Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
I must admit that I gave up watching CNN years ago, even before they attempted to become FOX News lite. Originally, as they created the standard for Cable News, they were an informative leader in providing television journalism. Because of their devotion to the news alone, they became the preferred alternative to Broadcast Network News, which at each network had been put under the “Entertainment Division” and thus viewed as a profit center, rather than a public information service. At the beginning and “golden age” of Television Network News, the FCC had mandated that each network was to provide “news” as a public service, in exchange for their license to control a band on the airways. The leader in this was CBS, a network under the aegis of William Paley, who hired war tested Journalists such as Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. CBS News was independent of the “Entertainment Division” and as a public service wasn’t expected to turn a profit. While it is true that there was an establishment bias on all news programming yet the coverage ranging from Joe McCarthy, to the Civil Rights Movement and to the Viet Nam War informed the public of great issues and brought home the realities through pictures indelibly imprinting horrific images on the public mind. Reactionary elements within the Corporate/Military Plutocracy viewed all of this with alarm. Their continued success depended upon an uninformed public, lulled by jingoistic propaganda and unaware of who really controlled our nation. There was a determination in these elite circles that the network news, the preferred means by which the public was informed on current affairs, must be reined in. William F. Buckley had already created the meme of a “liberal news bias” by this time as an explanation of why his philosophy of the supremacy of the elite was being bought by the general public. Building upon this meme networks were bought out by conservative corporations, news operations were put under the entertainment divisions and the FCC stop requiring news broadcasting as a condition of licensing.
Ted Turner realized that the traditional network news had been reduced in size and homogenized into a rather unpalatable product. He founded CNN under the paradigm of a 24 hour network dedicated solely to examining the news. Following CNN was the entry of Rupert Murdoch and the “tabloidization” of Cable News along with FOX News becoming a propaganda provider for his Conservative views and allies. This was nothing new for Murdoch who bought out the New Post and the Village Voice, turning them both into neo-conservative propaganda operations, sensationalized with gossip and racy pictures. Sadly, in terms of return on investment, it was a winning strategy for cable news as FOX shot to the top of the ratings. CNN the former ratings leader faltered and tried to become “a little” more like Fox News in order to regain their stature. In the process they became a failure as a serious news provider and have become every bit as inane as shows like “Entertainment Tonight”, even in their coverage of “hard” news stories. At this time in our country’s history with so many serious problems that need to be dealt with, CNN has proven not only incapable, but uninterested in providing coverage of issues that affect us all and of which we the public require more information.
Today, as with many Americans who try to be informed, almost all of the “news” I pay attention to comes from the internet. While I occasionally will watch Rachel Maddow and MSNBC coverage of important events, their coverage too seems lacking of content or even intelligent analysis. There are exceptions at MSNBC when they go away from their usual pundit crew to have on original thinkers undaunted by the need to parrot the establishment. Indeed, the first time I became familiar with Jonathan Turley’s work was seeing him on MSNBC. Since this is the case I had to discover something about CNN’s recent coverage from two articles I read in the Huffington Post, one of which made me snort with amusement, while the other just made me shake my head in disgust as to the current state of CNN, as a representative of mainstream Cable News
The first item was from perhaps the “purest” form of cable news, John Stewart and the Daily Show. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/15/jon-stewart-calls-out-cnn-carnival-triumph-ship-coverage_n_2694347.html
“Jon Stewart opened Thursday’s “Daily Show” by calling out CNN for their exhaustive coverage of Triumph, the Carnival cruise ship that was stuck in the Gulf of Mexico for six days. Despite other perhaps more significant stories occurring simultaneously, CNN, which recently came under the leadership of Jeff Zucker, devoted their entire morning and afternoon broadcast on Thursday to following the story of the ship that had lost power and forced its passengers into disgusting conditions, such as defecating into bags.
“CNN has been on the case, for some reason giving this boat crisis wall-to-shit-covered-wall coverage,” Stewart opined, before rolling a clip of a CNN anchor showing a young girl on the ship waving to her mother via the TV cameras.
“You’re not heroes, guys,” Stewart said, referring to CNN. “It’s not a hostage situation or a baby in a well. You reconnected them? They weren’t supposed to see each other. They were on a cruise for a few days.”
Stewart lamented that the CNN coverage was at the expense of notably more important stories, such as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation meeting in Cairo.”
