My political candidate of choice in this election has unfortunately experienced the lies of “corporate media” up close and personal. His campaign is against the status quo and against the moneyed interests in this country controlling our democracy and boy is the corporate media making him pay. They’ve either ignored him or written unflattering pieces about him. Because I’ve followed his campaign so closely I see each day how the media twists the truth. I called one reporter on it the other day (Jake Tapper) by demonstrating in a post how he had twisted the true story to deceive his readers and of course bash my candidate. I did it by using excerpts from another media story that had reported it as a straight story (he had used a few quotes from that piece but had put them in such an order as to distort their meaning). By the next day my comment had been unceremoniously removed from their website. Evidently it was ok to say all the awful things in the world about the candidate but to have the audacity to question the reporter was evidently out of bounds.

It is very discouraging at times because you feel so powerless to challenge the media in any meaningful way. I almost feel like we need to get all the kids across the country to go out on their bikes and wagons delivering flyers with the truth printed on them like they did in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Anyway, thanks again for the piece. It’s nice to at least know that others feel the same way.

I don’t have the money to start local papers but surely someone does. Until the top down media consolidation can be broken up the logical place to start is from the bottom up. It’s all well and good to complain, it’s all I can do lately. But local print media still exists and I think that it can have more power than the internet to effect change.

Starting local papers ranks with restaurant startups in how to lose money but there is no better way to influence local opinion.

Washington – The White House severely edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health, removing specific scientific references to potential health risks, according to two sources familiar with the documents.
“It was eviscerated,” said a CDC official, familiar with both versions, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the review process.
Now this is nothing new for this administration. Charlie that is very true what you said about it is not what they say but what they don’t say. Just ask yourself the question why is it important to removing specific scientific references to potential health risks about climate change. Wait don’t tell me because Americans can’t handle the truth. Then again didn’t the President say the other day if you are worried about world war three don’t let Iran get the bomb. So maybe the American people can handle the truth. Charlie I like taking things that are complex and making them simple and man is that hard sometimes.
Don

Similar to Senate Res. 1955 to supress domestic dissent.

You are all criminals.

“This is not a war between the white and the Negro but a conflict between justice and injustice. If we are arrested every day, if we are exploited every day, if we are trampled over every day, don’t ever let anyone pull you so low as to hate them. We must use the weapon of love.”
Montgomery, Alabama, 1955

So now all of you radical ideolouges will get the swift justice you deserve (tounge very much in cheek) for proposing that peace is the way human beings should live.

Our local paper has been bought out by a larger daily in a nearby city, which itself now belongs to an even larger entity. It also happened a little earlier to a small daily in a nearby town. There have been major staff changes at these papers and the freelancers are no longer welcome. These small papers have never delivered big profits so I could understand if someone felt they could turn them into reliable moneymakers and I do see changes. There are more weighty inserts every week from chain stores that represent paid advertising. It’s the other changes that worry me. The papers still give the required local photos, marriages etc. expected in a local paper but there’s nothing contentious, nothing in the line of “don’t you think people should know this.”

Even more stifling local state officials have always been very cooperative with answers and information. Most of them will no longer talk to us, Everything must now go through a press office that is expert at obfuscation and non-answers. Apparently any information we might want is now classified. One of the best pieces of information we’ve gotten recently is that “when rainfall levels return to normal area streams will refill and return to normal.” Wasn’t anywhere near the question we were asking but certainly comforting to know.

Even with an admitted bias towards what we look into we have always been fair. If the water utility really needed a rate increase we would lay the facts out and help them get the facts out. Didn’t we get mentioned somewhere in the Constitution? Lately facts are scarce and have taken a back seat to the goals of a few, and who needs a few complainers.

Yeah, they go to journalism school, or in the case of the racist, lying CNN immigrant hater, to KKK school, but that does NOT make them masters of the English language by any means. Most “reporters” on TV are reading teleprompters, which have been edited by more than one person. That’s why we call them “news” readers, or we did before they became celebrities, honored purveyors of “the truth”. And the ones who report in print are edited by others, too. And, still the scum, which most of them are, make mistakes, on air and in print.

I find the articles by Mr. Sullivan to be excellent and sensible. I may not always agree with him entirely, but I always get his point. Excepting Moyers and the OCCASIONAL decent documentary on the “public” network, the mainstream corporate media — including PBS/NPR, which for the most part is as corporate as can be — and its omissions and outright lies, does not exist in my world. I rather put up with minor errors than have myself numbed into total submission by the mouthpieces for our fascist state, one which is rapidly becoming a fascist police state.

And I wondered why Charles Sullivan referred to a “volunteer” army without mentioning the “economic” draft that figures prominently in story after story told by those who, having enlisted for an education, gave themselves one in order to avoid, or end, a direct complicity in war crimes? — crimes those of us who pay taxes commit every day.

One point to pick up on: professional (read corporate) journalists also have the benefit of journalistic educations, professional editors and fact checkers all of which confer a superficial but still real patina of authority on their copy. Those of us without these resources at our disposal, despite our best efforts, will invariably slip up.

This article contains a couple of these: It’s Seymour Hersh not Hersch. And “poignant” comes across as the wrong word in: “Occasionally, an astonished responder to one of my more poignant essays. . .” Also, the whole thing could probably use a bit of pruning though I’m not enough of a pro to know exactly where.

I don’t bring this up to denigrate this effort which is in the top 5% of what I’ve seen on lefty blogs but rather to point out how much help is needed to produce writing which people don’t just slog through but actually want to read.

And it’s damned hard to get this kind of help.

In any case, I appreciate your putting in the time and energy.