Surviving Capitalism (Not) : How the U.S. government uses its media servants to attack real journalism

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, July 16, 2011

How the U.S. government uses its media servants to attack real journalism

Click here to access article by Glenn Greenwald from Salon.

This article illustrates how the US ruling class operatives carefully controlled media, or propaganda machine, manages news that it deems inconsistent with the Empire's image of respectability and legitimacy. Also, it illustrates how nothing has changed under the "change" regime of Obama simply because the same political operatives are in charge of Obama, the media, and most everything else.

While the establishment media has been largely ignoring Scahill's revelations, a few particularly government-pleasing journalists have been dutifully following the CIA's script in order to undermine the credibility of Scahill's story. CNN's long-time Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr -- one of the most reliable DoD stenographers in the nation (she actually announced that the real Abu Ghraib scandal was the unauthorized release of the photographs, not the abuse they depicted) -- has been predictably tapped by the CIA to take the lead in this effort.