Reply #23: I first became a news hound while in the Marines.

[Uncle Joe]

For the most part, national and global issues concerned me as I considered these issues with the potential to greatly impact my life, I wanted to know who we were pissing off and why.

I was an addicted news-hound by the time of my discharge, reading three newspapers a day while living for the network evening news supplemented later by PBS's Newshour and Washington Week in Review, talk radio was the only source of news information that didn't interest me. CNN was heaven and I was ecstatic when USA Today first came to Nashville. I even looked for my information from late night comedy.

To my way of thinking getting information from a maximum variety of sources every day was imperative in order to discern the truth because I figured every side would put their spin on it.

I felt unease and started coming to the realization in the 90s of how highly choreographed it became with actual truth and facts becoming totally irrelevant to their coverage, reporting and opinions while commercials completely took over, you couldn't flip away with a remote to avoid them.

Critical issues and details of national or global importance were either downplayed, obfuscated or ignored altogether, while sensationalist stories affecting a micro few number of Americans was given the Lion's share of coverage.

The idea of privacy for individuals; average Americans, celebrities or politicians evaporated while corporate oversight was portrayed as encroachment by "Big Government."

The ridiculous slanders and libel against Al Gore promoted by all major news sources "Al Gore claimed to have invented the Internet" etc. etc. etc. and treated as fact, even after having been debunked, and then compounded by not giving the man credit for his legislative achievements and the enabling of an obvious corrupt/incompetent Bush to power was the straw that broke the camel's back.

By trashing the leading political champion of opening up the Internet to the American People, the corporate media showed their true colors to me. The First Amendment meant nothing to them except in regards to protecting their own view of corporate sponsored business, their mindless cheer-leading during the run-up to the Iraq War and complicity in exposing a covert CIA Agent and her company dedicated to the curtailment of actual WMDs proliferation only serves to add paint to their Sistine Chapel Ceiling of propaganda.

While they do have some variance in spin, the vast majority are essentially the same; vanilla or French Vanilla promoters of corporate supremacy over the best interests of the American People and "We the People's" government.

Thanks for the thread, graywarrior.:thumbsup: