Democracy Now!'s War & Peace Report provides news on the Middle East crisis, free of corporate influence.
- Death Toll in Lebanon Reaches 300
- Israel Bombs Milk, Pharmaceutical Factories, Aid Convoys, Church
- Lebanon PM Accuses Israel of Committing Massacres
- Hezbollah Continues Missile Attacks On Israel
- U.S. OKs Israel Continuing Attack For Another Week
- U.S. Senate Unanimously Votes to Back Israel
- UN: Nearly 6,000 Iraqis Died in May & June
http://blip.tv/search?q=democracynow
ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL SCHMID / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Why media ownership matters
Special to The Times
George Bush must have been delighted to learn from a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll that 56 percent of Americans still think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war, while six in 10 said they believe Iraq provided direct support to the al-Qaida terrorist network notions that have long since been thoroughly debunked by everyone from the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee to both of Bush's handpicked weapons inspectors, Charles Duelfer and David Kay.
Americans believe these lies not because they are stupid, but because they are good media consumers. Our media have become an echo chamber for those in power. Rather than challenge the fraudulent claims of the Bush administration, we've had a media acting as a conveyor belt for the government's lies.
As the Pentagon has learned, deploying the American media is more powerful than any bomb. The explosive effect is amplified as a few pro-war, pro-government media moguls consolidate their grip over the majority of news outlets. Media monopoly and militarism go hand in hand.
When it comes to issues of war and peace, the results of having a compliant media are as deadly to our democracy as they are to our soldiers. Why do the corporate media cheerlead for war? One answer lies in the corporations themselves the ones that own the major news outlets.
 Amy Goodman |
At the time of the first Persian Gulf War, CBS was owned by Westinghouse and NBC by General Electric. Two of the major nuclear weapons manufacturers owned two of the major networks. Westinghouse and GE made most of the parts for many of the weapons in the Persian Gulf War. It was no surprise, then, that much of the coverage on those networks looked like a military hardware show.
We see reporters in the cockpits of war planes, interviewing pilots about how it feels to be at the controls. We almost never see journalists at the target end, asking people huddled in their homes what it feels like not to know what the next moment will bring.
Amy Goodman was scheduled to be a panelist on the American Voices Forum, "All the News that's Fit to Own; Who Controls the Media and Why We Should Care," Saturday night at the Paramount Theater. The Glaser Progress Foundation provided support for the forum, and The Seattle Times was a media partner.
The media have a responsibility to show the true face of war. It is bloody. It is brutal. Real people die. Women and children are killed. Families are wiped out; villages are razed. If the media would show for one week the same unsanitized images of war that the rest of the world sees, people in the U.S. would say no, that war is not an answer to conflict in the 21st century.
But we don't see the real images of war. We don't need government censors, because we have corporations sanitizing the news. A study released last month by American University's School of Communications revealed that media outlets acknowledged they self-censored their reporting on the Iraq invasion out of concerns about public reaction to graphic images and content.
The media organizations in charge of vetting our images of war have become fewer and bigger and the news more uniform and gung ho. Six huge corporations now control the major U.S. media: Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (FOX, HarperCollins, New York Post, Weekly Standard, TV Guide, DirecTV and 35 TV stations), General Electric (NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, Telemundo, Bravo, Universal Pictures and 28 TV stations), Time Warner (AOL, CNN, Warner Bros., Time and its 130-plus magazines), Disney (ABC, Disney Channel, ESPN, 10 TV and 72 radio stations), Viacom (CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, Paramount Pictures, Simon & Schuster and 183 U.S. radio stations), and Bertelsmann (Random House and its more than 120 imprints worldwide, and Gruner + Jahr and its more than 110 magazines in 10 countries).
 David Goodman |
As Phil Donahue, the former host of MSNBC's highest-rated show who was fired by the network in February 2003 for bringing on anti-war voices, told "Democracy Now!," "We have more [TV] outlets now, but most of them sell the Bowflex machine. The rest of them are Jesus and jewelry. There really isn't diversity in the media anymore. Dissent? Forget about it."
