Remember When Bush's Lies Weren't "Old News"?

[Kevin Spidel]

Remember When Bush's Lies Weren't "Old News"?
By David Swanson, www.AfterDowningStreet.org

The most repeated excuse by U.S. media outlets for not covering the Downing Street Minutes and related documents is that they tell us nothing new, that they're old news. This conflicts, of course, with the second most common excuse, which is that they are false. If they're false, they can't be news at all, much less old news.

So, the question arises, when was this new news? At what point did it become old news to report that Bush had decided by the summer of 2002 to go to war and to use false justifications related to weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism? Of course, in one sense anything we discover now about secret goings on three years ago is old news – but that sense of being old news doesn't seem to spare us details of, for example, the Michael Jackson trial or the steroids in sports scandals. In those and many other cases, we're treated to news that's about old events. By that definition of old news we could have skipped Whitewater altogether.

Perhaps, then, something becomes old news in the relevant sense when a majority of the public has heard about it. But that can't be right, since so much of the American public, in the latest polls I know about, believes that Saddam Hussein actually did have ties to the 9-11 attacks and actually was stockpiling vast quantities of weapons of mass destruction. That this was all a crock intended to sell the public a war can't be old news while people still believe it's true, can it?

Well, then maybe a story becomes old news as soon as it shows up in some back-page article with a buried lead, even as the front page trumpets the opposite. Or maybe even showing up in international or independent or web-based media qualifies. But if that were right, then much of what major US corporate media outlets report would be old news. Some outlets might need to shut down altogether in order to avoid running old news, by that definition.

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the rest here: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/407

[uppityperson]

1. This is as stupid an excuse as "don't go to trial, it's old news..."

but new evidence.

It is not old news. It is old allegations and the DSM is new news.

[DemReadingDU]

2. Very interesting! n/t