NOTE: Because of the embarrassing cowardice of the
Democratic Party leadership and the shameless
complicity of the Corporatist News Media, the LNS will
distribute these supplements until someone is sworn in
January 2005.
There are some bitter ironies…In 2000, as an image of
a Bush–Putin pow-wow flashed on the screen, the LNS
editor-in-chief remarked, “there are the leaders of
Russia and the US, only one of them was elected, and
it is the Russian…” In 2004, as a similar image was
flashed on the screen, the LNS editor-in-chief
remarked “there are the leaders of Russia and the US,
only one of them has signed the Kyoto accords, and it
is the Russian…”
Recent news stories about North Korea report that the
cult of personality centered on Kim Jong is being
rolled back. His photos are vanishing all over the
isolated little police state. But, meanwhile, here in
America, Clear Channel is putting up billboards with
an image of a smiling George W. Bush with a caption
that reads” “Our Leader.” Long Live Little Brother!
But perhaps the bitterest irony of all is listening to
Secretary of Stone Calm ‘Em Powell, the WASHPs
Editorial Board and other denizens of Beltwayistan
condemn the theft of a national election – in the
Ukraine, and even have the audacity to cite the exit
polls as evidence…
Here are 17 news and opinion items…seven items on
Corporatist News Media complicity in Coup II, four
items on the citizen’s resistance to Coup II, two
items on the Bush abomination’s #1 failure (National
Security), three items on the Bush Abomination’s #2
failure (Economic Security), two items on the Bush
Abomination’s #3 failure (Environmental Security) and
two items on aspects of the struggle for hearts and
minds in America...remember, this conflict is not just
a Kulchur War, it is a defense of Western Civilization
itself -- the Renaissance, the Age of Reason, all of
it, is at risk…and yes, here is another bitter irony,
it is not multiculturalism that threatens Western
Civilization (as the Lynne Cheneys of the vast
reich-wing conspiracy want you to believe), it is the
White Taliban of the Not-So-Neo-Confederacy that
threaten it…
Reject those who talk about “bringing the country
together.” Reject the defeatism and collaborationism
of the current Democratic Party leadership.
Support www.moveon.org, not the Democratic Party.
Support www.blackboxvoting.org, not the Democratic
Party.
Support the bastions of the Information Rebellion
(i.e.www.buzzflash.com, www.truthout.org,
www.democrats.com, www.mediamatters.org), not the
Democratic Party…
We need a Greater Mississippi Free Democrats movement
to represent those progressive forces in this country
who understand that the Bush abomination’s war in Iraq
is insane and was insane from its inception, that the
Bush abomination’s pre-9/11 negligence and post-9/11
incompetence have botched and bungled the “war on
terrorism,” that the Bush abomination’s fiscal
irresponsibility is bringing us to the brink of
economic collapse, that we have already lost four
years in the struggle to cope with global warming that
we did not have to lose, and that media reform is the
number one priority for us all because it is the US
mainstream news media’s utter complicity that has
enabled the Bush abomination to overcome the will of
the US electorate. Yes, we need a Mississippi Free
Democrats to stand up not only to the Bush abomination
but to those who like Sen. Kerry choose to live in
denial, a Greater Mississippi Free Democrats willing
to expose election fraud and vote suppression, Greater
Mississippi Free Democrats willing to resist the
Fascist take-over…
1. The US Regimestream News Media is a Full Partner in
a Triad of Shared Special Interest (e.g. oil, weapons,
media, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, tobacco, etc.) with
the Bush Cabal and Its
Wholly-Owned-Subsidiary-Formerly-Known-As-The-Republican-Party,
and It Wants to Disinform You About The 2004 Election
Robert Parry, www.consortiumnews.com: The Washington
Post and other leading American newspapers are up in
arms about the legitimacy of a presidential election
where exit polls showed the challenger winning but
where the incumbent party came out on top, amid
complaints about heavy-handed election-day tactics and
possibly rigged vote tallies.
In a lead editorial, the Post cited the divergent exit
polls, along with voter claims about ballot
irregularities, as prime reasons for overturning the
official results. For its part, the New York Times
cited reports of “suspiciously, even fantastically,
high turnouts in regions that supported” the
government candidate. The U.S. news media is making
clear that the truth about these electoral anomalies
must be told.
Of course, the election in question occurred in the
Ukraine.
In the United States – where exit polls showed John
Kerry winning on Nov. 2, where Republican tactics
discouraged African-American voting in Democratic
precincts, and where George W. Bush’s vote totals in
many counties were eyebrow-raising – the Post, the
Times and other top news outlets mocked anyone who
questioned the results.
For instance, when we noted Bush’s surprising
performance in Dade, Broward and other Florida
counties, a Washington Post article termed us
“spreadsheet-wielding conspiracy theorists.” [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Washington Post’s Sloppy
Analysis.”] Meanwhile, the New York Times accepted
unsupported explanations for why the U.S. exit polls
were so wrong, including the theory that Kerry
supporters were chattier than Bush voters. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Evidence of a Second Bush
Coup?”]
Hypocrisy? What Hypocrisy?
But why the double standard? Why would Ukrainian exit
polls be deemed reliable evidence of fraud while
American exit polls would simply be inexplicably wrong
nationwide and in six battleground states where Kerry
was shown to be leading but Bush ultimately won?
Logically, it would seem that U.S. exit polls would be
more reliable because of the far greater experience in
refining sampling techniques than in the Ukraine.
Also, given the Ukraine’s authoritarian past, one
might expect that Ukrainian voters would be more
likely to rebuff pollsters or give false answers than
American voters.
Instead, the U.S. news media chucked out or
“corrected” the U.S. exit polls – CNN made them
conform to the official results – while embracing the
Ukrainian exit polls as a true measure of the popular
will.
Sebastian Usher, BBC: Journalists on Ukraine's
state-owned channel - which had previously given
unswerving support to Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych
- have joined the opposition, saying they have had
enough of "telling the government's lies".
Journalists on another strongly pro-government TV
station have also promised an end to the bias in their
reporting. The turnaround in news coverage, after
years of toeing the government line, is a big setback
for Mr Yanukovych.
Journalists in Ukraine seem to have responded to the
call by opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko for them
to reject government censorship.
A correspondent on the state channel, UT1, announced
live on the evening bulletin that the entire news team
was going to join the protests in Independence Square.
She said their message to the protesters was: "We are
not lying anymore".
For the first time in years, the UT1 bulletin aired
opposition views in a balanced way after the station's
management acceded to the journalists' demands.
It was the culmination of a rebellion among
journalists at the state-run channel that had been
brewing for days.
Even the sign-language presenter said that in an
earlier bulletin, she had rejected the pro-government
script and informed her viewers instead of the
allegations of vote-rigging.
John Nichols, The Nation: The best question asked in
the aftermath of the 2004 US election came from a
British newspaper, The Daily Mirror, which inquired
over a picture of George W. Bush, "How can 59,054,087
be so dumb?
Now, another British newspaper has answered the
question. A new marketing campaign for The Weekly
Guardian, one of the most respected publications in
the world, features images of a dancing Bush and notes
that, "Many US citizens think the world backed the war
in Iraq. Maybe it's the papers they're reading."
The weekly compendium of articles and analyses of
global affairs from Britain's liberal Guardian
newspaper has long been regarded as an antidote to
government controlled, spun and inept local media.
Nelson Mandela, when he was held in South Africa's
Pollsmor Prison, referred to the Weekly Guardian as a
"window on the wider world."
But is it really appropriate to compare the United
States in 2004 with a warped media market like South
Africa during apartheid days?
Actually, the comparison may be a bit unfair to South
African media in the apartheid era--when many
courageous journalists struggled to speak truth to
power.
No serious observer of the current circumstance in the
United States would suggest that our major media
serves the cause of democracy. Years of consolidation
and bottom-line pressures have forced even once
responsible media to allow entertainment and
commercial values to supersede civic and democratic
values when making news decisions. And the
determination to color within the lines of official
spin is such that even the supposed pinnacles of the
profession--the New York Times, the Washington Post
and CBS News' 60 Minutes--have been forced to
acknowledge that they got the story of the rush to war
with Iraq wrong.
There can be apologies. But there cannot be excuses
because, of course, media in the rest of the world got
that story right.
And there are consequences when major media blows big
stories. As the Weekly Guardian's new marketing
campaign suggests, a lot of Americans voted for George
W. Bush on November 2 on the basis of wrong
assumptions.
Matt Taibbi, New York Press: The much-hyped prize to
the winner is going to have to be put off, for now,
for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the Press had
felt quite confident that the winner would ultimately
prove to be Newsweek's Howard Fineman, and had staked
much of its prize plans (which failed, hilariously,
anyway) in that direction.
But Fineman never filed an election post-mortem for
Newsweek, and aside from a few cautiously irritating
exchanges with Joe Scarborough in which he
disingenuously defended Maureen Dowd as his "favorite
high-brow hussy," Fineman kept a very low profile
after the election. There was no rationally defensible
way to declare him the winner, except on the basis of
his cumulative record. And that would have been a
cop-out even worse than the already egregious cop-out
this final round is going to represent.
That leaves as the winner Elisabeth Bumiller of the
New York Times, who did file a number of grossly
objectionable pieces after the election, and so wins
the contest, if not yet the prize. And though this
contest fails in its stated objective of delivering a
just reward, we can say with a clear conscience that
Bumiller deserves her hollow victory, for consistently
representing almost everything that made this campaign
the Monumental Bummer it was.
www.mediamatters.org: Following the November 2
presidential election, Media Matters for America
documented the media's largely unquestioning
acceptance of the notion that "moral values"
determined the election. In their acceptance, the
media did not explain or define what voters meant by
"moral values." MMFA found that during the five days
after the election, network and cable news outlets
gave conservative religious leaders a forum in which
to provide that definition; these leaders often
appeared without other guests to counter their claims.
Between November 3 and November 7, conservative
religious figures appeared a total of 15 times on the
major broadcast and cable networks (ABC, NBC, CNN,
MSNBC, CNBC, and FOX News Channel, but not CBS) to
discuss "moral values," while progressive religious
figures appeared a total of only five times. MMFA
excluded Newsday columnists Rabbi Marc Gellman and
Monsignor Thomas Hartman of "The God Squad" from this
tally of figures. Although the two authors and
religious speakers did not openly endorse President
George W. Bush's reelection, they did speak of the
election results as an indicator of a deeply religious
nation, of which the "secular" coastal states are
"unaware."
