Reply #169: It's not too hard to fact check these pricks... [View All]

[warren pease]

...for distortions of both commission and omission. All you really need to do is be diligent about reading the international papers online, following the news on some of the US blogs like OpEdNews and a few others, then find stories you see in both sources but that never appear in fucko US mass media.

The Sibel Edmonds saga is a classic example. So is the Blackwater trespassing trial that Scahill reported on but which will never, ever see the light of day in the US press. A third will probably be (should be) the latest Rove scandal, where he's implicated in steering the 9/11 faux investigation in the approved directions and telling Zelikow how to proceed.

I should mention that I literally haven't seen a US TV news show, a TV pundit show, a TV round table discussion or anything else like that in several years -- probably since the 2000 selection "coverage." I only know how awful it must be now because I used to work in MSM 25 or so years ago and it was obvious even then where things were heading. The whole emphasis was slowly shifting from relatively objective news gathering and reporting to propaganda and corporate shilling.

I still have several friends from that time and we talk now and then about "the good old days" and how corporate American fucked up everything it touched, including our jobs and lives.

The other obvious indicator is the incredibly inept and/or purposely obtuse garbage passing for reporting that shows up here and Buzzflash and ZDNet and on other news/info sites linked from mass media sources. Some papers still value decent writing and the ability to tell a story, but most would rather have a compliant idiot who writes what he/she's told than a good reporter who's tougher to control.

Back in the day (and I really hate that "when I was a lad..." construct, but), reporters and editors had actual skills and a decent level of professional pride. Plus, the ones who survived J-school and, particularly, the dozens of verbal ass-kickings by hard-line editors who hated sloppy work, they either improved or they didn't have a job. It was literally impossible to remain in that career and write the kind of unfocused, rambling, vanilla copy you see everywhere today. But that was then.

What's happened is the corporate communications types have thinned the herd and gotten rid of the rebels and the independent thinkers and the highly motivated people who actually still believe in the traditional role of a free press.

They've been replaced with feather-headed androids who are hired almost exclusively for their looks (TV, of course), usually have little or no journalistic background or training, love the glitz and the status of big-time US TV news, love their salaries even more, know how to take orders and keep their mouths shut and wouldn't jeopardize their plum positions for anything -- least of all some quixotic urge to practice actual journalism. They're hopeless and, although it doesn't seem possible, getting even worse.

If you haven't already compiled your own, here's an amazingly comprehensive list of links to non-US media, along with just about anything else you could want. Here's another good list, with some good research sites linked as well. And here's a few personal favorites:

Le Monde (English)

The BBC

Times of India

Scoop New Zealand

Al Jazeera


Happy scrounging.

wp