No Questions Asked

I don’t know how many of you are familiar with Free Press, but it is an excellent organization that monitors news and pushes for media reform. I mention the organization in Chapter 8 of No Questions Asked as a reference source for better understanding media ownership.

The Free Press recently announced that despite repeated attempts to stop propaganda from appearing in news broadcasts, news stations continue to present video news releases (VNR) provided by PR firms or the federal government as independent sources of news. In other words, the American public is being fed information in what they believe are unbiased, accurate news reports when in fact they are advertisements. Often these advertisements are presented as news by reporters who are paid by a company to peddle a product.

This type of deceit should have stopped once exposed; yet it continues. Last year the New York Times revealed “at least 20 federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and the Census Bureau have made and distributed hundreds of news segments in the past four years.” (This issue is discussed in Chapter 7, A Propaganda Press). These segments pushed the administration’s key policies, including regime change in Iraq and Medicare reform. Called “covert propaganda” by the Government Accountability Office (the government’s watchdog agency), the President defended the news videos.

These fake news segments continue to air on reputable news stations around the country. The Free Press recently announced several television stations in New York “continued to air corporate PR designed to look like objective news. These stations slipped corporate-sponsored ‘video news releases’ — segments promoting commercial brands and products — into their regular news programming. These advertisements were passed off to viewers as legitimate news reports.”

The following New York stations have recently aired fake news:

• WKBW-7 in Buffalo*
• NY1 in New York**
• WCBS-2 in New York*
• WPIX-11 in New York**
• WUHF-31 in Rochester
• WSYR-9 in Syracuse*

*Exposed in original report in April.
**Exposed in original report in April and has aired other VNRs since.

These video news reports are also being broadcast in other states around the country.

Again, it is important to note that many news broadcasters are on the payroll of major corporations and plug the company’s products on air.

For more information visit the Free Press Action Center. Stop propaganda now — write to the FCC demanding they stop this deceit.

 

Five years after the vicious terrorist attacks in the US there have been dozens of documentaries made about that day. While many of them are interesting, all too often they drift off topic and focus on conspiracy theories. There are a few that remain focused on the facts, but none are as good as 9/11: Press for Truth.

911: Press for Truth highlights the questions that our politicians, media and (I believe) the general public should have asked after the attacks. It follows family members who are searching for answers to the lingering questions they have about why their loved ones died in the attacks. Each “went into angry mode” after the attacks and started to question the information they were receiving from the administration and the media.

They found the same thing that I did while researching No Questions Asked — nobody has asked the relevant questions that need to be answered, least of all members of the media.

The movie is brilliant in that it allows the facts to speak for themselves. The facts clearly show that the administration, members of congress and the press have not been forthcoming with information, and that we need to pay more attention to the bits of information scattered throughout our news reports — we need to connect the dots.
9/11: Press for Truth makes it clear that there has been “no accountability, few answers and many misleads.”

These family members and independent researcher Paul Thompson became the investigative journalists that were absent from our newspapers and broadcast networks. They spent thousands of hours searching for the answers to simple things like why our defense system failed to stop any of the four hijacked planes on 9/11. NORAD scrambled 129 fighters in 2000 to intercept planes during suspected emergencies, why didn’t NORAD automatically scramble fighters on 9/11? The families also want to better understand what role US ally Pakistan played in the attacks and who else was working with al Qaeda when the group planned the attack.

As one family member put it, “we felt that the country was at risk from terrorists and from incompetence and maybe worse. Why weren’t we looking at our protocols so we could fix it going forward? We were looking for answers feverishly at the beginning and there was very little information being put out through the major media that answered our questions. There were only more questions.”

They were easily able to draft a list of questions that needed to be answered by sifting through news reports. Why didn’t reporters do the same thing? Why weren’t elected officials interested enough in learning why and how we were attacked on 9/11 to ask any of the questions the families had provided?

“The largest structural collapse in world history, the largest loss of life on US soil since the civil war and not one governmental or elected official wanted to know why or how this happened?” said Monica Gabrielle, whose husband died in the World Trade Center.

The trouble these families had obtaining basic information about what happened to their husbands, wives, sons and daughters is maddening and should leave all Americans furious.

The film also follows Thompson’s meticulously documented 9/11 timeline (now a book called the The Terror Timeline). 