Reverend Jerry Falwell, national chairman of the Faith
and Values Coalition and Moral Majority founder, and
Reverend Joe Watkins, a Bush-Cheney '04 campaign
adviser and talk radio host, appeared four times each
in the five days following the election. Reverend
Jesse Jackson was the only progressive religious
leader to make multiple appearances (three) in that
time period.
Four conservative religious figures appeared without
opponents on news programs between November 3 and
November 7: Watkins, Christian Coalition of America
founder Reverend Pat Robertson, Peter Sprigg, senior
director of policy studies at the Family Research
Council (which "promotes the Judeo-Christian
worldview"), and Focus on the Family founder James
Dobson. No progressive religious leaders appeared
alone.
Further, when not appearing alone, conservative
religious leaders were more often paired with
Democratic or progressive pundits who are not
religious figures than with progressive religious
leaders. For example, on the November 4 edition of
CNBC's Capital Report, Falwell was paired with
syndicated columnist and MSNBC political analyst Bill
Press. On the November 7 edition of CNN's Inside
Politics with Judy Woodruff, Randy Tate -- former U.S.
Representative and former executive director of the
Christian Coalition (which identifies itself as
"America's Leading Grassroots Organization Defending
our Godly Heritage") -- appeared opposite U.S.
Representative Barney Frank (D-MA)…
John Byrne, Raw Story, www.bluelemur.com: A billboard
recently put up in Orlando bearing a smiling
photograph of President Bush with the words “Our
Leader” is raising eyebrows among progressives who
feel the poster is akin to that of propaganda used by
tyrannical regimes.
RAW STORY confirmed the billboard’s existence Monday
evening. At our behest, a member of an Orlando media
organization drove past the billboard on two occasions
and verified that it was indeed the one pictured.
The billboard pictured, which is on I-4, says that it
is a “political public service message brought to you
by Clear Channel Outdoor.”
The member, who declined to be named out of concern
for their employer, discovered a second billboard
bearing the same image along the same route, paid for
by Charles W. Clayton Jr.
The Clear Channel-sponsored billboard was not lit up
for drivers Monday evening. The Clayton billboard was.
Kali Autumn Lynn, The Denver Voice: To those of us on
the inside of this issue, it seems inconceivable that
our local newspapers would offer a front page story on
election fraud in Ukraine while ignoring stories of
the same right here at home in the United States.
Every day, since November 2nd, 2004, stories have
emerged detailing such things as malfunctioning voting
machines, fraudulent election records in Volusia,
Florida, inconsistent numbers of voter registrations
vs. vote totals in Ohio, credible university studies
showing serious statistical impossibilities in
election results, and much more. Yet, these daily
revelations have been almost completely ignored by our
media. These reports are coming not from persons with
tin foil hats as is often claimed, but from PhD level
citizens, election officials, and voting rights
activists.
But to the rest of America, who get their information
from corporate owned media sources, there is nothing
missing from the daily news. That's because, if they
don't report it, it didn't happen. For most of
America, we trust our local papers to report honestly
and fairly. But what many of us don't realize is that
our local newspapers are not so local after all.
2. Post-Coup II Resistance
Associated Press: The Rev. Jesse Jackson said he plans
a Sunday rally in Columbus with ministers from around
Ohio to call for an investigation of election
irregularities in the state.
Jackson and his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition civil rights
group want to call attention to the fact that votes in
Ohio are still undergoing the official count, he said
Thursday. Jackson also is questioning whether enough
voting machines were provided in inner-city precincts
and whether fraud could have occurred in counties that
use electronic machines without paper records of
ballots…
Lawyers who have been documenting election problems in
Ohio said last week they would challenge the results
of the presidential election as soon as the vote is
official.
They say they will represent voters who cast ballots
Nov. 2 and the challenge will be based on documented
cases of long lines, a shortage of machines and a
pattern of problems in predominantly black
neighborhoods.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler (D-NY): "We are pleased
that the GAO has reviewed the concerns expressed in
our letters and has found them of sufficient merit to
warrant further investigation. On its own authority,
the GAO will examine the security and accuracy of
voting technologies, distribution and allocation of
voting machines, and counting of provisional ballots.
We are hopeful that GAO's non-partisan and expert
analysis will get to the bottom of the flaws uncovered
in the 2004 election. As part of this inquiry, we will
provide copies of specific incident reports received
in our offices, including more than 57,000 such
complaints provided to the House Judiciary Committee.
"The core principle of any democracy is the consent of
the governed. All Americans, no matter how they voted,
need to have confidence that when they cast their
ballot, their voice is heard."
www.blackboxvoting.org: COMPLAINT TO CONTEST ELECTION
Plaintiff, Susan Rose Pynchon, sues the Volusia County
Canvassing Board and Ann McFall, defendants, and
alleges:
1. This is an action brought under section 102,168,
Florida Statutes (2004), to contest the certification
that Ann McFall received more votes in the November 2
General Election in Volusia County, Florida, than did
Patricia Northey.
2. Plaintiff is an elector resident and qualified to
vote in Volusia County, Florida, residing at (redacted
address).
3. Defendant Volusia County Canvassing Board consists
of Joie Alexander, Member of the Volusia County
Council, the Honorable Steven deLarouche, County
Judge, and Deanie Lowe, Supervisor of Elections.
4. Defendant Ann McFall, (redacted address), is the
candidate certified by the defendant Canvassing Board
to have won the November 2, 2004 election for
Supervisor of Elections.
5. Plaintiff has been informed that the Volusia County
Canvassing Board certified the election results on
November 12, 2004. Plaintiff is aware that the
statutory deadline for filing this complaint is ten
days following the date of that certification.
Plaintiff alleges, however, that this complaint should
be deemed timely filed for two reasons:
a. The Supervisor of Elections has unreasonably
delayed providing information on which this complaint
must be based, and still has not provided all of that
information. The Canvassing Board is therefore stopped
from asserting an untimely filing of this complaint.
b. The certification was based on inadequate and
incomplete information regarding the election results,
as will more particularly appear, and is, therefore,
an invalid certification of those results.
Bob Fertik, www.democrats.com: I've been involved in
the progressive movement since 1977, the year the
amazing Fannie Lou Hamer of the Mississippi Freedom
Democratic Party died. Fannie Lou's most famous quote
was: "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."
Are you sick and tired too?
Let's make a decision here today.
As progressives, let's decide not to spend one more
penny on TV or direct mail. From now on, let's put
every penny into a Manhattan Project effort to build
an e-mail list of 100 million Americans who agree with
us on the issues.
Here's the bottom line: E-mail lists are power.
When we can press "send" and reach tens of millions of
voters on an issue we all care about, we will have
clout.
When we can generate millions of letters and phone
calls to Congress, we will win legislative fights.
When we can mobilize thousands of voters in all 435
Congressional Districts, we will hold our
Representatives accountable.
And when we can recruit progressive candidates and
start their campaigns with lists of half of their
constituents who support progressive issues, our
candidates will win.
As Joe Trippi wrote in his great book: The Revolution
Will Not be Televised.
The future of progressive politics is e-mail, not TV.
If we work together, I know we can build a list of 100
million Americans who support us on the issues.
3. The Bush Abomination’s #1 Failure: National
Security
Chalmers Johnson, www.tomdispatch.com: Part of the
background to the Goss memo is a widespread
misunderstanding of why the CIA was created and what
it actually does. For example, Bush apostle David
Brooks writes in the New York Times that the CIA is
engaged "in slow-motion brazen insubordination, which
violate[s] all standards of honorable public service.
. . . It is time to reassert some harsh authority so
CIA employees know they must defer to the people who
win elections. . . . If they [people in the CIA] ever
want their information to be trusted, they can't break
the law with self-serving leaks of classified
data."[4] Brooks seems to think that the CIA is the
President's personal advertising agency and that its
employees owe their livelihoods to him. About Michael
Scheuer, the head of the "bin Laden Unit" in the
agency's Counterterrorism Center from 1996 to 1999 and
the anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West
is Losing the War on Terror, Brooks fumes, "Here was
an official on the president's payroll publicly
campaigning against his boss."
Leave aside the fact that the President doesn't pay
any government official's salary, at least not
legally, and that Scheuer was more interested in
educating the public about Osama bin Laden and
al-Qaeda, on which he is an authority, than in
covering up the President's mistakes; the point is
that the issue of the CIA's intelligence on the Iraq
war is bringing back into our political life once
again the figure most feared by presidents: the
truth-teller. During a previous period of falsified
intelligence, National Security Adviser Henry
Kissinger said in the Oval Office in front of
President Nixon and his Special Counsel Charles
Colson, "Daniel Ellsberg is the most dangerous man in
America. He must be stopped at all costs."[5]
Kissinger and Nixon subsequently ordered up felonies,
such as a break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's
office, in order to try to smear and discredit the man
who had revealed to the public the systematic lying of
three presidents -- Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson
-- about the war in Vietnam.
Pierre Lacoste, Le Figaro: Several CIA high officials
have resigned from their positions, horrified by the
aggressive behavior demonstrated by members of Porter
Goss' team, who want to overthrow the service's
structures and functioning.
A few Democratic Senators and Representatives, members
of the Congressional committees charged with secret
services' oversight, express the keenest reservations
over this new manifestation of White House
interference, while the President has still not gained
acceptance for creation of the post of supervisor for
the totality of the American intelligence community.
We may hope that in spite of the Republican majority
in the Senate and the House of Representatives,
Congressional checks and balances will oppose a
departure so extremely worrying for American
democracy.
The question is, in fact, an essential problem. It had
been illustrated by the false declarations made by
official representatives of the United States at the
United Nations' podium to justify the 2003 war against
Iraq. Only skillful legal sophistries allowed G. W.
Bush and Tony Blair to make their intelligence
services "take the fall" to cover up their own errors
of judgment with regard to Saddam Hussein's weapons of
mass destruction. One has only to consult the works of
witnesses as unimpugnable as UN Disarmament
Inspectors' Head, Hans Blix, or former White House
official in charge of anti-terrorism operations,
Richard Clarke, to have no doubt about the way
Washington's ultraconservatives deliberately engaged
in diverse manipulations of intelligence. One had only
to refer to the first declarations of the newly
elected president at the beginning of 2000 to know
their intentions. From that moment, the creation of an
intelligence analysis unit at the center of the
Pentagon allowed one to glimpse how Donald Rumsfeld's
team would go about supplying the President with its
own intelligence to influence his decisions, to the
detriment of State Department and CIA viewpoints. The
evolution of the war in Iraq has shown that, since the
Defense Department analyses prevailed, the
consequences of the initial battle were totally
underestimated.
