| According to Harry Shearer's radio program le
show (9/8/02), the ABC news program Good
Morning America recently featured a story about
a high school sports team from Push,
Nevada that has just won a national
competition. Members of the athletic team were
interviewed prior to the weather segment of the show and were
asked questions about their town and so forth. The only
problem is that there is no such town as Push, Nevada!
But there is a new television program that takes place in this
fictional city that happens to be scheduled as part of the
fall lineup on Good Morning America's parent company ABC.
The high school athletes were actors hired by an advertising
firm to, umm, push the new program onto the American
public. The ABC news bureau claimed no knowledge of the
marketing stunt, nor of any new ABC program called Push,
Nevada.
A group calling itself the Democratic
Iraqi Opposition of Germany carried out an embassy
takeover earlier this week to overthrow the leadership of
Saddam Hussein. Commenting on these events, White House
press secretary Ari Fleischer condemned the takeover, noting
that the actions do not represent "legitimate efforts to
bring about regime change in Iraq." Meanwhile, Donald
Rumsfeld commented that the U.S. cannot wait for evidence that
Hussein has evidence of biological or chemical weapons before
launching a renewed military assault against Iraq.
Later, when a reporter asked Rumsfeld whether the U.S. was
involved in the embassy takeover, he replied, "I'm very
embarrassed for you. The thought that the U.S. would be
engaged in something like that is so far a field."
- source: Democracy Now
CNN and CBS paid for
videotapes that depict al Qaeda poison gas experiments, but
insisted on Tuesday -- without naming their sources -- that
the money did not go to bin Laden's terrorist organization.
CNN began showing its video, from a cache of 64 al Qaeda tapes
taken from Afghanistan, on Sunday; CBS began airing similar
material Monday. CNN, which is continuing to air fresh
material from the tapes, at first said it had not paid for the
tapes. On Tuesday, blaming internal miscommunication, the
network said it had paid in the ``low five figures.'' CBS paid
a ''very nominal, very standard,'' said Marcy McGinnis, senior
vice president of news coverage. - source: Democracy Now/Miami
Herald
On ABC News' This Week
(8/11/02), round-table member and commentator
George F. Will spoke about the need for the U.S. to launch a
military strike against Iraq in what he called an act of "preemptive
self defense." To be fair, Will was
simply echoing the terminology of the current Bush
Administration. Ignoring the oxymoron presented, one
wonders whether battered-woman
syndrome will be met with renewed legal
acceptability, or whether Bush will issue Presidential pardons
for those women incarcerated for their own acts of pre-emptive
self defense when other legal means failed them. Or
whether Will himself (a conservative) will use his position
within the 'liberal' media to call for a more equitable
application of this legal clause.
A recent United
Nations study examining democracy
ranked the United States as the 6th most
democratic nation in the world. This is down from #2 in
1990. The study cited corporate funding of political
campaigns, lobbying by for-profit industries, and corporate
ownership of the media as major impediments to democratic
practice. The most democratic nations in the world,
according to the study, are: Norway, Sweden, and
Canada.
Homeland
Security without job security? President Bush
wants to insulate the new department of homeland security from
civil service protection guarantees. But as National
Public Radio commentator Daniel Schor noted, if Bush gets
his wish, then the FBI whistleblowers who publicized the gaps
in national security prior to 9/11 could have lost their jobs
if the new department were already in place.
|
JUSTICE,