By Bev Conover
Online Journal Editor & Publisher
March 6, 2003? The corporate-controlled media's employees? who falsely call themselves journalists? breathlessly feed the American people a daily diet of lies, distortions and disinformation packaged as news.
The weekend fare was the alleged capture of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, billed by White House Press Propagandist Ari Fleischer as "one of Osama bin Laden's most senior and significant lieutenants, a key al Qaeda planner and the mastermind of the September 11 attacks."
The New York Times Monday dutifully reported, "Tom Ridge, the secretary of the new Department of Homeland Security, agreed that Mr. Mohammed's capture was a significant blow to al Qaeda, and that Mr. Mohammed had been keeping tabs on a potential terrorist operation unfolding in the United States.
An impressive catch? Maybe. Maybe not.
Asia Timesreported last Oct. 30 that Mohammed was shot and killed in a police raid on his Karachi apartment last September 11.
If Asia Times is correct, Mohammed would have had to been raised from the dead. Now George W. and John "The Crisco Kid" Ashcroft may be fanatical born-again Christians, but the last person said to have raised anyone from the dead was Jesus.
So that leads to two possibilities: Asia Times is wrong or the Bushies are telling another whopper. And they have been telling a pile of whoppers? an elephant dung heap of them as high as the World Trade Center.
Since the dung heap has grown quite ripe, we'll spare you the litany of lies that run from George W dodging whether he used drugs, the stolen elections of 2000 and 2002, the official lines (lies) about 9/11 and the "evil" Saddam Hussein, to Colin Powell's "Miss Cleo" performance before the UN Security Council?when he told the members Al-Jazeera would soon play an alleged Osama audio tape which it hadn't yet received.
Day after day, night after night, the "newsies" ran with this crap without raising an eyebrow, much less a question. The slobbering pack runs with every PR handout or pronouncement from the White House and no questions asked, with the exception of Helen Thomas, who now is a bad girl for asking hard questions and calling George W. "the worst president [sic] in all of American history," and a few others who muster up enough courage now and then to get under Ari Fleischer's skin.
Then there was the lie about how we had to bomb Afghanistan back beyond the Stone Age in order to get Osama, the mastermind of 9/11, al Qaeda and, the new entry into the picture, the Taliban.
Failing to grab Osama by the beard and not really wanting anyone to notice that the oil companies could now build their pipeline through the shattered Afghanistan?as long as US troops stood guard? the Bushistas came up with a bigger whopper still: Saddam bin Laden . . . er, Saddam (he's a bastard, but he was our bastard) Hussein and his invisible to all, but the White House, "weapons of mass destruction."
Saddam, who has been locked in his war-torn Iraq for 11?12 years, suddenly became the Hitler of the 21st century who is a menace to the whole world.
And the "newsies" ate that up in the pages of their corporate-owned newspapers and magazines, and before their corporate-owned TV cameras. More than that, they became the cheering section for war. Television, especially, right down to the corporate-owned local news desks, just can get enough footage of troops packing up and shipping out for the slaughter.
When the lies are exposed for what they are, the "oops journalists" don't run to their word processors, microphones or cameras to tell the people. If they acknowledge they have been lied to at all, they probably do so in hushed tones and nervous tittering over drinks or lunch.
Investigative reporter Greg Palast, who ironically flat out denies that the George W. Bush or his administration had any foreknowledge of or involvement in the 9/11 attacks, said that Dan Rather of CBS, a guest on Palast ?s BBC?s Newsnight, told him that, in the wake of 9/11, US journalists "are simply too afraid to ask the uncomfortable questions that could kill careers."
Rather is worried about killing careers when it is the country that is being killed? He and his colleagues are fearful of being labeled "unpatriotic" for asking the questions the First Amendment of the Constitution empowers them to ask in their roles as the people's watchdogs?
What do Rather, NBC's Tom Brokaw, ABC's Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel, even PBS's Bill Moyers, have to lose? All are millionaires. Rather is 71 years old; Brokaw, 63; Jennings, 64; Koppel, 63, and Moyers, 68.
Is seeing their mugs on the tube more important than saving the country from the machinations of those who are destroying it? What do they think would happen if they put their heads together and on the same night went on the air and laid the truth before the American people?
At the worst, they would be unemployed and Jennings might even be deported to Canada. If suddenly finding themselves idle isn't their cuppa, there are many of us publishing and broadcasting on the Web who would welcome their help.
Are these men less courageous than Edward R. Murrow, who exposed Senator Joseph McCarthy for what he was; than Walter Cronkite who, after going to Vietnam for a first-hand look, turned on the war and thus ended Lyndon Johnson's aspirations for a second term as president; than Helen Thomas who refuses to be bowed by the Bushistas?
www.onlinejournal.com/Media/030603Conover/030603conover.html