Every day, I am being flooded with new details of media squeamishness and/or reactions against dissenting perspectives. Happily some mainstream media outlets are concerned. A top writer for a well known magazine called me today to book an interview on the subject, but they have a long lead time. More attention to this issue is needed now as the long arm of government information strategists and various media bully boys gang up on outlets or individuals that want to go their own way.

Today’s examples:

l. 60 MINUTES. One of America’s top TV shows revealed that they waited to report a story at the governments request. I was surprised that they would announce it, but so was someone named Charles who shared his concern on List serv I monitor: ” if anyone doubted the US news media was being censored they only had to hear the lead-in to the first story on “60 Minutes” tonight (September 30). The lead-in was a statement that the White House had told them not to say anything about the biological threat “until tonight” when they (the White House) said their very own Tommy Thompson would “explain” everything for the American public. So much for the free press in the US.”

2. ATTACK ON SUSAN SONTAG: The Wall Street Journal has censured writer Susan Sontag for her views in the New Yorker critical of our president, as if she has no write to express them. Writes editor David Talbot in Salon: “Susan Sontag was … singled out for censure in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and other thought-police strongholds. Her crime? She ventured to say that the American people are not being served by a political and media caste that seeks only to reassure us, instead of enlightening us: “Our leaders are bent on convincing us that everything is OK … We have a robotic president who assures us that America still stands tall … But everything is not OK … The voices licensed to follow the event seem to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public. Where is the acknowledgement that this was not a ‘cowardly’ attack on ‘civilization’ or ‘liberty’ or ‘humanity’ or ‘the free world’ but an attack on the world’s self-proclaimed superpower, undertaken as a consequence of specific American alliances and actions?”

3. CENSORSHIP AT BARNES & NOBLE. Media Channel advisor and critic/author Mark Crispin Miller reveals a recent experience of his own in connection with the promotion of a book he’s written criticizing President Bush: “….in the wake of the attack on 9/11, Barnes & Noble quicklycancelled my readings from THE BUSH DYSLEXICON, which they apparentlyassumed would irk their customers—an odd move for the world’s largestbookseller, which ought tobe expanding, and not narrowing, the national debate. Private censorship per se is nothing new, of course. Any thoroughhistory of war-time America will make that very clear. But when the majorplayers exert as large an influence as they do now, the problem iscompounded exponentially.”

4.COLLEGE TV STATION THREATENED. Peter Schmid of the Chronicle reports,”A television station owned by the University of Missouri at Columbia has come under fire from state lawmakers for barring its newscasters from wearing red-white-and-blue ribbons. Some Missouri legislators threatened last week to try to reduce the university’s state appropriation in response to the television station’s policy, which they criticized as unpatriotic and as a violation of the free-speech rights of station employees. Most or all of the lawmakers backed away from their threats, however, after learning that the station, KOMU, is self-supporting and does not receive university funds.”

5. US MEDIA STILL DENIED ACCESS TO THE BATTLEFIELDS.News World reports: The Radio-Television News Directors’ Association has written to US DefenseSecretary Donald Rumsfeld demanding access. Association’s president Barbra Cochran said: “No newsorganisation wants to be responsible for putting US fighting men and womenin harm’s way. But we also have a responsibility to keep the public informedabout key government activities, which surely include critical militaryoperations.”

6. CONSEQUENCES OF FREEDOM FORUM CUTBACKS AFTER SEPTEMBER 11: We reported earlier on the shut down of Freedom Forum offices worldwide with regret but have been been advised by friends that there are many concerns “about what happens now to all the people they were supporting through courses, helping with insurance schemes, post traumatic stress counseling etc.” Not good!

7. LOCAL JOURNALISTS HARASSED. Author Richard Reeves writes: “You also don’t have to be that big a man to lose your job - or be threatenedby the White House if you don’t shut up. Early casualties this time includeDan Guthrie, a columnist for The Daily Courier of Grants Pass, Ore., whoaccused President Bush and some of his advisers of “hiding in a Nebraskahole” immediately after the World Trade Center toppled and the Pentagon wasbombed on Sept. 11. The Texas City Sun, in the president’s home state, ran afront-page apology for an opinion by an employee. The offending opinion wasthat of the city editor, Tom Gutting, who wrote a column under the headline”Bush Has Failed to Lead U.S.”

8. IDEAS TO DISCUSS. Some thoughts from Indian Writer Arundhati Roy as pubished in the Guardian: “Terrorism as a phenomenon may never go away. But if it is to be contained, the first step is for America to at least acknowledge that it shares the planet with other nations, with other human beings who, even if they are not on TV, have loves and griefs and stories and songs and sorrows and, for heaven’s sake, rights. Instead, when Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary, was asked what he would call a victory in America’s new war, he said that if he could convince the world that Americans must be allowed to continue with their way of life, he would consider it a victory.

“The September 11 attacks were a monstrous calling card from a world gone horribly wrong. The message may have been written by Bin Laden (who knows?) and delivered by his couriers, but it could well have been signed by the ghosts of the victims of America’s old wars…..Someone recently said that if Osama bin Laden didn’t exist, America would have had to invent him. But, in a way, America did invent him…..”

Agree or not with these eloquently expressed words, they do speak for and to millions of people worldwide who were outraged by the events of September 11, but are unwilling to uncritically embrace Washington’s you are either with us or agin us response.

Americans need to hear — and debate these ideas! Will they, as war draws nearer?

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