From dissidentvoice
Back in March of this year, Phil Donahue did an interview on Democracy Now in which he said, "… I could never understand how we could put 120,000 Japanese behind a fence in World War II. I remember being bewildered, how could the United States have -- I don't have any more confusion about that. I realize what you can do when you scare the population and how media contributes to that."In fact, the corporate media are delivering a product that is the antithesis of true journalism. Paul Krugman wrote a pointed article this week suggesting that journalistic careerism is the core of the problem. I agree. You could go further, though, and say that such careerism is only possible in a raw corporate culture where everything is always about money. And the sad truth is, when Murdoch make a worse product, his stock goes up. Fox News, Clear Channel, Sinclair, they all give the people what they want. That’s their mission, their mandate, and their cover. What, they ask, is fairer than that for the American consumer?
But when events of the magnitude of Katrina occur, even the state media can't sustain illusions, and the careerists start to run like rats from a sinking ship. Suddenly when Helen Thomas is attacked at a White House briefing, another reporter leaps to her defense. Last week the big news was that the White House stages photo-ops! As I’ve heard in journalists' twisted accounts of why it made sense for them to ignore the Downing Street Memos, the big distinction is between what you know and what you can prove you know. Or something.
On the other hand, the press's defection might have something to do with the fact that, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, George W. Bush is in "what may turn out to be one of the biggest free-falls in the history of presidential polling." His approval rating among black people is at an astonishing two percent. That number is so low that David Bositis, a senior political analyst at a center tracking African-American public opinion, refuses to believe it. Can't be. Ten percent is "about as low as you can go." But it doesn't surprise me one bit. Even a hint of racial cleansing can have that effect.