Thompson put it this way: “There’s a lot of explosive information that has come out in the mainstream press but it comes out buried. As a casual observer of the news I had never noticed any of this stuff. You might find one important bit of information in a, in say, a newspaper story and another bit of information in a news show. If you put all those rather obscure stories together you end up with almost a completely different narrative where just about any area relating to 9/11 is quite different if you dig deeper into the news.”

The last quarter of the film highlights how reporters have failed to do their jobs, which is by definition to report the facts and ask officials the tough questions.

Again, the media’s passivity is well documented in No Questions Asked. Reporters acted more like government agents than independent analysts. A few important issues they missed: The Patriot Act II was incorporated into a spending bill and signed by the President the day Saddam Hussein was pulled from a spider hole in Iraq (see chapter 3); the administration was spreading propaganda through government created news reports aired on major networks and the CIA and FBI knew Osama bin Laden had sent people to the US to learn how to fly planes into buildings (see chapter 3).

Why are we so afraid of asking questions — what do we have to hide? If there are problems with US security, isn’t it better to learn about them so they can be fixed and we can all be safer?

Bob Mcilvaine, whose son died on 9/11 said his son had hung a sign on the wall of his room that said: KNOWLEDGE IS POWER.

I couldn’t agree more.

Here are the questions the group wanted members of the 9/11 Commission to ask.  Most of these questions are still unanswered.

I urge you to see this movie. It’s available in DVD format and would make a great gift for the activist in the family. You can also set up screenings so the whole community can watch the movie.

I look forward to the day we have a more vigilant press and a more active citizenry. These families are an example to us all and should be congratulated for their efforts.

As John Lennon would say, “I saw the news today, oh boy…”

Texas Bill To Allow The Blind To Use Lasers For Hunting

Dallas, Texas - A lawmaker has filed a bill for the 2007 legislative session that would allow legally blind persons to use laser sights, or lighted pointing instruments for hunting live animals.

“This opens up the fun of hunting to additional people, and I think that’s great,” said the bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Edmund Kuempel.

Christian video game draws anger

BBC News - A new Christian video game has sparked calls for a boycott from groups who say it is “training for religious warfare”. The game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces, is based on a wildly successful series of novels about the struggles on earth after true believers ascend to heaven.

Players can command the army of good - the Tribulation Force - against the anti-Christ’s Global Community.

The game’s makers reject criticism, saying their detractors “have a clear hatred of Biblical Christianity”.

An alliance of liberal groups including the Christian Alliance for Progress, the Campaign to Defend the Constitution, and Talk2Action, have urged the giant retailer Wal-Mart, among others, to stop stocking the game, which was released last month.

“It’s about religious warfare. The way to win is to convert or kill. You have both the Inquisition and the Crusades,” says Frederick Clarkson of Talk2Action.

“Anybody who is not a follower of Jesus is the enemy,” he claims.

‘Dehumanising the enemy’

Mr Clarkson is particularly concerned that the $39.95 (£20) game - which is rated for teenagers due to violence - is being marketed through churches.

… It is not the only violent video game with a message raising concern this holiday season.
Tony Blair and Iraq’s prime minister are targets in Quest for Bush

The Global Islamic Media Front has released a game called Quest for Bush, in which players aim to kill the US president.

Adam Raisman, an analyst at the Search for International Terrorist Entities (Site) Institute who has played the game, calls the free download “propaganda”, but stops short of labelling it recruitment.

“We can’t say this is preparation for jihad, but it puts out the idea that you can walk around with a gun and shoot American soldiers,” he says.

What happened to “thou shall not kill”? I thought that was a basic Christian value. I remember when we talked about “peace on earth” and “good will towards man” during the holiday season. Now we spread the “thrill” of killing.

 

  

I am extremely encouraged by the latest Huffington Post column by Marty Kaplan, the associate dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication.

…it’s hard to decide which is more pathetic: Bush’s “listening tour,” or the national media, which have cravenly agreed to call it by that name and cover it within that frame.

This “tour” has required no tourism. It has taken Bush from the Oval Office, over to Foggy Bottom, back to the West Wing, then over to the Pentagon, and back again to the White House. But the media have treated it like Lenin’s trip to the Finland Station, or the Beatles coming to America. Wow! Lookit him go! He’s even taken his fingers out of his ears! That bubble boy sure can listen!

You can imagine the staff meetings in the days leading up to the Iraq Study Group report. “We gotta give the appearance of paying attention to the report, Mr. President. We gotta let some time pass after Baker’s big show, until some serial killer or anorexic distracts the country again. In the meantime, we gotta give those newsie jerkoffs something to cover. Snow can only snow ‘em for a day or two. We need action. Photo ops. Soundbites. A storyline…. Wait a minute, I’ve got it: we’ll put you on a listening tour. Yeah, that’s the ticket. They’ll eat it up. A listening tour… and A New Way Forward!”