4. The Bush Abomination’s #2 Failure: Economic
Security
Pedro Nicolaci da Costa, Reuters: "This is a group of
people who don't believe that any of the rules really
apply, said Krugman. "They are utterly irresponsible."
Krugman is currently taking some time off from
journalism to write and promote the second installment
of his latest project - economics textbooks aimed at
making the science more accessible to college
students.
In the meantime, however, he worries the Bush
administration's fiscal policies are going to push the
world's largest economy into a rut.
The most immediate worry for Krugman is that Bush
will simultaneously push through more tax cuts and try
to privatize social security, ignoring a chorus of
economic thinkers who caution against such measures.
"If you go back and you look at the sources of the
blow-up of Argentine debt during the 1990s, one
little-appreciated thing is that social security
privatization was a important source of that expansion
of debt," said Krugman.
In 2001, Argentina finally defaulted on an
estimated $100 billion in debt, the largest such event
in modern economic history.
"So if you ask the question do we look like
Argentina, the answer is a whole lot more than anyone
is quite willing to admit at this point. We've become
a banana republic."
Crisis might take many forms, he said, but one key
concern is the prospect that Asian central banks may
lose their appetite for U.S. government debt, which
has so far allowed the United States to finance its
twin deficits.
A deeper plunge in the already battered U.S.
dollar is another possible route to crisis, the
professor said.
The absence of any mention of currencies in a
communique from the Group of 20 rich and emerging
market countries this past weekend only reinforced
investors' perception that the United States, while
saying it promotes a strong dollar, is willing to let
its currency slide further.
"The break can come either from the Reserve Bank
of China deciding it has enough dollars, thank you, or
from private investors saying 'I'm going to take a
speculative bet on a dollar plunge,' which then ends
up being a self-fulfilling prophecy," Krugman opined.
"Both scenarios are pretty unnerving."
Robert Reich, www.tompaine.com: You might as well
spend your cash now because the dollar is dropping
like a stone in international currency markets. It’s
dropped nearly 30 percent since 2001, and is now at a
record low. Even without the recent dour
pronouncements of Alan Greenspan and Treasury
Secretary John Snow, the greenback is likely to fall
further. And the reason is simple: We’re living beyond
our means. American consumers are deep in debt. The
nation is importing more than we’re exporting. Most
importantly, the federal budget deficit is out of
control.
Nearly all of the increase in public debt over the
last four years -- some 1 trillion dollars -- has been
financed by foreigners, lending us the money. But who
wants to lend more and more to a drunken sailor?
Foreigners are bailing out of dollars. Even the
Chinese and Japanese, who have kept lending so we’ll
keep buying their exports, are starting to wise up.
American exporters are cheering because a lower dollar
makes everything they sell abroad cheaper. But it’s
bad for the rest of us because as the dollar drops
everything we buy from abroad -- including oil --
becomes that much more expensive. And these higher
prices will ripple through the economy, threatening
inflation and higher interest rates -- and,
ultimately, reducing our living standards.
It’s one of the oldest of economic laws: When you’re
living too high on the hog, eventually you’re gonna
fall off and find yourself in pig slop.
www.bloomberg.com: U.S. 10-year Treasury notes fell,
heading for a fifth week of declines, on concern
foreign central banks may cut their holdings of the
securities as the dollar slides.
Indonesia may reduce dollars and U.S. notes in its
foreign- exchange reserves should the currency
continue to drop, said Aslim Tadjuddin, deputy
governor for monetary policy at the central bank.
Treasuries also dropped earlier today after China
Business News reported a central bank official said
China had cut its holdings of U.S. debt. The official
later denied the report. ``These rumors are leading to
tremendous movements in the yields,'' said Kornelius
Purps, a fixed-income strategist in Munich at HVB
Group, Germany's second-largest bank by assets.
``Speculation that the dollar is going to weaken
further means Treasuries are going to weaken further.
This takes out all the other fundamental issues of
rate hikes, steady growth
5. The Bush Abomination’s #3 Failure: Environmental
Security
www.abc.net.au: Ministers noted "with concern" a
report by 250 scientists this month warning that the
Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average,
threatening to wipe out species like polar bears by
2100 and undermining Indigenous hunting cultures.
"We all need to intensify efforts against pollution in
the Arctic," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov
said.
Indigenous peoples, some nations and environmentalists
had wanted the ministers to urge drastic cuts in
greenhouse gas emissions from cars and factories,
which are blamed for a warming that could melt the ice
around the North Pole in summer by 2100.
"In terms of what the planet needs, this is far from
enough," Sheila Watt-Cloutier, chair of the Inuit
Circumpolar Conference, said.
Alister Doyle, Reuters: Foreign ministers from the
eight Arctic countries are due to meet in Reykjavik on
Wednesday but are sharply divided about what to do.
The United States is most opposed to any drastic new
action.
The U.S. is the only country among the eight to reject
the 127-nation Kyoto protocol meant to cap emissions
of greenhouse gases. President Bush says the U.N. pact
would cost too much and unfairly excludes developing
states.
In some more southerly areas of the Arctic, like
Canada's Hudson Bay, receding ice means polar bears
are already struggling. The bears' main trick is to
pounce when seals surface to breathe through holes in
the ice.
The Arctic report says polar bears "are unlikely to
survive as a species if there is a complete loss of
summer-ice cover." Restricted to land, polar bears
would have to compete with better-adapted grizzly or
brown bears.
"The outlook for polar bears is stark. My grandson
will lose the culture I had as a child," said
Watt-Cloutier, referring to Inuit hunting cultures
based on catching seals, bears or whales.
6. Science and Psyche
LA Times: The lure is clear: $300 million a year for
embryonic stem cell research in California for the
next decade, more than 10 times the yearly federal
funding available and free of the Bush
administration's tight restrictions on what research
can be conducted with federal money.
"Everyone I talk to wants to move to California," said
Kevin Wilson, director of public policy for the
American Society of Cell Biologists. Wilson, only half
jokingly, suggested "staking out the airports" to get
a preview of which top researchers outside the state
are thinking of relocating.
Sidney Blumenthal, Guardian: Offstage, beforehand,
Rove and Bush had had their library tours. According
to two eyewitnesses, Rove had shown keen interest in
everything he saw, and asked questions, including
about costs, obviously thinking about a future George
W Bush library and legacy. "You're not such a scary
guy," joked his guide. "Yes, I am," Rove replied.
Walking away, he muttered deliberately and loudly: "I
change constitutions, I put churches in schools ..."
Thus he identified himself as more than the ruthless
campaign tactician; he was also the invisible hand of
power, pervasive and expansive, designing to alter the
fundamental American compact.
Bush appeared distracted, and glanced repeatedly at
his watch. When he stopped to gaze at the river, where
secret service agents were stationed in boats, the
guide said: "Usually, you might see some bass
fishermen out there." Bush replied: "A submarine could
take this place out."
Was the president warning of an al-Qaida submarine,
sneaking undetected up the Mississippi, through the
locks and dams of the Arkansas river, surfacing under
the bridge to the 21st century to dispatch the Clinton
library? Is that where Osama bin Laden is hiding?
Full texts and URLs follow.
Save the US Constitution! Save the Environment!
Restore the Sanctity of the Electoral Process! Break
the Corporatist Stranglehold on the US Mainstream News
Media! Repudiate the 9/11 Cover-Up & The Iraq War
Lies!
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2004/112304.html
Big Media's Democracy Double Standards
By Robert Parry
November 23, 2004
The Washington Post and other leading American
newspapers are up in arms about the legitimacy of a
presidential election where exit polls showed the
challenger winning but where the incumbent party came
out on top, amid complaints about heavy-handed
election-day tactics and possibly rigged vote tallies.
In a lead editorial, the Post cited the divergent exit
polls, along with voter claims about ballot
irregularities, as prime reasons for overturning the
official results. For its part, the New York Times
cited reports of “suspiciously, even fantastically,
high turnouts in regions that supported” the
government candidate. The U.S. news media is making
clear that the truth about these electoral anomalies
must be told.
Of course, the election in question occurred in the
Ukraine.
In the United States – where exit polls showed John
Kerry winning on Nov. 2, where Republican tactics
discouraged African-American voting in Democratic
precincts, and where George W. Bush’s vote totals in
many counties were eyebrow-raising – the Post, the
Times and other top news outlets mocked anyone who
questioned the results.
For instance, when we noted Bush’s surprising
performance in Dade, Broward and other Florida
counties, a Washington Post article termed us
“spreadsheet-wielding conspiracy theorists.” [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Washington Post’s Sloppy
Analysis.”] Meanwhile, the New York Times accepted
unsupported explanations for why the U.S. exit polls
were so wrong, including the theory that Kerry
supporters were chattier than Bush voters. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “Evidence of a Second Bush
Coup?”]
Hypocrisy? What Hypocrisy?
But why the double standard? Why would Ukrainian exit
polls be deemed reliable evidence of fraud while
American exit polls would simply be inexplicably wrong
nationwide and in six battleground states where Kerry
was shown to be leading but Bush ultimately won?
Logically, it would seem that U.S. exit polls would be
more reliable because of the far greater experience in
refining sampling techniques than in the Ukraine.
Also, given the Ukraine’s authoritarian past, one
might expect that Ukrainian voters would be more
likely to rebuff pollsters or give false answers than
American voters.
Instead, the U.S. news media chucked out or
“corrected” the U.S. exit polls – CNN made them
conform to the official results – while embracing the
Ukrainian exit polls as a true measure of the popular
will.
To compound the irony, the Washington Post editorial
is now calling on George W. Bush to defend democratic
principles halfway around the world. In the Nov. 23
editorial entitled “Coup in Kiev,” the Post wrote,
“For the Bush administration, the responsibility
starts with stating the unvarnished truth about what
has happened in an election” – the one in the Ukraine,
of course.
Election 2000
“Unvarnished truth” was far less important to the
Post, the Times and other U.S. news organizations when
they were reporting on the results of Election 2000.
Then, the cherished value was “unity,” as Americans
were urged to ignore the fact that Al Gore got more
votes and instead rally behind George W. Bush, even
though he had dispatched thugs to Florida to disrupt
recounts and then enlisted his political allies on the
U.S. Supreme Court to stop the counting of votes. [For
details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege: Rise
of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.]