The lack of diversity in ownership helps explain the lack of diversity in the news. When George W. Bush first came to power, the media watchers Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) looked at who appeared on the evening news on ABC, CBS and NBC. Ninety-two percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85 percent were male, and where party affiliation was identifiable, 75 percent were Republican.
In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, there was even less diversity of opinion on the airwaves. During the critical two weeks before and after Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations where he made his case for war, FAIR found that just three out of 393 sources — fewer than 1 percent — were affiliated with anti-war activism.
Three out of almost 400 interviews. And that was on the "respectable" evening news shows of CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS.
These are not media that are serving a democratic society, where a diversity of views is vital to shaping informed opinions. This is a well-oiled propaganda machine that is repackaging government spin and passing it off as journalism.
For the media moguls, even this parody of political "diversity" is too much. So as Gen. Colin Powell led the war on Iraq, his son, Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), led the war on diversity of voices at home.
In the spring of 2003, Michael Powell tried to hand over the airwaves and newspapers to fewer and fewer tycoons by further loosening restrictions on how many media outlets a single company could own. Powell tried to scrap 30-year-old rules that limited the reach of any television network to no more than 35 percent of the national population, and limits on cross-ownership that, for example, prevented newspapers from buying television or radio stations in the same city. The new rules would have allowed a broadcast network to buy up stations that together reached 45 percent of the national population.
The attack on the existing media-ownership rules came from predictable corners: Both Viacom, which owns CBS, and Rupert Murdoch's conservative FOX News Channel were already in violation, and would be forced to sell off stations to come into compliance with the 35-percent limit. The rule change would enable Murdoch to control the airwaves of entire cities. That would be fine with Bush and the Powells, since Murdoch is one of their biggest boosters.
Murdoch declared in February 2003 that George W. Bush "will either go down in history as a very great president or he'll crash and burn. I'm optimistic it will be the former by a ratio of 2 to 1." Murdoch leaves nothing to chance: His FOX News Channel is doing all it can to help.
It looked like Powell, backed by the Bush White House and with Republican control of Congress, would have no trouble ramming through these historic rule changes. The broadcast industry left nothing to chance: Between 1998 and 2004, broadcasters spent a boggling $249 million lobbying the federal government, including spending $27 million on federal candidates and lawmakers.
This would normally be called bribery. At the FCC, it's just business as usual. http://www.freepress.net/
You would think that FCC deregulation, affecting millions of Americans, would get major play in the media. But the national networks knew that if people found out about how one media mogul could own nearly everything you watch, hear and read in a city, there would be revolt. The solution for them was simple: They just didn't cover the issue for a year. The only thing the networks did was to join together and you thought they were competitors? in a brief filed with the FCC to call for media deregulation.
And then, something remarkable happened: Media activists an unlikely coalition of liberals and conservatives mounted a national campaign to defeat Powell and stop the corporate sell-off. The FCC received 2 million letters and e-mails, most of them opposing the sell-off. The Prometheus Radio Project, a grass-roots media activism group, sued to stop the sale of our airwaves, and won in federal court last June. These are hopeful signals that the days of backroom deals by media titans are numbered.
Powell announced his resignation as chairman of the FCC in January. Arguably the worst FCC chairman in history, Powell led with singular zeal the effort to auction off the public airwaves to the highest corporate bidder. In so doing, he did us all a favor: For a brief moment, he pulled back the covers on the incestuous world of media ownership to expose the corruption and rot for all to see.
Kevin Martin, Bush's newly appointed FCC chairman, will, according to an FCC insider, be even worse than Powell. Leading conservative and right-wing religious groups have been quietly lobbying the White House for Martin to chair the FCC. Martin voted with Powell on key regulations favoring media consolidation, and in addition has been a self-appointed indecency czar. The indecency furor conveniently grabs headlines and pushes for the regulation of content, while Martin and the media moguls plan sweetheart deregulation deals to achieve piecemeal what they couldn't push through all at once. This is the true indecency afflicting media today.
