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5/31/2005 Media / Politics (slate) Fox News Admits Bias!

Its London bureau chief blurts out the political slant that dare not speak its name. ... Fox News ha(s) long maintained that (it) is not biased in favor of conservatism. This charade is so important to Fox News that the company has actually sought to trademark the phrase "fair and balanced" (which is a bit like Richard Nixon trademarking the phrase "not a crook"). No fair-minded person actually believes that Fox News is unbiased, so pretending that it is calls for steely corporate resolve. ... Norvell is London bureau chief for Fox News, and on May 20 he let the mask slip in, of all places, the Wall Street Journal. ... Here is what Norvell fessed up to in the May 20 Wall Street Journal Europe:

"Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O'Reilly. And those who hate us can take solace in the fact that they aren't subsidizing Bill's bombast; we payers of the BBC license fee don't enjoy that peace of mind.

Fox News is, after all, a private channel and our presenters are quite open about where they stand on particular stories. That's our appeal. People watch us because they know what they are getting. ...."

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4/8/2005 Media / Mind / Physics (indiadaily). " Reverse engineering extraterrestrial UFO communications systems provides clues to human multidimensional consciousness and existence " Interesting title, isn't it? For some reason, my news searches are showing "India Daily - Whitehouse Station,NJ,USA" as a legit information source. Is it? A recent article claims, "Scientists and engineers have found evidence that extraterrestrial communication systems stretches multi dimensions."

Far out. I didn't even know earthly scientists and engineers had evidence of extraterrestrials, much less their mutli-dimensional communication systems! I wrote to editor@indiadaily.com tonight to ask for details. Who? What? Where? When? How? Journalistic standards? Fact checking?

Other stories on the site look (relatively) legit, but the technology area is filled with some pretty far out stuff. Is that because our news is censored and Indiadaily isn't? Hmm....

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3/17/2005 Media / Politics. (reuters) Lies and corruption ... Bush Defends Packaged News Stories from Government.

"President Bush said on Wednesday that the U.S. government's practice of sending packaged news stories to local television stations was legal and he had no plans to cease it. ... the packages, which are designed to look like television news segments ... were deemed a form of covert propaganda by the Government Accountability Office watchdog agency. GAO, an arm of Congress, said this ran counter to appropriation laws and was a misuse of federal funds.

... Among the packages the GAO looked at was one produced by the Health and Human Services Department to promote the Medicare prescription drug law. The story included a paid actor who narrated the piece in a similar style to the way a television reporter would. ... some stations were airing such pieces without a disclaimer saying they were produced by the government.

... It was not the first time the Bush administration has been criticized for blurring the line between media and government. Earlier this year, the Education Department acknowledged that it paid conservative commentator Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote the No Child Left Behind Act.

The Bush propaganda machine also installed a fake 'reporter' to ask Bush easy and BS questions during press briefings. Read about James Guckert (fake press name "Jeff Gannon") and you'll eventually find that this fake reporter was a male prostitute who set up gay military escort porn sites.

So what if Guckert/Gannon is a conservative christian gay hooker? So what if he obtained press credentials (two years ago under his real name) for a fake news service that was really a republican propaganda group called GOPUSA? So what if he had 'daily access' to the Bush White House under a fake name?

No big deal? It may be if this is true: Guckert was the only "reporter" anywhere with access to "a secret internal CIA memo that named Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative" according to a Washington Post story. In other words, is the Bush administration's "inside fake news guy" the Plame-gate connection to the criminal act of outing a CIA agent? Outing Plame as an agent was done by someone in the Bush Whitehouse as retribution because her husband told the American people the truth: that Bush lied about WMDs in his State of the Union address to justify invading Iraq. Amazing, isn't it? Then again, some say Guckert lied about seeing the document to seem important. Guckert now refuses to say if he saw the document, but he has agreed to answer questions from bloggers. Should be interesting.

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3/18/2004: Medicare Fake Video: (denverpost | progressive | seattlepi | modestobee )
See the people giving Bush a standing ovation in this photo from CNN? They are paid actors. "Federal investigators are scrutinizing television segments in which the Bush administration paid people to pose as journalists praising the benefits of the new Medicare law," The New York Times reported Monday.

"The videos are intended for use in local television news programs. Several include pictures of President Bush receiving a standing ovation from a crowd cheering as he signed the Medicare law."

The fake news story was produced by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as a video news release - or "VNR," as they're known in the trade.

