reinform.org

Media and the Death of Journalism
- quotes and thoughts about the media today
Disappearing News
Fake News (and we're paying for it with our tax dollars) - Amy Goodman
More about Fake News (and what you can do about it)
Consumer Beware: Fake news will continue
Media Matters for America - an invaluable online watchdog of American media.
Why Media Ownership Matters - Amy Goodman
Corporate Controlled Media - Media Reform Information Center
Media Reform - an incredibly damning and challenging speech by Bill Moyers
Media Watchdog Links

Who owns the media and why is their a problem with this? A crash course in corporate control.
It's unbelievable that this ever made it to the air! click here: snl_tv_funhouse

Recommended Reading:
News Flash by Bonnie Anderson
Bad News by Tom Fenton

Reinform.org strongly suggests watching William Rivers Pitt - the fourth video set down on this page: http://www.truthout.org/multimedia.htm

Quotes:
"If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism." - Hunter S. Thompson

"We Report. You Decide." - Fox News Channel motto

"Fox was measurably more one-sided than the other networks, and Fox journalists were more opinionated on the air. ... In the degree to which journalists are allowed to offer their own opinions, Fox stands out. Across the programs studied, nearly seven out of ten stories (68%) included personal opinions from Fox's reporters -- the highest of any outlet studied by far. ... Fox journalists were even more prone to offer their own opinions in the channel's coverage of the war in Iraq. There 73% of the stories included such personal judgments. On CNN the figure was 2%, and on MSNBC, 29%. The same was true in coverage of the Presidential election, where 82% of Fox stories included journalist opinions, compared to 7% on CNN and 27% on MSNBC." - Project for Excellence in Journalism

"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours." - Hunter S. Thompson

"I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee. We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people." - Bill Moyers, Final PBS "Now" Episode, Dec. 17, 2004

Disappearing News

When listening to a local radio host that is given to picking and reading more obscure news from the AP wire, I learned yesterday that hundreds of protestors gathered In Brussels to throw eggs and beer bottles at the residence housing President Bush during his stay in Belgium. The report went on to say that police in full riot gear stood by and did nothing as the acts of protest continued - for three hours. I could find no other reference to this event in any American media - not even on the "liberal" NPR.

A similar thing happened in London during Bush's November 2003 visit. 200,000 jammed the streets to protest our President. A friend living in England called and asked excitedly, "Did you see 'em? Did you see the protests?!"

No. We didn't see any protests. And we didn't read about them in our newspapers or hear about them on our radio stations.

Something is wrong when the "balanced news" that we're delivered is so obviously lopsided - erring toward the side that has been proven time and again to be lying to us (or "acting on faulty information"). Something is wrong when the news we get kowtows to an administration that will go to any extreme necessary to accomplish its agenda - no matter how damaging its nice-sounding initiatives may be to our families, our children, our education system, our jobs, our environment, our foreign relations. And our mainstream "liberal media" sits quietly by and allows all of this to happen without so much as a peep to the American public.

How can we be responsible citizens, acting to protect the values that this Nation was founded upon, when we are uniformed/misinformed citizens? If you think about it, we're starting to look awfully similar to a Fascist state.

Here's the call to action: Contact the media and request that we be allowed to experience real journalism, not homogenized information that has been sanitized for the Administration's protection. Then use the internet to find foreign news sources that are more apt to dispense complete, unfiltered information. Compare what we are doing as a country to the values that we profess to be founded on - and act accordingly.

Recommended reading: "Bad News" by Tom Fenton (former CBS field reporter on the demise of network journalism) click cover on left to order online

- Tim Nyberg, LiberalWare.com host

Not Necessarily the News
By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
March 15, 2005
online at http://www.alternet.org/story/21493/

Editor's note: The following is an edited transcript of a Democracy Now! interview with PRwatch.org's John Stauber and Pulitzer-winning reporter Laurie Garrett. For the full transcript go to Democracy Now!

Yesterday, The New York Times featured an extensive front-page investigation detailing the extent that pre-packaged news releases – produced by the federal government – are being used by television stations all across the country.

The article reports that at least 20 federal agencies – including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau – have distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years. Many were then broadcast on local stations without crediting the government as the source of the information.

The article goes on to state that "the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations." Later the article says that "some reports were produced to support the administration's most cherished policy objectives like regime change in Iraq and Medicare reform. ... They often feature quote, unquote "interviews" with senior administration officials in which questions are scripted and answers rehearsed. Critics are excluded as are any hints of controversy, waste or mismanagement."

