A must read..
Frank Rich in the New York Times on journalistic ethics, payola, and American democracy's accelerating march into history.
This is a scenario out of "The Manchurian Candidate." Here we find Mr. Cheney criticizing the press for a sin his own government was at that same moment signing up Mr. Williams to commit. The interview is broadcast by the same company that would later order its ABC affiliates to ban Ted Koppel's "Nightline" recitation of American casualties in Iraq and then propose showing an anti-Kerry documentary, "Stolen Honor," under the rubric of "news" in prime time just before Election Day. (After fierce criticism, Sinclair retreated from that plan.) Thus the Williams interview with the vice president, implicitly presented as an example of the kind of "objective" news Mr. Cheney endorses, was in reality a completely subjective, bought-and-paid-for fake news event for a broadcast company that barely bothers to fake objectivity and both of whose chief executives were major contributors to the Bush-Cheney campaign. The Soviets couldn't have constructed a more ingenious or insidious plot to bamboozle the citizenry.
I'd like to emphasize one line there, with which I whole-heartedly agree: "The Soviets couldn't have constructed a more ingenious or insidious plot to bamboozle the citizenry."
This is exactly how I felt when I read the story of the Social Security Administration being used to shill for the President's policies. It looks like it's time for Pogo again.
Pogo may need a little updating, actually.
"We have met the enemy, and we are worse."