Media

By David Swanson

On Thursday, ABC News reported a big new break in the story of illegal and unconstitutional spying that our government has engaged in for years now, except that there was nothing new in the story and the important parts were left out.

The ABC News announcer began the video report thus:

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By David Swanson

I think that’s a fair question. When Rood worked for TPMMuckraker he complained to CBS News about the life of a blogger.

When he got hired by the Disney Corporation (ABC News) he begin tackling such tasks as burying a story of war lies and war crimes in order to blog about phone sex.

Now he’s added a followup to the original story that still fails to note that I blogged the full story over a year ago, and still fails to tell most of the story.

By David Swanson

While supporters of McCain and Palin generally appear to be a lily white mob of vicious imbeciles who shout things like Sit Down Boy! and Keep the White House white!, one black man, a radio host from Milwaukee whom I had never heard of before, James T. Harris, was given the microphone at a John McCain event and proceeded to lay the biggest wettest kiss possible on McCain’s flabby white butt, after which McCain struggled to produce a coherent response.

This disturbs me a little read more

By David Swanson

Here’s a typical example of how the news cycle works now that the blogosphere interacts (or doesn’t) with independent and corporate media:

July 1, 2007, AfterDowningStreet.org Breaks Story of NSA Whistleblower Adrienne Kinne
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/24183

May 13, 2008, Democracy Now picks up the story of Kinne
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/5/13/fmr_military_intelligence_officer_…

May 19, 2008, AfterDowningStreet.org Breaks Story of NSA Whistleblower read more

By David Swanson

Project Censored has released a valuable new book called “Censored 2009: The Top 25 Stories of 2007-08“.

The book includes summaries of the censored stories, in some cases citing multiple small and independent sources that told the stories, plus updates on new developments in the stories. Also included are substantial updates on the top censored stories of the previous year, most of which are still making news except that they’re not making news: they’re read more

By David Swanson

Robert Fisk’s “The Age of the Warrior” collects 500 stupendous pages of his columns from the past several years. Fisk is, of course, the Middle Eastern correspondent for the Independent (UK) based in Beirut. He writes about Iraq, Turkey, Palestine, the United States, literature, cinema, genocide, whatever grabs his interest, and he does so with a great deal of honesty and courage. I couldn’t recommend the book more highly. It lives up to its rather epic read more

By David Swanson

Last Friday one of two things indisputably happened. Either a dozen senior Congress members and several well-known expert witnesses went certifiably and collectively insane, or charges of the most extreme executive abuses of power ever heard in the history of this nation were backed up by overwhelming evidence during a six-hour hearing of the House Judiciary Committee focused on the possible need to impeach the President and the Vice President. Either way, a nation with a public read more

By David Swanson

There’s been a lot of public discussion of late of the Associated Press’s Washington Bureau Chief Ron Fournier’s changes in style rules. Out with “just the facts,” in with opinion and perspective. Or so the story goes. The changes that are afoot at the AP appear to be part of a broader trend, influenced – in part – by the internet, the medium itself and the competition from bloggers. Of the two biggest problems I see in American journalism, read more