WPCNR NEWS COMMENT. By John F. Bailey. July 6, 2005, UPDATED July 11, 2005: Has anyone noticed the slow motion coup unfolding in this land?
It began with the growth of Fox News with its ludicrous slogan. “We report. You decide.” Fox News spawned a slew of commentators attacking the “liberal media” as being anti-Bush and too liberal and not reporting in a fair manner on the Reagan-Bush presidencies. Paralleling the growth of Fox News was rightwing talk radio, the demagogues poking fun and chastising liberal figures for their alleged hypocrisy, and cheerleading for Republican Conservative administrations, politicos and policies in a way no network anchor on CBS News ever would, and wrapping it all in a love for America that they claim liberals do not display.
The latest manifestation of “The Creeping Coup” happened yestersay when Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, was jailed for not divulging her source on the CIA agent-outing story.
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On the print side, large conglomerates have purchased newspapers in city after city, and consolidated them, turning out the same paper to serve entire regions. It’s cheap. You need less staff. Only trouble is you get a lot less reporting.
One of the results of the newspaper buyups is a gutting of local news reporting by knowledgeable reporters, and communities that do not receive detailed coverage of what their governments are doing from people who live in the community. The one-medium towns and cities receive a slanted view of the news, and whatever news suits the political leanings and connections of the media czar in control of that newspaper.
Meanwhile governments, congresspersons and department heads hire entire staffs of taxpayer expense to produce reams of news releases to spin their side of the story.
Propaganda, managing the news,
Ignoring stories, Harassing Reporters.
The rabble rousing, the nationalism, the militarism of rightwing radio and television, the shameless fact-bereft promotion of right wing politics in America today are right out of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and we quote the infamous Hitler directly:
The first task of propaganda is the winning of the people for the future organization; the first task of the organization is the winning of people for the continuation of propaganda. The second task of propaganda is the destruction of the existing condition and the permeation of this condition with the new doctrine, while the second task of the organization must be the fight for power, so that by it it will achieve the final success of the doctrine.
One America Less Voices. No watchdogs.
As right wing talk radio grew nationally, aided by the gobbling of independent radio stations by media giants like Infinity Broadcasting, another insidious thing developed: syndicated radio. Drive through America today and all radio sounds the same thanks to syndication. Just try and find a local newscast that is not a rip-and-read operation. There are no independent radio news gathering departments in the satellite radio stations in Westchester that I know of. The only radio station that programs local commentary is WVOX in New Rochelle, and praise God for Bill O’Shaughnessy (the owner of VOX).
The real scary thing is that when I am in Buffalo or Providence, or Harrisburg, or Charlotte, the radio shows feature the same commentators you hear in New York. Local radio is no more. Perhaps the only local radio to be found is in the local baseball broadcasts. Even NPR is essentially a syndication.
The result of this wave of one-voice-for-all-America radio spawned by the syndication, communications conglomerate collecting of radio, is that all America is beginning to think alike as never before. We never used to be that way. More than ever, we hear talk about one America. America wants this. America is behind this, etc.
Destruction of the news-gathering media.
The Getting of Reporters. Leak No More.
The examples of discrediting of newsmen and news commentators are numerous: the setup of Dan Rather comes to mind. On a more local level the continued harassment of reporters by a certain local Administration comes to mind. But the media thugs and boy propagandists in the pathetic media fumblers in governments and press offices everywhere have to be cheered by this week’s Supreme Court decision on revealing news sources.
The Supreme Court ducking the Miller-Cooper case, which lets stand a ruling holding the two reporters in contempt for refusing to reveal their sources, may mean reporters have to reveal their sources in legal proceedings – is perhaps the most devastating blow against free reporting and investigation of government or business – in the history of the courts. The Supreme Court is willingly going along with the dismantling of the Constitution one right at a time. Freedom of the Press is in Amendment Number 1.
