RATHER DISTURBING

IRAQ GOING DOWN

BANE ON THE BRAIN

Poor Dan Rather. As far as the right is concerned, the CBS anchor might as well immolate himself.

Never mind that the conservative Media Research Center gave him their best marks for pro-war coverage by a complicit network. No matter. No one on the right remembers as the knives are sharpened. Their shoot the messenger strategy is still on a full court press as a gaggle of smirking websites and aggressive radio talk show hosts call on my namesake Dan to resign. Why? The fog machines insist that CBS relied on forged documents to make charges that President Bush skedaddled out of his military service. CBS now says the charges are true even if the documents were invented.

Last night’s CBS 60 Minutes show revisited the story featuring an interview with Marion Carr Knox, the secretary of Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, whose personal memos were part of a report on last Wednesday’s 60 MINUTES broadcast regarding questions about President Bush’s service at the Texas Air National Guard.

CBS reported “In the interview, Ms. Knox states that she does not believe the memos are genuine. However, she confirms that the content of the memos does reflect the feelings of Lt. Col. Killian at the time and accurately portrays events that were taking place in connection with then-Lt. Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service.

“I know that I didn’t type ‘em. However, the information in those is correct,” Ms. Knox told CBS News for tonight’s broadcast.

WILLIAMS: A TRASH JOB

In a lead piece carried on Mediachannel’s home page. Ian William, author the book “Deserter.” contends that “Faced with unpalatable facts, the Bush campaign has been consistent. Trash the source: or better yet, get someone else to do so. It is interesting that the White House itself has not denied the authenticity of the documents that CBS obtained from Lt Col Jerry Killian’s files, but has relied on the blogosphere to do so on its behalf.”

In her NY Times column today, Maureen Dowd writes of pre-emptive paranoia: “The administration has been so dazzling in misleading the public that the Democrats fear the Bushies are capable of any level of deceit.”

THE KINKO KONNECTION

The Sludge report was out with a report that “Kinko’s may indeed be the better way to office, but is it also the better way to forge.” So charges Matt Drudge. (”Developing…”) The Washington post explains:” Documents allegedly written by deceased officer that raised questions about Bush’s service with Texas National Guard bore markings showing they had been faxed to CBS News from a Kinko’s copy shop in Abilene, Texas… ”

“Abilene is about 20 miles away from Baird, Texas, the home of Bill Burkett, a former Texas National Guard member whom Newsweek magazine reported may have been CBS’s source. Burkett is known to have a grudge against George W. Bush, the former governor of his state.

BOYCOTT CBS OR ITS CRITICS?

Forget the facts. Its more fun for them to launch a boycott of CBS as a new website is now advocating: www.boycottcbs.com

On September 10, CBS issued a statement standing by its report. Now it is softening its stance somewhat, reporting “all sides of the story.” The earlier statement said categorically:

“For the record, CBS News stands by the thoroughness and accuracy of the 60 MINUTES report this Wednesday on President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard. This report was not based solely on recovered documents, but rather on a preponderance of evidence, including documents that were provided by unimpeachable sources, interviews with former Texas National Guard officials and individuals who worked closely back in the early 1970s with Colonel Jerry Killian and were well acquainted with his procedures, his character and his thinking. In addition, the documents are backed up not only by independent handwriting and forensic document experts but by sources familiar with their content. Contrary to some rumors, no internal investigation is underway at CBS News nor is one planned. We have complete confidence in our reporting and will continue to pursue the story. ”

BLAST THE BLOGGERS

The credibility of those bloggers reporting on all the juicy details of this controversy is being challenged by mainstream media outlets. Chicago Tribune managing editor James O’Shea is saying. “You have to look at who these people are. We have to put some scrutiny on the bloggers.”

www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000629751

ONE BLOGGER ASKS: WHY FORGE?

“Assuming for the moment that the CBS documents are forgeries, but, as the former secretary of Lieutenant Colonel Killian says, accurately reflect his thoughts and are likely based on the contents of his original notes (and watch for reports of this in the disgusting American media to simply say the documents are forgeries, without reference to the vital fact that the contents are substantially true), why would the forger go to all the trouble of making a forgery? If he had access to the original notes, and he must have had such access in order to make substantively accurate forgeries, why not send them to CBS?

“The only reason you would make a forgery, and a forgery which was discovered with very suspicious speed and detail, is if you were trying to undermine the credibility of the content of the notes. If you knew the substance of the notes was going to be released, and might be an election issue, releasing the notes yourself in a forged form is the perfect way to diffuse the crisis. Everyone is now watching the spectacle of the alleged shenanigans, and completely ignoring the substantive issues raised by the notes.”

