Whew! Talk about NAUSEATING TV! Howie Kurtz's swarmy appearance on CNN's "Reliable Sources" today was the most revolting spectacle of TV talk, since serial liar and terminal bloviator Rush Limbaugh tried to run his show on camera in front of a live TV audience.
The substance of Kurtz's show today was allegedly to celebrate the career and retirement of DAN RATHER, the CBS news anchor who has been unceremoniously shown the door by CBS for Rather's role in "Rathergate" - Rather's 2004 attempt to bring attention to George W. Bush's record from when Bush was a Lieutenant in the Texas Air National Guard (ANG) in the early 1970s during the Vietnam war.
Leave 'Em Laughing (Or Just Leave)
Diary Entry by lindbergh
June 25, 2006
Rather and Chung retiring at the same time may be noted by the MSM only for it's irony. But it's the news behind the news that we ought to pay attention to.
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I think people mostly missed the points being made with the departures of both Dan Rather and Connie Chung from TV news. No doubt many people saw only irony in the two "leaving" broadcast journalism in the same week. Their relationship as co-anchors of CBS's Evening News in the early 90's had been tense and often terse -- on the air and off.
No doubt liberal-bashers broke open a few bottles of well-aged scotch to celebrate their "passing" -- especially Rather's. I know some of those folks are in TV news management. Many of them know deep-down they're also drinking to numb their own consciences as collaborators in government controlled news. As for their drinking -- one's probably too many and a hundred won't be enough.
Rather undergoing a forced retirement and Chung's "up yours" farewell to MSNBC were both part of the same process -- to present what little was left of moderate MSM as a "dying breed." Chung ought to get an Emmy for sticking it to GE/NBC the way she did. She was outrageously funny -- offering us a version of a sullen lounge "lizard" who once did the TV news and "wound up" the way Susan Alexander did in Citizen Kane.
The Rather story, though, is far more fetching. In 2004, Rather had been either set up by Viacom/CBS or was asked to take one for the team -- as they say -- with the Killian/Lt. Col. Burkett papers about Bush's Texas ANG service. That story couldn't possibly have been anything but a pre-emptive strike against anyone trying to bring up Bush's troubled and fraudulent National Guard service just before the Presidential election. In the end Dan got "swiftboated" and Viacom/CBS got "payback" at Mary Mapes -- who was eventually set-up as the ultimate fall guy (fall gal?) and fired over the affair.
In 2003-04 Mapes had produced news segments that 1) helped expose the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo atrocities, and 2) revealed that Strom Thurmond had fathered an interracial daughter out of wedlock.
I once thought that Rather was merely naive enough to get sucked into the now-called "Rathergate" affair but the set-up was indeed a sophisticated GOP plot to make it look like CBS was trying to throw the election to Kerry when the opposite was true. Many in the GOP had already been calling for Mapes' head -- especially since she'd produced a story casting "shame" on a GOP icon like Thurmond.
All the while, CEO Sumner Redstone was saying "that a Bush victory in 2004 was better for Viacom/CBS's bottom line." viacom/CBS had issues which would have to go before the FCC in 2005. A takeover of Vivendi/Universal was being contemplated -- although the deal fell apart the following year in its early stages. Still, a Bush defeat might mean a Democrat in charge of the FCC Board.
The White House eventually made out like a bandit after the Rather/Mapes trap had been sprung. Rather gave way to Bob Schieffer -- a conservative and far more acceptable to the Busheviks. Schieffer had also done an interview with Dubya right before the New Hampshire primaries that helped put Bush win the state.
I think Connie Chung's farewell was also her way of giving the finger to all of NBC's news programming. GE/NBC doesn't even bother with pretenses of fairness in TV journalism any more. The "S" in "MSNBC" must stand for "shill." The "C" in all of their ghastly manifestations now seems to stand for "crackpot."
But -- as expected -- nearly all of the MSM just "played dumb" and took Chung's farewell as "just another day at the office." Sadly, that gives you an idea of what a day at their office has become -- at places like CNN and Faux News and the others. Somebody in charge takes White House, Pentagon, and Treasury Department orders over the phone and fax machines and turns them into the day's neo-con propaganda.
Pravda reporters in the old USSR were more critical than the goons and lackeys brought in to run TV news today. What else has TV news become other than a propaganda weapon for the GOP, their lobbyists, major defense contractors, the oil "bidness," as well as the megacorps.
Popular actor;disgruntled office seeker;anarchist;patsy;bigger patsy
Copyright © OpEdNews, 2002-2006
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BuzzFlash Hates to Beat Up on a Dead War, But the Mainstream Media Won't
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/06/06/ana06050.html
We hate to beat up on a dead war -- but following up on our last several days of posts, it's worth noting that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating at an alarming pace.
While the mainstream media writes "speculative" news analyses asking if the Democratic opposition to the war is "politically" motivated, you can't find a paper or television station (at least we haven't found one) that "speculates" on whether or not the timing of the arrest of the Miami gang that couldn't shoot straight was "politically" motivated.
This is what we mean by news editors having an editorial bias. Their bias is toward the "fantasy island" faux news generated by the White House.
It is extremely safe for almost any news editor in the country to go with the daily spin of the Rovian propaganda machine. Asking questions, or focusing on the White House lies and deceptions -- well that can get you into career trouble, big career trouble.
To put it in the vernacular, in today's corporate media world -- where the parent companies rely on the Republicans for tax breaks, favorable FCC, IRS and SEC rulings, and legislative goodies -- it doesn't get you any bonus points by being a "smarty pants" reporter.
The distorted "fantasy island" news coverage you generally see on TV and in most newspapers is due to the decisions news editors make to emphasize the propaganda perspective of the White House. If you freelance with the truth, it may get you reassigned to the mailroom.
Choosing what news is important is a matter of judgment and careerism. Choosing to emphasize minor busts of terrorist wannabes from Liberty City in Miami is a total waste of millions and millions of dollars in "news resources." It is the same type of propaganda operation that was at work in the endless wars and endless enemies the government created in Orwell's "1984." Only now it is accomplished with the "appearance" of a free press, but one that is really on the corporate leash of the White House.
The CEOs and boards of the multi-million dollar enterprises that own the subsidiary news companies know that if you cross the Bush Administration, you won't go home with a doggy bag. Instead, you'll end up a stray dog rummaging through dumpsters for food.
Meanwhile, Bush fiddles and Cheney snarls while Iraq burns -- and the media writes endless stories about some bumbling fools in Miami.
Message to the Media: the real bumbling fools who threaten America are in the White House, and Iraq is on fire.
Will someone in the mainstream press report the truth?
We doubt it.
Everyone's too comfortable with their jobs to lose them.
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
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