Advertisement

The news media are knocking Bush -- and propping him up

This month we’ve heard a lot of talk about journalists who got tough with President Bush. And it’s true that he has been on the receiving end of some fiercely negative media coverage in the wake of the hurricane. But the mainstream U.S. press is ill-suited to challenging the legitimacy of the Bush administration.

The country’s largest media institutions operate on a basis of enormous respect for presidential power. Major news organizations defer to that power even while venting criticisms. Overall, mass media outlets restrain the momentum of denunciations lest they appear to create instability for the Republic.

Initially, when the lethal character of Bush’s “leadership” became clear in New Orleans, the journalistic focus on federal accountability was quick to bypass the president. For several days, the national political story seemed to mostly revolve around the flak-catching FEMA director, Michael Brown, a cipher who obviously was going to be tossed overboard by the administration.

On Tuesday, the day after Brown resigned, President Bush adjusted the damage-control weaseling. “Katrina exposed serious problems in our response

The occasional media ritual of lamenting the habitual

Dan Rather caused some ripples when he spoke at a law school in New York on Sept. 19 and warned that politicians have been putting effective pressure on the corporate owners of major broadcast outlets. Summarizing his remarks, the Hollywood Reporter said that the former CBS anchor contended “there is a climate of fear running through newsrooms stronger than he has ever seen in his more than four-decade career.”

When a network TV correspondent makes noises that indicate a possible break with the corporate media establishment, I think of something that Mark Twain said: “It’s easy to quit smoking. I’ve done it hundreds of times.”

As a matter of routine, television anchors and their colleagues at the networks avidly go along with the White House and the Pentagon. When there’s a war, with rare exceptions they provide the kind of coverage that Washington officials appreciate. Long afterward, when the mania subsides, a few TV journalists may express some misgivings. But when the next war comes along, it’s back to propaganda business as usual.

Over the course of his career, Rather occasionally voiced alarm

Ayatollahs of the apocalypse

These are triumphant hours for Pat Robertson. His standing as America's senior ayatollah is becoming firmer as Billy Graham and even Jerry Falwell yield the prime-time pulpit to the smooth-tongued maestro of the Christian Coalition.

A decade ago, CNN would sooner have given half an hour's air time to the leader of North Korea, but last week, Wolf Blitzer poked a stick through the bars and nodded respectfully as Robertson raved on about the End Time:

BLITZER: "Welcome to 'LATE EDITION,' Reverend ... "

REV. PAT ROBERTSON: "Thanks, Wolf."

BLITZER: " ... thanks very much for joining us.

"I want to get to Harriet Miers in a moment, but you're a minister. You see what's going on in the world today in Pakistan, in India, Afghanistan, an earthquake, maybe 20,000 people dead, maybe twice that number; we don't have a count. Hurricanes in the United States and around the world, a tsunami a little bit less than a year or so ago in Southeast Asia. What's happening?"

Robertson rose gracefully to the challenge:

DC protest illness- Bob Fitrakis

Dear Bob

Thanks for the great article on the DC protests and Tularemia.

I will tell you that it's much more important to those of us who were also in Crawford at Camp Casey in Aug, especially the last weekend Saturday rally.

So many of us from Dallas were there that day and so many of us were sick with pneumonia like symptoms after the weekend that in the next few weeks we called it " the Camp Casey cold ".

I never gave it another thought until the DC march and Tularemia alerts. When we all read about the bio sensors going off and learned of the symptoms, lights went off for many of us as we thought back to that last week in august and the worst cold we’ve ever had !

I posted an email to a few of the "peace " lists and asked if anyone was sick  - I am also a member of the Camp Casey Alumni yahoo group and i will say that I have about 20 emails from folks that were sick and i get a few more every day ! If you would ever be interested in talking to any of the folks that were sick let me know – I’ve asked John Conyers and my own Congressman to look into it- to no avail.

Potential avian flu pandemic

Who?: Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).

What?: Immediate massive production of Avian Flu vaccine.

Why?: To prevent possible millions upon millions of deaths in the event of an epidemic.

Where?: Worldwide.

When?: As soon as PhRMA can persuade the federal government to pick up the tab to subsidize pharmaceutical manufacturers’ usual 18% profit margins or until hell freezes over.

How?: By using its firmly entrenched, all-encompassing, overwhelming lobbying influence on members of Congress and the medical profession.

