Politics, the Media and 9/11

[ProSense]

Opinion

Politics, the Media and 9/11

Eric Boehlert Thu Sep 7, 2:30 PM ET

The Nation -- It was Sunday, August 1, 2004, and Senator John Kerry's presidential prospects appeared healthy. Just days earlier Kerry had accepted his party's nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, and now Kerry was making the rounds on the morning talk shows, aggressively issuing his call for change.

At noon Kerry, sitting dead-even in the polls with the incumbent, wartime President, began his fourth and final Sunday morning television interview, appearing on CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. The show opened with a report from Iraq about that day's multiple bomb attacks against Christian churches: "Absolute mayhem on the streets of Baghdad," announced the CNN reporter. The dispatch reinforced Kerry's campaign pitch that President George W. Bush had misled America into a disastrous war.

Snip...

Because less than ten minutes after thanking Kerry for appearing on his show, Blitzer pivoted and announced, "We're getting some breaking news information. CNN has now learned that the Secretary of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, is about to announce that the nation will go to a higher level of security..."

Two points that afternoon became glaringly obvious: The "war on terror," Bush's strong suit politically, had returned to the forefront, thanks to the warnings the President himself had signed into action; and the media, particularly cable television outlets, were going to hype the "chilling" terror scare with endless, excited saturation coverage, and do it at Kerry's expense.

Snip...

They also need to worry about the role the media will play if that occurs. Because if one of the enduring legacies of 9/11 has been this Administration's politicization of terror threats inside the United States, the media's lapdog hyping of the threats--its tendency to act as a megaphone instead of a filter, even in the wake of the Administration's clear record of distortion--is another. Too often anxious for access and too nervous about allegations of liberal bias (and, to be fair, somewhat constrained by the fact that the Administration often controls key information and decides how to disseminate it), news organizations remain much more willing to cheerlead terror warnings than seriously question them or put them in proper political context.

more..

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20060907/cm_thenation/20060925boehlert_1

[blm]

1. And complicit media was readying to help WH for this Nov election, too.

We need a full blown assault on the corpmedia that EXPOSES their complicity with the GOP for the past decade.

Gore wasn't "gored" and Kerry wasn't "swiftboated" - they were "impeachmented" by the same media that was complicit with the GOPs during impeachment of Clinton.

This tactic of using the media against Democratic leaders has been in full swing for a decade now.

[ProSense]

2. The media's complicity

or terror-on-demand propaganda is only effective if Americans, once again, buy into the BS. Everything must be done to expose the lies. It's possible, but not easy. The RW is entrenched in the media as clearly evidenced by the Path to 9/11 debacle and ABC's defiance.

[blm]

4. It was proven to me with the coverage of the 2000 election and nailed shut

when they all CHOSE to be absent for Kerry's speech to the Firefighters Convention.

After the Downing Street Memos revealed fully the extent BushInc was going to for war, and the media downplayed or ignored those findings, there could be no doubt WHO they were serving - and it certainly isn't us citizens.

[lynne]

3. The only way around this -

- is to either change the month of elections or change the date of 09/11. This being the 5th Anniversary has just compounded the situation. As long as 9/11 is in the national memory, there will be events relating to its anniversary and every few years those events will fall 2 months before an election. It has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with the calendar.

What is needed is to make that anniversary work in our favor instead of against us.