Stories best not forgotten from last week

[solarbird]

A series of hideous revelations about the contemptible role of the major media outlets, particularly television, as propaganda organ for the Bush administration. Friday: questioning anything the government says is "mindlessly adversarial". Also, the only network voice against the war (if MSNBC counts as a network) was fired to get anti-Iraq-war voices off the air. Thursday: extensive documentation of suppression of stories - and reporters - contradicting the administration and the march to war in Iraq. Meanwhile, it's not going to get any better because the shit truly rises to the surface, as the people most responsible for presenting all the crap the anchors at the major networks think they did a great job. And they did; it's just that that job has nothing to do with journalism. It has a lot to do with presenting the Pentagon's domestic propaganda campaign as "independent analyst" work, a savage raping of law that they still refuse to mention.

I mean, even Scott McClellon, press secretary for the Bush administration and abler and abetter of Administration propaganda, thinks they were pathetic lapdogs - so they are, of course, going after him. Oh, by the way, Mr. McClellon also let slip that Chief Executive Bush personally authorised the leak of Valerie Wilson's identity as an undercover CIA agent. That wasn't the only retaliatory leak; last weekend's This American Life had a long-form story about the breakdown and overturning of the FBI's first successful terrorism conviction - a conviction the FBI renounced - and retaliatory leaking of names of undercover FBI sources.

Also, the usual commentary from the media is that the bullshit distraction coverage they provide is what Americans actually want. polls say this is a lie, and is directly tied to why the mainstream media scores worse in trust than the least popular chief executive in modern American history. But, again, truth isn't part of the consideration.

Oh, and, there's a new report out in the UK alleging that the US is using navy ships as new indefinite holding facilities for, you know, whoever the fuck the Bush administration wants to grab and hold indefinitely and possibly torture. And that "extraordinary rendition" continues, like you'd expect in a torture state.

Finally, out today; an extensive description of China's new pervasive surveillance network, and the ways it's used for political oppression. It's not just the Great Firewall of China, and yeah, a lot of American companies are involved, and marketing the systems that have been developed to the US government.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Naomi Klein's story for Wired squares fairly well with my experiences in Beijing and the Regions: the technological measures don't yet seem to have been extended to the smaller towns within the Chinese hinterland. But they will, most surely.

All of which left me wondering how in the heck these surveillance technologies would cope with cultures in which a substantial portion of the populace were wandering about the streets wearing scarves and veils: I mean, how do you even attempt facial biometrics under those circumstances?

On a not wholly-random note, CBC Radio last night did a story on the kaffiyeh as a 'fashion accessory' in Quebec.....

And yeah, I know better than to try to drive through a roadblock with my hair covered, let alone my face: makes the Powers That Be quite twitchy, it does.

(sent anonymously since I mention China, and that's always potentially sensitive to financial well-being. insert big weary sigh here...)

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Polls say this is a lie...

Polls don't matter. There's are solid differences between what people will say to a pollster, what they'll do in a voting booth, what they'll do with a half-hour block of time brought to you by your advertising industry, what they'll do with a half-hour in front of their computers, and what they'll do with a half-hour that asks them to take out their wallets.

These are all such different markets, inhabited by different people, that trying to generalize across them is simply a mistake.

[solarbird]

These are all such different markets, inhabited by different people, that trying to generalize across them is simply a mistake.
We're talking specifically about TV news coverage and polling about TV news coverage.

I think the continually declining market - still the biggest single market, but nonetheless, continually declining - shows that what they're doing isn't working very well. It works okay in the eternally-refighting-the-60s Baby Boomers and older, but nobody the fuck else. (Just check their numbers, after all.)