction, singing, chanting, or rapping. Not that I would expect you to get that. Think of it this way, your blathering is not created by an "Invisible Hand." Tool.

Yes, preposterous from the standpoint that lack of war is generally not something you have to pursuade the public to accept.

Just for fun, I came across this today. You know how I feel about America First from this period, and I have no way of knowing how close he was to the fascists, but this is interesting.

After the election of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Garrett went on to become one of the most vocal critics of the New Deal and what he saw as its socialist measures. He wrote a series of his columns in the Saturday Evening Post between 1933 to 1940, which were later compiled into a collection of his essays titled Salvos Against the New Deal: Selections from the Saturday Evening Post: 1933-1940, published in 2002. The Saturday Evening Post kept Garrett on as a columnist despite the fact that at one point it became financially perilous for them to do so. In 1940 the management of the Saturday Evening Post made Garrett editorial-writer-in-chief after the passing of George Horace Lorimer. Garrett was highly critical of the Roosevelt Administration's moves toward intervention in the war then underway in Europe; he covered this topic in a series of editorials which were collected under the title Defend America First: The Antiwar Editorials of the Saturday Evening Post, 1939-1942, which was published in 2003.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garet_Garrett