Comments for All the News That Fits—In 500 words or a Graphic at http://atlanticfreepress.com , comment 1 to 1 out of 1 comments http://atlanticfreepress.com Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:20:44 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/3923-all-the-news-that-fitsin-500-words-or-a-graphic.html#comment-5111 Brasch's argument is essentially Marxist: it assigns economic motives to group behavior. That doesn't mean it's entirely wrong, just that it's sort of one-dimensional. American journalism doesn't do what it does exclusively because American journalism thinks it will lose money if it does things differently. The most terse and accurate explanation of American journalism's behavior I've seen appears as the lead paragraph in a May 13 [u]Arizona Republic[/u] editorial titled "They Fight Our War." It says: "The single most effective thing the United States could do to help Mexico's emerging democracy prevail over drug cartels would be to legalize recreational drugs. We are not advocating that. Not now." There it is. American journalism is not blind to what's important or to what is good policy or simply to what is right. It's just that American journlism doesn't have the [i]cojones[/i] to rock the political boat. The days when [i]New York World[/i] Washington bureau chief Charles Michelson at White House press conferences was unafraid to ridicule "the White House spooksman" who spoke (i.e.: spun lies) for President Calvin Coolidge simply are no more. Today's White House journalists sit and take notes as if they were listening to a campus lecture while hideous, slimy creatures like Dana Perino spew the most fantastic and idiotic lies imaginable. The disinformation comedy has been playing, becoming wilder day by day, since the end of World War II. Now we're at the end of the rope: after more than 60 years of national policy based upon lies, unchecked by watchdog journalism, we are come to the point where only truth can save us. And the lying goes on apace. It isn't just Marxist motives that move the villains in American journalism: it is the corporate ethos, the fascist ethic which demands that everyone "go along to get along." - Cyanide Hole Sat, 17 May 2008 10:42:11 +0100