Two videos end with the voice of a woman who says, "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." Karen Ryan is actually an employee of the production company Home Front Communications reading "a script prepared by the government." According to the Times, "Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for 'publicity or propaganda purposes' not authorized by Congress." HHS spokesman Bill Pierce claimed Wednesday that Ryan is a free-lance reporter, not an actress. I haven't been able to find any stories she has written.

Forty TV stations nationwide are known to have run portions of the Medicare video, including Fresno's KSEE, Channel 24.

I find it interesting that a California man once had to pay a $25,000 fine to settle allegations that he posted a bogus news article, and he only earned $350 on a stock trade according to CNN.

How much money will this fake news story generate, and for whom? $400 billion give away to drug and insurance companies? The democrats say that Bush "threatened to fire a top Medicare official if he gave data to Congress showing the high costs of How crooked can we become before we get uncomfortable with ourselves and our system? I've even read that Bush's turkey for Iraq troops was fake.

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3/18/2004: VNRs: (b-roll) I found these comments very interesting. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

"VNRs are nothing new. In fact, they get on the feeds sometimes as regular news stories. If they're done well, they look just like regular stories.

Has your station ever run a package a producer found on the feed about some new wonder drug or treatment? That was probably a VNR, paid for by the drug company. Have you run a package on trends in child care? That was probably a VNR paid for by a child care trade association or lobbying group.

Most of the time these things get stripped of the original reporter's voice and revoiced by a local. Most of the time, however, they also keep the original script copy, just revoicing without rewriting. The company that made it doesn't care, because you're still putting their client's message out there. Even if you just use the b-roll in other packages and don't run the original, you're showing the product and giving them free advertising.

Some of your stations subscribe to VNR services and don't even realize it. You know those canned medical and business packages you get? Where do you suppose those story ideas come from? Many of those stories are paid for the companies profiled in them.

But your ND and EP will quietly look the other way and pretend they don't know anything about it, because those silly things fill two minutes of newshole. Without it, they have to come up with another package every day. They've already scaled down the staff to bare bones level, so it's easier to keep using the VNRs than to try to squeeze more blood from the turnip."

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3/11/2004: (Truthout) You gotta love quotes like this one: "I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again." - Bill O'Reilley, on ABC's Good Morning America, 03-18-03. Lots more quotes here. but not here. O'Reilley, of course, is one of the conservative "Lying Liars" in Al Franken's "A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." Try these sepecific examples of Fox News conservative bias. Anyone have a similar page showing Fox News' liberal bias?

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1/8/2004: Jack Kelley, reporter from USA Today resigned following a company investigation into his stories. Interesting, because he is the foreign correspondent responsible for many key stories in the Bush terrorism wars. Did the paper think he was biased? "Truth is the first casualty of any war," once said Jack Kelley to his audience of Christian journalists. Thursday's Washington Post editions reported that Kelley was accused in an anonymous letter of falsifying stories. The paper won't say why he was investigated and will not be correcting any of his stories. Some of his work:

- Vigilantes take up arms, vow to expel 'Muslim filth'
- Saudi money aiding bin Laden
- Iraqis pour out tales of Saddam's torture chambers
- Mystery over 'Musharraf interview' (You didn't interview me! Yes I did.)

Kelley wrote the article ( February 12, 2002 ) that told americans about the link between Bin Laden and the WTC attacks. "The alleged activities of the bin Laden aide, a fugitive identified as Tawfiq bin Atash, represent the "strongest proof yet" that bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorism network masterminded the attacks on New York City and Washington, the U.S. officials say." According to another article in which he attacks anti-war democrats we learn, "Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration and is national security writer for the Pittsburgh (Pa.) Post-Gazette. " Does his past military experience lead to bias in war / terrorism reporting?

A columbia law web site says, "The reporter (or rather government propagandist), Jack Kelley, tells us that, "lately, al-Qaeda operatives have been sending hundreds of encrypted messages that have been hidden in files on digital photographs on the auction site eBay.com. Most of the messages have been sent from Internet cafes in Pakistan and public libraries throughout the world." A painfully familiar claim for which the author provides not one scrap of evidence, yet expresses as an established fact. We like the way he uses location (his in Islamabad and the criminal images' on eBay) for that extra ring of authenticity.

To get a fair view of his fairness, try a google search.

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9/26/03: See top censored stories of the year.

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5/27/03: Who owns the media (radio/cable) in your town?

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4/17/03: CNN publishes obituaries of Pope, Fidel Castro, Bob Hope, Nelson Mandela, Dick Cheney and Ronald Reagan ... oops, they aren't dead yet.