Here is an example of a video news release produced by the State Department:

Reporter: The televised images from Baghdad prompted celebrations from Iraqi Americans all across the United States. They seemed to revel in the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, as much as they did in Baghdad. In suburban Detroit, hundreds of Iraqi Americans marched triumphantly through the streets. The community of Dearborn is home to America's largest Arab community. On Warren Avenue people chanted, "No more Saddam," as they honked horns and waved Iraqi and American flags.

Iraqi American 1: We love the United States! We love America! They help us!

Iraqi American 2: Yes!

Reporter: In this Kansas City cafe, Iraqi Americans watch the historic events on TV.

Iraqi American 3: I'm very, very happy. I said, thank you, Bush. Thank you, U.S.A. I love Bush, I love U.S.A., because they do that for Iraqi people's freedom.

Reporter: At the Arab-American Center in San Jose, California:

Iraqi American 4: To see him toppled and destroyed, it's very gratifying. It's very gratifying to all of the Iraqis.

Reporter: At this Mid-Eastern market in Denver, Colorado:

Iraqi American 5: I never heard anybody who said he wants to see Saddam stay so they all want Saddam to go.

Reporter: For Iraqis living in the U.S., the nearly quarter century-long nightmare in their homeland is now drawing closer to the end.

Amy Goodman: A video news release produced by the State Department. On the phone us with from Madison, Wisconsin, John Stauber whose organization, PR Watch, has been tracking the rise of government- and corporate-produced news for years. Welcome to Democracy Now!, John.

John Stauber: Hi, Amy. It's a pleasure to be on.

Amy Goodman: It's good to have you with us. This is a major piece in the Times. They have got the frames of video news releases front and center in yesterday's New York Times. Headline: "Under Bush, A New Age Of Prepackaged News." You have been following this kind of, I think you could call, selling, whether it's corporations or government, for a long time.

John Stauber: I was absolutely elated to see The New York Times front page coverage with the inside spread. I would urge everyone watching or listening to read that article. We link to it off of our web site at prwatch.org. In the more than 10 years that I have been investigating and reporting on the widespread use of public relations as news, there's never, ever been a story like this. This widespread use of fake news, we're talking thousands of stories a year. This is a billion dollar sub-industry of the P.R. industry has been going on for 20 years, and this is the first mainstream media expose of any length and depth about it.

Amy Goodman: So let's get into how these end up on local newscasts.

John Stauber: Well, it's like this. First of all, we're talking about fake news. These are news stories done by journalists, but these are journalists who now work for public relations firms employed by the State Department, employed by pharmaceutical companies, and they're producing news stories, video news releases, which are provided free to TV networks and TV stations, and are then aired by TV networks and news producers as if they were news, often as if they were produced locally by the station. And what this is, actually, is propaganda, because these are not news stories. They look like news stories, but they have a bias in favor of a political program or an ideology or a product. And the networks and stations that air these, and we're talking about thousands of these produced a year, are engaging simply in plagiarism and fraud, fraud perpetrated on their viewers, saying this is news when it's not news. It's all provided. To follow up on some critical points that Laurie was making earlier, what's going on here is that TV news directors and networks are not only passing on fake news and propaganda, but that so-called "news hole," all of that time that could be used to actually report news is being filled up with this fake news and propaganda. And The New York Times piece really, really puts the wood to the Bush administration for their massive spending, a quarter of a billion dollars in just the last four years on P.R. spin and propaganda. You know, we need a full scale investigation of how that money has been spent, but actually, that's just the tip of the iceberg, when you consider that most of these are coming from corporations.

Amy Goodman: Couldn't you also argue that people would have gotten a sense of where these were coming from earlier, if the actual newscasts didn't look a lot like this anyway? I mean, you have a Pentagon report where they're all saying, "Welcome, America," without any countering point of view. Isn't that often what we got anyway, and it really is hard to distinguish. This is what's frightening. The VNR, the video news release from the Pentagon, from a standard report, and maybe that's even worse, a report that so-called was produced independent of the government.