The second Huffington Post Story added depth to the Daily Show comedy and clarified the Jeff Zucker that Stewart Referred to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/14/cnn-cruise-ship-zucker_n_2687679.html
“Media watchers took notice on Thursday when CNN sent out a press release detailing its incredibly extensive coverage plans for the final leg of the journey of the Carnival Triumph cruise ship, which has been struck with power failures and squalid conditions for five days. The release made clear that CNN was going all in:
“CNN’s Erin Burnett will anchor “Erin Burnett OutFront” from Mobile, Alabama, where the ship will dock. Sandra Endo covers the ship’s arrival by helicopter; Victor Blackwell monitors by boat; and David Mattingly and Martin Savidge report from the dock in Mobile. CNN.com/live and the CNN apps will live stream the docking. CNN International will simulcast the arrival later tonight.On Saturday at 7:30pmET and 10:30pmET, CNN will broadcast “Cruise from Hell: Stranded at Sea,” a 30 minute special reported by Martin Savidge.”
“CNN wound up going beyond even that: during much of the late morning and early afternoon, there was literally no other story for the channel. Fox News talked about various matters, and MSNBC talked about the Chuck Hagel nomination and other political stories, but CNN had eyes only for the ship. The network devoted at least an hour of commercial-free coverage of its journey. The helicopter zoomed in and out, the correspondents reported from land and boat and studio, and the words “CNN Live Exclusive” were plastered in the top right hand corner of the screen the whole time.”
“It was not hard news, and it was not the most “important” story that CNN could have been covering. Jon Stewart will probably have a field day. But it was, if anyone needed it, a reminder that television news is still television — and it was very attention-grabbing. Substitute Matt Lauer for Banfield, and it could have easily been seen on “Today.” (The cruise ship was second only to the Oscar Pistorius murder allegations on that show’s Thursday edition.)Coincidentally (or not), “Today” happens to be where new CNN chief Jeff Zucker cut his teeth. Zucker has made clear that he wants to, in his words, “broaden the definition of news,”
The Today Show has been an NBC standard since the 50’s. It’s hosts through the years became TV lengends such as Dave Garroway, Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs. While it has always had a news content it was always really an entertainment show, with news content. As the years have progressed this had become truer and now with morning show competition the pressure to deliver light content has grown. Since these type of shows are cheaper to produce they have always been very profitable to the networks. Bringing Jeff Zucker in seems a clear sign to me that CNN will become even more of an entertainment network, pretending to provide serious news content. If the Zucker experiment is successful, how log will it be before the other cable news networks get the message and how much less informed will the America Public become?
As I said in the beginning though, I don’t generally watch cable news, but a viewing experience this week aroused ager and disdain, so when these “cruise ship” stories came up they caught my attention. Being in my late 60’s and having always been a political junkie, I’ve watched every State of the Union address that has ever been televised since 1965. Though they began televising the SOTU’s in 1947, in 1965 LBJ decided to make it a prime time affair. I probably watched some before that depending on where I was at the time. I believe that it is the duty of a citizen to watch the SOTU, no matter who is President, since its delivery is mandated constitutionally and thus serves as a common ritual. With the advent of cable news it has become traditional to have news programs concerned with the SOTU leading in to them and then analysis afterwards. When my wife and I sat down to watch on MSBC at 8:00pm, an hour before it was scheduled to begin, we were shocked to see a picture of a burning cabin in the woods. They were giving full on coverage of the Richard Dorner story and it seemed he had been surrounded in the woods. We had the expectation that this would entail bringing viewers up to date on this story and then become the usual background and analysis leading up to the SOTU. The time passed and not only did they stay with the story, but turned their coverage over to the local station that was covering the story. The problem was that like most “wrap around” news coverage we see on TV, think helicopters chasing OJ’s Bronco, there was little breaking news to cover and so we were treated to a constant rehashing of the known material, as each broadcaster seeking their moment of national fame, regurgitated essentially the same story.
Since two County Sheriff’s had been shot, we were treated to pictures of the hospital and the police guard keeping the media away. This continued on even though we knew that the status was that one officer was dead ad the other due to recover. I became increasingly frustrated as this coverage continued up until 3 minutes before the 9:00pm start. Tuning to the other news networks I saw the same coverage of the Dorner story.
