We asked for journalism. You gave us Ann Coulter. An open letter to the corporate media.

Bjorn Against

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Wed Jun-27-07 05:14 PM
Original message

We asked for journalism. You gave us Ann Coulter. An open letter to the corporate media.

Edited on Wed Jun-27-07 05:24 PM by MN Against Bush

Dear Corporate Propagandists,

For years you have sat your talking heads in front of the camera to convince us that we were going to get fair and accurate coverage of the issues that matter in our lives. Something soon became clear however, it became clear that you believed the only stories that effected us were Paris Hilton and who Brad Pitt was in a relationship with.

We tried to make it clear to you that we cared about more important issues, so what did you do? You gave us people like Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly to "discuss" those important issues. You gave us people who made a living by attacking minority groups, you gave us people who called the bombing killing and maiming of Iraqi civilians, and you gave us lies.

And what did you provide for balance? You provided us with spineless pundits who called themselves Democrats right before they caved into Bush repeatedly. You gave us a balance between status quo and extreme right wing, while consistently ignoring true progressive voices.

You ignored our calls for Universal Health Care while you ran your very profitable pharmaceutical ads. You ignored the consensus that scientists reached on the reality of global warming and told us the facts were in debate, all while never questioning the "facts" that were contained in the multi-million dollar SUV ads you constantly aired. You continuously took money from big corporations while pretending that you could be trusted to report fairly and accurately on the issues that effected the pocketbooks of those corporations.

Yet after all this those talking heads on your network have the nerve to complain that Michael Moore is not covering both sides of the story a balanced manner in his documentary. Tell me this, when did any major television network give equal airtime to proponents of Single Payer health insurance? The biggest challenge to our system it seems you were ever willing to allow were calls for more "affordable health care". It didn't matter how much the costs of health care rose you still thought these politicians calling for more affordable health care costs while keeping the current system in place were credible sources no matter how expensive it got.

I used to feel I needed to watch the news every night, but now I have realized that watching any of your so-called "news" shows only serves to distract me from the truth. There is a reason that millions of us are turning off our televisions and connecting to the internet, because we are sick of being lied to. We are sick of being a fed a false sense of "balanced journalism" by your portrayal of peace being as bad as war. We are sick of being told that advocates of environmental devastation should be given equal airtime with advocates of scientific fact. And we are sick of the people who told us there were Weapons of Mass Destruction being given equal airtime with, well the other people who told us there were Weapons of Mass Destruction.

You may have had our trust at one time, but you do not any more. We have turned our television sets off, and we will keep them off. Adios.

Sincerely,
A citizen for truth