Why We Need Media Reform

Here's a great bit from The National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, TN. This is a major event going on right now about why we NEED a media reform movement and what it should look like. Specifics on the participants at Robert McChesney's Free Press sponsored show are a must see!

For live updates from the national media reform conference see the Common Dreams website here. Thanks to www.CommonDreams.org for covering this important event.

The mainstream corporate press are really at the center of our current democratic and constitutional crisis. Let's really mobilize around media reform in 2007. Check out some of these links and stay tuned in!

Media Rights

Free Press

Project Censored

PR Watch

Media Alliance

Media Matters

FAIR

ACME

And, of course, remember to check out Retropoll

Remember*--"A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy or perhaps both." James Madison

[The David Swanson piece linked above can be read below...]

Why Do We Need a National Conference for Media Reform?
Submitted by dswanson on Thu, 2007-01-11
By David Swanson

Here's why.

Bush just connected Iraq to 9-11 again, and the media will not tell you it was a lie.

Bush just gave a list of reasons why this time his escalation of the war will work. The reasons amounted to:

1)We'll have more troops.
2)We'll go into neighborhoods holding hands with Iraqis
3)Maliki won't "tolerate" any interference

A minute later Bush told us there will still be IED attacks and suicide bombings. The media will not point out that such actions ought really to count as interference.

Bush just announced that he wanted to share Iraq's oil profits with all of the Iraqi people, and the media will not examine what Bush is actually doing or even question his right to determine what happens to Iraq's oil.

Bush just said that Al Qaeda is "still" active in Iraq, and the media will not tell you that Al Qaeda's activities in Iraq really began when Bush attacked and turned the country into a training ground for terrorism.

Bush just issued a vague threat to Iran and Syria, and the media will not question his right to do that or the sanity of doing so.

Bush just claimed that withdrawing from Iraq would amount to siding with "extremists" which continuing to occupy Iraq would amount to siding with Iraqis. The media will not contrast this lie with public opinion polls taken of Iraqis.

Bush just claimed he was making Americans more safe with his occupation of Iraq. The media will not contrast this claim with any studies of the actual effects of the Iraq War.

Bush just claimed he cared about U.S. service men and women. The media will not ask our troops what they think. Veteran and military family organizations opposing the war will not be asked to comment for the morning headlines.

The media WILL report on Bush's posture, tone of voice, tie color, and attitude. The trivial will be made into the gargantuan. The important will be slipped in sideways, quietly, in the form of an unstated assumption that the "surge" is already underway and out of Congress's hands to stop – an action that would be indecent anyway.

The media will not ask or try to answer what Bush means when he says "victory." The media will not raise the question of what this war is being fought for.

The media will depict the anti-war movement as striving ultimately only for a rejection of the "surge." No mention will be made of efforts to de-escalate and end the war. And the media will continue to call the "surge" a surge, gradually dropping the quotation marks.

The media will not show us the Iraqi people killed and injured by our war.

And as long as Tucker Carlson is given air time, people will ask me if I'm one of THOSE Swansons. No, I'm not. I have no money. The anti-war movement has no money. And we have no media.

But we do have the blues and we are headed to Memphis: http://www.freepress.net/conference

*Turn on, tune in, and drop by the retro blog...more to come at Whose News!