OP/ED: Lapdog media: "Don't follow the money"

Some 33 years after the Watergate scandal that was a long-running national nightmare, fewer than one-third of Americans polled is able to describe the most serious of exposed conspiracies that lead to 30 guilty pleas among White House staff. The scandal has become a mere blip, an interesting movie with that red-head actor from "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". A scathing commentary from Frank Rich of the New York Times reveals that, "Follow the money" was never uttered by Deep Throat. Truth has become fiction.




If the free-press investigative media looses courage... who is left?

Related News Links:
www.watergate.info
en.wikipedia.org
www.khaleejtimes.com
www.starofmysore.com

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
Watergate II: Bush impeachment process
What Was Watergate?

This is a pressing issue, and I'll come back and reply to this after some sleep. But I'll just note that the independent news sites are absolutely buzzing with the Downing Street minutes and what they mean to the legality of the Iraq invasion; the "'burbs" and dark corridors of the web are on fire with this stuff; people are outraged and calling for impeachment of Bush and his cabinet based on this piece of damning evidence. Even hardline Republicans are starting to murmur. But in the mainstream media, suckling on the teat of the Bush cabal as it is, all we saw was merely a passing note about a "memo". It's almost...no, it is CATEGORICALLY Orwellian the way that the language has been altered and the story has been glossed over in order to erase this from the public mind. Winston Smith is doing his job well it seems, and his love for Big Brother grows with every passing day...

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
If the free-press investigative media looses courage... who is left?

Us, whether thats a good or bad thing is still to be determined.

Forums such as these are maligned and assumed to be false, by the reader, unless they generally agree with whats being said. The status of "infallible" that newspapers have enjoyed for centuries is something that we wont be granted. We wont be able to change entrenched opinion easily, if at all. We just have to settle for educating the waivering amongst us.

Hopefully when we can make a topic as mainstream as possible the newspapers can deliver the topical coup de graces for us.

We provide the critical mass and they are the nuclear explosion.

[edit on 12/6/05 by subz]

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
If the free-press investigative media looses courage... who is left?

Is there even such a thing as free press anymore?

Investigative Journalists? Who would they be? I can't think of a single one.

Media corporations are just that, corporations that are looking out for their own interests. They won't bite the hand that feeds them.

Also, I think people tend to forget on this board and in general, that most of our "intelligence" we know about the government and about possible conspiracies in general stem from what these media corporations dish out.

So, ATSNN along with most of the other threads on this board can't actually be considered investigative journalism if all we are doing is copying and discussing what someone else wrote.

If we are to be the investigative journalists, although I hope not the only ones, we're actually going to have to investigate and not just report what everyone else does.

And, yes, this will require you to talk to real people.

Sorry, but all I see in Frank Rich's op-ed is an old left-wing press dinosaur so infatuated with the fact that once the press did basically bring down a President that they hated. In a vain attempt to repeat the coup, he's become paranoid and delusional and sees connections and relations everywhere that have no basis in reality.

Originally posted by djohnsto77
so infatuated with the fact that once the press did basically bring down a President that they hated.

So you fell the crimes of the Nixon administration were not actually crimes?

Regardless of your political inclination, a press that has no stomach for investigative work on government issues is a very bad thing.

Yes, of course the Nixon administration was rife with corruption, much of which was not Nixon's doing. I do really doubt how much investigative work Woodward and Bernstein actually did, as it now seems they were just kind of shuffling between anonymous sources and editing together something for a paper, only later to have it later dramatized. Also, I fail to see what that has to do with the Bush administration. Certainly the press has gone after the administration with investigative reporting, but with mixed success -- i.e. Abu Ghraib vs. the CBS Rathergate story. There's certainly no evidence of any federal or state crime having been committed by Bush or to which he's been a conpirator with while President, despite many cries from left. If there was anything the press could get its hands on it'd be out there much faster than the Lewinsky affair hit the press, believe me.

It seems to me that, according to Rich, the press is unsuccessful unless they bring down, or seriously injure, a President.



[edit on 6/12/2005 by djohnsto77]

dj,


Please clarify whether you're saying the Watergate investigations were unwarranted. I'm real confused right now.

Downing Street Memo

The Downing Street Memo doesn't include any admission by the U.S. government as it is a document prepared by the British government. Furthermore, if everything in there, word for word, is true, I still don't see any clear evidence of a crime. The most interesting part of it:

But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record.

Could mean almost anything. Plus, it doesn't seem to hold water, since the U.S. did take its intelligence report to the UN in the end. All Western intelligence bureaus seemed to agree with the U.S. position on the data, even if they disagreed with what to do here.

Again, where is the crime? Give me a section, paragraph of the U.S. Criminal Code that has been broken by Bush...

That's not the point! So now I understand where the disconnect is.

The point is the meaning of the words you quoted from that memo should be investigated. If you're waiting for the U.S. government's admission they fixed intell - you've got a long blissful wait. Those words warrant an investigation. And they do hint at a crime....that's why the investigation is warranted.

Originally posted by Valhall
The point is the meaning of the words you quoted from that memo should be investigated. If you're waiting for the U.S. government's admission they fixed intell - you've got a long blissful wait. Those words warrant an investigation. And they do hint at a crime....that's why the investigation is warranted.

Well how do you know that such vigorous press investigations aren't going on as we speak and they just haven't been able to uncover anything? It doesn't exactly make the news if a reporter looks into something and finds everything to be hunky-dory. Again, it seems that he, and maybe you, are saying that investigations are only successful if they uncover a crime...what if the fact is that there's no crime to uncover?

