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As shocking as this is, we've been putting up for years with the whitewashing of the network news, suppressing glaring evidence in several major government scandals as if they never existed. For example, I haven't seen any of the major networks confirm, refute, analyze or even mention the Articles of Impeachment filed against the President by Congress.
The Downing Street Memos alleged that Bush suggested to the UK's Prime Minister we fly planes with fake UN markings into Iraqi airspace to provoke an incident. Two significant members of his cabinet have written books alleging the war was a sell-job and Col. Powell's Chief of Staff blew the whistle on Cheney, Rumsfeld and the entire Iraq Team for concocting the entire war as "a hoax".
On and on it goes, from Seymour Hersh's never-denied reports on the Abu Ghraib scandal being a deliberate operation run by Rumsfeld's undersecretary to the damning evidence of minority vote caging lists coming from the computers of Karl Rove who is currently blowing off subpoenas for the DOJ firings and tampering in the Don Siegelman conviction. Then too, we have hard drives trashed and wiped out in violation of the Presidential Records Act, an FBI whistleblower alleging her bosses allowed drug running, money laundering and even the transfer of nuclear secrets to Turkish operatives in the AQ Khan network.
The $70 million lawsuit against CBS brought by Dan Rather alleges that White House interference caused his dismissal, but more importantly, ordered the network to withdraw and suppress the Texas Air Guard story in which a young George Bush received special treatment in ducking deployment in Vietnam. If you remember, the story was true, but Rather's controversial "forged" document became a famous distraction.
The tell-all books of George Tenet and Scott McClellan broke this haze of suppression in the print world, with McClellan divulging that Rove routinely furnished talking points to friends in media, most notably talk radio personalities. This represents a violation of the 1948 ban on covert propaganda when government sources for broadcast info is not disclosed.
With the Obama administration apparently uninterested in investigating or prosecuting crimes, it appears the compliant media will also escape accountability unless a serious, vocal grassroots effort comes forward from the people to insist on better.
In my blog series on Limbaugh/Hannity, I question the ethics and integrity of the deceitful duo and call again for them to confirm or deny whether they used undisclosed White House talking points (it sure seems like their broadcasts ran strikingly parallel to neocon policy every day for years down to exacting detail). The latest installment describes a whistleblower who claims radio hosts he worked for in Milwaukee did air information secretly obtained from government memos.
With a corrupt media looking to preserve it's own interests, I suggest people organize and get active in demanding truth in broadcasting. No, not the Fairness Doctrine, rather a high-tech, collective watchdog effort using web tools such as Twitter. If you have a passion for outing propaganda, consider joining a "more inclusive" Twitter-based discussion of Hannity/Limbaugh's broadcasts live as they air. Read more at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Radio-Treason-Right-Wing-by-Gustav-Wynn-081130-768.html