In the months that followed Election 2000, the U.S.
news media even put the cause of Bush’s legitimacy
ahead of its duty to accurately inform the public. In
November 2001, after conducting an unofficial recount
of Florida’s ballots, the news outlets discovered that
if all legally cast votes had been counted –
regardless of the standard used for evaluating chads –
Gore won.
That finding meant that Gore was the rightful occupant
of the White House and that Bush was a fraudulent
president. But in those days after the Sept. 11 terror
attacks, the news organizations again opted for
“unity” over “unvarnished truth,” fudging their own
results and burying the lead of Gore’s electoral
victory.
To falsely tout Bush’s “victory,” the Post, the Times,
CNN and other news outlets arbitrarily – and
erroneously – ditched so-called “overvotes,” in which
voters both checked and wrote in a candidate’s name.
Not only were these votes legal under Florida law but
they apparently would have been included in the
statewide recount if the five Republicans on the U.S.
Supreme Court had not intervened at Bush’s behest.
[For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “So Bush Did
Steal the White House.”]
Weak Democrats
In another case of painful irony, the U.S. Democratic
Party is expressing more outrage about electoral
fairness in the Ukraine than in the United States. The
National Democratic Institute for International
Affairs, which is sponsored by the Democratic Party,
put out a statement declaring that “fundamental flaws
in Ukraine’s presidential election process subverted
its legitimacy.” [NYT, Nov. 23, 2004]
However, at home, the Democrats have accepted the Nov.
2 outcome passively, despite widespread fury within
the Democratic base about what many see as the Bush
campaign’s abusive practices. Again, “unity” has
trumped “unvarnished truth.”
It has fallen to several third-party candidates to
seek limited recounts in several states, including
Ohio and New Hampshire, a move at least designed to
give assurance to millions of Americans that the Bush
campaign didn’t get away with stealing a second
election. Meanwhile, the national Democratic Party has
chosen to sit on the sidelines, presumably to avoid
accusations of irresponsibility from the Washington
Post and other parts of the big U.S. news media.
So, as the Ukrainian people take to the streets to
defend the principles of democracy, including the
concept that a just government derives from the
consent of the governed, the United States – once
democracy’s beacon to the world – presents its
commitment to those ideals more through hypocrisy
abroad than action at home.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Parry, who broke many of the Iran-Contra
stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and
Newsweek, has written a new book, Secrecy & Privilege:
Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq. It
can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also
available at Amazon.com.
Back to Home Page
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4044791.stm
Ukraine state TV in revolt
By Sebastian Usher
BBC world media correspondent
Journalists on Ukraine's state-owned channel - which
had previously given unswerving support to Prime
Minister Viktor Yanukovych - have joined the
opposition, saying they have had enough of "telling
the government's lies".
Journalists on another strongly pro-government TV
station have also promised an end to the bias in their
reporting. The turnaround in news coverage, after
years of toeing the government line, is a big setback
for Mr Yanukovych.
Journalists in Ukraine seem to have responded to the
call by opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko for them
to reject government censorship.
A correspondent on the state channel, UT1, announced
live on the evening bulletin that the entire news team
was going to join the protests in Independence Square.
She said their message to the protesters was: "We are
not lying anymore".
Rebellion
For the first time in years, the UT1 bulletin aired
opposition views in a balanced way after the station's
management acceded to the journalists' demands.
It was the culmination of a rebellion among
journalists at the state-run channel that had been
brewing for days.
Even the sign-language presenter said that in an
earlier bulletin, she had rejected the pro-government
script and informed her viewers instead of the
allegations of vote-rigging.
The news staff at UT1 were not alone. A couple of
hours earlier, journalists on the pro-government
private channel One Plus One took a similar stand.
The station had announced earlier in the day the
resignation of its news editor, who had been
presenting a fiercely pro-government election special
for the past three days, after journalists refused to
produce news bulletins in protest at censorship of the
opposition.
Impartial
In the reinstated evening bulletin that replaced the
election special, the channel's director Aleksander
Rodnyansky stood in front of a solemn group of his
colleagues to deliver a brief statement.
He began by saying: "The One Plus One TV channel fully
resumes its news and political and social
broadcasting.
"We understand our responsibility for the biased news
that the channel has so far been broadcasting under
pressure and on orders from various political forces."
Mr Rodnyansky went on to say that the station would
now guarantee "full and impartial" news coverage,
allowing all viewpoints to be expressed. The
subsequent bulletin lived up to this promise.
Media role
This new balance in TV coverage on previously
government-controlled channels means that pictures
making plain the huge size of the opposition
demonstrations can now reach the heartland of Mr
Yanukovych's support in the east of the country.
Rolling news coverage of the protests by Channel 5 -
the one station fully backing the opposition - had
earlier been blocked in the region.
The Ukrainian media played a big role in boosting Mr
Yanukovych's election chances by denying the
opposition any airtime to make its case and ridiculing
his challenger, Mr Yushchenko. Reporters say the
government issued lists of what they could and could
not show.
Now that Ukrainian journalists have openly rebelled
against such tight government control, Mr Yanukovych
appears to have lost one of the key pillars of his
support. It is another clear sign that the momentum
behind the opposition is growing ever stronger.
BBC Monitoring, based in Caversham in southern
England, selects and translates information from
radio, television, press, news agencies and the
internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1123-26.htm
Published on Tuesday, November 23, 2004 by The Nation
Stenographers to Power
by John Nichols
The best question asked in the aftermath of the 2004
US election came from a British newspaper, The Daily
Mirror, which inquired over a picture of George W.
Bush, "How can 59,054,087 be so dumb?
Now, another British newspaper has answered the
question. A new marketing campaign for The Weekly
Guardian, one of the most respected publications in
the world, features images of a dancing Bush and notes
that, "Many US citizens think the world backed the war
in Iraq. Maybe it's the papers they're reading."
The weekly compendium of articles and analyses of
global affairs from Britain's liberal Guardian
newspaper has long been regarded as an antidote to
government controlled, spun and inept local media.
Nelson Mandela, when he was held in South Africa's
Pollsmor Prison, referred to the Weekly Guardian as a
"window on the wider world."
But is it really appropriate to compare the United
States in 2004 with a warped media market like South
Africa during apartheid days?
Actually, the comparison may be a bit unfair to South
African media in the apartheid era--when many
courageous journalists struggled to speak truth to
power.
No serious observer of the current circumstance in the
United States would suggest that our major media
serves the cause of democracy. Years of consolidation
and bottom-line pressures have forced even once
responsible media to allow entertainment and
commercial values to supersede civic and democratic
values when making news decisions. And the
determination to color within the lines of official
spin is such that even the supposed pinnacles of the
profession--the New York Times, the Washington Post
and CBS News' 60 Minutes--have been forced to
acknowledge that they got the story of the rush to war
with Iraq wrong.
There can be apologies. But there cannot be excuses
because, of course, media in the rest of the world got
that story right.
And there are consequences when major media blows big
stories. As the Weekly Guardian's new marketing
campaign suggests, a lot of Americans voted for George
W. Bush on November 2 on the basis of wrong
assumptions.
According to a survey conducted during the fall
campaign season by the Program on International Policy
Attitudes--a joint initiative of the Center on Policy
Attitudes and the Center for International and
Security Studies at the University of Maryland School
of Public Affairs--a lot of what Americans know is
wrong.
Despite the fact that surveys by the Gallup
organization and other polling firms have repeatedly
confirmed that the vast majority of citizens of other
countries opposed the war in Iraq, the PIPA survey
found that only 31 percent of Bush supporters
recognized that the majority of people in the world
opposed the Bush administration's decision to invade
Iraq.
Amazingly, according to the PIPA poll, 57 percent of
Bush supporters assumed that the majority of people in
the world would favor Bush's reelection, while only 33
percent assumed that global views regarding Bush were
evenly divided. Only 9 percent of Bush backers
correctly assumed that Kerry was the world's choice.
That wasn't the end of the misperception.
"Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to
Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant
WMD program, 72 percent of Bush supporters continue to
believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47 percent) or a
major program for developing them (25 percent),"
explained the summary of PIPA's polling. "Fifty-six
percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had
actual WMD and 57 percent also assume, incorrectly,
that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD
program."
"Similarly," the pollsters found, "75 percent of Bush
supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing
substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63 percent
believe that clear evidence of this support has been
found. Sixty percent of Bush supporters assume that
this is also the conclusion of most experts, and 55
percent assume, incorrectly, that this was the
conclusion of the 9/11 Commission."
PIPA analysts suggest that the "tendency of Bush
supporters to ignore dissonant information" offers
some explanation for these numbers. And there is
something to that. After all, Kerry backers displayed
a far sounder sense of reality in PIPA surveys.
But unless we want to assume that close to 60 million
Americans look at the world only through Bush-colored
glasses, there has to be some acceptance of the fact
that good citizens who consume American media come
away with dramatic misconceptions about the most vital
issues of the day.
Sure, Fox warps facts intentionally. But what about
CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, USA Today, the New York Times and
the Washington Post, as well as most local media
across the country? They may strive to be more
accurate than Fox or talk-radio personalities such as
Rush Limbaugh. But they still fed the American people
an inaccurate picture when they allowed the Bush team
to peddle lies about Iraq and other issues without
aggressively and consistently challenging those
misstatements of fact.
America has many great journalists. And there are
still good newspapers, magazines and broadcast
programs. But, taken as a whole, US media--with its
obsessive focus on John Kerry's Vietnam record, its
neglect of fundamental economic and environmental
issues and its stenographic repetition of even the
most absurd claims by the president and vice
president--warped the debate in 2004.
Some of those 59,054,087 Bush voters may have been
dumb.
But a far better explanation for the election result
is summed up by the Weekly Guardian's observation
that, "Maybe it's the papers they're reading."
John Nichols, The Nation's Washington correspondent,
has covered progressive politics and activism in the
United States and abroad for more than a decade. He is
currently the editor of the editorial page of Madison,
Wisconsin's Capital Times.
© 2004 The Nation
###
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/20532/
Wimblehack: The Winner
By Matt Taibbi, New York Press. Posted November 19,
2004.
A post-mortem of election post-mortems reveals the
winner of the prize for worst campaign journalist of
2004. Story Tools
The kids still loved him. You were sure that Spot
could live for another year at least. But those clouds
over his eyes just got too big, and he was walking
into the refrigerator and the brick edge of the
fireplace just a little too often.
