End Government Run Media Now

First the Bush administration paid columnists hundreds of thousands of dollars to promote their agenda, a fact the “journalists” involved did not make public. Then we learned that a non-journalist, partisan Republican named J.D. Gukert, was provided daily press passes by the White House (normally very hard to get) for nearly 700 consecutive days, under the fake name Jeff Gannon. It was soon uncovered that “Gannon” was also a gay male prostitute.

More recently, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has ordered the Bush White House to end the practice of producing fake “news segments” supporting Bush’s policies and disseminating them to local TV stations where they are aired without the public’s knowledge of their source. The administration has refused to comply. So far, they have spent more than $250 Million in taxpayer money on propaganda.

If you haven’t heard these stories, relax, it’s not your fault. So-called “mainstream media” has been bullied into submission by the Republican Noise Machine, as author David Brock calls it. Fox News Channel, right wing cable pundits, radio talkers and hundreds of expressly right wing newspapers and periodicals put forth misleading and often downright false, partisan propaganda daily while lashing out in virulent outrage when one of the networks report something they don’t like!

You’ve heard about Dan Rather and those memos, no doubt; but have you heard that FDR’s grandson has called for the resignation of Brit Hume at Fox after Mr. Hume deliberately misquoted FDR in an effort to claim the former President supported Social Security “privatization”? I doubt it highly. Independent surveys have repeatedly shown that regular Fox viewers are the most poorly informed citizens of this country. Without reliable information, our Democracy will wither and die. I urge all Americans to tune out government run propaganda before this can happen.