The major media conglomerates are among the most powerful on the planet. The onrush of digital convergence and broadband access in the workplaces and homes of America will radically change the way we work, play and communicate. Fiber-to-the-premise (FTTP) from the regional Bells, Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony, bundled services from cable companies, and increased capacity in satellite and wireless technologies will transform the platforms on which we communicate.
Who owns these platforms, what is delivered over them and, fundamentally, in whose interest they work are critical issues before us now. Given the wealth of the media companies and their shrewd donations into our political process, the advocates for the public interest are in far too short a supply.
A blow against media ownership consolidation now or in the future will have far-reaching implications, as critical information gains exposure to a caring, active public. Instead of fake reality TV, maybe the media will start to cover the reality of people struggling to get by and of the victories that happen every day in our communities, and in strife-torn regions around the globe. http://www.openleft.com/
When people get information, they are empowered. We have to ensure that the airwaves are open for more of that. Our motto at "Democracy Now!" is to break the sound barrier. We call ourselves the exception to the rulers. We believe all media should be. http://www.stopbigmedia.com/
Amy Goodman, host of the award-winning radio and TV news show "Democracy Now!," and her brother David Goodman, a contributing writer for Mother Jones, are authors of "The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them," which was just released in paperback by Hyperion.
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http://www.openleft.com/userDiary.do?personId=470 by: Paul Rosenberg
The Judgment of History--Bush and the Neocons Try To Avoid It, But Israel and America Cannot
For the current issue of Random Lengths News I recommended two possibilities to use as national op-eds, both dealing with Gaza and Isreali propaganda. One was from Counterpunch, Consider the Realities of Gaza by William Cook. The other, which we ended up using, was "Have Bush and the Neocons Ruined it for the Israelis?" by Juan Cole, from Informed Comment, which began thus:
The Israeli propaganda blitz around their attack on Gaza has been greeted with uncharacteristic skepticism by the American public and even by some of the mainstream US press. Even the Jewish American community is uneasy about this one, in a way perhaps unparalelled since the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon and siege of Beirut. Jews for Peace in Los Angeles are actively protesting the Gaza atrocities, and newspaper articles from around the US on local protests held this weekend often mention mixed Arab-American and Jewish-American rallies
If it is true that Americans are greeting Israeli talking points with more criticism this time, is it because we have been intensively exposed for the past 8 years to precisely this sort of mental manipulation by Bush-Cheney and their stable of Neoconservatives?
Let's take some of the basic techniques of propaganda practiced by Bush and compare them to those deployed by the Israeli leadership in the past 8 days.
Well, of course, Jaun had no difficulty at all drawing parallels between the neocon propaganda and what's going on now in Israel vis-a-vis Gaza. But the important point is rather the flip side: not that an expert critic can see all these connections, but that even a wannabee dittohead can't avoid them. They can just feel their unspoken 5-0, 40-love advantage slipping away. The fate awaiting them all is that of Martin Indyk in the Democracy Now! interchange with Norman Finklestein that I wrote about earlier this week.
But that's only the tip of the iceberg. Because, you see, I've got a little secret to share with you all: Empires Fall.
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Fmr. Clinton Special Counsel Lanny Davis vs. Israeli Professor Neve Gordon: A Debate on the Israeli Assault on Gaza
Israel has poured thousands of reservists into Gaza as Israeli troops push deeper into Gaza City in the seventeenth day of fighting. Nearly 900 Palestinians have now died, including 275 children. Another 4,100 Palestinians have been injured. The Israeli death toll is at thirteen. We host a debate on the crisis with Lanny Davis, senior adviser to the Israel Project and the former special counsel to President Clinton, and with Neve Gordon, an Israeli professor at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. [includes rush transcript]
Kucinich Cites Arms Export and Control Act in Decision to Vote Against House Measure Supporting Israeli Offensive
Both the House and Senate passed non-binding resolutions last week overwhelmingly supporting Israels offensive in Gaza. On Thursday, the Senate passed the resolution by a unanimous voice vote. The House voted on a similar bill on Friday that passed by a vote of 390 for and five against. Twenty-two representatives voted present. We speak with Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) who voted against the measure.
