March 28th, 2003, 4:12 am
During the Gulf War, the Pentagon established new ground rules for the media, such as granting access only to a small group of reporters and screening dispatches to prevent the release of classified information. Major news companies participated in negotiating these rules and accepted them without protest. But some renegades still think that was wrong. "I don't think it's our job at all to have meetings with them," Hersh said, referring to the ongoing dialogue between the press and the Pentagon. "We should be insisting on complete access. . . . But we don't even begin to insist on that. We're so beaten down. We're so cowardly in our profession." "The Washington press corps is complicit," Simon added ruefully. "The game that's played in Washington—and it's always been played this way—is the trade-off of access for patronage. If you agree to sing their song, you'll be invited for an audience. This is happening to somebody at CBS I can think of, somebody at NBC, somebody at The Washington Post. They go easy on the president and his people, and they keep on getting invited back and getting more access." spin masquerading as information-------------------------------In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a simmering American skepticism about the motives and morality of our leaders boiled over. Several long-term trends coalesced into a climate of suspicion -- and at times paranoia -- that moved rapidly from the left and right margins of society into the mainstream. The 1960s brought a rebellion against authority. .............................................And then the mood of active distrust began to subside. It was as if Americans, having faced the darkest elements of their system, couldn't bear to see any more. The post-Vietnam years witnessed a backlash against what was seen as an excess of self-criticism. Old-fashioned values of family, patriotism, hierarchy and duty regained cachet.Journalists value a good scoop, regardless of whose ox is gored--------------------------------"The Beeb is a mandatory government-run service staffed with the usual people who go into government-run media, i.e. left-wing hacks," British expatriate Andrew Sullivan writes on his Web site. "The BBC is increasingly perceived, even by sympathetic parties, as the voice in part of the anti-war forces. . . . How the Beeb ceased to become an objective news source and became a broadcast version of the Nation is one of the great tragedies of modern journalism."..."If we were simply to take the justification for the war, we would have lost half our audience," he says (BBC News Director Richard Sambrook). "There's a strong body of opinion in Europe that the grounds for this war haven't been proven and aren't clear. Our coverage has to reflect that."We're pleasing no one...---------------------------------FAIR examined the 393 on-camera sources who appeared in nightly news stories about Iraq on ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News and PBS's NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The study began one week before and ended one week after Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5 presentation at the U.N., a time that saw particularly intense debate about the idea of a war against Iraq on the national and international level. More than two-thirds (267 out of 393) of the guests featured were from the United States. Of the U.S. guests, a striking 75 percent (199) were either current or former government or military officials. Only one of the official U.S. sources-- Sen. Edward Kennedy (D.-Mass.)-- expressed skepticism or opposition to the war. Even this was couched in vague terms: "Once we get in there how are we going to get out, what’s the loss for American troops are going to be, how long we're going to be stationed there, what’s the cost is going to be," said Kennedy on NBC Nightly News (2/5/03).Networks Are Megaphones for Official Views ----------------------------------Picked off browsing around, jumping from one link to another ....... All I can say is that it's a scary trend .......