I’m not surprised that Bush has tried such a brazen stunt; I’m just stunned that the media has fallen for it so frictionlessly. Maybe it’s just the time of the year; perhaps the press corps’s just preoccupied with playing Secret Santa.

Reporters are finally being accurately labed as PR flacks, a role they have chosen to take on since the 9/11 attacks. I am encouraged that journalism professors are taking note and will point this out to their students.

We can only pull the profession back up to its “checks and balances” position after we acknowledge just how far it has fallen.  I am optimistic that journalists are going to be able to return to their adversarial relationship with officials. A free thinking media is so important in a democratic society. I think journalism in the US is on the rebound –  although it may take the next generation of journalism students to get it back on track.

Last year, worldwide spending on military was more than $1,000 billion. While world leaders and war profiteers call it the “defense industry”, the majority of those who are on the receiving end of this “defense” spending are innocent civilians who pay with their lives. Those unnamed victims of 100s of wars all around the world are the losers in the escalating madness spreading to every corner of this planet. 

This holiday season pause for a few minutes to remember those who are suffering because of the actions of your government and do something to reverse the pattern. Write a letter to your representative in Congress (or member of Parliament or Riksdag or Majlis). Contribute to Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch or any or another charity devoted to helping humanity. Write a letter to your newspaper complaining about a story that was not accurately reported or seemed bias. Ask them why they didn’t ask an official more specific questions and when the paper will be more vigilant about pursuing answers.

A child holds a weapon belonging to his father as he stands with his family who were displaced from their home, during a protest in Baghdad December 10, 2006. Shi’ite militias attacked Sunni homes in Baghdad’s religiously mixed Hurriya district on Saturday, Interior Ministry officials and witnesses said. More than 30 families fled after the militias torched homes and killed at least one person, witnesses and officials said.

Instead of buying your husband or father another tie or sweater, why not consider the gift of food for a family in a place that is not so peaceful? Add five political prisoners to your Christmas card list and write them letters that can be delivered through Amnesty International? Donate to your favorite charity – make a difference. Here are mine: Doctors Without Borders and Save the Children.

An Afghan student waits for class to start at the Bibi Mahroo high school in Kabul on Nov. 22. Twenty teachers have been killed this year by the Taliban, and nearly 200 schools have been burned in a campaign of intimidation. The Taliban gunmen who murdered two teachers in eastern Afghanistan early Saturday were only following their rules: Teachers receive a warning, then a beating, and if they continue to teach must be killed.

Remind your children that others are not as fortunate and that giving is the true spirit of the holiday season.

Iraqi children lined up in Baghdad for fuel last January. Iraq is failing to spend billions of dollars of oil revenues that have been set aside to rebuild its damaged roads, schools and power stations and to repair refineries and pipelines.

Katrina’s Refugees Scattered across several states, survivors of the hurricane try to track down missing loved ones and to keep their minds off all they’ve left behind. The refugees of Hurricane Katrina are tired and scared, not knowing if they will ever be able to go home again. They are sleeping in cars or campsites as far away as Houston. They worry about their belongings and their bank accounts. But more than anything, they worry about the friends and family members who have gone missing.

Here’s a question: Where are the hurricane Katrina refugees now? Are they gainfully employed? Do they have food and shelter? We know most have not returned to New Orleans but the media hasn’t followed up on what happened to all these displaced people.

Make this a special holiday season for you and your family by spending less time in a shopping mall and more time doing community service. If we all do a little something we will  make a difference.

Apparently the Justice Department didn’t need the USA Patriot Act after all, Google works just as well.

US Tries to Google for Intelligence on Iran

When the State Department recently asked the CIA for names of Iranians who could be sanctioned for their involvement in a clandestine nuclear weapons program, the agency refused, citing a large workload and a desire to protect its sources and tradecraft.

Frustrated, the State Department assigned a junior Foreign Service officer to find the names another way — by using Google. Those with the most hits under search terms such as “Iran and nuclear,” three officials said, became targets for international rebuke Friday when a sanctions resolution circulated at the United Nations.

Does it bother anyone else that the agencies responsible for guarding against terrorist attacks are still not cooperating? Googling for terrorists??? Unbelievable!

How do you think they put the ”no fly list” together?