Tens of Thousands Demonstrate Globally Against Israeli Actions, Jewish Women Among Those Leading Protests
Tens of thousands of people took to streets over the weekend in cities across the globe to demonstrate against Israels assault on Gaza. Some of the protests have ben organized by Jewish groups who are speaking out against Israels actions. We speak with two Jewish women for peace: Dorothy Zellner, one of 15 Jews who have signed a call for a protest in front of the Israeli Consulate in New York and Judy Rebick, who organized a sit-in comprised of Jewish Canadian women at the Israeli consulate in Toronto.
Amy Goodmans New Column, Israeli Voices for Peace
Israel’s assault on Gaza, by air, sea and now land, has killed (at the time of this writing) more than 600 Palestinians, with more than 2,700 injured. Ten Israelis have been killed, three of them Israeli soldiers killed by friendly fire. Beyond the deaths and injuries, the people of Gaza are suffering a dire humanitarian crisis that is dismisseby the Israeli government. There is, however, Israeli opposition to the military assault.
Voices of Resistance Sing On
Strong voices for peace have left us this year, people who used their art for social change, often at a high personal price. A look at the lives and politics of Odetta, Miriam Makeba and Eartha Kitt.
One Man’s Bid to Aid the Environment
A Utah student’s disruption of a federal auction has temporarily blocked a Bush-enabled land grab by the oil and gas industries.
Workers Laid Off, Executives Paid Off, Bernard Madoff
The global financial crisis deepens, with more than 10 million in the U.S. out of work, according to the Department of Labor. Unemployment hit 6.7 percent in November. Add the 7.3 million “involuntary part-time workers,” who want to work full time but can’t find such a job. Jobless claims have reached a 26-year high, while 30 states reportedly face potential shortfalls in their unemployment-insurance pools.
A Tale of Two Nobel Nations
While the Nobel prizes recognize lifetime achievements in medicine, chemistry, physics, literature, economics and peace, and Sweden is a paragon among progressive, social democracies, there is another side to Sweden and the Nobels that warrants a closer look.
Amy Goodman and other Right Livelihood Award Laureates arrive in Stockholm
The Right Livelihood Awards (RLA) festivities are beginning in Stockholm, Sweden. Joining Amy are her sister RLA Laureates Krishnammal Jagannathan, Asha Hagi, and Monika Hauser.
Chevron in the White House
President-elect Barack Obama introduced his principal national-security Cabinet selections to the world Monday and left no doubt that he intends to start his administration on a war footing. Perhaps the least well known among them is retired Marine Gen. James Jones, Obama’s pick for national security adviser. The position is crucial—think of the power that Henry Kissinger wielded in Richard Nixon’s White House. A look into who James Jones is sheds a little light on the Obama campaign’s promise of “Change We Can Believe In.”
Tutu, Obama and the Middle East
As President-elect Barack Obama focuses on the meltdown of the U.S. economy, another fire is burning: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You may not have heard much lately about the disaster in the Gaza Strip. That silence is intentional: The Israeli government has barred international journalists from entering the occupied territory.
