I was listening to the Thom Hartmann program on the way into work this morning and Thom was interviewing Phil Donahue and he talked about how it was like working for MSNBC back in 2002 during the run-up to the war in Iraq. Phil told how GE, the owner of NBC at the time, had ordered the MSBNC producers that for every 'liberal' guest interviewed, they needed to find and put on the air at least TWO 'conservative' guests in order to make sure that a 'balanced' view-point was offered because they truly believed that if left to their own devices, the general public tended to be overly-influenced by liberal arguments and so they needed that 2:1 ratio to assure that there would at least be the perception that they were trying to maintain a neutral tone in their programming. His contention was that the White House and the corporate media was so worried that if given equal time, that under no circumstances would the average American support going to war against a country that was not an obvious threat to America, and therefore it was absolutely mandatory that the news coverage, both of the events leading up to the war and war itself once it started, be 'managed' so as to avoid what happened during the later stages of the Vietnam War. It was at that point that Bush ordered that NO press would be allowed to cover the unloading of coffins at Dover AFB nor would they be permitted to cover the military funerals of servicemen and women killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And it's still going on today. The talking heads on the Sunday morning news shows are all in support of another war in Iraq and the continued 'managing' of the news by the corporate media remains a reality. A case-in-point; did any of the Sunday morning news shows report even one line about the fact that 400,000+ people were marching in the streets of New York City in support of action to address global climate change?
Of course if 3 or 4 tea-baggers walk around with signs denigrating the Commander in Chief or are taped with AK-47's over their shoulders or 9mm Glocks strapped to their belts, now that's NEWS that will get a top slot on a least a couple of the big cable news networks.
OCU
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