My LTTE - printed last week.

[AllegroRondo]

To the Editor:

Do you trust the media? I'm not sure anymore.

The media are supposed to represent the truth, not a varnished, whitewashed version of truth that they think you want to hear.

The government will always bend the facts to make things look good. It is the job of competent journalists to separate the facts from the smoke and mirrors and bring these facts to the public intact.

My doubting started in 2002. That year, President Bush's plan for adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare was the hot topic. The Department of Health and Human Services produced what were essentially fake newscasts and distributed them to TV stations nationwide, telling America how great the new benefit would be.

The Government Accounting Office later determined that this was illegal and ordered it to stop. But the damage was done, public opinion was turned, and we got a drug benefit that costs double what we were promised.

Next came the use of columnists and editorial writers to push the Bush agenda. Conservative columnist Armstrong Williams got paid more than a quarter of a million dollars by the Bush administration to peddle No Child Left Behind. Conservative columnist Maggie Gallagher got $41,000 to peddle Bush's ideas on marriage. Conservative columnist Mike McManus got $59,000 to pitch the same policy.

This particular administration can't sell its policy initiatives on merit, but instead has to pay journalists to sell them to the public. The next time you hear your favorite radio personality go on about the wonders of Social Security personal accounts, you must ask yourself "Is this person getting paid by the government to say this?"

_______________
For the record, I had another couple paragraphs that went into the whole Gannon/Guckert thing, but were not printed. Possibly because I used the words "gay hooker" about a dozen times.

[bvar22]

1. Good job.

Great letter.
Can I ask which paper?

[AllegroRondo]

2. Local paper in a St Louis suburb

[bvar22]

8. All politics...

...IS local!

[GetTheRightVote]

3. Time wells spent in this letter

:kick:

[KurtNYC]

4. Good tight letter

:toast:

[intheflow]

5. Great letter!

It's interesting that they edited the Gannon part out. The "liberal" press seems so scared to be called "anti-gay" if they talk about him at all, completely ignoring that his sexuality has nothing to do with the fact that he was a GOP plant. But your letter as they printed it still makes that point. Thank you for doing the journalists' job in getting the truth out!

[AllegroRondo]

6. It was kind of surreal

the very next paragraph talked about how the MSM were avoiding any mention of Gannon, and that the average person had no idea who he is.

[intheflow]

7. That's not surreal,

it's disturbing. I'm a seminary student who just preached a sermon on the rise of fascism in the US.

I spoke about the paid journalists who shilled propaganda for the admin. I let out Gannon b/c the sermon was runing long and I didn't want the congregation to be side-tracked from the point (that propaganda is happening in the US right now) by any salacious details. But what I found most disturbing was that out of about 250 cogregants, only five had heard of Ryan, two McManus, three Maggie Gallagher, and nine or ten people knew of Williams.

I'll tell ya, the congregation looked positively shell-shocked when the service ended. But I had tables set up with petitions and writing tablets for people to contact their elected officials, and I think we got a good 200 signatures on the petitions and about 30 letters. Very encouraging from a not very politically active congregation!

[AllegroRondo]

9. The left out paragraphs

From the depths of my hard drive:

The sad and sordid tale of Jeff Gannon (aka John Guckert) is the final nail in the coffin. Many people may have not even heard the name Jeff Gannon yet, and its not thier fault. The major media outlets have chosen not to cover the story, in favor of much more "important" news like the Michael Jackson case.

The problem is not the fact that Gannon is gay. It's not even the fact that he runs websites for male escort services, where his own picture is displayed as one of the wares for sale. The problem is that a gay hooker was able to get into the White House Press Briefing Room on a daily basis for over two years, and ask questions of the President, while the FBI and Secret Service either did not know, or knew and did nothing.

Gannon wasn’t just a writer who got a one-day pass. It normally takes serious credentials and a 3 month background check by the FBI to get a White House press pass. But someone at the White House must have liked Gannon, because he was given a pass for over two years, even though his only journalistic experience consisted of writing for a "news" web site run by the Texas Republican Committee. It is now known that he was given press access a month before this news agency even existed. He bragged publicly about playing a key role in an act of treason perpetrated by members of this administration, namely the outing of a CIA operative, something he would not have been able to do had he not had friends inside the White House.

If this were 1998, we'd be knee deep in congressional investigations into the gay hooker ring in the White House. Every news crew in the DC area would be camped out on Jeff's front lawn. Fox News would have 24 hour coverage with updates every 15 minutes on the sordid details, while Rush and Hannity expressed outrage at the lack of morals in this country.

But, it isn't 1998 and it will probably not even be mentioned. And I'm not a Republican so I don't think, as they would, that it's necessary to dig into every single White House staffer's sex life to find out who leaked a confidential memo to a gay hooker. But do I trust the media to bring the truth? Sadly, not any more.