Stumble it!The battle for the mind of North America
posted in Corruption, Daily News by themaiden |Lets start with the light stuff.
There is Lonelygirl15, a curious bit of corporate sponsored false reality– perhaps. ((Be sure to read comment #1))
Lonelygirl15 appears to be an innocent, home-schooled 16-year-old, pouring her heart out for her video camera in the privacy of her bedroom. But since May, her brief posts on the video-sharing site YouTube and the social networking hub MySpace have launched a Web mystery eagerly followed by her million-plus viewers: Who is this sheltered ingenue who calls herself “Bree,” and is she in some sort of danger — or, worse, the tool of some giant marketing machine?
While it is doubtful that Lonelygirl15 is a malicious plot, it is dangerous to blur fact and fiction. It sets the stage for very bad things– bad things, like, for example…
Ten South Florida journalists, including three with The Miami Herald’s Spanish-language sister paper, received thousands of dollars from the U.S. Office of Cuba Broadcasting for working on a radio and TV station aimed at undermining Fidel Castro’s communist regime, the Herald reported Friday.
The Miami Herald Media Co.’s President responds, I think, appropriately.
Jesus Diaz Jr., president of the Miami Herald Media Co. and publisher of both newspapers, said the individuals violated a “sacred trust” between journalists and the public.
“Even the appearance that your objectivity or integrity might have been impaired is something we can’t condone, not in our business,” Diaz said. “I personally don’t believe that integrity and objectivity can be assured if any of our reporters receive monetary compensation from any entity that he or she may cover or have covered, but particularly if it’s a government agency.”
What Diaz did not mention, and what should be the real punch line, is that the objectivity and the integrity of the United States Government has been impaired. US citizens should not condone such behavior, even if the cause is perceived to be a good one.
It seems that ABC is ready to air a Clinton Smearumentary title “The Path to 9/11″, which reads like a defense of neo-con talking points. Unfortunately…
Clinton told reporters in Arkansas Thursday night that ABC executives should provide an honest accounting in “The Path to 9/11″ — “particularly if they’re going to claim it’s based on the 9/11 commission report, they shouldn’t have scenes which are directly contradicted by the factual findings of the 9/11 commission. I just want people to tell the truth and not to pretend it’s something it’s not.”
Clinton, Other Democrats Assail ABC Docudrama ‘Path to 9/11′
… much in the film seems to be false.
Actor Harvey Keitel, who plays an FBI agent in the film, has joined the critics, telling CNN’s “Showbiz Tonight” that he has had arguments with the filmmakers over elements that were “wrong.”
“You can’t put these things together, compress them and then distort the reality. . . . You cannot cross the line from a conflation of events to a distortion of the event,” Keitel said. “Where we have distorted something, we made a mistake, and it should be corrected.”
Clinton, Other Democrats Assail ABC Docudrama ‘Path to 9/11′
Oh… but Keitel is just an actor and Clinton is sore about that thing with the blue dress. Would the testimony of a few historians be better?
In another salvo, nine prominent historians — including Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Sean Wilentz and Michael Kazin — released a letter urging the film’s cancellation. Calling ABC’s explanation that the movie will be identified as a dramatization “disingenuous and dangerous,” they said: “A responsible broadcast network should have nothing to do with the falsification of history, except to expose it.”
Clinton, Other Democrats Assail ABC Docudrama ‘Path to 9/11′
Or the testimony of a former counterterrorism advisor to both Clinton and Bush?
Moreover, Roger Cressey, an NBC terrorism analyst and a former counterterrorism adviser to presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said on September 5, “[W]hat’s amazing about this, based on what I’ve seen so far, is how much they’ve gotten wrong.”
Or that of two former FBI agents?
Two retired F.B.I. agents said today that they had rejected advisory roles on the disputed ABC mini-series, “The Path to 9/11,” because of concerns about the program’s accuracy.
One of the agents, Thomas E. Nicoletti, was hired by the producers of the mini-series in July 2005 to oversee its technical accuracy, but left after less than a month because of scenes he believed were misleading or just false.
But at least there are no politics involved.
During interviews about the ABC miniseries The Path to 9/11 with former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean (R), chairman of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States — also known as the 9-11 Commission — the hosts of CNN’s Paula Zahn Now, Fox News’ Fox & Friends, and ABC’s Good Morning America failed to raise key issues with Kean bearing on his role as a senior consultant to the film: What are the terms of his arrangement with ABC? Might his son, Thomas H. Kean Jr., who is challenging Democrat Bob Menendez for his New Jersey Senate seat, not benefit from Kean’s high-profile promotion of a film that falsely presents the actions of President Clinton, who is campaigning for Menendez; by promoting a film that smears a Democratic administration through fabricated scenes, is Kean not tarnishing his own image and that of the 9-11 Commission, which has to date acted in a largely bipartisan manner and produced a report that has garnered wide respect?
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