Then there were those wheezing fits, the ones that
kept waking you and the wife up in the middle of the
night and throwing the both of you into a tiresome
panic. Do you call the vet? Is there even a vet to
call at 3 a.m.? What moral calculus applies, in the
middle of the night, to the adult owners of a dying
Shar-pei with glowing green pus in his eyes?
The time comes when you and the wife have to send the
kids off to school and take an unscheduled trip to
that little one-story clinic downtown. Make that one
last handshake with Dr. Bernstein, and stroke Spot's
head as he cheerfully lies down on the table and waits
for the needle...
Such is the situation with Wimblehack, which comes to
an end this week in highly unsatisfactory fashion. The
much-hyped prize to the winner is going to have to be
put off, for now, for a variety of reasons. For one
thing, the Press had felt quite confident that the
winner would ultimately prove to be Newsweek's Howard
Fineman, and had staked much of its prize plans (which
failed, hilariously, anyway) in that direction.
But Fineman never filed an election post-mortem for
Newsweek, and aside from a few cautiously irritating
exchanges with Joe Scarborough in which he
disingenuously defended Maureen Dowd as his "favorite
high-brow hussy," Fineman kept a very low profile
after the election. There was no rationally defensible
way to declare him the winner, except on the basis of
his cumulative record. And that would have been a
cop-out even worse than the already egregious cop-out
this final round is going to represent.
That leaves as the winner Elisabeth Bumiller of the
New York Times, who did file a number of grossly
objectionable pieces after the election, and so wins
the contest, if not yet the prize. And though this
contest fails in its stated objective of delivering a
just reward, we can say with a clear conscience that
Bumiller deserves her hollow victory, for consistently
representing almost everything that made this campaign
the Monumental Bummer it was.
On November 7, reverting to her pre-campaign state as
a Times White House correspondent, Bumiller filed her
first large post-election article. Entitled "President
Feels Emboldened, Not Accidental, After Victory," the
piece was pleased to draw a number of conclusions
about the sunny state of the reelected executive's
mind. She writes:
One trademark of President Bush's first term was his
aversion to news conferences, which his staff says he
often treated like trips to the dentist. So on the
morning after Mr. Bush's re-election, Dan Bartlett,
the White House communications director, was taken
aback when the president told him he was ready to hold
a news conference that Mr. Bartlett had suggested, win
or lose, the week before.
"I didn't have to convince him or anything," Mr.
Bartlett said. "Without me prompting him, he brought
it up."
It was a small but telling change for a president
whose re-election has already had a powerful effect on
his psyche, his friends and advisers say.
This habit of taking at face value the unconfirmable
assertions about the personal feelings of officials –
assertions hand-delivered to the journalist by a paid
mouthpiece whose very job is to deadpan preposterous
pieces of mythmaking to the media – is nothing new to
most political reporters. But almost no one consumes
this stuff more eagerly than Bumiller.
Take her piece from March 2 of this year, "Gay issue
leaves Bush ill at ease," in which Bumiller gives
off-the-record spokesmen a chance to allow Bush to
split the difference on the gay-marriage issue:
When President George W. Bush announced his support
last week for a constitutional amendment banning gay
marriage, his body language in the Roosevelt Room did
not seem to match his words. Bush may have forcefully
defended the union of a man and a woman as "the most
fundamental institution of civilization," but even
some White House officials said he appeared
uncomfortable.
This kind of thing is standard in the business – it is
how we are delivered such seemingly unknowable facts
as the "remarkably close friendship" we are told
exists between Bush and Vladimir Putin – but what's
striking about Bumiller is that this is apparently her
conscious response to an administration whose
excessive secrecy she has complained about in public.
On December 3 of last year, Bumiller gave a talk at
Yale University nauseatingly entitled "Shock, Awe, and
Battle Fatigue," in which she complained about the
lack of access in the Bush White House.
"The White House has set a troubling standard for
secrecy," she said. "I worry that future
administrations will look at this White House as a
model that has worked fairly well."
Bumiller went on to laud the administration's "genius"
in interpersonal relations, adding: "The White House
is awesomely good at what it does... The political
skills of the president and his handlers are
unparalleled."
This speech came just days after Bumiller had
experienced a very public slap in the face by that
same White House, which took the extraordinary step of
sending Bush on a surprise trip to Baghdad on
Thanksgiving with a handpicked contingent of
reporters. In a move that was widely interpreted as
payback for the paper's insufficiently slavish
reporting on the Iraq war, the Bush people
conspicuously omitted the Times and Bumiller from the
guest list. Characteristically, however, rather than
giving back in kind by ignoring the Bush p.r. stunt or
burying it in an inside page, the Times responded by
having Bumiller write a front-page story about it,
accompanied up top by the famous turkey photo in full
color.
How did she write the story? The same way she always
covered the White House, and went on to cover the
campaign: She took what was given to her, in this case
the pool report of the Washington Post's Mike Allen.
The pool report allowed her, she said, to write about
the trip "vividly, as if I had been [there]." Her
"vivid" descriptions of the dramatic journey she did
not actually go on included inspired passages of
pastoral magnificence like the following:
"Air traffic controllers in Baghdad did not know the
plane heading for the runway was Air Force One, and it
then landed without its lights in darkness, but for a
sliver of moon."
Far from being insulted at not having been invited,
Bumiller told her Yale audience that the Bush trip was
"brilliant politics." She made sure to point out to
the audience that the Times had taken care to insert
in her article a passage explaining that the piece had
been based on the account of another writer. "That was
a good addition, and it is in essence truth in
packaging," she said, adding that it was "inserted
largely because of the changes at the paper since the
catastrophe of Jayson Blair."
This is ironic again because, as noted previously in
this contest, no reporter in the campaign was more
consistently guilty of violating the "Jayson Blair
test" than Bumiller. In this particular
campaign-journalism fixture, reporters file campaign
pieces from remote state locations in which the entire
article could have been written from a burned-out
crackhouse 2000 miles away, using nothing but a
glimpse of a photo from the event and a Rolodex with
which to call friendly campaign aides.
The typical Bumiller campaign piece showed some
version of that same "sliver of moon" imagery and
sandwiched it around a lot of quotes from trail
regulars – who often, again, provided primarily
apocryphal insights into the mindset of the president
that could then be credulously reported to the public
as fact by the Greatest Newspaper In The World.
In one of her last campaign-trail pieces ("Entering
the homestretch with a smile," Nov. 1), Bumiller
followed this formula exactly. Ostensibly the action
takes place in two sites in Pennsylvania and New
Hampshire, but all we see of the locations is some
more (literally) pastoral descriptive stuff in the
lede:
Late last week at a campaign rally in a dark
Pennsylvania pasture, thousands of supporters listened
raptly to President Bush and then watched fireworks
explode overhead. But other pyrotechnics were going
off in a distant corner, where a giant scrum of
reporters ignored the candidate but hung on to every
word of a bombastic, deceptively cherub-faced man
Democrats love to hate.
He was Karl Rove, the president's political adviser...
In this particular, article Bumiller uses a technique
that my research indicates is peculiar to her alone.
In this passage, she actually swallows an apocryphal
story from one aide about another apocryphal story
about a different aide's apocryphal relationship to
the president. This is Bumiller, reporting from the
unseen alien planet New Hampshire, quoting Karen
Hughes telling a story about Karl Rove talking to
George Bush:
Other times Mr. Rove likes to playfully withhold news
of recent polls from the president. "He'll smile and
say, 'I'm not going to tell you about the latest
numbers,' but he'll have a big smile on his face," Ms.
Hughes said.
Bumiller told her Yale audience last year: "What I
write about is really important. Ninety-five percent
of it is interesting, and 30 percent of it is
absolutely riveting." One wonders which percentile
this insight about Rove falls under.
All campaign journalists fall into the habit of
writing long personality pieces about the
"man-behind-the-man" figures they spend so much time
with on the campaign. In the last two years there were
probably 10 times more profiles of Stephanie Cutter
and Ken Mehlman and Karl Rove and Karen Hughes and Joe
Trippi and Chris Lehane and Ralph Reed than there were
of laid-off workers, prisoners, illegal immigrants,
the uninsured or any of the other mysterious
categories of depressing individuals ostensibly
involved in the election.
Obviously, this was a crime in itself of sorts, as the
campaign press focused a lot more on the optimistic,
self-justifying soap opera of the campaign itself than
on the country's actual problems. The campaign press
was consistently far more fascinated with the drama
and the trimmings of power than it was with, say,
nuclear safety, or how people who collect AFDC checks
live. That's why the only time you saw a profile of a
"working-class Catholic girl" was when it was Karen
Tumulty writing about Mary Beth Cahill, the "miracle
worker" who brought back John Kerry's campaign from
the dead.
Now, if you're like me, you probably don't give a shit
about the fact that Mary Beth Cahill honed her
political reflexes at her working-class Boston dinner
table, where she was the bossy older sister in a
family with six children. But if you think that's
irrelevant, try giving a shit about the inner life of
the presidential tailor, Georges de Paris, whom
Bumiller amazingly profiled just a week after the
election, when half of the population was still trying
to talk itself down from the ledge in the wake of the
horrifying result.
Here's Bumiller quoting de Paris on Nov. 8:
"I love all the presidents, but President Bush is
something more special," Mr. de Paris said Friday,
perhaps employing the principle that it is best to
have the sitting president as No. 1. "He makes you
happy."
More insights, just days after Bush's reelection:
Mr. de Paris would not say how many suits he had made
for the president, although he did say that he was
responsible for a dark blue-on-blue stripe that Mr.
Bush wore for his "axis of evil" State of the Union
address in 2002. The president, he added, likes
full-cut trousers and his hand-sewn white Sea Island
cotton and French blue shirts... As Mr. de Paris
spoke, he sewed a lining with rapid, precisely placed
stitches into a new suit for the secretary of
commerce, Donald L. Evans, a close friend of the
president. Hand-sewn suits, Mr. de Paris said, take
three full days to make and are far more supple than
those made by machine. "It's the difference between
filet mignon and hamburger," he said.
Well, I guess if the administration won't tell you
anything about why it invaded Iraq, and if you don't
feel like making a fuss about it, you might as well
find out who made that blue-on-blue-stripe suit Bush
wore during his "Axis of Evil" speech.
Bumiller of course, was not completely immune to
concerns about the lack of substance in the campaign.