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/

HURRICANES AND GLOBAL WARMING

I led with this yesterday and even as Hurricane Ivan is downgraded to a Category 3 storm, the coverage becomes more dramatic with reporters like CNN’s Anderson Cooper dancing around in the storm, being blown here and there, on camera, without wearing a hat, defying the winds and making it all seem fun and funny. How cool. Duh? I am sure they are calling his performance “Great TV.” In the CNN control room, the multi-colored Doppler radar is on display too to enable us to get close ups of tornado activity as well. Never mind the plight of the 60 people dead so far. (Did you know that a young local reporter named Dan Rather first came to national attention for his dramatic storm coverage in Texas?)

New Orleans has happily been spared. Pensacola was hit hard as was parts of Alabama but nothing compared to what happened in the Caribbean. WBAI Radio in New York was reporting 80.000 homeless on Grenada with NINETY PERCENT of all structures destroyed…UNICEF has issues an emergency appeal but that was not reported on the Cable outlets this morning… The worst the damage, the less coverage…..

Yesterday I raised the possibility that the hurricanes now terrorizing the US and the Caribbean may be linked to global warming. I hadn’t seen the connection anywhere. I thought I was going out on a paranoid limb until this story by Stephen Landy crossed my desktop. Have you seen this on TV?

“Hurricane Ivan is among the most powerful Atlantic storms in recent history, and more such storms are likely in the future due to global warming,” say climate experts.

“Global warming is creating conditions that (are) more favorable for hurricanes to develop and be more severe,” said Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

“While few climate and hurricane experts are willing to go that far publicly, there is little debate that the Earth is retaining more of the sun’s energy than in the past. Emissions of gases such as carbon dioxide act as an extra blanket that keeps some of the sun’s energy from dissipating into space. The extra energy from this ‘greenhouse effect’ has already warmed the Earth by about 1 degree Fahrenheit, according to the 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The report is based on evidence and research from more than 2,500 scientists from about 100 countries.

“Hurricanes need warm water, and the oceans are heating up, as evidenced by the 1 1/4-inch rise in global sea levels over the past 10 years, said Trenberth. The additional heat is causing most of this sea level rise because of thermal expansion — just as a very full pot of water heated on a stove will spill over.”

www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,64952,00.html

IRAQ IN FREE FALL?

Its hard to keep up with the free fall that Iraq seems to be in the midst of as billions set aside for reconstruction are diverted for “security” while the body count rises and insecurity intensifies. Three more people were abducted overnight, two Americans and a Brit. Sid Blumenthal writes on Salon:” The “war is lost” Military experts say they see no exit from the Iraq debacle — and that the war is helping al-Qaida.”

The NY Times cites intelligence estimates: “A National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq.” My favorite NY Times watcher Dan Cassidey quotes the “newspaper of record:”

“The escalating violence throughout the country poses a challenge to the interim government of Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, which has seemed powerless to control the hostilities. nyt (11 am, wed. west coast time).”

Cassidy comments: “the underlying assumption here is that allawi is PM of a “real govt.” what about the non-interim govt. of Bush? that’s where the mortars and the bucks stop.”

Air America radio carried some snippets from a CNN report by Walter Rodgers which described a bloody and horrendous scene in the aftermath of another incident with body parts hanging from trees. Yuk. Back in the command module, Wolf Blitzer let him finish and then asked, as if to change the subject and downplay the horror we had just heard. “But aren’t we making progress? ”

This is the same Blitzer who admitted to The Daily Show’s John Stewart that the media was guilty of “group think” when it came to Iraq coverage. Stewart actually asked him if there was “retardation or group think” in the news media? Wolf chose the latter. After this recent comment, I am leaning towards the former.

Another Rodgers in Eau Claire Wisconsin told a local paper ” Iraq Situation Worse than Reported”

“An Eau Claire man working in Iraq says the presidential candidates are not taking the war in Iraq seriously and the media is letting that slide. Former Eau Claire City Council President Wallace Rogers says that’s the impression he got while home on leave. Rogers is back in the Middle East. He says what is going on there is very different from the picture painted by the American media. He says, while he was in Eau Claire, he heard that the U.S. is winning the war and that we are making progress in establishing a democracy. Rogers says that is not what he sees. He says: “I am surprised and disturbed by what’s been happening in Iraq that I didn’t see or read about during the fifteen days I was just home. Iraq – Baghdad in particular this time – has spiraled into a state of anarchy: important Iraqi government officials are assassinated every other day; American soldiers and marines have been killed at a rate of more than three a day since I’ve left.”

SANITIZED COVERAGE

Barry Grey writes “Every day, US military forces in Iraq are attacking civilian populations in a calculated effort to drown a growing popular insurgency in blood. But one would hardly know the dimensions or brutality of the atrocities being carried out in the name of the American people from the sparse and sanitized coverage provided by the major press and broadcast outlets that purport to disseminate ‘the news.’”

http://legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news

Newspapers overseas are reporting the slow motion collapse. There are headlines like this “Slippage of control in Iraq makes a mockery of power hand-over “with stories that say:

“The prospect of a “super rogue state”, as raised in recent days by Iraq’s new UN ambassador Samir Sum-aida’ie, is no longer a distant nightmare but an approaching possibility.