Laurie Garrett: One of the things that happens a lot in the local news is, since – again, they have to have a high profit return on their local newscast, and that's hard to do if you are spending a lot of money sending reporters out to do slick, well-produced stories. But you could take a produced story like this, the one you just saw about Iraq or the one about the Transportation Safety Agency, and you can pull out the audio of the fake reporter and put in audio of your own reporter, voicing over the same footage with basically the same slant and the same construct of the editing of the video, and it sounds like – and if you are sitting there in Memphis, Tennessee, watching this on your TV, or in Oakland, California, or wherever you might be, to you – it seems like a locally-produced, legitimate news story. And this is true both for things coming from the government and also it has been true for a long time, for corporate spin releases on specific corporate products, especially the pharmaceutical industry.

Amy Goodman: Looking at the piece inside, they have a photograph of Karen Ryan, the so-called reporter in several of the government produced segments. "As she cringes at the phrase, 'covert propaganda.' These are words for dictators and spies, and yet they have attached themselves to her like a pair of handcuffs," the Times writes. "Not long ago, Ryan was a much-sought-after so-called reporter for news segments produced by the federal government. A journalist at ABC and PBS, who became a P.R. consultant, Ryan worked on about a dozen reports for seven federal agencies in 2003 and 2004. She was surprised by the number of stations that were willing to run her government segments without any editing or acknowledgement of origin. As proud as she says she is of her work, she did not hesitate even for a second when asked if she would have broadcast one of her government reports if she were a local news director. She said, 'Absolutely not.'"

John Stauber: Well, to use her own words this is covert propaganda, and the fact that when she puts on her journalist hat, she says, "I wouldn't air the fake news that I produce through my P.R. firm," really underlines that. Karen Ryan has sort of become the poster child over the last year, of this problem, but there's – here's what's happening. The people like Karen Ryan, the public relations professionals who usually, by the way, come out of journalism and go into P.R. because there's a lot more money to be made, say, "Hey, you know, we're P.R. people. Of course, we produce these. It's up to the news directors and producers to label them as provided footage." But they know. They know perfectly well that virtually no news director in this country, no producer at a TV station in this country, labels this as provided footage. They should, but if they label that footage, and they said, "This is a video news release provided by the State Department," "This is a video news release provided by the Transportation Security Administration," "This is a video news release provided by Monsanto," that would destroy it. That would expose it. So, what's going on here is that the public relations industry, the billion-dollar industry of video news releases knows that the TV news directors and producers are not going to label these, and there's a very simple solution here. Label it. They should be labeling it. The Radio, TV, and News Directors' Association has for decades now turned a blind eye to this, and it clearly violates their ethics code. In The New York Times article, they're muttering about strengthening their ethics code, but that won't matter, because they don't care. There's so much money to be made or saved, if you will, by replacing real news on TV with fake news, that this will continue to be a widespread problem unless there's a mobilization of outraged news viewers who demand that the F.C.C. step in and enforce standards which would seem to indicate that this is in violation of the F.C.C. standards, and then I think the media reform movement is also going to have to figure out how to hold TV news directors and producers' feet to the fire, because they're not going to want to give this up. This – we're talking billions of dollars here in producing these and in airing them instead of going out and producing real news.

Laurie Garrett: You know, one of the things that I found, Amy and John, I'd love to know your sense of this, as well, but one of the things I found as a visiting professor at a lot of graduate journalism departments around the country over the last few years is, I have seen this disturbing trend where I will ask students in the room, "How many of you want someday to work at a major newspaper, be a Woodward or Bernstein at The Washington Post or be a network television correspondent." A couple of hands go up. Then I look the at rest of the room. "Well, what is it you all want to do?" and they all say "public relations." So, the lines are getting very, very blurred, even at the level of the basic training in journalism schools.

Amy Goodman: Well, aren't P.R. schools and journalism schools also merging in some places?

Laurie Garrett: They have merged. I mean, let's face it. And when you ask the students why public relations as opposed to journalism, often they would say to me, "Well, there really isn't that much of a distinction, but you can make more money on the P.R. side."

Amy Goodman: Well, isn't the scandal around Jeff Gannon or whatever the guy's name is, who was in the White House using a false name and asking puffball questions, isn't this – how, John, would you connect this to this expose on VNRs? I mean, you have got these P.R. people who aren't even using their own names in their reports, who are using fake names, for example, the TSA so-called reporter?

