Sherrie Gossett is a fine reporter who I first met when we both denounced violations of media freedom in China at New York human rights related press conference. She was then with the right-wing Accuracy in Media organization although was willing to dialogue with me on shared concerns. She went on to work for CNS where she did some terrific investigative reporting of the non-partisan kind.

She wrote me yesterday.

Her media freedom has, for the moment, been extinguished. We wish her well:

”I got fired from CNS, booted out without any notice.

“To do the firing, my editor-in-chief came up with two ridiculous lies -(which I have proof are not true, as if it matters…). Adding to the curiosity is someone who was at the big donor gala Thurs night who insisted something I wrote be changed –which my editor speedily did without discussing it with me, and posted a lying “correction” note at the top indicating the 3 offending graphs had been removed.)

“Anyway –wanted to let you know. I have to tell you - although it’s scary financially, I should be glad, b’c deep down I wasn’t happy at all with the GOP propaganda bleedover. (Although- doing the terrorism beat, kept me out of that.)

“Oh and by the way, a follow-up Murtha piece was canned by Bozell b/c donors to MRC were pissed at the first piece. And I can still hear my editor walking in our cubicle saying (about Murtha when he directed a reporter to start digging for dirt)..”I wanna /get /that guy!”.

“Not politically motivated at all…

For those of you who missed it, I posted a dissection on Saturday on the suspension of John Green, an ABC News Producer who was punished for expressing himself in an e-mail. It is in the archive. I am writing about it as a follow up to my “Fear in the Room” Piece.

LETTER TO HELEN THOMAS

Linda Milazzo writes in praise on the Code Pink Site:

” To say we respect you is an understatement. To say we adore you is in no way strong enough. To say you’re our inspiration doesn’t come close to describing the importance of the path you have burned… the lessons you’ve taught us about character, tenacity, moral judgement, fearlessness, self-respect… the worth of a woman and how high she can rise in a testosterone world.”

EDWARD R MURROW

I was a big Ed Murrow fan but after he left CBS, he became the head of the United States Information Agency, the official propagandist of the US government. In that job, he appeared in cold war propaganda films, one of which was produced by the US Army. I never saw it until I came across it on-line. This was definitely not in Good Night, and Good Luck.

http://www.archive.org/details/Challeng1961

THE CENTRAL PARK COYOTE IS NO MORE

Bradley Laing who first told me about Hal sends in this sad update:

Hal the Central Park Coyote Dies - Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/city_coyote

RESOURCES:

1.Check out Jeff Chester’s new blog on media policy and politics. There is no one better informed.

http://www.democraticmedia.org/jcblog/

2. A New Animation: Brave New World
Huffington Post: http://bravenewworld.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

QUOTE OF THE DAY

”According to Advertising Age Magazine, about 75 percent of commercial television network time is paid for by the hundred largest corporations in the country. Many people do not react to this statistic as being important. But consider that there are presently 450,000 corporations in the United States and some 250 million people with extremely diverse viewpoints about life-style, politics, and personal and national priorities. Yet, only one hundred corporations get to decide what will appear on television and what will not. These corporations do not overtly announce their refusal to finance programs that contain views disconsonant with their own; their control is far more subtle. When television producers think about which programs to produce, they have to subordinate other considerations to the need to sell the programming to corporate backers. An effective censorship results.”

From The Rules of Corporate Behavior in “The Case Against the Global Economy and a Turn for the Local” By Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith. (via Steve Z)

DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?

Just in case you need to know, Stephen Fleischman advises:

“On Wednesday of this coming week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06. That won’t ever happen again.”

On to a new week in the month of April showers. Today is the day that in 1882, Jesse James, an outlaw in the American Old West, was shot in the back and killed for a US $5,000 bounty. In, 1922 on this day, Joseph Stalin became the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. And, in 1936 - Bruno Hauptmann was executed in the electric chair for the kidnapping and murder of the “Lindbergh baby”.

Thank you Wikipedia.

Your support and comments welcome. Write: dissector@mediachannel.org