They Shoot News Anchors, Don’t They?

[moobu2]

Nice piece about corporate/media/republican connections. (hope this isn't a dupe)

Media moguls, not looters, killed Katrina’s truth tellers

At first, only CNN appeared not to have thoroughly read the proverbial memo. It was the only network, on air and on its Web site, to compare and contrast the wildly contradictory statements by federal, state and local officials, sometimes within hours, but often within minutes of each other. It was CNN that posted the first full transcript of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin’s profanity- and passion-filled September 2 interview on local radio. It was also CNN that first exposed the gruesome nature of the conditions at the Superdome, at the convention center and in the hospital corridors. Its broadcasters were the first to keep a heart-wrenching online blog during Katrina. Even as late as September 6, political correspondent Ed Henry was the first to counter the claims by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay that local officials and not the feds were to blame, by reporting that congressional Republicans, in a secret confab, were giving the Bush administration a big fat F.

Then the fix was in.

On September 8, CNN anchorette Kyra Phillips was chewing into House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for “continuing to criticize the administration, and criticize the director of FEMA... I think it’s unfair that FEMA is just singled out. There are so many people responsible for what has happened in the state of Louisiana.”

Instead of smiling through clenched teeth, the San Francisco Democrat bit back: “I’m sorry that you think it’s unfair. But I don’t . . . If you want to make a case for the White House, you should go on their payroll.”

<snip>

If big media look like they’re propping up W’s presidency, they are. Because doing so is good for corporate coffers — in the form of government contracts, billion-dollar tax breaks, regulatory relaxations and security favors. At least that wily old codger Sumner Redstone, head of Viacom, parent company of CBS, has admitted what everyone already knows is true: that, while he personally may be a Democrat, “It happens that I vote for Viacom. Viacom is my life, and I do believe that a Republican administration is better for media companies than a Democratic one.”

More @ laweekly.com

[Amonester]

1. Puke maladministrations are better for media because

they create a never ending chain of disasters, day in, day out, that have the potential to shock the taxpayers to the point they become so stressed out and insecure that they can't stop buying everything (total crap, most of the time) the media companies want to sell them (fear is a best seller...)

Yeah, the good and peaceful stories of Democratic administrations don't sell enough for these greedy bastards...

[Laelth]

2. Couldn't have said it better. n/t

-Laelth

[colonel odis]

3. GE, owner of nbc, etc., is a huge corporate polluter.

so who do you thinks going to give them the breaks? a repub administration or a democratic one?