Bizarre publicity for Bin Laden - Page 2

Frank, can we really rely on OK! to deliver us the hard-hitting coverage we expect from Life & Style?

Follow the money. What are the motives of the corporations that own the media? Would they benefit from objective analysis of current US policy, or would they benefit from tax breaks and no-bid contracts and de-regulation of industry?

And good Rupert Murdoch, for one, admitted point blank at an economic conference in Switzerland that Fox News was, at the time, actively promoting the Bush Administration's case for war. Why is anyone's guess.

Or it could be the general flakiness of the media, the same flakiness that leads to constant coverage of things that aren't really national news. They may well know Kristol's a boob, but people are watching and ad dollars are pouring in so there's no reason to make the effort to do any real journalism.

How long will Osama use fucking 9/11 as a meal ticket? He'd better get his finger out and pull his sock up and cook up a hot new terrorist act, or people will stop taking him seriously.

Fixed.

Bingo.

Ok, but you have to make that case. My skepticism meter goes to red when anyone (conservative or liberal) starts talking about "the media," because there is no "the media." There are media, many of which are controlled by different corporations with different (and often competing) interests. The Washinton Post is coming from a different place than The Washington Times, and both are coming from a different place than the Christian Science Monitor.

I don't understand how you can dole out wholesale criticism to the NYT, WaPo, CNN, etc... and then hold up Keith Olbermann as some kind of paragon of integrity. He works for MSNBC. NBC is owned by GE. GE is a large corporation, and so, by your logic, has a sinister corporate agenda. Which means that Olbermann has a sinister corporate agenda.

The fact of the matter is that Olbermann is a commentator. All of these outlets are made up of individuals who report the news, or offer their own opinions about it. David Brooks is hardly representative of the editorial view of the New York Times, for example. And are you going to tell me that, say, John Harwood, one of the most competent and respected political reporters in Washington, carries the Bush Administration's water? Or takes journalistic marching-orders from his corporate higher-ups at the Wall Street Journal? That's simply not true.

I'm not going to deny that there aren't some problems involved with corporate ownership of mass media. But to think that there's some kind of massive media-government conspiracy in which all journalists (be they reporters or analysts) are complicit, is just not true.

They don't even know what "censored" means. Credibility = 0.

I just browsed through some of the news items on that site, and I can say with total conviction: Yes. The NY Times, for all its flaws, does have more credibility.

Where's the lack of integrity? He's of the opinion that the Emperor has no clothes and is a buffoon in any case, but he doesn't make stuff up in an effort to pretend his opinion has merit.

And a good one.

See the bit above about making stuff up.
Conspiracy implies secrecy. That Cheney quoted the NYT as separate confirmation of his claims is not secret. That Rupert Murdoch confessed that Fox News was in the business of shoring up the White House's claims is not secret. That most news outfits are more than willing to provide a forum for the White House to spread it's nonsense is not secret either.

I don't know what to make of chyrons like "Democrats: Supporters of Terrorism or Haters of Freedom?" and the like, but that the purpose of Fox News is to be a White House mouthpiece is certainly not secret.

The only question to ask is why they do all this. Intellectual laziness as opposed to being an active propaganda arm is one theory, but the problem with that is that it leads to the question "Why the Republicans?" People hate Bush and hate this war, so you'd think that if CNN is only after ratings, it would be non-stop reporting on the perfidy, mendacity, incompetence, and sadism of the Bush Administration; Glenn Beck would be working the 12-6 shift at some University station in Arkansas where he belongs.

So could the tape author face the death penalty? My understanding of treason is pretty much limited to the Rosenbergs. Apparently I know even less than I thought, they were convicted of espionage.

Holy crap, so he hadn't dyed his beard after all?

So the big question becomes: if Bin Laden has been turned into a puppet, who's pulling the strings?

Can you imagine the hue and cry that would ensue if Democrats had leaked info like that to, say, The New York Times? The shrill cries of TREASON!!!! would be deafening. It makes my head ache.

Not everyone in the government is a Republican. We've seen discussed in several threads that there is suspicion that Dems are tanking the Government for the next year just to put the current administration in the worst light, damn the cost to the rest of us.

Don't tell me that someone with that mindset wouldn't leak this irregardless of cost in terms of intelligence gathering in the future.

That being said, I wouldn't put it past general incompetence of people of either party to do this in the name of getting points with the media.

Can we hit the big reset button now, please?

Looking at SITE's website, it's like a private intelligence version of Media Matters. While it's not too surprising that there are private intelligence groups like this, I always figured them to be more policy oriented.

The WaPo article states that SITE informed the White House of the video tape around 10 am on October 7. Apparently, this was over 30 minutes after ABC News broke a story about the video in which it quotes government officials who were familiar with the content of the video. I'm not sure what this all means for the White House and leaks. Was the video WaPo is referring to a different one? If not, It's pretty clear that if Al Qaeda's website was supposed to be the only source of the video and a national news agency ran a story on it before the official release, OBL's boys might think that they had security issues before the Pentagon started their downloads.

Well, the last thing "they" want is to capture Bin Laden, since then they won't be able to scare people with him any more. But "A small private intelligence company?" Like plumbers, but with intelligence instead of flanges? Everything's getting privatized these days.