Bush Lies, Media Swallows
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"President Bush is a liar. There, I said it, but most of the mainstream media won't," writes Eric Alterman.
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U.S. Government
Journalist Helen Thomas Condemns Bush
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Veteran journalist Helen Thomas is angered by the Bush administration's "bullying drumbeat" of war. "Where is the outrage?" she said in a talk at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Where is Congress? They're supine! Bush has held only six press conferences, the only forum in our society where a president can be questioned. I'm on the phone to [press secretary] Ari Fleischer every day, asking will he ever hold another one? The international world is wondering what happened to America's great heart and soul. ... I do not absolve the press. We've rolled over and played dead, too."
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Secret CIA Study Said Secrecy Backfires
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"We know that secrecy by its very nature may affect the personality of its practioners," wrote the still-secret author of a 1977 secret study by the CIA, which noted that these "unintended psychological effects ... seem to diminish rather than enhance security." The author, whose study was finally declassified last month, pointed to the example of Pearl Harbor: "That most disastrous of intelligence failures was due in no small measure to the mishandling of compartmented intelligence.
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War Party Gears Up for Post-Election Campaign
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"As soon as the results of Tuesday's mid-term elections are known, a small group of influential right-wing hawks with close ties to the offices of Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney will launch a new political campaign to rally public support for the invasion of Iraq," writes Jim Lobe.
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"Dark Alliance" Revived From the Dead
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Award-winning journalist Gary Webb was hung out to dry by his newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News, after writing "Dark Alliance," which showed how the CIA and drug dealers fueled the epidemic of crack cocaine in Los Angeles in the 1980s. As the first Internet-based expose in journalism history, it was seen by millions worldwide, but caused such a firestorm of controversy that the paper's editor later apologized and shut down the website to keep the stories from ever being seen again.
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A Call for Action Against Secrecy
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
OMB Watch, a nonprofit organization that monitors the White House Office of Management and Budget, has issued a working paper titled "The Bush Administration's Secrecy Policy: A Call to Action to Protect Democratic Values."
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Anti-Americanism Rising in the Middle East
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
Speakers at a recent symposium of the Public Relations Society of America said that "U.S. support for Israelis over Palestinians, President Bush's 'crusade' against the Taliban and the presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia contribute to the rising anti-American sentiment in the Middle East," reports O'Dwyer's PR Daily. "According to Denise Gray-Felder, VP of communications for the Rockefeller Foundation, 'Americans persist in operating like a nation of ignorants.' She has noticed in her international travels that foreigners are far better educated on world affairs than U.S.
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US Unveils "Muslim-as-Apple-Pie" Ad Campaign
Submitted by John Stauber on
The US government is using The Rendon Group, advertising whiz Charlotte Beers and others to develop PR and ad campaigns to sway Muslim opinion toward the US. The first ads are being "greeted with skepticism," according to the New York Times. "Rawia Ismail, ...her head covered with an Islamic head scarf, appears in a US government video that will have its first public showing this week on national television here in [Indonesia]... 'I didn't see any prejudice anywhere in my neighborhood after Sept.
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Branding New and Improved Wars
Submitted by Laura Miller on
"Marketing a war is serious business. And no product requires better brand names than one that squanders vast quantities of resources while intentionally killing large numbers of people," Media Beat columnist Norman Solomon writes. From 1989's Operation Just Cause to 1991's Operation Desert Storm to today's Enduring Freedom, Solomon suggests that naming military operations is nothing more than a form of "media cross-promotion" meant to sanitize war.
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Political Intelligence
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
"As the White House searches for every possible excuse to go to war with Iraq," writes James Bamford, "pressure has been building on the intelligence agencies to deliberately slant estimates to fit a political agenda.
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