An Army of $15.5 Million
Source: Wall Street Journal (sub req'd), January 7, 2009The Chicago-based ad firm Leo Burnett "has agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle charges that it over-billed the U.S. Army for work on its 'Army of One' campaign," while still claiming that it "believes the government's claims are without merit." Leo Burnett is charged with inflating its expenses on the Army account, by billing for work done by its Internet division as if the division were an independent subcontractor and by excluding "lower cost smaller subcontractors [when] proposing, negotiating and billing its hourly rate in 2000 and 2001." Details of the over-billing were provided by two former Leo Burnett employees who became whistleblowers and filed suit against the firm in 2004. Leo Burnett worked on the "lucrative account" for five years, attempting "to craft a campaign that would help stop shortfalls in the Army's recruiting and retention targets, which were being hampered by the Iraq war." Leo Burnett is part of the Publicis Groupe communications giant; Interpublic Group's McCann-Erickson now has the Army contract. "This isn't the first time a Madison avenue firm has become embroiled in an over-billing scandal," notes the Wall Street Journal. In 2002, WPP's Ogilvy & Mather paid $1.8 million to settle charges that it had over-billed the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
Hot Air Confuses the Climate Debate
Source: Willamette Week (Portland, Oregon), January 7, 2009
Reporter Dave Maza looks at Arthur B. Robinson of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, a man long "in the vanguard of a small but vocal and persistent collection of scientists, industry advocates and commentators who dismiss human culpability for climate change. ... Robinson's critics say his analysis is simplistic, but it remains persuasive a decade later with powerful policymakers like U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a visible and effective player in blocking a bill to limit greenhouse-gas emissions last fall. 'The influence Robinson and the others have is to muddy the waters and delay action on global warming,' says Sheldon Rampton, research director for the Center for Media and Democracy, a nonprofit organization that promotes media literacy. 'I thought he was thoroughly discredited years ago,' Rampton says. 'But the global-warming skeptics certainly haven’t given up. And they seem willing to promote anyone who can be half-plausibly sold as an expert.' Robinson's views have been cited on Fox News, MSNBC and other national newscasts, such as Exposed: The Climate of Fear, an hourlong special report in 2007 by CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck. The report relied heavily on Robinson's findings to attack former Vice President Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth."
CORE Shills Still Pushing for Drill, Baby, Drill
Source: Deseret News (Utah), December 31, 2008The industry-funded former civil rights group Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) continues to bash environmentalists, to the benefit of the energy industry. In July 2008, CORE, the conservative High Impact Leadership Coalition (HILC) and the pro-drilling front group Americans for American Energy pushed for increased domestic oil and gas production, under the banner "stop the war on the poor." Now, CORE and HILC have a campaign called "don't freeze us out," which supports "a Bush administration auction in Utah of oil and gas leases, some near national parks." Environmentalists, including Robert Redford, are urging President-elect Barack Obama to overturn the already-completed auction. CORE's Niger Innis vowed, "We are not going to stand by as Robert Redford tries to slow the flow of home heating fuel from the Rockies and drive up home heating prices to millions of Americans in his lust for environmental headlines." Innis "also recently appeared at a press conference in Washington ... in support of the Americans for American Energy Act sponsored by Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah." CORE has received funding from ExxonMobil.
The Holes in Israels Web 2.0 Propaganda
Source: Haaretz (Israel), January 3, 2009"To gain greater international support for Israel Defense Forces operations in the Gaza Strip," Israeli Foreign Minister (and candidate for Prime Minister) Tzipi Livni directed the Foreign Ministry to lead "an aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign." In addition to meetings with foreign officials and interviews with international media, Israeli officials are posting videos to YouTube and conducting "press conferences" via the microblogging site Twitter. The Israeli military described one of its YouTube videos as a bomb attack on "a Hamas truck carrying dozens of Grad rockets." Yet human rights groups say the truck belonged to a local resident, who was moving equipment out of his workshop, after the house next to it was bombed. Ahmed Samur, the person who says the bombed vehicle was his, told Haaretz, "These were not Hamas [who were killed], they were our children." BBC News writes that "the incident shows how an apparently definitive piece of video can turn into something much more doubtful." Doubts have also been raised about the Israeli Foreign Ministry's changing graph of the number of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel. Still, according to the BBC, "Israel appears to think its [PR] efforts are working," to "justify the air attacks" and "show that there is no humanitarian calamity in Gaza."
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