I think there are too many "investigative reporting" out there in the US media.
Unfortuantely, instead of investigating and reporting without bias is not there.
Modern day reporting is more towards sensationalism than real investigative reports. The reporters and the media that they work for are more towards selling more papers (example) than anything else.

Look at the latest "investigative" reporting fiascos like the NewsWeek, or CBS reports. Instead of actually investigating the information that they receive, they run straight to press. Without, verifying their sources or interpeting "no comment" as somehow an admission of guilt ? knowledge.

I will present you with a personal example. A few years ago, I was working at a store that sold T-shirts that had a logo that went " Legalize today Get high tonight." It had a blunt picture. Some "investigative reporters" showed up one day and purchased one of the shirts. A few days later, they came with their cameras. The owners of the store refused to allow them to film in their store. In order to try to prevent negative press, I went out and spoke with the reporters on camera.
I explained to them the meaning of the shirts was to promote the legalization and not to promote people to break the law by smoking MJ. That night, our industrious reporters ran with the story. Here is why they were "investigating". There was a council woman (that the station backed) who was anti-drug and was trying to run her campaign on wiping out illegal drug use.
Here is how the "reporters" ran the story.
They show the shirt which they had brought a few days earlier.
Reported that they were refused entrance into the store.
That they could not purchase anything in the store.
They showed a heavily edited version of their interview of me which basically made it to look like we were promoting ilegal drug use.
I called the station up and demanded that they correct their report.
Guess what.... they did that three days later on the rerun of the evening report for that day. The time of the re-run..... 3:30 AM. That was the only time that they ran the correction.
Got to love it!

Wanted to add, that the sales in the store went through the roof after the news "story hit that airwaves

[edit on 12-6-2005 by kenshiro2012]

Originally posted by djohnsto77


Well how do you know that such vigorous press investigations aren't going on as we speak and they just haven't been able to uncover anything? It doesn't exactly make the news if a reporter looks into something and finds everything to be hunky-dory. Again, it seems that he, and maybe you, are saying that investigations are only successful if they uncover a crime...what if the fact is that there's no crime to uncover?

Well - right back at ya! Why in the world would an investigation that shows there's nothing to it be deemed by the news agencies to not be of interest to me? Don't you think that would be a bit suspect as well?

Originally posted by Valhall
Well - right back at ya! Why in the world would an investigation that shows there's nothing to it be deemed by the news agencies to not be of interest to me? Don't you think that would be a bit suspect as well?

I agree with you there Val! Both you and I would be interested in such a report, but such a thing usually doesn't come out. Perhaps this a place where some bias comes in as well. If it was a liberal Democrat in the White House, I could much more easily see The New York Times publish such a story documenting an investigation that turned up no wrongdoing than publishing a similar report exonerating a Republican president.

[edit on 6/12/2005 by djohnsto77]

Valhall, in other posts on deepthroat DJ said that Felt deserved deserved to be executed for being a traitor. So, getting a real answer not blinded by ignorance/republicanese is not going to happen.

Well, let me ask you this dj. Don't you find it very scary that there has been no major move to find out how false intell got us into a war? I mean, whether the prosecutions are against CIA members, the administration or whatever. The false intell is a fact now - why hasn't there been any formal movements made in this area?

Does that not bother you? We've got a lot of dead kids and billions of dollars spent because of lies. Don't you think there should have been some more official investigations and by now possibly some prosecutions under way?

Originally posted by Valhall
Well, let me ask you this dj. Don't you find it very scary that there has been no major move to find out how false intell got us into a war? I mean, whether the prosecutions are against CIA members, the administration or whatever. The false intell is a fact now - why hasn't there been any formal movements made in this area?

Does that not bother you? We've got a lot of dead kids and billions of dollars spent because of lies. Don't you think there should have been some more official investigations and by now possibly some prosecutions under way?

I think investigations have been made, but perhaps more thorough investigations are called for. I know former CIA chief Tenet is gone, probably mainly over this and his "slam dunk" comment. But it wasn't just U.S. intelligence that said this, as I indicated earlier, every intelligence agency I know of was pretty much on the same page on Iraq. Intelligence is more of an art than a science and findings, while made in good faith, can be wrong.

Originally posted by James the Lesser
Valhall, in other posts on deepthroat DJ said that Felt deserved deserved to be executed for being a traitor. So, getting a real answer not blinded by ignorance/republicanese is not going to happen.

That is a total lie! I never said deepthroat deserved to be executed!!! This is a breach of the site's T&C.

I have to agree with you Vahall, where is the independent investigative reporters on all the bad intel that "caused" us to go to war? I have seen very little on this subject from reporters other than stating the facts (and rumors) like all the other reporters. There has not been 1 single actual reporter who has tried to get the low down on just how all the bad intel was allowed to be used without substiaition, or questioning.

Where is the investigation on the (alledged) billions missing for Iraq (the money under US control). etc. Again, I have to say that unless they can get the "facts" in a very short time, or if the reporters / media can't make a sensational splash, then there is no investigation as they do not want to spend the time, money, resources to actually do a reporters work.

Originally posted by kenshiro2012

Where is the investigation on the (alledged) billions missing for Iraq (the money under US control). etc. Again, I have to say that unless they can get the "facts" in a very short time, or if the reporters / media can't make a sensational splash, then there is no investigation as they do not want to spend the time, money, resources to actually do a reporters work.

You are absolutely right - which makes the title of this thread wrong. Because when it comes to the media being hound dogs on something they are most definitely FOLLOWING THE MONEY.

We had to live through months to years of Clinton getting a hummer in the oval office