Monday, August 31, 2009

Media Won't Go There


As Mark Crispin Miller continues to emphasize in his series of public addresses, "Twilight Time," the commercial media are not going to duplicate the depth and honesty of reporting on Watergate, not for Iran Contra, and not for Torturegate--two arguably far worse scandals than Watergate was.

Miller cites the same evidence unveiled in "Mockingbird: The Subversion of The Free Press by the CIA" and Carl Bernstein's "The CIA and the Media."

Miller contends that the commercial media follow-up to the shocking allegations of CIA media control was so muted as to indicate one of two possible explanations for the silence. (1) The story was false, or (2) The story was true and the CIA prevailed.

Now we see yet another of the endless subsequent string of unfollowed leads and unprosecuted grovernment crimes in the unwillingness of the commercial media to hold the Obama administration accountable for not investigating and prosecuting Bush/Cheney war crimes, specifically, torture and illegal detentions. As FAIR noted in May,
media's willingness to give Cheney a platform in the debate over torture shifted the discussion away from the central issue that torture is illegal under both U.S. and international law, and focused attention instead on torture's efficacy. The media allowed Cheney to push the discussion in this direction, in large part because Cheney assured that these secret documents would show that he was right. Now that it's clear they do not, will the media outlets that gave Cheney a platform continue to let him off the hook?

It's Danny Schechter, of course, who pulls all the threads together so we can see the true fabric of the emperor's new clothes.

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