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Fifth
Estate, Anyone?
February
26, 2002
By Prodigal Son
The fourth estate is as cold as last week's road kill. Journalism,
as America's watchdog of wrongdoing, has been eroding, as
Dick Cheney says, "Big Time."
Gone are the glory days of reporting, in which was debated
such momentous issues as which direction the presidential
member purportedly leaned. (Remember when that was such a
HUGE topic for all the pundits? Not a "Could there be terrorists
be among us?" story to be seen if you will recall).
Despite lacking evidence, or doing the smallest bit of investigation,
the American media often repeats lies that race on to being
accepted as fact faster than you can say, "Bush's Afghanistan
Oil Pipeline."
The latest example of this is a false claim by FOX news,
and other right wing sources, that there is well documented
evidence that former Enron CEO Ken Lay stayed in the Lincoln
Bedroom of the White House during the Clinton administration.
Apparently, for the right-wing hate crowd, "well-documented"
means, "I heard Rush say it."
USA today says they got the story from the Chicago Tribune,
the Moonie owned Washington Times, Fred Barnes and Republican
gangster Alex Castellanos took it up as gospel. It raced on
from there.
So what?
Well, turns out that Kenny boy never was an overnight guest
during the Clinton administration. Lay did, however, stay
at the White House when George Bush the elder was president.
Here is another interesting tidbit you never heard reported:
Bush had lunch with Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings,
Ted Koppel, Judy Woodruff, Wolf Blitzer, Brit Hume, Jim Lehrer,
Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer, Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts
on the day of his State of the Union address.
Maybe it was just a coincidence that they simply gushed over
it. Yeah, and Bush didn't forget about WW II in his speech
to Japan. ("For a century and a half now, America and Japan
have formed one of the great and enduring alliances of modern
times")
Let's get one thing straight right now. The media is not
in the business of reporting or informing you and I. Not anymore.
It is in the business of making money. To heck with you and
your need to be informed of what big business and the government
are doing in our name.
The chairman of the FCC, Michael Powell, Colin's son (Thanks
Unca George!), has never met a media merger he didn't love.
He is ready to give media monopolies absolute control over
all communications channels... including the Internet. The
big networks, including Fox, want to end a cap limiting them
to the number of stations that equal 35 percent of the television-viewing
audience, so they can own an unlimited number of stations,
and force local owners to sell to them for cheap.
The vision? A single company in one community owning the
newspaper, several television stations, several radio stations,
the cable system, and the local phone company. Goodbye diversity
of thought, and goodbye democracy. Conservatives, would you
want an all-liberal slant, all-the-time, media monopoly in
YOUR city?
Liberals, would you want a right-wing dominating media covering
for corporate swindling, and Republican wrongdoing, all the
while falsely claiming liberal bias?
Oh, wait. We already have that.
Prodigal Son is the meanest damn Liberal in the South
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