And what of the free speech rights taken from US troops who shot valuable video or photos of what is actually happening in Iraq and Afghanistan? It wasn't until Iraqi insurgents posted online a clip compilation of US tanks, trucks, and humvees getting blown up that I first understood the nature of the US casualty count in Iraq - for years our troops have been blown up while driving on roads in search of an invisible foe, hidden among the populace and integrated into the Iraqi security forces we armed and trained.
Maddow has long committed to keep us informed of news from Iraq on her radio program, a feature notably less present on her TV show. Today the collective mainstream media whitewash of hard-hitting news is a complicated maze of bought-off silence, intrigue and unholy alliances between the corporate bosses, shareholders, government puppetmasters, well funded "527" campaigns, corporate sponsors, lowly reporters and a lot of under-informed viewers. We end up with what you see every night on the network news - a waste of time that has more and more Americans turning off their TVs and opening their laptops to search for information online.
Though he is a fear-baiting, war-profiteering propagandist, Rupert Murdoch at least has the chutzpah to use his network newscasts to express his political beliefs, of late encouraging right-wingers to stockpile arms and mobilize "bubba militias" to guard against Democrat 'tyranny'. If the other networks had a pair, we might see some semblance of balance, but NBC and the other obedient Stepford networks defer to silence.
As we teach our children in schools, yellow journalism was an embarrassing episode in the late 1890s when dueling newspapers distorted and sensationalized the news to sell papers. But a new bio of William Randolph Hearst demonstrates his paper actually had a fairly low incidence of fabrication or exaggeration, even by today's standards. Rather, the controversial magnate had deeply held convictions about the power of populism.
Ironically, the revisionist history of "yellow journalism" is what is actually slanted, according to new research - Hearst used his platform to stand up to the "isolationist" government who stood by as hundreds of thousands of oppressed Cubans were being slaughtered by Spain.
Today, it's our "whitewashed journalism" that begs for improvement, especially on the key issue of voting integrity, where I can even find common ground with Sean Hannity. While Hannity feels Al Franken stole his Minnesota senate seat and ACORN has been engaging in fraudulent registrations, I feel electronic voting machines used in the 2000 and 2004 elections had proven vulnerabilities. Over a million US voters may have been disenfranchised and I suspect Bush's DOJ was illegally used to gin up vote fraud cases and target Democratic officials and fund raisers in swing states.
Somewhere in there, Sean and I agree - elections are an issue the mainstream American press needs to cover. But unlike Hannity, I believe the media needs to be a free and open place for informed debate, serving the interests of the people who own the airwaves. Let's report the facts and then have a messy, contentious discussion over what it all means. America can handle the truth...and even if it did happen in 2004, it probably wouldn't be the first time an election was stolen. Only this time it was on our watch.
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