The Dorner story indeed is one of interest. His murder spree and escape certainly merits attention, as doe the fact of his firing as a police officer, which he claimed was done to quiet his ratting out another officer’s improper conduct. However, perhaps some might think me insensitive to state that this story didn’t merit the coverage it was getting. It certainly pales in comparison to the SOTU speech, however one might feel about the President. The SOTU is the executive’s opportunity to lay out an agenda for the ext year. We are facing continued unemployment, a financial crisis and the continued deterioration of the infrastructure of this country. There are foreign policy issues that also are urgent and need to be discussed. It is horrible that Dorner murdered people, but such murders are really common place in this country, while there are urgent crises we face. We know the news maxim “if it bleeds, it leads” has too often been a ratings grabber.
This is the state of public affairs in this country as our newspapers fail and television journalism becomes an oxymoron. This coverage, leading up to the SOTU, was disrespectful of the traditions and rituals of this nation. We find this trivialization occurring consistently today and in truth it has been this way for years. We see a citizenry that is alienated from the concept of the American community and a good part of that is because those common rituals of our have been trivialized in the name of commerce. It is ironic to me when I as a Jew can understand Fundamentalist Christianity’s decrying the “War on Christmas”. Christmas in America has become yet another opportunity of commercialization, where presents and Santa subsume any meaning of what the holiday is supposed to be about. This is true though of our other Holidays as Thanksgiving has become football and Macy’s Day and as “President’s Day” has become the opportunity to have actors dressed as Lincoln and Washington offering “tremendous” deals on new cars. Sadly, the same traditionalists who decry these changes, fail to recognize that they are the accoutrements of a Corporate Plutocracy that will sell anything in pursuit of profit.
Which leads us back to the News and the need for a informed citizenry. I my opinion the American Empire has emulated Rome’s “bread and circuses” to keep the masses under control. The last vestige of a “Free Press” informing a “Free Citizenry” has fallen to the internet and to blogs such as ours. CNN to me stands for the “Clown News Network” just as FOX has become “Faux News”. MSNBC is not a news paradigm either, even though its political stance has some similarities to my own. I find them all stultifying and boring in content and structure. They all confuse the concept of journalism, with entertainment and therefore I damn them all.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
Elaine, your comment reminded me of the old joke that is played out in many forms, including commercials. Current version of CNN: “I am not a journalist, but I played one on TV.”
Ted Turner is still living, or I would say he was turning over in his grave. AFIK, he has not said much publicly about the devolvement of his brainchild, but I cannot imagine he is happy.
Like Swarthmore mom, I’m a fan of Up with Chris Hayes.
*****
As for Erin Burnett? A pretty face with an empty head who is a friend of the big banks.
*****
CNN’s New Star Is a Little Too Sympathetic to Wall Street
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2011/10/cnns-erin-burnett-sympathetic-wall-street/43407/#.To3cH7y8W-U.email
Excerpt:CNN’s newest primetime anchor Erin Burnett isn’t making any friends among the Occupy Wall Street protesters. In a visit to the front lines of the movement earlier this week Burnett grilled protesters on the specifics of their outrage, many say, from a point-of-view that’s not befitting of a network that’s often boasted of its objective journalism. However, Burnett’s combative tone in her “Seriously” segment on Tuesday night–on top of a deleted tweet by business reporter Alison Kosik in which she makes fun of the protesters–is dismaying press critics and CNN viewers alike. On top of that, journalism watchdog group FAIR says that, Burnett misreported the facts in an attempt to make the protesters look uninformed. Burnett, whose fiancée is a Citigroup executive, is now being framed as the next generation of CNN personalities that stray from the network’s commitment to being the “only credible, nonpartisan voice left.”
Neither CNN nor Burnett are winning supporters from fellow journalists either. Dave Weigel called Burnett’s Tuesday night segment “hippie punching,” and NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen tweeted, “Man, the blowback on Erin Burnett’s visit to #occupywallst is like a crossover hit.” Now, the press critics are weighing in, not only criticizing Burnett but an unnerving shift in CNN’s approach that draws comparisons to Fox News. Eric Jackson at Forbes called her “vapid” in a sprawling take-down, and The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik wrote off her new show OutFront completely in his Wednesday column:
Two of the fundamental attributes of good journalism are curiosity and a respect for the people on whom you report. Burnett got an “F” on both those counts with her Occupy Wall Street piece. Not only didn’t she listen hard enough to learn anything from the people in the group, she and her producers positioned the speakers to be seen as objects of derision. That is deplorable.
