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Federal regulators are looking into allegations that a number of military analysts failed to disclose their ties to the Pentagon when they appeared on television to discuss the Iraq war, according to U.S. News & World Report.
“In its letter signed by the chief of the investigations and hearings division enforcement bureau, the FCC suggests that TV stations and networks may have violated two sections of the Communications Act of 1934 by not identifying the ties to the Pentagon that their military analysts had,” the magazine says in its Washington Whispers column.
The Wall Street Journal says an FCC spokesman confirmed the letters, but wouldn’t otherwise comment on the investigation, which appears to have grown out of a New York Times report that said the Pentagon was using former commanders and current contractors to influence public opinion.
– By Mike Carney
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This vital revelation of the poisoning of objective media non-fiction in the U.S., I suggest, is the tip of an iceberg that despite its massive bulk and threat to the major ‘lanes of communication’ has gone largely unreported for over five decades. As long ago as 1972, the author of The Boys on the Bus accused the corporate monopoly CEOs newsmen of treating the president as an imperial figure; his charge has largely been ignored since that time. But there can be by scientific proof no greater threat to the independence of “news” than the failure
to disclose the philosophical and hierarchical bona fides (or lack thereof) of those permitted to speak and not–for whatever reason–refused an ean earned place at the public microphone. The neocon bureucratic and eexecutive tsars of Washington have been accused now for years of creating or referring to an ‘alternate universe”, while ignoring reality space-time. That fantasy
construct has a name that is well-known and familiar. It is called “the public policy”. Quite simply, the man who fails to deal with reality–a postmodernist of whatever stripes–wants to get away with some crime against the persons who live in the real. So he makes up an excuse, a rationalization, a set of anti-concepts and replaces something real with his version of a new universe–of whose mysteries he is the
inerrable godlike annunciator. This is micro-controlling dictatorism practiced on a concrete level of orders, misevaluations and power-seeking. The suborning of expert witnesses,
the use of false witnesses, the introduction of secret partisans–all such fraud is as dangerous as the salting of fake Establishment/tsardom items masked up as “news”–attested facts, standards-based evaluations or science. because either way, the informed citizen can no longer access true information; instead, he/she is restricted to faked, false, erroneous data dn unreal analyses delivered by those abetting the tsar-in-chief, formerly a president or an Administration’s public dictators, formerly protectors of individuals’ rights but now slavish believers in the public-sector pseudo-religion being fed by would-be power-monopolists to a betrayed citizenry’s minds one mind at a time.
If we saw a bona fided representative of a party being bodily dragged off a public podium by amed thugs using force, any citizen or group of citizens would know what had happened–the silencing of an independent voice. Why is it so hard for US citizens to see that a monopoly over airtime held by non bona-fided thugs of fraud results in the same crime–the silencing of any independent voice? It has been happening for decades. In academia, in news, in publishing,
in fictional filmmaking and theater, in hiring at corporations, on every level of government, the man who stands for realism and individual rights faces insuperable barriers. To speak for American ideas such as individual life, liberty and the pursuit of selfish happiness is to commit economic suicide. False headlines, echoing of extremist myths, attitudes mongering misusing unearned value terms and the spouting of mantras of false beliefs, lies and slanders have become the be-all and end-all of the choking off of public dissent by the 85% right-wing extremists of the conservative media dictatorship. What will it take to awaken sane minds to their own virtual enslavement by electronically-equipped gatekeeper tsars reducing all other minds to the status of threatened wage-slaves and rightless obedients of an empire of neocon elitist thieves and would-be dictators? When will those of us who know the truth be permitted to speak to the public at large–not to Letters to the Editor columns alone?
By Danny Schechter
As millions of homes are foreclosed upon, as unemployment grows and inflation mounts, it is time to understand the origins of the crisis and the need to fight for economic justice.
Written by veteran media critic and Emmy winner Rory O'Connor, Shock Jocks features unsparing profiles of the ten worst conservative radio talkers in America, including Michael Savage, Bill O' Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Don Imus and the rest.