John Stauber: I consider the Jeff Gannon story a major scandal, and certainly, that deserves much deeper examination than it's gotten. But I think when we're talking these fake news stories, it's an even bigger scandal, and here's why. Most Americans get most of their news, unfortunately, from television. We know that TV is the worst source to receive news. For instance, back in the first Gulf War, the Hill & Knowlton P.R. firm produced 20, at least, video news releases promoting the war. No one has gotten a hold of those to examine them. A reporter from The Progressive investigated this afterwards, and the P.R. firm refused to turn them over. We also know from the University of Amherst study back then, and there have been other studies that have corroborated this with other situations since, that the American public, who watched the most TV coverage of that Gulf War, thought they knew the most, actually knew less than most people who were getting their news through newspapers, for instance, and yet were the strongest supporters of the war. So, the bottom line here is that if you are watching war on television, with all of the propaganda and video news releases that go along with it, you are actually being misinformed, and yet you're more likely to support the war. Television is the number one source of so-called news for most Americans, and a huge proportion of that is fake news.

Amy Goodman: Now, isn't this a violation of the Smith-Mundt Act after World War II, that you're not supposed to propagandize your own population? You know, it's why we can't hear Voice of America in the United States?

John Stauber: Well, it would appear to be, and there are other acts, going all the way back to the 1920s where Congress has weighed in and said that in a democracy, government propaganda is inappropriate and illegal. But the government has consistently gotten around that, and both Republican and Democratic administrations and politicians have hired P.R. professionals and used spin and used propaganda, but I think the exciting thing now is that I hope this New York Times expose in the context of all of the other exposés going on and in the context of the growing media reform movement will really incite a mobilization where, through F.C.C. regulations and through grassroots mobilization, we can get rid of these video news releases.

Amy Goodman: I just want to bring in one thing, since we only have 30 seconds. In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger [is] also coming under criticism for producing video news releases. Last week, his communications director, Rob Stutzman, defended the so-called VNR, saying it's just like any other press release, only it's on video.

John Stauber: Well, that would be true if the press release constituted verbatim, for instance, most of the front page of The New York Times. The difference here is that they're handing a fake news story, and it's being aired as a real news story. It's not being used for background information. It's taking the place of the news.

Amy Goodman: And we're paying for it.

John Stauber: Yeah. In the case of Governor Schwarzenegger -

Amy Goodman: Taxpayer dollars.

John Stauber: – and the Bush administration, that's public money.

© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/21493/

Fight Back! Get Active! Click to http://www.stopfakenews.org

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More About Fake News - information from www.stopfakenews.org

What are government-funded fake newscasts?
Under President Bush, at least 20 different federal agencies have produced "prepackaged, ready-to-serve" reports that are distributed to hundreds of television stations, such as Fox 13 in Memphis, TN or WCIA 3 in Champaign, IL. These reports are often broadcast on television news programs without disclosing that the segments are produced and paid for by the US federal government.
Source: The New York Times, 3/13/2005, "Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged News".

How much public money has the Bush administration spent on this propaganda programming?
The investigation by The New York Times showed that the Bush administration has spent unprecedented sums of money on these fake news programs and has already paid PR firms more than $254 million to create this programming.
Source: The New York Times, 3/13/2005, "Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged News".

What does the independent Government Accountability Office (G.A.O.) say about these government-produced fake news segments?
In three separate reports, the G.A.O. has criticized the Bush administration's government-made "news" programs. The GAO has concluded that these reports may constitute "covert propaganda." The GAO concluded that Bush administration agencies "designed and executed" these reports "to be indistinguishable from news stories produced by the private sector television news organizations."
Source: The New York Times, 3/13/2005, "Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged News"; The Washington Post, 1/9/2005, "Drug Control Office Faulted For Issuing Fake News Tapes".

Is it legal for the Bush administration to use taxpayer money to advocate for its political agenda?
No. Many of the fake news segments produced and disseminated by the Bush administration violate laws that prohibit the government from using taxpayer dollars for political lobbying activities. The GAO has concluded that a number of Bush administration television segments misused public funds and "violated the publicity or propaganda prohibitions."
Source: Government Accountability Office, 1/4/05, "Office of National Drug Control Policy--Video News Release, B-303495" (citing 31 U.S.C. 1341 and Pub. L. No. 108-199).