Glenn Greenwald at Salon followed up on Wednesday afternoon with a post that thoroughly traces Burnett’s career from her job as a Goldman Sachs analyst through her tenure at CNBC and now as CNN new star. The unavoidable ties between Burnett and Wall Street–husband is a Citigroup executive after all–clashes with CNN’s ability to produce objective journalism so badly, he says, it’s “embarrassing”:
Needless to say, Burnett and Kosik consider themselves to be opinion-free, objective “reporters.” Indeed, this is what Burnett said in the Vantiy Fair interview when asked if she sympathizes too much with the Wall Street plutocrats on whom she purports to report: “My job isn’t to give an opinion but to try and explain what’s happening.” …
It’s the opposite of surprising that large corporations which own media outlets want to hire people to play the role of journalist on the TV who are slavishly devoted to their culture and their agenda. But that’s the point: the pretense that these people are “objective journalists” delivering opinion-free facts is so discredited that they should just stop pretending. It’s embarrassing already. Few things have exposed their deep, embittered biases as much as their snide, defensive reaction to these Wall Street protests.
Dredd,
America’s status as a low opportunity land is established.
But some anomalies are there. Finland, a part of Norden, but not Scandinavia, has one of the highest academic raitings in the world, just after South Korea.
But Finland accepts practically no immigrants. Sweden does poorly, but has many quota immigrants. Shall we seek the academic performance in the per cent immigrants. I don’t think so.
But explaining America is a very very large task
FWIW.
OT OT OT OT OT
David Blauw,
Maybe my work is not in your taste, but believe me I am not a hater of jews or a denier of Auschwitz. You indicated some personal connection to the jewish cause.
I have written much about jews, cultural contributions, actions toward the world they live in. I even have 3 jewish friends!!!! (I talk openheartedly with blacks too!) Hope you see the irony in my truth. Some jews like my friend Lena D. prefer not to be addressed on jew questions, and she is not alone.
I would quickly tire myself if constantly checked, like a weather vane, and then being asked for expressions of position on every red-neck issue of the day.
Sometimes people just like to be people. And a little persecution even today would spoil anyone’s day. And there are many groups besides ex-red necks who suffer ;.) ,
The first mistake I made was skipping by all the posts to post mine. And the second was scrolling upwards only one step and found the best of the Mcwilliam comments. Now having read the total, I understand the uproar he caused.
I could offer more rebuttal to him, but why bother rebutting a rat creeping out of the sewage pipe. Shoot him, we can with terrorists, but not him.
If O, did that, think of the million (?) hearts that would freeze in fear, when the cause would be made known in a justification press release.
Drones would not be necessary for mcwilliam’s case. Collateral damage is not good when it is American lives. And it is assassination or execution without the usual provings in court that is the essential bit, not the drones.
So if you assume that I am a ***jew hater, then disabuse yourself of that.
I may be a goy, but my nose is prominent and my skin is dark. My mom said we were of scotch-irish descent, but who knows. Only a jew knows.
***I abhor the term anti-semitic. The arabs are semites too. But they get no sympathy from me on that account. I “sympathize” with muslims just on the basis that freedom of speech is accorded gun nuts here. Let us not create more us vs them situations.
And the anti-islamic phobia here at JT’s smells so bad and often that I attack it or defend the right of people to be deceived by their religion.
I don’t condone Puritans drowning of witches, nor modern day ones taking away from women their reproductive and sexual enjoyment rights.
My favorite “jewish” mother is Irish, a sixth generation settler in AZ, the mother of a son by a Jewish father. The son is a paid teacher at 15 to the synagogue students of Hebrew. Has been for years.
Jewish father, maybe. Jewish mother, so is baby. But some exceptions are allowed. He is an ardent jew, but doubt if he will become a rabbi. But I forget, rabbis and mullahs are allowed to have wives. Joseph is into girls now at 15 (little retarded) and don’t know how far in (pun?), but believe he has the healthy jewish attitude towards sex. I could regale with further Joseph and his pappas tales. But don’t want to risk their being doc’ed. A term and a practice of which I was made aware by another jew last night.
Not to speak of all the Afghanis, Brazilians, Ethiopians, Eritreans.
Rwandians, etc. that I converse with frankly. So if there is a jew that I hate. it is because his name is Bibi and is head of the Israeli government. But then he has his rights. And his land shows that multi-party democracies are a mockery just as our 2-party one ís too.
And I am not stupid and believe that one person from one land is a fingerprint of all the inhabitants there.
One of the crimes the news media, like CNN, has done is to gloss over and cover-up the plundering of middle class and poor Americans by the plutocrats.
Their sins are open for all to see:
(Joseph Stiglitz).
“I believe that it is the duty of a citizen to watch the SOTU, no matter who is President, since its delivery is mandated constitutionally and thus serves as a common ritual.”