She demonstrated that most forcefully when she was one
of the moderators of a live televised debate of
Democratic candidates, held in New York on Feb. 29 of
this year.
You may remember that one: Bumiller was one of three
journalists, along with Dan Rather and Andrew Kirtzman
of WCBS, who moderated the last meaningful Democratic
debate. At the time, there were only four candidates
left: Kerry, Edwards, Sharpton and Kucinich. The
debate was remarkable because of the obviousness with
which the three panelists tried to steer the
discussion away from Sharpton and Kucinich. Early in
the debate, Bumiller cut Sharpton off in the middle of
one of his answers, about Haiti. When she tried it
again later on, Sharpton protested:
SHARPTON: If we're going to have a discussion just
between two – in your arrogance (ph), you can try
that, but that's one of the reasons we're going to
have delegates, so that you can't just limit the
discussion. And I think that your attempt to do this
is blatant, and I'm going to call you out on it,
because I'm not going to sit here and be window
dressing.
BUMILLER: Well, I'm not going to be addressed like
this.
And Bumiller made it clear later on that the press was
not going to be pushed around, when in an exchange
with Kerry she angrily insisted on the right to make
political labels an issue in the campaign:
BUMILLER: Can I just change the topic for a minute,
just ask a plain political question?
The National Journal, a respected, nonideologic
publication covering Congress, as you both know, has
just rated you, Senator Kerry, number one, the most
liberal senator in the Senate...
How can you hope to win with this kind of
characterization, in this climate?
KERRY: Because it's a laughable characterization. It's
absolutely the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen in
my life.
BUMILLER: Are you a liberal?
KERRY: Let me just...
BUMILLER: Are you a liberal?
KERRY: ...to the characterization. I mean, look,
labels are so silly in American politics...
BUMILLER: But, Senator Kerry, the question is...
KERRY: I know. You don't let us finish answering
questions.
BUMILLER: You're in New York.
This question – how can you hope to win if you're so
liberal – was what sank Howard Dean, was what allowed
the press to ignore Sharpton and Kucinich, was what
ultimately made it impossible for opponents of the war
to have a voice in this campaign. In most cases, this
demonization of the word and witch-hunting of anyone
who could be attached to it was a subtle thing whose
effect was cumulative. But Bumiller brought it right
out into the open, wore it like a badge of honor. And
looked like a smug, barking cow doing it.
One of the most pervasive themes of the post-electoral
wrap-ups was the relentless focus on the seeming
geographical intractability of the political
red-and-blue picture. Nearly every newspaper in the
country led with one version or another of the "nation
bitterly divided" theme, which within a day or two
morphed smoothly into the next round of post-mortems
speculating on the prospects for Bush to "unite" this
wounded nation (Bumiller did one of these,
incidentally).
Almost every part of the country woke up the morning
after the election to see a journalist on its local
daily's front page sounding this "divisiveness" theme.
"Now, as Bush, 58, looks forward to a second term, he
leads a nation as bitterly divided as ever over the
bruising presidential election campaign..." wrote
David Greene of the Baltimore Sun.
"The country is still divided, bitterly divided, and
[Bush's] plans controversial and not proven,"
countered Newsday.
"The nation may be as bitterly divided as ever, but
this one is in the books," sighed the Lincoln
(Nebraska) Journal Star, seemingly in relief.
And it must be admitted that some attention was given
to the relationship of the media to this divisive
picture. There was some hand-wringing in the press
about some errors it might have made in covering the
election, although as in the case of the Iraq war, it
was all the wrong kind of hand-wringing.
Much attention, for instance, was given to the
apparent fact, supported by exit polls, that
journalists had underestimated the role "moral values"
had played in determining the election. No less an
authority than Howard Fineman was one of many who
asserted that the media was out of touch with
mainstream America, and even offered his own mea culpa
on that score. Journalists "don't understand red-state
America," he said, adding, "I'm an indicted
co-conspirator."
But the unanswered question in all of this was: If the
nation was so bitterly divided, how come the campaign
press corps wasn't? Why did they all look so charged
up by the whole thing on television? Why did it seem
like, no matter what they might have said as pundits
on-camera, they were all such buddies off-camera? Why
was an avowed Bush-lover like Howard Fineman sticking
up for Maureen Dowd on MSNBC? Jon Stewart aside, was
there anyone out there in the business who took this
election personally enough to risk pissing off a
colleague over it?
The answer is no, not a one. It was all a game to
these people, which is why they covered it like a
game. There were some people I know personally out
there who hated it, who felt guilty about being part
of the whole ugly charade. But there were a lot more
who were really proud of this life of free lunches,
VIP seating and the chance to be the planted audience
for the occasional dick joke in an off-the-record chat
with some of the hired liars on Air Force One. The
maintenance of these privileges for certain people
dwarfed the more abstract matter of which millions
down there on the ground won or, more to the point,
which ones lost.
How does one decide the country's Worst Campaign
Journalist? Well, the one who loves his job the most
is probably a good candidate. Why not the reporter
whose first cheerful thought after the election was
the hand-sewn suit of Don Evans?
New York Press apologizes for not having a prize ready
for Elisabeth Bumiller, but hopes readers will allow
us time to try to make amends. We have four more
years, after all.
Matt Taibbi lives in New York. He covers politics for
Rolling Stone and the New York Press.
http://mediamatters.org/items/printable/200411240001
Media allowed conservative religious leaders to define
"moral values"
In five days following election, conservative
religious figures made 15 media appearances to
progressive religious leaders' five
Following the November 2 presidential election, Media
Matters for America documented the media's largely
unquestioning acceptance of the notion that "moral
values" determined the election. In their acceptance,
the media did not explain or define what voters meant
by "moral values." MMFA found that during the five
days after the election, network and cable news
outlets gave conservative religious leaders a forum in
which to provide that definition; these leaders often
appeared without other guests to counter their claims.
Between November 3 and November 7, conservative
religious figures appeared a total of 15 times on the
major broadcast and cable networks (ABC, NBC, CNN,
MSNBC, CNBC, and FOX News Channel, but not CBS) to
discuss "moral values," while progressive religious
figures appeared a total of only five times. MMFA
excluded Newsday columnists Rabbi Marc Gellman and
Monsignor Thomas Hartman of "The God Squad" from this
tally of figures. Although the two authors and
religious speakers did not openly endorse President
George W. Bush's reelection, they did speak of the
election results as an indicator of a deeply religious
nation, of which the "secular" coastal states are
"unaware."
Reverend Jerry Falwell, national chairman of the Faith
and Values Coalition and Moral Majority founder, and
Reverend Joe Watkins, a Bush-Cheney '04 campaign
adviser and talk radio host, appeared four times each
in the five days following the election. Reverend
Jesse Jackson was the only progressive religious
leader to make multiple appearances (three) in that
time period.
Four conservative religious figures appeared without
opponents on news programs between November 3 and
November 7: Watkins, Christian Coalition of America
founder Reverend Pat Robertson, Peter Sprigg, senior
director of policy studies at the Family Research
Council (which "promotes the Judeo-Christian
worldview"), and Focus on the Family founder James
Dobson. No progressive religious leaders appeared
alone.
Further, when not appearing alone, conservative
religious leaders were more often paired with
Democratic or progressive pundits who are not
religious figures than with progressive religious
leaders. For example, on the November 4 edition of
CNBC's Capital Report, Falwell was paired with
syndicated columnist and MSNBC political analyst Bill
Press. On the November 7 edition of CNN's Inside
Politics with Judy Woodruff, Randy Tate -- former U.S.
Representative and former executive director of the
Christian Coalition (which identifies itself as
"America's Leading Grassroots Organization Defending
our Godly Heritage") -- appeared opposite U.S.
Representative Barney Frank (D-MA). Watkins appeared
three times opposite progressive pundits who are not
religious figures (in his November 3 appearance on
CNN's American Morning, he was not described as a
"reverend" but as a "Republican strategist").
Progressive religious figures appeared only twice
without conservative religious counterparts: Jackson
appeared with conservative author and nationally
syndicated radio host William J. Bennett on the
November 7 edition of NBC's Today, and Reverend Al
Sharpton appeared on a panel (on the November 3
edition of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews) that
also included NBC News chief foreign affairs
correspondent Andrea Mitchell, Newsweek managing
editor Jon Meacham, and Republican strategist Ed
Rollins.
Many of the conservative religious figures suggested
that Bush's victory shows public support for
Republican positions on issues such as gay marriage
and abortion. As MSNBC host Deborah Norville pointed
out, however, polling shows that Democrats are
actually more aligned with the American public than
Republicans are on those issues.
Here are some examples of conservative religious
figures delineating "moral values":
• Robertson claimed on the November 4 edition of FOX
News Channel's Hannity & Colmes that voters'
overwhelming opposition to gay marriage was the
decisive factor in the election: "President [George
W.] Bush ought to send roses to that bunch up there in
Massachusetts [the Massachusetts Supreme Court]. I
mean, they won him the victory. ... [T]o cater to a
two-percent minority in the United States, to give
them what they want [gay marriage] is insane. And the
American people aren't going to do that."
• Also November 4, Falwell asserted on CNN's American
Morning that "because of the issues of faith and
family, the unborn, the same-sex marriage, and the war
on terrorism ... Mr. Bush had to go back [to the White
House]." The same day, Falwell said on Capital Report
that in addition to those issues, "questioning 'under
God' in the pledge [of allegiance] and 'In God we
trust' on the coinage" and "kicking the Ten
Commandments out of schoolhouses, [and] courthouses"
had also contributed to "awaken[ing] a sleeping
giant."
• In addition to anti-abortion issues, on the November
7 edition of CNN's Inside Politics, Tate included "a
tax system where families can keep more of their own
money to spend on themselves" as a "moral values"
issue that benefited Bush at the polls.
• On CNN Live Saturday on November 6, Sprigg added the
"type of sex education" that students receive to "the
unlimited abortion license and the issues of same-sex
marriage" as crucial "moral issues" that determined
the election.
• Radio host and WorldNetDaily columnist Rabbi Shmuley
Boteach claimed on the November 4 edition of MSNBC's
Scarborough Country that another aspect was "the whole
issue of a moral focus ... in foreign policy. Guys
like me are sick and tired of the Democratic Party
being apologists for tyrants."