Is it legal for television stations to air these fake news reports?
No. If television stations air programs that are paid for by the federal government, the stations must disclose that information at the time they air the program. The GAO reports indicate that a great number of stations aired these programs and did not disclose that they were produced and paid for by the government. Moreover, the FCC has already concluded that "listeners and viewers are entitled to know by whom they are being persuaded." This failure to disclose the source of the programming violates federal laws including the Radio Act and Section 317 of the Communications Act.
Source: FCC, 12/22/2000, "Enforcement Letter" (citing the Radio Act and 47 U.S.C. 317); FCC, "Payola and Sponsorship Identification" (citing 47 U.S.C. 317).

Fight Back! Get Active! Sign a petition to the FCC: Click to http://www.stopfakenews.org

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Consumer Beware! - Bush administration intends to continue the production of faux news.

Consumer beware! Or, should I say, BUYER beware (since we are paying for this fake news with our tax dollars)? The Bush administration seems to acknowledge and even joke about the Faux News that it produces to disseminate propaganda to the American public...

The following is an excerpt from a Maureen Dowd column:
(entire column online at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/17/opinion/17dowd.html)

The White House isn't backing off its plan to replace real news with faux news. The Bushies created their own reality to convince the country that Iraq was a threat to U.S. security. So even though the war has given birth to some of the very evils it was supposed to fix - like more recruits for Osama, and Saddam's formerly sealed weapons' falling into terrorists' hands - Bushies like the results of their war.

Now the White House has its own gulag: C.I.A. agents snatch suspects and fly them to places like Egypt and Syria to be strung up in chains and tortured. And The Times reported yesterday that at least 26 deaths of prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan may be criminal homicides. So it also has its own Soviet-style propaganda campaign.

At his news conference yesterday, the president bristled a bit when a reporter reminded him that after it was revealed that his administration was paying columnists to shill for agency programs, Mr. Bush had ordered that such tactics cease.

But, as the reporter noted, the administration is still using government money to produce stories about the government that are broadcast with no disclosure that the government is producing them.

David Barstow and Robin Stein wrote in The Times on Sunday that at least 20 agencies had made and distributed fake news segments to local TV stations; the administration spent $254 million in its first four years to buy self-aggrandizing puffery from P.R. firms.

The president joked that he could tack on an "I'm George W. Bush and I approved this disclaimer." But then he said he wouldn't - that it was up to local stations to reveal the truth.

He said his Justice Department had found that the fake news programs are "within the law so long as they're based upon facts, not advocacy."

And, of course, this is a White House that never makes up facts to suit its purposes or sell its programs. It serves its propaganda baldfaced, with no hint of its real agenda. - Maureen Dowd

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Recommended Reading:
News Flash by Bonnie Anderson (click on book cover to purchase online)

While talking heads debate the media’s alleged conservative or liberal bias, award-winning journalist Bonnie Anderson knows that the problem with television news isn’t about the Left versus the Right-- it’s all about the money. From illegal hiring practices to ethnocentric coverage to political cheerleading, News Flash exposes how American broadcast conglomerates’ pursuit of the almighty dollar consistently trumps the need for fair and objective reporting. Along the way to the bottomline, the proud tradition of American television journalism has given way to an entertainment-driven industry that’s losing credibility and viewers by the day.

As someone who has worked as both a broadcast reporter and a network executive, Anderson details how the networks have been co-opted by bottom-line thinking that places more value on a telegenic face than on substantive reporting. Network executives—the real power in broadcast journalism—are increasingly employing tactics and strategies from the entertainment industry. They "cast" reporters based on their ability to "project credibility," value youth over training and experience, and often greenlight coverage only if they can be assured that it will appeal to advertiser-friendly demographics.

Reviews
"Anderson documents clearly and convincingly, in a professional's crisp and clear voice, the sad slide of television news at the hands of bureaucrats who think of news only in terms of profits and ratings, who value good looks and smooth delivery over truth. If television news is to play the vital role in democracy that it should, journalists, producers and executives must heed Ms. Anderson's call for a return to the ethics and high principles of television journalism."
--Terry Anderson, former Associated Press Middle East bureau chief; former U.S. hostage in Lebanon, and author, Den of Lions

"This is a book told by a journalistic idealist that is full of sound and fury, signifying something truly important. To understand why journalism too often falls short, and why this failure is costly, read this searing book"
--Ken Auletta, media critic, New Yorker magazine; author, Backstory: Inside the Business of News