As a citizen, I have no duty to watch one criminal spout a pack of lies and falsehoods followed by another criminal spouting a counter pack of lies and falsehoods.
Like any other ritual, I can simply ignore it as irrelevant, which in this case, I am proud to say I did.
Reblogged this on Siebenundvierzig and commented:
Hier ein Fundstück das mich via Jonathan Turley erreichte: In einem Gastbeitrag beschreibt Mike Spindell seine Sicht der US-Amerikanischen Fernsehlandschaft. Darunter finden sich allzuviele vertraute Entwicklungen, da in Europa diese Ausrichtung – mit einer gewissen Verzögerung – nachgeahmt wird.
David Blauw,
“Fiscal cliff, Debt ceiling, Sequester, these three concepts are the sugar bomb cereals of current news reports…….”
Wow, I stand humbled. My bleating alhough with my special smell, don’t compare with your. Although you have done better, but the word to MikeS was something I liked.
Don’t bother answering, I know you won’t anyway. I am not stalking, just talking, as usual.
I am not saying that Arnett was anti-USA. He was anti-war and the suffering it gave. He did not think of it as a wow fireworks display, and a demonstration of our tech supremacy. He saw the people being killed. That was his subjects or viewpoint.
No fireworks in color from strone strikes today. And it is not the Ministry of Defense in Bagdad. Then we issued warnings. How gentlemanly we were.
Drone strikes are not on skyscrapers, nor any warning given to the school to be stricken.
Get my message.
It was Peter Arnett that I was thinking of. I expected his dismissal because he saw the strikes in terms not complimentary to the USA. Shaw was the black one. Holliman I don’t recall. So even then CNN was corrupt in that it played to American auiences, and the truth be damned. The only truth spoken was by Arnett, I contend.
And after that It is now a part of the entertainment world. How sad.
Truth is often sadder than fiction. Maybe Shaw’s wife had ditched him for getting syph from a Bagdad escort girl, you know the kind that escort you 10 steps to their hovel. You’d look tired too if that happened to you.
Thanks OS for the rundown.
billmcwilliams.
If you don’t get it, it is not likely that an explanation would help.
You are obviously looking for hatred. Poor you.
I was complimenting you on coming with a broader and more critical post.
What you said since that snark to me, is not read yet. Looking forward to having a misanthropist here. Which gutter did you crawl out of?
Nothing personal, Just like to pirouette when I feel like it’
🙂
We’ve finally hit the big time. This blog has now attracted a holocaust denier. Please give bill mcwilliams the welcome and respect that he deserves.
Several times in the last year I have seen some old network farts on a talk show thing rapping about the good ol days of NBC and CBS and the grand old types like Edward R. Murrow. They over look the fact that in those days you had a half hour news show on at Six on the East Coast with ten minutes of commercials. There was no CSPAN or other 24/7 channels like CNN. Current and Aljazera (sp) are rather new to the mix but they add new perspectives. Cronkite and Murrow used to smoke on tv on their news shows and were in fact sponsoring tobacco products. In his Memoirs Cronkite relates what he thinks is a humorous story about him correcting teh Winston jingle of Winston Tastes Good Like A Cigarette should to proper English of “as a cigarette should” and how he got reprimanded. In his dotage he does not seem aware that he was coddling todllers to smoke and many are dead from it after these fifty some odd years.
I for one do not have a feelling that the good ol days were good for news. I watch Book TV and all of the CSPAN shows and Aljazerra, Current and CNN. I pass by Fox like I pass by the outhouse as long as the regular toilet is working. Lately Fox is defaming some Senator from NJ by saying that he was down in the Domiinican Republic porking underage prostitutes. Ya, fair and balanced.
BDog,
Yes the “good old days” were never as good as memory makes them. I don’t know your age though, but I lived through them. In context I started smoking before the Surgeon Generals report that smoking could cause cancer and heart disease. My father actually taught me to inhale and I smoked cigarettes from the age of 12 on. My parents though both died at age 54 and I’ve been very open about my ow heart troubles. I think, without looking it up, that Murrow died at 57. The “Nightly News” was originally an hour long, as I remember it and then pared down as the time went on.
Also important to remember was the “chilling effect” of Joe McCarthy and of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) which during that “Cold War” era scared hell out of the entire media. Given those structural limitations they did a much better job than they do today and certainly were more in line with the concept of journalism.