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1080302004

A VIEW FROM IRAQ: RIVERBEND’S LATEST

My favorite Iraqi blogger reports:

“The last few days, Baghdad has been echoing with explosions. We woke up to several loud blasts a few days ago. The sound has become all too common. It’s like the heat, the flies, the carcasses of buildings, the broken streets and the haphazard walls coming up out of nowhere all over the city… it has become a part of life. …I found E. flipping through the news channels, trying to find out what was going on. “They aren’t nearly fast enough,” he shook his head with disgust. “We’re not going to know what’s happening until noon.”

“But the news began coming in much sooner. There were clashes between armed Iraqis and the Americans on Haifa Street- a burned out hummer, some celebrating crowds, missiles from helicopters, a journalist dead, dozens of Iraqis wounded, and several others dead. The road leading to the airport has seen some action these last few days- more attacks on troops and also some attacks on Iraqi guard. The people in the areas surrounding the airport claim that no one got any sleep the whole night….

“So how did I spend my 9/11? I watched Michael Moore’s movie, Fahrenheit 9/11. I’ve had bootleg CD version since early August. (Grave apologies to Michael Moore — but there’s no other way we can see it here…) The copy has been sitting in a drawer with a bunch of other CDs. One of my cousins brought it over one day and said that while it was brilliant, it was also quite depressing and distressing all at once. I had been avoiding it because, quite frankly, I cannot stand to see Bush for five minutes straight- I wasn’t sure how I’d cope with almost two hours….

“I was caught up in the film from the first moment, until the very last. There were moments, while watching, when I could barely breathe. I wasn’t surprised with anything- there was nothing that shocked me- all of the stuff about the Bush family and their Saudi friends was old news. It was the other stuff that had an impact- seeing the reactions of Americans to the war, seeing the troops in Iraq being interviewed, seeing that American mother before and after she lost her son in Iraq……

“All in all, the film was… what is the right word for it? Great? Amazing? Fantastic? No. It made me furious, it made me sad and I cried more than I’d like to admit… but it was brilliant. The words he used to narrate were simple and to the point. I wish everyone could see the film. I know I’ll be getting dozens of emails from enraged Americans telling me that so-and-so statement was exaggerated, etc. But it really doesn’t matter to me. What matters is the underlying message of the film- things aren’t better for Americans now than they were in 2001, and they certainly aren’t better for Iraqis.”

http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/

AS PREDICTED AND PREDICTABLE

Speaking of Moore’s Movie, FOX News (natch) reports:

” Michael Moore was a no-show at the first-ever conservative film festival held outside Dallas last weekend.

“The liberal moviemaker’s absence is not a surprise since the film that earned a two-minute standing ovation was the world premiere of a documentary titled, “Michael Moore Hates America.”

“There were 24 conservative-minded films screened at the three-day American Film Renaissance Festival in the Dallas suburb of Addison, Texas. Movies included “George W. Bush: Faith in the White House,” “DC 9/11: Time of Crisis” and “The Peace Commies,” which addresses “subversive radicals behind the peace movement.”

My own film WMD was selected at this stunt posing as a film festival. (It will be at New Haven Film fest this weekend and Sillverlake in LA later in the month) Another new film not seen was by Karil Daniels who writes; “The Get-Out-The-Vote-Against-Bush film that I have been working on for nearly 2 years is finished and on its way out into the world to help educate and motivate people before the election. It is called “VOICES OF DISSENT: ACTIVISM & AMERICAN DEMOCRACY”

“There is now an 8 minute preview/trailer available as a free download at the website

www.voicesofdissent.us

MEDIA NEWS: SUING CANADIAN TV

This just in:

“Adbusters, the Vancouver-based alternative media organization, is suing Canada’s major television networks for refusing to broadcast advertisements that criticize consumerism.

“It has hired prominent civil-rights lawyer Clayton Ruby to act as counsel in this case, which it describes as the opening salvo in a war for greater media democracy.

“For the last 10 years I’ve been trying to buy air time and by and large I’ve been unable to do that,” said Kalle Lasn, editor-in-chief of Adbusters magazine.

“I think it’s a violation of my right to freedom of speech.”

The lawsuit, which was filed in Ontario Superior Court, names the CBC, CanWest Global, Bell Globemedia and CHUM Ltd. as respondents. It also names the Government of Canada in its role as regulator of the airwaves.”