Why is protection of sources important? Obvious. Sources tell you things out of the goodness of their hearts that the powerful don’t want known. They often work for companies and governments and organizations that would fire them or take reprisals if they knew who the leaker was.
Watergate would not have been uncovered without a source. The Pentagon Papers would not have been published without a source — and the Supreme Court protected Daniel Elsberg, the man who furnished those documents to The New York Times.
In light of the Supreme Court rufusal to take up the Miller- Cooper cases this week, whistle blowers are no longer protected.
Irritated Politicians and Power Obcessed Bureaucrats Have Got to Love It.
The chilling effect of this decision means it will be much more difficult to get government officials to leak information about not so good things to a reporter. Hence, less investigative reporting will be done.
The Machiavellian jailing of Judith Miller of The New York Times for not revealing her source on the CIA agent outing (when she did not even write the story), comes little more than one year to the day when White Plains resident Elena Sassower was thrown in the slammer for “Disruption of Congress,” that gang of rich fools who stand idly by to aid the coup’s bidding.
Release those disturbed Level 3 Sex Offenders, Let The White Collar Crooks Free
Slap those enemies of the state, those #$%^&@#* Reporters in Jail.
The trend these days is letting violent disturbed people out of prison, allowing massive corporate fraud perps to walk scot-free, and putting reporters like Ms. Miller and whistle blowers like Elena Sassower in jail straightaway.
And for all of you who like to think Ms. Sassower “had it coming,” wait until they do what they did to Judith Miller and Elena Sassower, to you.
Are our priorities about who gets out of jail and who goes in just a little out of whack?
Congress needs more disrupting. They need to wake up and smell the rot.
Who will be the first Senator and Congressperson to introduce a bill to amend the U.S. Constitution to correct this egregious Supreme Court decision? Remember the oath, ladies and gentlemen of congress when you swore to uphold the Constitution? Let me refresh your memory, Ladies and Gentlemen of congress, and you geniuses on the U.S. Supreme Court about what the First Amendment says:
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Anyone in the State Legislature Ready to stand up for the
Karen Silwoods, Daniel Pearls, and Dan Rathers of the World?
A New York State Assemblyperson or a New York State Senator should call for a special session of the legislature expressly for the purpose of introducing and passing a new New York State Law that upholds the right of the press to protect its sources, and forbids courts in New York State to jail journalists for refusing to reveal sources or methods used to gather news. Let us put states’ rights to a test. (WPCNR has since learned that New York State does have a law protecting journalists from having to reveal sources, perhaps it should be strengthened?)
For the United States Supreme Court to rule that a reporter must reveal their source or go to jail on the day after after July 4 is a national disgrace.
How Did Adolf Hitler Think the Press Should be Handled?
The principles (Articles) of the National Socialist Movement in Germany in Mein Kampf number 25. Article 23 (of 25 Articles of the National Socialist Movement) is entitled with chilling bluntness: Regulations are needed to govern the press.
The writers of the Introduction to Mein Kampf surveyed the media of the Germany of 1938 and write in a footnote that as of 1938 (five years after Adolf Hitler became dictator of Germany), the press was tightly controlled:
The Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture) embraces all the seven agencies of “culture” – authorship, the press, the radio, the movie, music, the arts, authors, musicians, and artists. Virtually all these endeavors have been subject to the control of Dr. Goebbels, but recently some of his authority has been delegated to others. The press and the radio are completely subordinated (gleichgeschaltet). In Berlin, the shrinkage in the newspaper field is more and more startling, now that the Tageblatt and the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung have merged and the Germania has ceased publication.
Old Vienna landmarks – the Tagblatt, the Neue Freie Presse, and the Reichspost – have disappeared. The holocaust (of newspapers) in the provinces is comparable. Radio broadcasting has become an unadorned propaganda instrument.
That could be talking about The Standard Star, The Tarrytown Daily News, and The Item.
The creeping coup of the takeover of America is going by the book.
