Submitted by Laura Miller on
While the giant US media networks are covering the US's invasion of Iraq, they are also heavily lobbying to get rid of restriction on the number of TV and radio stations they can own in one market.The Guardian reports media critics are alarmed by what they see as a "serious conflict of interest" concerning how the broadcast industry covers the Bush administration.
Submitted by John Stauber on
Columnist Frank Rich writes, "There's almost nothing in the war, it seems, that cannot be exploited as a network promo. ... When Victoria Clarke at the Pentagon says Saddam is responsible for 'decades and decades and decades of torture and oppression the likes of which I think the world has not ever seen before,' no one on Fox or MSNBC is going to gainsay her by bringing up Hitler and Stalin.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
The producer of a CBS mini-series has been fired after comparing the climate of fear in the United States to the political environment that enabled Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Ed Gernon, the producer of "Hitler: The Rise of Evil" told TV Guide that the story "basically boils down to an entire nation gripped by fear, who ultimately chose to give up their civil rights and plunged the whole world into war.
Submitted by Sheldon Rampton on
An executive who claimed to have developed an online file-trading service that intentionally violated copyright protection laws now says that he made up the whole thing to sell his book. Pieter Plass, author of The Honest Thief, calls it an "April Fool's joke," but his PR firm, the Alliant Group, isn't laughing. They fell for the hoax and helped spread it, as did the Wall Street Journal, Business Wire, CNET, and Wired News.
Submitted by John Stauber on
Robert Fisk reports that "an Iraqi general, surrounded by hundreds of his armed troops, stands in central Basra and announces that Iraq's second city remains firmly in Iraqi hands. The unedited al-Jazeera videotape, filmed over the past 36 hours and newly arrived in Baghdad, is raw, painful, devastating. ... It is also proof that Basra, reportedly 'captured" and 'secured' by British troops last week, is indeed under the control of Saddam Hussein's forces. ...
Submitted by John Stauber on
"Hundreds of chanting demonstrators lined
Manhattan's Fifth Avenue on Thursday, and dozens lay down
in the street in a 'die-in' to protest the war. ... Anti-war groups also called for other civil disobedience in
the city to protest media and corporate 'profiteering from
the war.' ... Some protest signs were directed at the media. One
protester held a sign showing a picture of parrots and the
Submitted by John Stauber on
"The English-language and Arabic websites of Qatar-based broadcaster al-Jazeera were forced down this morning after a spate of suspected hacker attacks last night. Neither aljazeera.net, which gets the most hits of any Arabic website in the world, nor english.aljazeera.net, which launched on Monday, were available this morning after suspected attacks crashed both sites. [C]ommunications manager Jihad Ali Ballout told MediaGuardian.co.uk the company was doing everything possible to get the sites up and running.. ...
Submitted by John Stauber on
Paul Krugman notes that "by and large, recent pro-war rallies haven't drawn nearly as many people as
antiwar rallies, but they have certainly been vehement. ... Who has been organizing those pro-war rallies? The answer, it turns out, is
that they are being promoted by key players in the radio industry - with
close links to the Bush administration. ... Until now, complaints about Clear Channel have focused on its business
practices. Critics say it uses its power to squeeze recording companies and
Submitted by John Stauber on
Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post asks, "Why did so many people think this would be a cakewalk? You'd have to say the media played a key role. The pre-war buildup was so overwhelming that it seemed like the war should be called off as a horrible mismatch. There were hundreds of stories about America's superior weaponry, the Bradleys and Apaches and Mother of All Bombs, the superbly trained forces. There were so many 'shock and awe' stories that Americans could be forgiven for thinking they were in for another video-game conflict.
Submitted by John Stauber on
"The start of the war caused business at movie theaters to
drop by 25 percent on Wednesday as people stayed home to
watch the war, and snack-food sales and restaurant
deliveries thrived. The opening salvos of the war had taken
the place of prime-time entertainment, and television
stations did their best to serve up gaudily produced
coverage: the war in Iraq as the ultimate in reality
television, as the apotheosis of every favorite Hollywood
genre, from the combat thriller to the coming-of-age tale
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