News media falling short in watchdog role, critics say

[rodeodance]

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/16863000.htm

Posted on Thu, Mar. 08, 2007

News media falling short in watchdog role, critics say
By Matt Stearns
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON - It was a big week for accountability in Washington.

Military leaders had to explain to Congress how they let war veterans fester in moldy, roach-infested buildings at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was convicted on perjury and obstruction charges.

But there's another Washington institution that many say needs an accountability moment: the news media.

In both events, experts say, the country would have been better served if big news outlets had taken a more aggressive watchdog attitude. The Libby case especially illustrates that too many elite members of the media are more interested in cultivating Washington power brokers than in maintaining skeptical, independent and arms-length relationships with them, challenging their assertions and holding them to account for their failings.

The consequences can be enormous: The country went to war in Iraq on false or exaggerated evidence trumpeted by anonymous sources through compliant media. And U.S. forces have been at war since 2001, but only in 2007 did the Walter Reed abuses come to light, as the elite media ignored earlier reports from smaller outlets, such as the online magazine Salon, rather than credit and build on them.

"Unfortunately, the mainstream media was not paying attention," Celia Viggo Wexler, the vice president of the civic-reform group Common Cause, wrote in an opinion article this week. ......

[frogcycle]

1. well duh!

The so-called Fourth Estate has been out to lunch. They are supposed to be the "people's watchdogs" over the supposedly three coequal branches of government. They have been bought by the same big business interests as has the government. We live in the "Terminator" movies and just don't realize it. Or 1984. Or the Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Mind control of the masses is essential to sustaining a coup like has been conducted in this country, starting in the late fifties.

We are down to the few surviving humans conducting an insurgency against the establishment, and most of the news machine is just their mouthpiece - part of the problem.

[OneBlueSky]

2. falling short??? . . . more like "news media have ABANDONED watchdog role" . .

in favor of becoming the purveyors of BushCo propaganda . . . shades of Nazi Germany . . . n/t

[Red Zelda]

3. And more and more people realize it.

[zbdent]

4. It's not the job of the media to ask questions of those in power ...

it's to save the administration on fax charges by spreading the talking points for free ...

Didn't these people get the memo???

[Jester_11218]

5. They are not falling short...they are complicit

A Direct and Personal Challenge to EVERYONE in the Corporate Media
From the Editor of TvNewsLIES.org

The corporate media is the greatest enemy of the people. And we better start realizing this. They are not failing...they are participating in the creation and maintenance of a false reality.

http://tvnewslies.org/html/criminal_corporate_media.html

This nation has no national news media and I will prove it to anyone who dares take me up on my challenge - If Hitler’s Germany had today’s American media, we would all be speaking German.

I can do my presentation on this, for free, to your group, school, organization, etc. Education is our only defense.

Peace,
Jesse