• On the November 3 edition of CNN's Paula Zahn Now,
Watkins suggested that black Democrats' religious
values spurred them to vote for Bush over Kerry: "I
had callers calling in [to my radio program] saying,
'I'm an African American, I am a Democrat, and I
normally vote Democrat, but this year because of my
faith, I'm voting for George W. Bush.'" (According to
exit polling, Kerry won 88 percent of the black vote.)
• On ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos on
November 7, Dobson warned that Republicans have a duty
to implement the policies of "morality," or else "I
believe they'll pay a price at the -- in the next
election."
The claim that the election was a rejection of
Democratic views on social issues was exemplified by a
particularly skewed panel on the November 4 edition of
MSNBC's Scarborough Country, which featured Rabbi
Boteach, Catholic League President William Donahue,
right-wing pundit Ann Coulter, former Republican
presidential candidate and MSNBC analyst Pat Buchanan,
Boston Herald columnist Mike Barnicle, and former
Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich. The two
religious leaders on the panel attacked and smeared
the Democratic Party. Donahue declared, "I think that
there's something in the Democratic Party. There's an
absolute animus, a hostility to people who hold
religion seriously. Either that or they were
delirious, in which case, you have got to get the
straitjackets. Put them in the asylum." Aside from his
claim that Democrats are "apologists for tyrants,"
Boteach also claimed that "Robert Reich is being
totally disingenuous when he blames the corporations
rather than the Democrats for the smut in the
culture." Host and former U.S. Representative Joe
Scarborough (R-FL) suggested that his panel provided a
balanced discussion of moral values because Donahue is
Catholic and Boteach is Jewish -- but he failed to
mention that both men hold highly conservative views:
"Rabbi, let me -- we've been talking about evangelical
Christians. Bill Donahue, obviously a Catholic. But
this isn't just about being a Christian, is it? I
mean, it goes beyond that." The "God Squad" appearance
on CNN also featured a Christian and a Jew (Hartman
and Gelllman) who presented a unified message on moral
values and the election.
Boteach and Donahue were not the only conservative
religious leaders to use the topic of moral values as
an opportunity to attack Democrats. On the November 3
edition of CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, Falwell compared
Kerry's unwillingness to oppose gay marriage through
an amendment to the U.S. constitution to the
unwillingness of many to strongly oppose slavery in
the mid-19th century: "the fact that he [Kerry] would
not support a federal marriage amendment, it equates
in our minds as someone 150 years ago saying I'm
personally opposed to slavery, but if my neighbor
wants to own one or two that's OK. We don't buy that."
The chart below summarizes religious leaders' network
and cable appearances between November 3 and November
7:
Conservative Religious Leaders Program Channel Date
Reverend Jerry Falwell Anderson Cooper 360 CNN 11/3
Falwell American Morning CNN 11/4
Falwell Capital Report CNBC 11/4
Falwell Anderson Cooper 360 CNBC 11/5
Reverend Joe Watkins American Morning CNN 11/3
Watkins Paula Zahn Now CNN 11/3
Watkins Good Morning America ABC 11/4
Watkins Paula Zahn Now CNN 11/5
William Donohue Scarborough Country MSNBC 11/4
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach Scarborough Country MSNBC 11/4
Reverend Pat Robertson Hannity & Colmes FNC 11/4
Randy Tate Crossfire CNN 11/5
Tate Inside Politics CNN 11/7
Peter Sprigg CNN Live CNN 11/6
James Dobson This Week ABC 11/7
The "God Squad" Program Channel Date
Rabbi Marc Gellman CNN Saturday Night CNN 11/6
Monsignor Thomas Hartman CNN Saturday Night CNN 11/6
Progressive Religious Leaders Program Channel Date
Reverend Al Sharpton Hardball MSNBC 11/3
Reverend Jesse Jackson Anderson Cooper 360 CNN 11/3
Jackson Crossfire CNN 11/5
Jackson Today NBC 11/7
Nun and author Karol Jackowski
American Morning CNN 11/4
http://www.bluelemur.com/index.php?p=442
11/22/2004
Mysterious ‘George W. Bush: Our leader’ Clear Channel
political public service billboard graces Orlando
freeway
Filed under: General— site admin @ 8:39 pm Email This
By John Byrne | RAW STORY Editor
A billboard recently put up in Orlando bearing a
smiling photograph of President Bush with the words
“Our Leader” is raising eyebrows among progressives
who feel the poster is akin to that of propaganda used
by tyrannical regimes.
RAW STORY confirmed the billboard’s existence Monday
evening. At our behest, a member of an Orlando media
organization drove past the billboard on two occasions
and verified that it was indeed the one pictured.
The billboard pictured, which is on I-4, says that it
is a “political public service message brought to you
by Clear Channel Outdoor.”
The member, who declined to be named out of concern
for their employer, discovered a second billboard
bearing the same image along the same route, paid for
by Charles W. Clayton Jr.
The Clear Channel-sponsored billboard was not lit up
for drivers Monday evening. The Clayton billboard was.
Clear Channel Outdoor Orlando said they could not
respond to requests for comment this week because
their press person was “away.” They referred calls to
their San Antonio corporate parent, which did not
return two messages for comment.
Clayton’s firm, Charles Clayton Construction, said he
was traveling this week and couldn’t be reached for
comment.
The Orlando Associated Press bureau said they had seen
at least one sign but didn’t plan a story. They
suggested that the signs would only become a story
were there a public response to the billboards, and
that the county in which they were situated would
probably meet the signs with “a warm response.”
One Orlando resident penned a concerned letter to the
(registration-restricted) Orlando Sentinel on Saturday
about the billboard. As the site is restricted to
members, the letter appears below.
“The first thing I thought was, when was the last time
I have seen a president on a billboard?” wrote
resident Dianna Lawson. “Didn’t Saddam Hussein have
his picture up everywhere? What next, a statue?”
Orlando Sentinel Letters Editor Dixie Tate said they
wouldn’t have printed the letter were it false. Other
reporters at the Sentinel told RAW STORY they’d also
seen the billboard.
Others said they’d seen a similar sign in Jacksonville
along I-95.
“We don’t do political advertising,” said Jacksonville
Clear Channel sales representative Brad Parsons. He
said the photograph was probably bogus.
A second Jacksonville rep acknowledged the company did
political advertising but only when paid for by a
third party. When asked if he would look at the
picture for verification, he declined to give out his
email address.
Common Cause, the public interest advocacy group, said
the billboard probably wasn’t a violation of campaign
finance regulations, but expressed concern about Clear
Channel’s history and their use of billboard space to
support the Administration.
“I think it sort of exemplifies the fact that big
media companies are going to do all they can to stay
on the good side of the administration because they’re
very concerned about any efforts in Congress to
challenge their ownership,” Common Cause Vice
President for Advocacy Celia Wexler said Tuesday.
“Clear Channel has a history of weighing in in
controversial ways that don’t respect the diversity of
opinion,” she added. “It is in keeping with Clear
Channel’s vision of the world which is to not take
seriously an effort to serve the public interest or be
non-partisan.”
The posted was first noticed by the liberal forum
Democratic Underground.
The letter in the Orlando Sentinel:
Billboard message
On my way to work Wednesday morning, I looked up and
saw a giant billboard with a picture of George W. Bush
and the words “OUR LEADER” under it. The first thing I
thought was, when was the last time I have seen a
president on a billboard? What is going on? Didn’t
Saddam Hussein have his picture up everywhere? What
next, a statue?
I am so concerned with our country and the division. I
still stand by my vote, which was for John Kerry.
George W. Bush has a lot of work to do to change the
way I feel. Putting him up on a billboard does not
make him a better president. His actions speak louder
than words.
I wonder if anyone else finds the president’s picture
on a billboard odd? I’m sorry, but it reminds me of
countries with dictators, and it seems people are
making him out to be the messiah, the savior of our
world.
Fear, fear, fear. I’m tired of being afraid.
Dianna Lawson
Orlando
http://denvervoice.org/features/Nov_2004/who_is_the_denver_post.htm
Media Blackout on Election Fraud by Media News Group
Denver Post and 94+ Newspapers, Radio Stations, TV
Stations
Corporate Profits vs Civil Rights, and the Vote
by Kali Autumn Lynn
The Denver Voice
Denver, Co: November 26, 2004
To those of us on the inside of this issue, it seems
inconceivable that our local newspapers would offer a
front page story on election fraud in Ukraine while
ignoring stories of the same right here at home in the
United States. Every day, since November 2nd, 2004,
stories have emerged detailing such things as
malfunctioning voting machines, fraudulent election
records in Volusia, Florida, inconsistent numbers of
voter registrations vs. vote totals in Ohio, credible
university studies showing serious statistical
impossibilities in election results, and much more.
Yet, these daily revelations have been almost
completely ignored by our media. These reports are
coming not from persons with tin foil hats as is often
claimed, but from PhD level citizens, election
officials, and voting rights activists.
But to the rest of America, who get their information
from corporate owned media sources, there is nothing
missing from the daily news. That's because, if they
don't report it, it didn't happen. For most of
America, we trust our local papers to report honestly
and fairly. But what many of us don't realize is that
our local newspapers are not so local after all.
Protestors: End the Media Blackout on Election Fraud
One Local Protest
This past Wednesday, November 24th in Denver Colorado,
a small group went to the Denver Post headquarters to
protest a media blackout on coverage of the issue of
election fraud. They tried to see someone, anyone at
the Denver Post but where turned away at security
checkpoints consistently. Eventually the settled for a
phone number a vowed to return every Wednesday at noon
in greater numbers. According to one member, they have
not ruled out spreading the protest to other cities.
Aren't You a "News" Paper?
So question number one comes to mind; if the Denver
Post is just a local paper, why where they so
insistent that the public not be able to see them.
After all isn't "news" something timely? Aren't they a
"news" paper? Why the security? Is there something
bigger going on here. Shouldn't a "news" paper want to
know when things are happening in their community?
According to the Denver Post Web Site they are just a
local newspaper. Searching further reveals that they
are in fact owned by William Dean Singleton and Media
News Group, Inc. (the list of properties they hold is
woefully out of date on their web site). Media News
Group is located in the Denver Post Building and is
owner of at least 94 seperate media properties
including newspapers, radio stations, and television
stations in 12 states. See Media Holdings for a
partial list.
But is that all there is?
As early as May of 2000, Media News Group was working
on the purchase of KTVA in Anchorage Alaska, as
reported by the Peninsula Clarion
http://www.peninsulaclarion.com/stories/052300/ala_052300ala0pm060001.shtml.