SOME SOLUTIONS:

1. Strict government regulations and controls that would eliminate the pharmaceutical industry’s undue influence on members of Congress and the medical profession. A good start would be legislation that would prevent members of Congress from lobbying for the industry for a period of three years after they leave office.

2. A complete overhaul of the incomprehensible 2004 Medicare Modernization and Improvement Act.

Ohio Election Reform

With Issues 2 through 5 on the November ballot, an unprecedented opportunity is being presented to Ohio voters. With these amendments, Ohioans can choose to dispens with politices as usual, and begin to return power to the hands of Ohio voters rather than the lobbyists who have had free reign in the state capital for the last 15 years.

These issues simplify absentee voting, reduce special interest money, more fairly apportion electoral and Congressional districts, and create a bi-partisan State Board of elections. All common sense issues, and all bitterly opposed by Ohio's Republican leadership.

Their stance is that passage of these issues would lead to vote fraud and DIsenfrancise countless Ohioans. Can anyone forget the long lines, lack of voting machines, and problems with what voting machines were available, in 2004? All occured under the current system which favors the majority party. And for the last fifteen years that has been the Republican party. With electoral districts gerrymandered beyond any reasonable bounds to favor the majority party, with the corruption which has reached even into Governor Taft's office, the

What’s happening out of camera range?

By now, millions of TV viewers have seen the video numerous times on television: Two police officers are beating a man on the pavement. It’s big news -- because a camera was there.

Robert Davis, a 64-year-old retired teacher, suffered injuries during the incident on the night of Oct. 8 in New Orleans. He’s scheduled to go on trial with charges that include resisting arrest and battery on one of the police officers who beat him. But under the circumstances, the man on the receiving end of the violence got lucky.

Ordinarily, there’s no evidence to dispute the accounts provided by police officers after such violence occurs. The news media and the legal system are oriented to accept the word of uniformed authorities and discount the claims of defendants. For journalists and judges, the official story becomes The Story.

Davis’ ordeal was unusual, and caused a national uproar, because an Associated Press Television News crew happened to be near. But for every exceptional incident that exposes official misconduct to national view, there are countless deplorable events that never see the light of media day.

Pensions

AUSTIN, Texas -- The entire political world is agog: Tom DeLay indicted, Scooter Libby in danger, Karl Rove rumors abound, Miers' nomination in doo-doo. So I'm writing about ... pensions. They're just so sexy, I couldn't resist.

Of course, the word pension is a terminal turnoff for anyone under 60 -- so redolent of the blue-rinse perm set. As one whose idea of financial planning consists of playing bingo at the Safeway, I'd prefer to be out listening to reggaeton, myself. Still, when you're getting screwed, you really should know about it.

This column is part of a continuing effort to see if we can keep our eyes on the shell with the pea under it, even while some other shells, mighty flashy and colorful, are whizzing around. Our particular shell bears the fatal rubric, "You are getting screwed again."

Protect abortion rights

Yesterday the Ohio House Health committee held a hearing on House Bill 239.  This politically-motivated and dangerous bill would make it more difficult for Ohio women to obtain safe, legal abortion care by:
Eliminating funding for Medicaid and public employee health plans for abortion care for rape victims, and women whose health is at stake.
Banning public hospitals and employees from providing abortion care—except to save the life of the woman. 

This bill has no exceptions for victims of rape or incest, for women who are at risk of losing a major bodily function or organ, or in cases where there are severe fetal abnormalities that will likely result in stillbirth.

At the same time that the bill limits women's ability to exercise their legal right to choose, it doesn't provide a single penny of funding for prenatal or postnatal care that would promote healthy mothers and healthy babies.  This legislation is full of rhetoric, but does nothing to prevent unintended pregnancies or to promote healthy pregnancies.

Outrage of the Week

AUSTIN, Texas -- On one of those television gong shows that passes for journalism, the panelists used to have to pick an Outrage of the Week. Then, each performer would wax indignant about his or choice for 60 seconds or so. If someone asked me to name the Outrage of the Week about now, I'd have a coronary. How could anyone possibly choose?

I suppose the frontrunner is the anti-torture amendment. Sen. John McCain proposed an amendment to the military appropriations bill that would prohibit "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of prisoners in the custody of the U.S. military.

This may strike you as a "goes without saying" proposition -- the amendment passed the Senate 90 to nine. The United States has been signing anti-torture treaties under Democrats and Republicans for at least 50 years. But the Bush administration actually managed to find some weasel words to create a loophole in this longstanding commitment to civilized behavior.

Pages

Subscribe to ColumbusFreePress.com RSS