Just keeping a tally:
- Jeff Gannon, a gay, male prostitute posing as a reporter, allowed into the White House by the administration under an alias to pitch soft-ball questions at press conferences. Result? Nothing.
- Bush administration revealed to be paying off “journalists” and commentators like Armstrong Williams to pitch their positions across the country. Result? Nothing.
- Downing Street Memo–internal British government document quotes director of Intelligence service as saying “intelligence is being fixed” to support Bush’s pre-determined outcome of invading Iraq, a nation that did not attack us, despite continued efforts by the Bush administration to conflate Iraq and 9/11. Result? Nothing.
- Top Presidential advisor and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove is revealed to be the source of the leak that revealed CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity….which is, according to the laws of the US, an act of treason. Made all the more egregious by the motivation–pay-back for her husband’s public criticism of the Iraq policy. Result? Nothing so far.
- *Internal* reports by the FBI reveal torture at Gitmo and Bagram Air Base. Bush Administration and Republicans blame the messenger…not the FBI, but the Democrats who attempt to draw attention to the FBI reports. The United States is engaged in torture. Result? Nothing.
- Bush adminstration demands that NYC return 125 million dollars of already-appropriated funds for 9/11 victims. Yes, you read that right. They’re taking the money back. Result? Nothing—the media has barely covered it at all.
- Contracts for work in the reconstruction of Iraq and support for the troops stationed there are awared in no-bid contracts to Halliburton…which “just happens” to have been formerly run by VP Dick Cheney. Oh, and they’re revealed to be massively overcharging for their services. Oh, and a recent audit reveals that Billions (with a B) of dollars have gone unaccounted for in the Iraq reconstruction. Result? You guessed it. Nothing.
All of the above barely scratches the surface of the media, who instead fills us with daily updates on Tom & Katie, Michael Jackson, Natalie Holloway, while reading White House press releases in between. The majority of the American people either don’t know, or don’t care.
On the other hand:
- Whitewater! Land deal, where Clinton made no money. After $64 Million dollar investigation, and constant media coverage, the end result is that the President had done nothing wrong.
- Travelgate! White House travel office employees fired by “secret agenda” by Hillary Clinton!! Scandal! Shock! Horror!!!
- Lewinsky! President gets a blow-job. Yup. Got him on that one. Even got him denying it. Result? 24-7 news media coverage for well over a year, and the House votes to Impeach.
Just figured that I’d lay that out for folks.
Yup. Makes me sick. Also makes me want to fucking punch people in the throat everytime I hear “liberal media” used as anything but a joke.
Yeah, the whole “liberal media” thing makes me insane as well, for several reasons:
1) I used to work in the media. 2 years working for the local NPR affiliate, the most liberal of the news outlets, and we had to walk on fucking eggshells to make sure that we weren’t biased. It was a major part of the job. We had edicts on acceptable language (we could not use the term “pro-choice” , for example, since it implied that the opponents were “anti-choice”…which, in my opinion, is true, but we weren’t allowed to say it.) I’d like to think that the same level of circumspection occurs at, say, Fox News, but I doubt it.
2) The whole ‘liberal media’ argument conveniently ignores that every major media conglomerate is owned by wealthy conservatives, and backed by corporate advertisement (the corporations, for the most part, owned by wealthy conservatives).
All those gophers who still think we’re not running headlong into a lovely New World Order, pop your heads up and say “Aye!”
*shoots cannon at gopher heads, hoping to hit the president*
The ones that always get me are that the media made a big deal about (then 13-year-old) Chelsea Clinton being “homely”, but gets in trouble when reporting that the Bush daughters have been getting into mischief…
And how it was seemingly a much bigger deal that Clinton may or may not have tried marijuana, when Bush was in a DUI on cocaine. If that had been Clinton, they never would have shut up about it!
Top Presidential advisor and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove is revealed to be the source of the leak that revealed CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity….which is, according to the laws of the US, an act of treason.
It’s not treason, it’s only worth five to ten:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/50/chapters/15/subchapters/iv/sections/section_421.html
You’ll also notice that the law says “covert agent” and is conditional on the US taking pains to conceal that status. Plame was employed by the CIA at their headquarters, which would sort of give away her association with them, since she drove there instead of taking the invisible jet.
Bush still needs to keep his word and fire Rove, of course.
The whole ‘liberal media’ argument conveniently ignores that every major media conglomerate is owned by wealthy conservatives, and backed by corporate advertisement (the corporations, for the most part, owned by wealthy conservatives).
This applies equally to the entertainment industry, but doesn’t stop them.
Plame was employed by the CIA at their headquarters, which would sort of give away her association with them, since she drove there instead of taking the invisible jet.
Plame’s classification was as a covert agent. She had been recalled to detached duty at Langley because they were concerned that she might have been one of the agents whose cover was blown by Aldrich Ames.
Ironic (and disgusting) that it was the White House, not an infamous double-agent traitor, who ended up “outing” her.
“the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States” – having her work openly at Langely would be an affirmative measure to *expose* her intelligence relationship.
sorry if multiple replies are showing up, the HTML e-mail reply form isn’t following through like usual
Are you familiar with the CIA? Many covert agents end up spending some desk time at Langley, and then get re-assigned to field work. That doesn’t indicate an affirmative measure to expose their identity.