Letters to the Editor
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Thank you for taking the time to do this:
This is important work and I'm grateful that you have the time and patience to do it.
I have only one small suggestion for an update
In your post you wrote:
It is difficult to see how this could be anything but illegal.
A link to the text of the statute that is being violated would be a quick and easy way to drive an additional nail into the coffin of CNN's credibility.
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Thanks for being a real journalist, Glenn.
Hope CNN had a chance to see your post today. They should be ashamed of themselves. Embarrassing.
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First two links I found....
http://uspolitics.about.com/od/electionissues/a/01_propaganda.htm
http://www.prwatch.org/node/7261
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worse than their complicity...
...is that the networks, from the execs to the producers to the on-camera readers, don't even think what they've been doing is wrong. they literally do not have an understanding that what they are providing is not independent analysis, but governement propaganda.
and they'd be shocked to learn that such dissemination of propaganda is not their role, that it is professional negligence and that it has an unhealthy effect on policy and the national discourse.
indeed, unless they are puffing up their own importance, media folks reflexively step away from the idea that what they report has any consequence or affects their audience at all.
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More....
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9502E4DC103FF933A15756C0A9629C8B63
Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for ''publicity or propaganda purposes'' not authorized by Congress. The accounting office has found that federal agencies violated this restriction when they disseminated editorials and newspaper articles written by the government without identifying the source.
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Reverse Embeds
PSYOPS. Perception Management. Information Warfare.
How does it feel to be a Propagandee?
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Thank You, Glenn
They cannot suppress the truth forever, and your work will continue to fan the flames.
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Mainstream media accessories to the crimes
It's become increasingly evident over time, and as highlighed by much of your work, Glenn, that many, if not most of the crimes committed by this administration could not have been effected--at least, not so easily--without the criminal collusion of the mainstream media. This is not merely a matter of "lax journalistic ethics" or even simply a misunderstanding by contemporary journalists and their editors as to the purpose and proper practices of a free press. This is willful, knowing participation in the coverup and misrepresentation of crimes by the government against the American people and against people around the world.
This underscores more than any civics class ever could how essential a free, uncompromised press is to a democracy. The slightest of plunderers will not escape justice if the press works to expose their crimes; but the worst will never face justice if the press actively impedes the disclosure and nature of their crimes, which our press works to do every day.
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More....
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL32750.pdf
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Comparisons to Soviet Russia...
...are increasingly apt.
We have our Pravda, our Gulag, and the "Party." Membership in which guarantees Pravda will write gushing stories about you and you will not end up in the Gulag as long as you toe the party line.
Remember what Nietzche said about fighting monsters?
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The Politics of lying
was a classic article by the political theorist, Hannah Arendt.
It takes more effort to lie because one has to remember all the lies that build to the house of cards of lies.
I have been waiting for years for the house of cards to collapse.
The pentagon propaganda may be an issue to knock down at least a part of the house of cards. Somehow the whole house has been able to stay upright so far.
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Paul Dirks
I have only one small suggestion for an update
In your post you wrote:
It is difficult to see how this could be anything but illegal.
A link to the text of the statute that is being violated would be a quick and easy way to drive an additional nail into the coffin of CNN's credibility.
Paul - I linked to the PR watch document in the first paragraph over the word "illegal) but your suggestion is a good one. I'll add the other links you found in an update -- thanks.
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Lessons Learned
It seems as though the networks learned at least one thing during the Bush years; ignoring a story and creating a distraction tosses it down the memory hole, no matter how significant and damning the story may be. In the course of their collusion with the administration, they have learned the value of, and now obviously adopted, its techniques.
All of which would only be rational, were they, say aspiring politicians, or aggressive corporate plunderers, but they are supposed to be, albeit nominally, "News" organizations.
One would think they were concealing their roles out of embarrassment, if one were inclined to be charitable. But I think it's more accurate to say that they have sampled the prerogatives of power, including the power to deceive, and like it.
They join Dick Cheney in saying, "So?"
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No, it is different.
I realize that it is natural to compare the current situation in the US with regards to the media with the Soviet Union of the middle of the previous century. However, the situation is really not the same. The USSR had a limited press controlled directly by the government. The US has unlimited multimedia controlled by a few large corporations whose interests coincide with those of the government. This coincidence of interests results from corporate influence of the government, and from the flow of officials from the government to corporations and various propaganda machines, such as "think tanks".
I am happy to listen to any contrary arguments, but this looks pretty obvious to me.
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Perplexing
What I find so fascinating about all this is not that they would do this. It is that they would do this for a pipsqueak like George W Bush and his ghoulish crew. This really does seem like a real-life Ship of Fools where you have high ranking military officers, media executives, bureaucrats all sacrificing whatever principles and dignity they ever had in slavish devotion to the Bush agenda.
I would expect Satan to show up any minute now, demanding payment in souls for the deals these people must have made circa 2001.