I can remember Malcolm X being grilled by a panel on “Meet The Press” when he first became famous. They were “bemused” by his militancy and rather dismissive of the cause of Black freedom. Actually though, Malcolm made mincemeat of their arguments and I learned to respect his intelligence.
@rafflaw “That is a big story!”
I think it is plausible to argue that any story that makes it to the NYT is a big story.
But my quick check shows one story on one day in the NYT. A similar check of the Washington Post shows three stories on two days. The Washington Post is a bit difficult to count because they sometimes show different listings for essentially the same story that appears in different editions – so you might get a listing for a story in the morning edition and then a different listing for the same story in the final edition – is that two stories or one?
And yes other papers carried the story of microphones in the meeting rooms – for maybe a day.
Did CNN ever carry the story? Were they able to sandwich it between the story about the cop killer, and the cruise ship, and the meteor. I don’t know. Somehow I missed it on CNN – but I definitely heard about the cop killer, and the cruise ship, and the meteor.
I am sure Chris Mathews mentioned the story and I will bet Maddow spent an entire segment on the story. And O’Donnell must have nearly come through the screen expressing his indignation.
But if they did you will have to tell me because I missed it on MSNBC. But I did hear Mathews go on about Rubios drinking habits – interesting story. And Maddow has kept us up to date about voter suppression – important story. Some how I am blocking on O’Donnell – is he past his fascination with 30 round magazines yet?
But microphones…Guantanamo..consultation rooms…defense attorneys? I don’t remember hearing about it – do you?
Now don’t get me wrong. I am no champion of Al Qaeda. I have no sympathy for anyone that wages war against this country.
But if anyone thinks these people deserve a tribunal and a firing squad then let them make that argument.
Right now it is my understand that they are entitled to a trial, with counsel. Yes I know it is not the usual kind of civilian trial. But still, I am not aware of any decisions which support government monitoring of defense conferences.
Ops…I nearly forgot. The military clearly stated that no information was turned over to the prosecution.
I am reassured.
Great quotes RobinH. Especially from the ”Intellectual Elite” Himself!
Dear Bill McDonalds HACK. They must have forgot my father in laws pictures. What little tube of reality do you live in. What kind of cheese do you find so tasty that you write such trash!!!!!
Milford Cutter, I too need many English lessons. Whether Oro Lee appreciates them or not; I do. As soon as I am perfect and know everything I will announce it. ….. Of course I am assuming your correction is correct.
PS. What the heck was the purpose of paragraphing in grammar school.
Blessed Sacrament, Nuns of St. Joseph. If paragraphing is the wrong word. It was noun, adjective, adverb, subject, and maybe other things, that we had to graph on a bar….. ,,, ????? I haven’t used it since 6th grade, but I do still remember it.
Oro Lee,
I apparently view the same news blogs as do you, although I also check in on Red State and NewsBusters (they are kept in my RWNJ link folder.) It helps me to know what talking points from the right I will need to debunk each day.
Incidentally, to comply with the rules of proper punctuation I believe the second apostrophe should follow the s in y’alls’ as this is a plural possessive.
Below are quotes taken from speeches delivered time and time again by our so called leaders of ” the free world”
i’ve taken and posted just a few which tells us why we no longer receive news but tabloid gossip and misinformation from those who pledged to provide us with the ability to make informed decisions based on the information we receive thru their services
“There is no such thing as an independent press in America, unless it is in the country towns. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.
“I am paid $150.00 a week for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for doing similar things. If I should permit honest opinions to be printed in one issue of my paper, like Othello, before twenty-four hours, my occupation would be gone.
“The business of the New York journalist is to destroy truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon; to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. We are the tools and vessels for rich men behind the scenes. We are intellectual prostitutes.”
John Swinton, editor of the New York Tribune.
______________________________________________
“We are going to impose our agenda on the coverage by dealing with issues and subjects that we choose to deal with.”
Richard M. Cohen, Senior Producer of CBS political news.
_____________________________________________________
“We in the press like to say we’re honest brokers of information and it’s just not true. The press does have an agenda.”
Bernard Goldberg, as quoted by Harry Stein in the June 13-19, 1992 TV Guide.
_________________________________________________________
“We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.”
David Rockefeller, Baden-Baden, Germany 1991
______________________________________________________
BFM — this is for you:
“Hence, as of this day there is not a single known air photo of Auschwitz-Birkenau showing smoke coming out of any of the crematories.”
http://inconvenienthistory.com/archive/2012/volume_4/number_4/smoking_crematory_chimney_at_auschwitz.php
includes photos taken from Allies’ planes.