I'D RATHER NOT SAY GOOD-BYE, DAN - By Greg Palast

[Jon8503]

A good article by Greg shows what our media is like here.
Wednesday, March 9, 2005

Without his make-up, Dan looked like hell warmed over: old, defeated, yet angry. And he told our television audience something that just blew me away. Dan Rather said that American reporters may not ask tough questions about George Bush or his wars.

"It's an obscene comparison," Rather said, "but there was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around peoples' necks if they dissented. In some ways, the fear is that you will be neck-laced here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck."

Talking to another reporter, Dan told it straight about the careerism that keeps US journalists in line. "It's that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions and to continue to bore-in on the tough questions so often."

Silence as patriotism. Ugh. He confessed, "One finds oneself saying, ?I know the right question, but you know what, this is not exactly the right time to ask it." It was making him ill and he was ready to say, BASTA, enough. Suddenly, there was fire in those eyes: "It's extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted and I'm sorry to say that, up to and including this moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the current Administration revels in that, they relish and take refuge in that."

Of course, Dan said all these things to a British audience. But back in the USA, Dan had promised America he would be a good boy, a trained press puppy who would poop on the paper set down for him. He told his US audience, "George Bush is the President. He makes the decisions. He wants me to line up, just tell me where."

But CBS' million-dollar man was about to step out of line.

http://www.gregpalast.com/

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. He wants me to line up

Thuggery, skullduggery and things that go bump in the night. It's not about patriotism, it's about blatant bullying and professing that wrong is right. It's bs. Thank gawd Dan had the mind to know the difference.

[tsuki]

2. Is it really careerism that keeps "reporters" in line? Or is the

loss of multimillion dollar contracts? We have been warned since the sixties about the emergence of a beltway media. A media based, not forged in iron by a hard ass editor who questioned everything from sources to commas, but rather in a teased, blown dryed, manicured orator who could read at a sixth grade level.

Twenty-five million dollars for Hannity?

Today, I heard on CNN a report in which legislators were calling for the regulation of "blogs." According to the report, blogs were a problem in the political process. Anyone could start a blog, be a reporter and influence an election.

Start a blog and be a reporter? Influence an election? How?

Is it because "reporter" just means "who can shout the loudest?" I read, therefore, I am.

If anyone wants to control the blogs, it is those that pose as "reporters" today. No facts, all fluff, all spin from the canned corporate news clips to the multimillion dollar contracts.

[Jon8503]

4. What you are talking about is anyway to me it is scary as what

they are trying hard to do is get rid of the bloggers. I think the MSM is seeing the result of information basically getting out that they do not want to report on. Also, the bloggers are showing the highly paid media reporters up on a lot of things.

I have seen where they are moving to really stifle the news in ways such as not being able to link to political sites, etc, not sure what all they are trying to do just yet.

[BushIsBurning]

3. Agreeed...for all his faults, Dan Rather did his best to stop Bushitler...

and ended up with the burning neckalace around his neck..

[NVMojo]

5. I'm still on Dan's side. I know a reporter who was put into a temporary

editorship of a paper owned by Liberty Publishing a few years back. He saw what was coming in the industry, kept telling everyone what was coming, saw the "corporitizing" of the media clear down to the small town papers in lucrative markets. He talked about the bastardization and prostitution of the news pages to advertising and the editorial content given over to the big corporations and the Republican Party in town. He went to a company conference of editors and delived a manifesto on the state of things, all the while, he slipped into a tunnel of alcoholism and depression. They fired him. It was a horrible thing to watch and then he fell, hard. This was a man who had covered events in Bosnia of such horror that one didn't want to imagine it.

I see him wandering the streets these days, he's been jobless for years. He reminds me of a John the Baptist, a voice crying out in the wilderness 10 years ago about what was coming with the media ...and he couldn't handle the truth of what he saw coming. Dan Rather is a victim of what this man predicted ...