OPRAH’S AUTO GIVE AWAY

We all read about Oprah giving everyone in her audience a car. How generous of her. Well, not quite. I cam across this under reported aspect of her generosity on MSNBC. I didn’t see it at the time:

Giveaway A Marketing Gambit

Pontiac wanted to draw attention to its brand-new sport sedan, and Oprah Winfrey wanted to celebrate the start of her 19th season. Together they launched an event that marketing executives say could set a new bar for product placement.

BUT THE COST OF LIVING IS RISING….

The Telegraph reports: Rupert Murdoch was paid 10m pounds for running News Corporation last year.

YOUR LETTERS: NACKERING NADER

Jeff Cohen writes; “From today’s St. Petersburg Times on Nader’s ballot access lawyer in Florida, Kenneth Sukhia: “Sukhia is a former federal prosecutor who once was nominated by President Bush to become a federal judge and who represented Bush in the agonizing Florida ballot count in 2000.”

“I’d never heard of him so I googled Sukhia. First item that came up was 1999 testimony before US House Judiciary Committee, calling for tougher punishment against juvenile crime. Second item was his official bio, which lists as one of his specialties: “white collar defense.” It says he’s a member of the Federalist Society.

Dr. Sharon Diamond, MD, writes to me and NBC:

“Danny — Matt Lauer’s hostile questioning of Kitty Kelly on the Today Show stands in sharp contrast to his cheerleading of Administration officials in the prelude to the Iraq War. Thought you might be interested in the e-mail I sent to NBC. Of course I didn’t mention the obvious- their corporate owner, GE’s war profiteering. Doubt I’ll get a response but thought it was worth a try.

TO NBC: “Matt Lauer’s aggressive, confrontational style with Kitty Kelly was very impressive. It is most unfortunate that he did not utilize this capability in his questioning of administration officials prior to our invasion of Iraq. Had this same scepticism been shown regarding our so-called intelligence sources as was shown towards Ms. Kelly’s sources by Mr. Lauer and the rest of the news media, perhaps we would not be in the quagmire we are now in with the loss of over 1000 young American lives and with countless injuries and maimings. You should all be ashamed. I hope at the very least you are engaging in some self-scrutiny. Perhaps your could ask yourselves why you were able to effectively challenge a non-fiction author whose words are very unlikely to have life and death consequences but cowered in the face of political leaders whose actions had lethal implications for the entire world and were predicated on fiction. Again, you should all be ashamed!”

CONVERGENCE OF CONSPIRACIES?:

ANNOUNCING:

“Like Pearl Harbor and 9/11, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was an enormous calamity, which also marked a catastrophic intelligence failure: a failure to connect the dots. The Warren Report, issued 40 years ago this month, has left a legacy of doubt and distrust. The public does not believe the official theory that a lone madman assassinated the President. This public disbelief is supported by a congressional finding that JFK was probably killed as the result of a conspiracy.

Now after 40 years, a clearer and deeper understanding of the intelligence failures of November 22, 1963, is emerging. A conference of experts on the Kennedy assassination will discuss “The Warren Report and Its Legacy” September 17-19th, at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, Washington, DC.

BANE IN MOUTH DISEASE

When I blow it I blow it big. Yesterday when I was closing the column, I reached for a word that I thought of as a positive way to express my appreciation for all of you who share you letters and concerns with our readers. I referred to the letters as the “bane of the blog.” I was clever by a half. And wrong. Larry Houteling wrote to bane my choice of language.

“Our letters are ‘the bane of the blog’? Well, shut my mouth.” No Larry, I should have shut mine as Cathy Kingery of Manchester, NH was quick to explain:

“Being a professional editor for more years than I care to count, I must call to your attention the gaffe in your 9/15 blog. You ended the piece with the following statement: ‘ ….Thanks to all for tuning in. Your comments and items are the bane of the blog. Keep them coming.’ Whoa! Webster’s Dictionary defines “bane” thusly: 1. Archaic. Fatal injury or poison. 2. A cause of death, destruction, or ruin. 3. A deadly poison. Perhaps you should have said, ‘Your comments and items are the lifeblood of the blog. George W. and his band of neo-cons are the bane of the country.’ That said, I’m a fan of yours from way back. I used to enjoy listening to your comments on WBCN in Boston oh-so-many years ago. Keep up the good work.”

SHANA TOVA

Thanks, now I know better. Lets substitute balm for bane and see how that works …. Globalvision and MediaChannel pause to honor and join our president in mourning the loss of his personal balm. My partner Rory O’Connor lost his father Walter a few days back and we all share our condolences and love with him and his immediate and extended family.

Happy New Year to members of the tribe. Here’s an item mark the occasion: “Madonna is visiting the Holy Land on a spiritual quest, and Israel is abuzz over the presence of a major star. However, some are perplexed by her interest in their religion, and rabbis say she has no business studying holy texts.”

Keep those mails balming in. Write dissector@mediachannel.org