(Corporate) Media Whores NO DIFFERENT than the "kept media" of a DICTATORSHIP. Madison, Wisconsin, Times

Again, we here at MediaWhoresUSA.blogspot.com APOLOGIZE to the sex-workers of the world, many of whom were driven into their trade by bullying, evil forces beyond their control, and many of whom support their families by plying "the world's oldest profession."

But in the case of America's multi-million dollar MEDIA WHORES, we can summon no amount of derision or scorn sufficient to describe THE BETRAYAL of the ideal of a FREE and INDEPENDENT media, by those "independent" organizations that are JOINED AT THE HIP with a dictatorial and chronically lying administration in the favor of vast sums of money for a garbage and awful product.

These media whores JOIN the Bush administration, IN BOLD FACED LYING: they are neither "INDEPENDENT" nor "JOURNALISTS," but paid whores spreading propaganda LIES for wealth and profit, at the expense of blood and lost opportunity here in America and across the world.

<< Handing the bully pulpit over to a president who has repeatedly misused his position to DECEIVE the Congress and the American people is not journalism; it is stenography.

And make no mistake: A "free" press that practices STENOGRAPHY TO POWER is no different from the KEPT PRESS of a TOTALITARIAN state. >>

Like the Nazi press before them, America's corporate media whores of today take an idea (in this case, American supremacy and "legitimacy" to start a war anytime, anywhere, on the most atrocious of pretexts) as making them Holy and Superior, and JUSTIFYING ANY bending of the facts (lies) to legitimize their goals, in this case legitimizing a lying, criminal, and corrupt government.

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Editorial: Bush in the bully pulpit
Madison Times, Wisconsin, editorial
Jan 13 2006
http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/index.php?ntid=114813&ntpid=0

It is all well and good to celebrate the cautious baby steps being taken by Congress to reassert itself as a check and balance on the executive branch excesses of the monarchical Bush administration. When even Republicans, such as Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, are publicly admitting that the House and Senate failed during the first six years of the Bush interregnum to practice even minimal oversight, there is perhaps a measure of hope for the republic.

But that hope will not be realized if we wait for Congress to develop the spine it has been deprived of since the Watergate era. There must be an external check and balance on the executive branch, and that will only happen if the media abandon the bended-knee position from which they have covered the Bush administration.

The willingness of most mainstream media outlets to continue to treat seriously the absurd and propagandistic claims of this president and his aides is at least as damaging to the discourse and, by extension, to the American experiment as the collapse of congressional oversight. To allow the administration and its supporters to suggest, at this late stage in the disaster that is the Iraq invasion and occupation, that challenges to the president's proposal to escalate the war are disrespectful of U.S. troops serving there is to perpetuate a lie that warps the national debate in a manner that ensures more Americans and Iraqis will be killed.

The president and his dwindling circle of supporters certainly have a right to make their pronouncements. But they do not have a right to expect that lies and spin will be swallowed by the media and then regurgitated into the living rooms of Americans.


AP Photo/Gerald Herbert
President Bush delivers a speech to troops and their families at Fort Benning, Ga. Jan. 11.
Unfortunately, that is what happened Wednesday night, as a presidential address that should have been met with unbridled skepticism was instead treated as a meaningful statement regarding the future U.S. presence in Iraq.

Just as it would be wrong for the media to censor Bush, it is equally wrong for the media to allow the madness of this modern-day King George to infect the discourse without the immediate application of the antidote of truth.

Handing the bully pulpit over to a president who has repeatedly misused his position to deceive the Congress and the American people is not journalism; it is stenography.

And make no mistake: A "free" press that practices stenography to power is no different from the "kept" press of a totalitarian state.

Indeed, the promise of "freedom of the press" is nothing more than a meaningless clause in a disposable document if journalists do not use the freedom they have been afforded by the Constitution to challenge the status quo.

It is significant, indeed, that the travesty of the latest presidential address to the nation came on the eve of this weekend's third National Conference for Media Reform, which has brought more than 3,000 activists, academics, members of Congress and concerned journalists to Memphis this weekend. They could not have picked a better time to address the crisis created by an increasingly consolidated, dumbed-down and homogenized national media.

There is a dawning realization that what's wrong with America is not just the fault of an incompetent and deceptive president, nor of a cowardly and dysfunctional Congress. The founders established a free press to keep watch on the executive branch particularly in a time of war. No less a figure than James Madison warned, "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both."

Iraq is a tragedy. Proposals to escalate U.S. involvement are a farce. And surely, Madison would tell us a media system that does not have the capacity to communicate that fact to the American people bluntly, and without apology is in need of radical reform.