“News Flash is more frightening than a Stephen King novel. It meticulously chronicles how ou r nation’s television news has morphed into brazen show biz, how good journalism fell victim to good looks, how serving public interest gave way to placating corporate greed. This is a riveting account by a veteran television reporter and network executive who watched it all happen from the inside. Bonnie Anderson exposes the shameful way that network executives routinely give token attention to ethnic, racial and gender diversity yet quietly keep white males in virtual control of the key jobs in television news. All the while, our evening news programs blissfully - and arrogantly - ignore the information needs of a rapidly changing America.”
--Juan Gonzalez, columnist, New York Daily News; president, The National Association of Hispanic Journalists

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Recommended Reading:
Bad News by Tom Fenton (click on book cover to purchase online)

In his long journalistic experience as the senior European correspondent for CBS News, Tom Fenton has reported on everything from the fall of the Shah of Iran to the movements of al Qaeda throughout Europe -- a story he was tracking before 9/11. And in the three years since that fateful day, he has come to a sobering realization: Our once-noble news media -- and network TV news in particular -- have abdicated their responsibility to the American people, and endangered us in the process.

As Fenton points out, much of the United States still depends on the networks for most of its information about the world. But after the fall of the Soviet Union, the networks gutted their news-gathering operations -- just as the old Cold War status quo was shattering -- leaving behind an unstable and violent new world order. Once a public service, the network news was commandeered by its corporate parents as a cash cow. In-depth reporting on critical issues was replaced with saturation coverage of sensationalistic crime stories and simpleminded "news you can use." Even as genocide spread through Africa -- and Islamic terror festered in the Middle East -- international reporting disappeared almost entirely from the airwaves. And Americans were left uninformed, unable to judge the accuracy of politically biased stories (on both sides of the spectrum), and utterly unprepared for the war on terror about to descend on their doorstep.

In Bad News, Tom Fenton offers a fiery indictment of just how far "the news" has fallen. As a frequent voice in the wilderness himself -- who fought in vain to interest CBS in an Osama bin Laden interview in the 1990s -- Fenton reveals a news-gathering environment gutted by corporate bottom-lining bottom-feeders, staffed by dilatory producers and executives (who dismissed important stories as depressing or obscure), and dangerously dependent on images and information gathered by third-party sources. In hard-hitting interviews with Dan Rather, Peter Jennings, and Tom Brokaw, he exposes how even the anchors themselves believed they were outlandishly compensated -- while quality coverage was being slashed. And he charges that the news media must lose its entertainment-industry mindset and reestablish its role as a keeper of the public trust.

"This is not just a book," writes Fenton. "This is the beginning of a campaign to galvanize America. We need more and better news. Our lives depend on it."

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Why media ownership matters
By Amy Goodman and David Goodman
4/3/05

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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. click on book cover to order

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Corporate Controlled Media
In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly. In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote "in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media" -- controlling almost all of America's newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies. This was greeted with skepticism at the time. When the 6th edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world's largest media corporation.

In 2004, Bagdikian's revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations -- Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) -- now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric's NBC is a close sixth. Source: Media Reform Information Center

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MEDIA REFORM Bill Moyers just gave one of the most revealing, truth-filled, damning, challenging, and brilliantly effective speeches that I have ever heard at the National Conference for Media Reform yesterday (5/16/05 - it was on CSPAN). I highly recommend reading the transcript, listening to the audio or watching the video of the speech.

Take ACTION - sign a petition to get the Corporation for Public Broadcasting back on track - click here.

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Media Watchdog Links:
Media Matters for America
a Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.
Take Back the Media - Who owns the media?
FreePress.net - involving the public in media policymaking
MediaChannel.org - the global network for democratic media
Media Reform Information Center - resources on Media Reform
Operation Truth
Vets fighting a new war: to get the truth about Iraq to the public
MichaelMoore.com
Filmmaker and author Michael Moore's web site
whereisthemoney.org
Enron-style looting of the U.S. Treasury and what it means to you.
StopFakeNews.org - The Bush Administration is spending your tax money creating propaganda for United States' Citizens' consumption.
OpenAirwaves.org - The Center for Public Integrity - Investigative Journalism in the Public Interest
Media Alliance - Promoting excellence, ethics, diversity and accountability in the interests of peace, justice and social responsibility
Media Access Project - Non-Profit Public Interest Telecommunications Law Firm
Media Transparency - the Money behind the Media

Get informed. BBC offers REAL news - worldwide, with an integrity and objectiveness that American media has long ago sold off (with its soul) to corporate greed.
Click the logo to listen online.

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