This was in "In anticipation of changes in the
regulations governing the ownership of newspapers,
radio and television," according to the MediaNewsGroup
Web Site (c)2000. Now, I ask you this, how can the
purchase of a single television station be in
anticipation of a change in FCC law?
In 2002, KTVA, merged with the local fox affiliate
KTBY, which required special FCC approval, and began
selling joint advertising
http://www.medianewsgroup.com/CompanyNews/2002/121002.pdf.
This was only one in a landslide of mergers and
acquisitions that led to the empire you see today. At
some point Media News Group stopped listing all of
their holdings in one place. At least they stopped
listing multiple holdings in the same market in one
place.
The lists of media holdings I've compiled below come
from two web sites. Notice KTBY didn't appear on
either of them. In fact their corporate site is four
years old! In Denver, Colorado, The Denver Post and
The Rocky Mountain news began publishing joint weekend
editions, but are foggy about their actual
relationship..
What could be determined regarding the ownership of
the Rocky Mountain News is this. After the formation
of the Denver Newspaper Agency, all corporate reports
at the Colorado Secretary of States office,
http://www.sos.state.co.us, for both the Rocky
Mountain News' parent company, The Denver Publishing
Company, and the Denver Newspaper Agency are blacked
out... a whole new meaning for media blackout. Before
the merger, The Denver Publishing Company never
blacked out these reports.
It has become very difficult to determine just what
properties Media News Group owns since they stopped
updating their web sites several years ago. Still they
manage to keep an up to date web site for every one of
their daily newspapers.
The DOJ Loves US
Eventually I located the DOJ anti trust case for the
merger between The Rocky Mountain News and The Denver
Post http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f6500/6508.htm.
Apparently, the Rocky Mountain News was in "probable"
financial trouble so they where allowed to merge. No
hearing and a green light to raise advertising rates
even though Westword would be faced with the complete
loss of competitive bids for printing and other
publishers would be affected. A few groups even
contended that the Rocky Mountain News was not in
financial trouble.
Excerpt from DOJ case:
The Division expects that if established, the JOA
agency may raise prices substantially for newspaper
subscriptions and advertising, and it may restrict
output in other ways. However, the NPA was
specifically designed with the clear recognition that
these types of anticompetitiveeffects could very well
flow from the elimination of competition between
certain newspapers, that otherwise would be prevented
from combining by the federal antitrust laws.
For the reasons described below, the Antitrust
Division recommends that the Attorney General find
that the applicants in this matter have made an
adequate showing that the News is in probable danger
of financial failure and that the proposed Denver JOA
effectuates the policy and purpose of the NPA. As a
result, the Antitrust Division recommends that the
Attorney General approve the application without a
hearing, and immunize what appears to be an
anticompetitive agreement to eliminate competition
between these parties, one that would likely be found
illegal under the Clayton Act (15 U.S.C. §18) were it
not for the NPA.
// end of excerpt
The FCC Loves US
But does Media News Group really want to continue
their pattern of mergers and acquisitions in the same
markets?
This is taken Directly from the US Senates Web Site.
It is William Dean Singleton, of Media News Group's
testimony in which he explains why he should be
allowed to merge merge merge........ see the link for
the complete text.
http://commerce.senate.gov/pdf/singleton051303.pdf
TESTIMONY OF WILLIAM DEAN SINGLETON
VICE CHAIRMAN AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
MEDIANEWS GROUP, INC.
IMMEDIATE PAST CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
NEWSPAPER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA
Before the
SENATE COMMERCE COMMITTEE
May 13, 2003
1
Good morning. I am Dean Singleton, vice chairman and
chief executive officer of MediaNews
Group Inc., a private company that publishes 50 daily
newspapers—including The Denver Post,
the Los Angeles Daily News and The Salt Lake
Tribune—as well as 121 non-daily newspapers.
I am also the immediate past chairman of the Board of
the Newspaper Association of America. I
am very pleased to have this opportunity to appear
before the Committee today to discuss the
compelling reasons for eliminating the FCC’s long
outdated and counterproductive ban on
newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership.
The newspaper ban is the last vestige of a series of
“one outlet per customer” local media
ownership restrictions adopted by the FCC in the 1960s
and 1970s. Of these limitations, only the
newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule has remained
completely unchanged over the past
three decades, with only four permanent waivers of the
rule granted by the FCC over the last 28
years. All of the Commission’s other restrictions on
broadcast ownership have been either
eliminated or significantly relaxed over the years.
Aside from these four situations and the
newspaper/broadcast combinations that were
“grandfathered” when the rule was originally
adopted, newspaper publishers—alone among local media
outlets—have been completely barred
from participating in the broadcast markets of their
local communities.
This inaction on the part of the Commission is not for
a lack of evidence. To the contrary, over
the past few years, the agency has accumulated a
mountain of evidence supporting the repeal of
the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban...........
So, we've established two things. Mr. Singleton wants
something from the government. Permission to merge
holdings in the same major markets. And he doesn't
want us to know what he's doing anymore now that the
company has gotten so big. So far though, he has every
reason to be happy with the republican leadership, and
the DOJ.
In June 2003, the FCC announced sweeping changes in
their cross ownership rules that would have allowed
large media conglomerates to expand drastically. Then,
just when it looked like Media News Group would get
everything they wanted from Republican FCC Chairman
Michael Powell, former Secretary of State Colin
Powell's son, who led the effort to revise the
ownership regulations, democrats and an odd alliance
of organizations managed to put a halt on the process.
See the report by the Associated Press:
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/24-06242004-321843.html.
But Media News Group still got most of what they
wanted, for now.
In their 2-to-1 decision, federal judges threw out
rules that would have allowed greater ownership of
television and radio stations in the same market.
However, they also found that the FCC was within its
rights to repeal a blanket prohibition on companies
owning both a newspaper and a television station in
the same city. Current polls indicate that as the
public becomes more aware of this issue they are
against loosening of the restrictions on media cross
ownership. See study by the PEW research center
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=188.
Further relaxation of these rules will depend heavily
on government sponsorship.
So what do we have so far? A strong desire to merge
and acquire, secrecy, and thank you to the son of the
Secretary of State of the Bush Administration. Oh and
a need for the current administration, who is very
friendly to media mergers, to stay put in order to
push through the FCC's agenda. Then along came
Kerry... Kerry was short sighted in this case. What
one thing could he possibly do to make all of our
major media hate him? Even if he was right?
The Democrats Don't Love US
John Kerry, ""I'm against the ongoing push for
reducing restrictions on media concentration," Kerry
said on August 6, 2004, echoing the question by Forbes
senior editor Brett Pulley. "It's contrary to the
greater goals of democracy for the country." see:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/media/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000600685.
Kerry said this right before all of the major media
outlets decided who to support for President.
This in effect said to every major media outlet in the
world, "I will limit your profit potential!"
Corporations exist to make money for their
shareholders and themselves, not to make the world a
better place. Maybe for some of them that is someplace
in the list, but number one is MAKE MONEY. That is why
the stock market works, that is why it is called
capitalism. Kerry made this statement just a few
months before the media corporations made their
endorsements for the presidential race.
Conclusions
So what conclusions can we draw? I've laid out the
facts. Decide for yourself. It seems pretty obvious to
me that:
Media News Group wants to merge and acquire. So much
so that they started buying up properties before the
laws changed because they were so sure they would
change. They buy up multiple properties in the same
market and have shown a growing tendency towards
secrecy in their holdings. Media News Group influences
legislation so that they can continue to merge and
acquire. They have the son of the Bush
Administration's former Secretary of State to thank
for changes in laws that allow them to grow. Continued
mergers and acquisitions give Media News Group control
over advertising rates and public
opinion/dissemination of information in major markets.
Their continued long term growth depends on continued
relaxation of laws regarding cross ownership of media
properties. Media News Group supported George W. Bush
for President.
Media news group has initiated a near total blackout
on coverage of the election fraud issue, an issue that
could potentially remove the republicans from office,
thereby resulting in the election of a government less
friendly to loosening of FCC cross ownership law,
severely hampering their ability to merge, acquire and
thus grow. This could force them to divest themselves
of properties, limit their ability to control
advertising rates and information, destroy their
growth potential. That is, if fraud where proven and
the elections invalidated.
Even if coverage of the fraud issue didn't result in
removal from office of any elected officials, it could
really upset them, and even cast a shadow of doubt
over many in office, lessening the likelihood that
Media News Group would be received favorably when they
ask the FCC for permission to acquire additional
properties or merge with properties in markets in
which they already have a presence. Make no mistake,
the stakes for them are high. According to Media News
Group's latest financial report, their total assets
are $1,334,844,000.00. For reference see
http://www.medianewsgroup.com/financialinformation/2004/10Q09312004.pdf.
This is an issue that is vital to the health of our
democracy yet because we have allowed big media and
politics to become so entwined and media companies to
exert so much control, they now determine the very
information we receive. They in effect have the
ability, for a great number in our society, to say
what is the truth. As a society we have allowed
ourselves to become disenfranchised from the truth,
giving this responsibility over to corporations whose
number one goal is to make money. In this case, the
truth is, corporate profits over democracy, civil
rights, and the vote.
Media Holdings of Media News Group (gathered from 2
Media News Group Web Sites)
California
The Daily Democrat - Woodland, CA
The Daily Review - Hayward, CA
Enterprise Record - Chico, CA
Times Standard - Eureka, CA
Alameda Times-Star - Alameda, CA
Argus - Fremont, CA
Daily Review - Hayward, CA
Daily Democrat - Woodland, CA
Chico Enterprise Record - Chico, CA
Ft. Bragg Advocate-News - Fort Bragg, CA
Lake County Record Bee - Lakeport, CA
Marin Independent Journal - Marin, CA
Mendocino Beacon - Mendocino, CA
Milpitas Post - Milpitas, CA
The Oakland Tribune - Oakland, CA
Pacifica Tribune- Pacifica, CA
Paradise Post - Paradise, CA
Oroville Mercury Registry - Oroville, CA
Red Bluff Daily News - Red Bluff, CA
The Reporter - Vacaville, CA
San Mateo County Times - San Mateo, CA
Times-Herald - Vallejo, CA
Tri-Valley Herald - Pleasanton, CA
Ukiah Daily Journal - Ukiah, CA
Willits News - Willits, CA
Los Angeles Daily News - Los Angeles, CA
LA.com - Los Angeles, CA
LA Daily News - Los Angeles, CA
Inland Valley Daily