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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Wasn't Williams the guy who helped push the phony anthrax story back in 2001? The one about the proof of the letters going back to Iraq. Wouldn't that make Williams an accessory after the fact and now once again linked to the most likely perpetrators of those murders?
The network is, after all, owned by General Electric, which has a higher financial stake in the wars than the conflict-in-interest analysts could ever hope to have.
How many contracts between the military and General Electric stay nice and bloated with little oversight for as long as there is war? Probably billions worth.
NBC/GE has no interest in disclosing the truth of this matter. They are not interested in the public good; they are only interested in GE's profits.
Yes, I bought one too, and had to get rid of it; that is how bad it was. No wonder we never got Osama.
A proud old name gone to shame.
and though GE does provide military products--but not weapons--its profits actually fell a bit in the period just after the start of the Gulf War in 2003, though they did do pretty good business up until a year or two ago in aviation (and I assume much of that was military, although again I don't know). They've never made much money on the war--at least when compared to some actors involved, and when they did it wasn't until mid decade. Their profit margin doesn't seem to have been worth the effort, and their stock remained relativley flat throughout the war.
GE is having a very bad year, in any case, which would indicate that their fortunes are tethered to more standard fare. Either they were not poised to take advantage of the Gulf war, or it was never considered to be a boon to them. In any case, their 'leftist' window dressing would also indicate at least an ambivalence toward the war. I'm not sure what relationship or goal NBC has in covering for McCaffrey. Previously, MSNBC seemed to be bowing to White House pressure and fear of sullying its brand when the rest of the country was war-hungry.
Anyway, FAIR has been documenting the pentagon analyst psy-op kind of stuff since forever. I posted a link to a story last time this issue came up, so I won't do it again here, but its worth checking out their archives for stories going back to the early nineties...
www.fair.org
I love the smell of raked muck in the morning!
Of course, I'm perpetually grinding what's left of my teeth at the nefarious Byzantine interrelationships between government, civil and military, and the corporate sector-- including, maybe especially, corporate media.
It's been a long time since my parochial school introduction to New Math, but if I remember Venn Diagram drawing aright, I would draw these domains as nearly overlapping circles-- with a bare crescent on the margins inhabited by rogues like Barstow and, say, Bunnatine Greenhouse.
It's no surprise that accomplished infotainwhores like Williams and McCaffrey remain evasive and disingenuous about their sordid professional relationship, and the ethical and epistemological fault lines upon which it's based. My felt intuition is that in our debased and mendacious culture, persons who reach the elite ranks of these professions truly come to consider themselves superior beings, intellectually and morally.
If their brains were soaked in sodium pentothal, and these men were transported in restraints to be interviewed (interrogated) at length by Glenn on Salon Radio, I expect that ultimately they'd spit out a diatribe not unlike Jack Nicholson's Colonel Nathan R. Jessep in "A Few Good Men"-- that is, they might finally admit that there's something superficially untoward about the way they operate, and that they're handsomely rewarded for their efforts-- but they would superciliously insist that they're proven persons of outstanding character and patriotism, and that what they do is necessary to ensure that our Leaders accomplish their missions in order to keep the rest of us safe and free.
Put more simply, my guess is that they really think that their business is none of our business-- but that, in any case, they are entitled to be unconditionally respected and trusted that they are, at bottom, acting in the interests of the greater good.
Wasn't Brian WilliamsWasn't Williams the guy who helped push the phony anthrax story back in 2001?
-- Bob On The Pacific Coast
You're probably thinking of Brian Ross of ABC.
The test for success for these people is whether they make money, not whether they somehow serve the "public interest". What the heck is the "public interest"? No one can tell, no one can measure it. You can measure the size of your bank account, on the other hand. These people are crooks, who do not think like most people. You shouldn't expect them to respond to your human-oriented criticisms. They are amoral money-making machines. The only way to stop them is to stop giving them money. Fortunately, network television news is dying as its viewers die and are not replaced.
Another bit of potentially nasty revisionism going on in Tom Friedman's column is the description of the Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and Iraq as a "treaty." Although it has been ratified by the Iraqi Parliament, the pact was not -- and apparently will never be -- submitted to the Senate for the approval treaties are required to obtain per the U.S. Constitution. Thus, calling the pact a treaty is a stretch at best, dangerous revisionism at worst.
In a New Yorker article, Seymour Hersh revealed that at the end of the Gulf war Gen. Barry McCaffrey's division attacked a retreating Iraqi army, causing death and destruction The editor of the magazine went on Charlie Rose's show to defend Hersh's accusation, which came close to calling McCaffrey a war criiminal.
The owners and managers of the media are knowingly doing what they're doing -- not just Murdoch, but all of them. The people who work for them know what's expected of them and willingly do it.
There are reasons why the media are more responsive to conservative pressure than to liberal pressure. Whatever the bylined authors and TV talking heads may personally think, their superiors (the business people) are conservative on the key issues -- above all, war and taxes. And the business people have no concern at all for journalistic professionalism.
There are liberals and Democrats with deep pockets, and there have been several new national media established in recent decades: CNN, Fox, and USA Today. But liberals are not entrepreneurs or innovators.
I've been arguing this point futilely with Glenn, DeLong, and Somerby for some time now. If people start talking about a new cable network or a new national newspaper, it might happen. If they don't, it won't.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
