Our Greatest Nemesis

[Mythsaje]

The greatest enemy that the people of the United States, and therefore the world, actually face is not the U.S. government, though god only knows it's enemy enough at this point, nor Iraq, nor Iran, nor Syria (regardless of what G.W. Bush and crew tries to tell us).

It's not even China, though they're likely to give us a great amount of trouble in the future.

No, our greatest enemy is, and will remain, the complely complicit U.S. corporate media. They are STILL playing along with Shrub and his cronies as if he actually has a plan other than raping and pillaging whole countries for the benefit of his corporate buddies.

I won't even address FOX News here...it's obvious that Dr. Dean was right when he called them the "propoganda arm of the Republican Party." They cannot, and will not, be reformed.

But the rest of them? Why is it that few, if any, of the major media outlets actually pick apart and analyze all of the assumptions and predictions made by the White House and the Republicans still on board this crazy train? Is it because nearly all of the news outlets are owned by rich war profiteers, and war sells quite well?

We can only wonder. Death and destruction follow in this administration's wake, and the complicit media follows along behind as if they were little more than vultures picking at the leavings of a great, mindless predator.

It's sick, and it's wrong, and the American people, along with the rest of the world, are being victimized by it all.

A Democracy is only as good as the information it receives. And so far we've received some pretty crappy information. The corporate media seems to have abandoned its journalistic integrity to become little more than mimics of what the White House wants to tell us. There's no objective analysis of the arguments.

I gave up on the corporate media several years ago...long before I ever found DU. I saw through the fearmongering, the political spin, and the lack of real information, and I simply gave up on it all. I'd had enough.

Nearly ALL the national news services are worthless. Completely worthless. They marginalize the opposition to this administration--not only war protestors, but those in the know who are trying desperately to get the word out.

Attacking the media should be, if not our greatest priority, then our second greatest. We should NEVER let people forget that they've turned away from their mission to become little more than cheerleaders and propogandists for a blindly destructive force that seems dead-set on plunging our whole world into war.

It's time we yelled "enough!" and loudly. They use our airwaves. We buy their fish-wrap. And while we complain about what they're doing, we do nothing to counteract it on a regular basis. It's time we did.

Say "NO" to the corporate spin.

We have no choice.

[RethugAssKicker]

1. Couldn't agree more...

The media is and has been complicit in the criminal activities and imperalistic philosophies
of the Neocons... These bastards should suffer some kind of consequence for their MAJOR part
in the warmongering of the US.

But, even if Bush is impeached.... How can we make the media pay????

I for one do not watch the MSM... I get most of my news from independent media such as Democracy NOw and alternative Radio... also from right here DU...

I despise American MSM so much, I used to literally screem at the TV set and get extremely worked up.... I am much happier for not watching now, and my blood pressure has also come down !!

[sammythecat]

2. The MSM is most definitely complicit

in all the bad things that have happened. The "george w. bush" is leaking and starting to sink. They're being very sneaky, in my opinion, in trying to jump ship without being seen.

If they were to tell the truth, they'd have to say, "We were whores for george bush. We thought we'd keep our jobs and make more money if we whored for him." They will never, ever, admit this. They weren't fooled. They weren't "misled". They were just corrupt and dishonest.

I think it's going to take a new generation to clean all this up. The msm and most of the Democratic leadership acted like cowards and failed to do their jobs. They will continue to lie about this disgraceful behavior until they are replaced by others who don't have to cover for their shame. We need new blood. New people. The old have shown little except their ability to be corrupted. They have been a disgrace.

[puebloknot]

3. You are so right.

I was a lucky little girl. My WWII soldier father once peered over the newspaper he was reading and said to me: "Just because it's printed in a newspaper doesn't mean it's true."

That was one of those moments in time we all have where something shifted permanently.

Thanks, Dad, for the reality lesson! Wish you were here to tell it to all of We the People!

How do we say no to corporate spin? We could go around in the dead of night and gather up all the newspapers and burn them in the streets, a la Hitler. But that could get us in a lot of trouble.

We could print our own broadsheets like those Dutch students did, and put them inside all the newspapers. But that takes a lot of time and all of us have a day job and a night job and a weekend job.

We could stop buying newspapers, but trying to get everyone to do that just won't work. First you have to know you're reading dreck, and how do you find that out if they don't print it in the newspaper?

So these are things that won't work. What will?

We've got the Internet, and we hope to keep it. It's powerful.

We've got the ability to write, those of us here, because we post messages all the time.

I think we have to do what we can to get outside DU (in addition to, not instead of) and get the attention of people who read, for example, The New York Times and think they're well informed (a particular professor from my past comes to mind).

The other day I was having a fantasy about writing an article for the Ladies Home Journal about impeaching George Bush. I was Ms. Walter Mitty, wielding the pen with such force that I could see the world changing all about me.

Now...what can we realistically do? Blog, blog, blog. Write articles and try to get them into mainstream publications, no matter how small. You convert your three, and they convert their three, and before you know it we've conquered the country through the marvels of geometry.

But most of all, we need to let our newly-empowered Dem Congress know that we want our lanes of communication back. We want *real* "fair and balanced." We want the likes of Rush Limbaugh curtailed for incitement to riot.

We shouldn't even have to ask. But let's do!

[oblivious]

4. The problem is the power of AP, Reuters and AFP. The papers just print what they are fed.

We need an honest progressive group with very deep pockets to match AP's network to provide newspapers around the world with an alternative.

[Mythsaje]

5. Or maybe they should just hire real reporters of their own...

Like they used to have.