Free Press? So Why "Fear Is In Every Newsroom In The Country"?

So much for the First Amendment, folks. From Adbusters (with deep thanks to Buzzflash for the link):

When Australia’s Rupert Murdoch threw his support behind the Iraq War, so did the 175 media outlets he owns as part of News Corp. When Canada’s CanWest Global Communications justified the Afghanistan invasion, so did its eleven daily newspapers and 16 television stations. And when the major US media conglomerates signed off on the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, American journalists lined up right behind them. In a recent interview on PBS’s Bill Moyers Report, former CBS Evening News anchorman Dan Rather explained why journalists were so afraid to question the war.

“Fear is in every newsroom in the country . . . particularly in [the] networks,” said Rather. “They’ve become huge international conglomerates. They have big needs, legislative needs, regulatory needs in Washington. Nobody has to send you a memo to tell you that that’s the case – you know. And that puts a seed in your mind of well, ‘If you stick your neck out, if you take the risk of going against the grain with your reporting, is anybody going to back you up?’”

Although the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have shown that media conglomerates limit the diversity of views, subvert democracy and stymie journalistic integrity, Canada, America and Australia’s media regulators continue to let them expand. In fact, over the past decade, media regulators have gone out of their way to help facilitate consolidation or have refused to speak up against it – all to the detriment of the public’s interest. As each of these three countries enters another round of media convergence, their federal media watchdogs appear to be looking the other way.

Too Much GonzalesGate?

JurassicPork of Welcome to Pottersville raises a good point in a post entitled, "Stonewall Jackass Rides Again": why is it the story of the purging of U.S. Attorneys (federal prosecutors) is getting all the media attention when there are so many different scandals, scofflaws, and scary stuff that never sees the light of day?

As I've posted here and at All Things Democrat, I do feel like the GonzalesGate story is a big deal within context. It is NOT, however, an isolated scandal with the GOP which has been about little more than blind ambition, unchecked power and abuse of that power, as well as partisan palaver.

Yet I do see JP's point of view (we Yankees have to stick together).

I will also say that I grow weary of the media only being able to handle one story at a time (and then, none too thoroughly), often leaving out any context of wrong-doing throughout.

In The Case of Anna Nicole Smith, Please Cut Out The Chase

As you may have noticed - and hell, hopefully appreciated - I've been trying to practice an Anna Nicole Smith Circus-Free zone. That this woman's death is the same catastrophic, more-foolish-than-humanly-possible train wreck her entire adult life seemed to be makes me sick. My sympathy, however, is reserved only for her five-month-old daughter, but not because she lost her mom; sadly, I suspect by the time the girl was three, had Vicki Arthur (Anna's real name) lived, the little girl would have been raising her.

Three points make me raise the issue. First, I am aghast at how the story of a woman who never did a moment's useful anything in her life is all-consumed by the mainstream media. We appear to be on the brink of war with Iran and all I hear about is Judge Larry Seidlin, the former Bronx cabbie who presided over the Florida court case to determine where Anna's dead body should go.

Second, last night, Saturday Night Live did a parody of Wolf Blitzer and his Situation Room handling the Anna Nicole Smith saga. It was OK, up to a point. But the skit, with Darrell Hammond as Wolfie, gave FAR too much credit to Blitzer for trying to regain control over his own program. Wolfie has been so blindly consumed by this story that even Lou Dobbs gladly bitch-slapped him one day on air by announcing that on Dobbs' show, there would be NO talk of Anna (someone told me that CNN itself cut into Dobb's show that night for an Anna Nicole "still dead" update but I cannot say with certainty this happened).

We got satellite reception back from the Valentine's Day 38-inch blizzard for the first time on Thursday and man, I tell you... I apparently had missed NOTHING because between the three so-called news channels, I saw 8 Anna Nicole "specials" listed in a two-night period. WTF?

Third, I just had the most annoying email exchange with someone who someone made the gargantuan leap that, since Anna Nicole Smith got illegal methadone prescriptions using the fake name of Michelle Chase while pregnant (illegal because law forbids a prescription written to a pseudo ID), that somehow I must know Anna Nicole because the name of my blog - and indeed, my last name - includes the name Chase. Now, with a leap like this, I'm fucking amazed this person could figure out how to contact me via email. But he or she did.

Anyone who is paying much attention at all to this pathetic piece of garbage passed off as fluff... well... whoa...