Reply #26: Here's mine. It's long but I got on a roll

[katinmn]

CNN:

Based on how you cover the news, I don't believe you actually care about what is a threat to our democracy but I'll play along.

The greatest threat to our democracy is the media's fixation on unimportant things like the runaway bride, Martha Stewart's homecoming, Michael Jackson's trial and various rich and spoiled pop tarts instead of reporting the truth about the invasion of Iraq, our economy which is in serious trouble, election fraud, how the Bush Administration has turned our country over to corporations, and the extreme right's fascist tendencies (see Bush lovers only church in North Carolina), and on and on. The media avoids reporting anything that would be an embarrassment to the corporations that own them. The media enabled all of the above, not passively, but by one-sided cheerleading coverage of the extreme Right's agenda.

The media -- no longer mainstream at all - is a propaganda tool for big business. The networks, CNN, Fox and major news magazines and newspapers are alike in many ways. They are entertainment vehicles at best and more often channels for the Bush Administration to disseminate their bs to the public. It doesn't take a rocket scientist or someone with a high school diploma to see the blatant skewing of the facts by the media.

If it weren't for a small, honest group of elected leaders in Congress, the media would continue to have Rove contractors on the air as news commentators, a prostitute posing as a journalist feeding softball questions to the president, and taxpayer financed VNRs that push the extreme Right's agenda under the guise of fair and balanced news.

Americans were not well served by the media during the campaign for the presidency. Instead of presenting the public with fact-based reporting on the important issues, the media took in billions of dollars in advertising, much of it hate-filled ads that further divided the country. Aside from three debates, Americans were never given a glimpse into what these candidates had on their agendas.

The few remaining members of Congress that haven't sold out to corporations spend the majority of their time watchdogging the Bush Administration -- a job that the media should be doing. Lately they've also had to watchdog the media.

For a current example, CNN reported the UK Iraq Memo today only after Knight Ridder picked it up. KR picked it up after Congressman Conyers acquired more than 80 signatures of fellow representatives asking that the implication of the memo be investigated. CNN chose to minimize the importance of the memo by saying it was reported by the London Times, a "tabloid." Heavy stress on the tabloid. Have you ever read the London Times? It is less a tabloid than the New York Times.

Despite best efforts to keep it hidden, many Americans now know that the Bush team conspired to "fit the facts" regarding Iraq.

The Fourth Estate? It's dead. Thinking people now rely on news reports from other countries and citizen researched and reported news via the Internet.

Thanks!