Press Failing, Says Critic (Norman Solomon)

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0223-11.htm

Press Failing, Says Critic
Acclaimed media expert addresses Drury audience
by Steve Koehler

A national media critic said Thursday that talk of the Bush administration facing war-crime charges is being avoided because the national media "licks the boots of those in power in Washington."

Norman Solomon, author of "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death," spoke at Drury University on Thursday as part of the university's yearlong convocation titled "Liberty & Security in a Post-911 World."

Solomon, a media critic for the watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, gave a soft-spoken but blistering 50-minute analysis of the national media's role in the runup to the Iraq war four years ago and of its reporting since.

"There was deception and activities (by President Bush and Vice President Cheney) led up to the war. The media ... is afraid of looking at the elephant in the living room. Are they guilty of war crimes?" he asked an audience of about 100 students, faculty and the public.

"The news media should be part of the discourse and encourage us to think, not shut it down."

Solomon contends the news in the months leading up to the war was spun "by those who wanted to go to war."

And the media, he said, "functioned as stenographers" by putting out information the government wanted to public to know.

more...

We have a press? Really?

All I see is entertainment when I turn on the television.

All I see are ads when I open a newspaper.

Radio? Hah!

I suspect we have no press, but just a bunch of organizations that like to claim the title without expending any effort to do actual journalism.

Game over, man.

I just wanted to pile on.

The state of our "press" is very, very discouraging. I have grown very cynical about it. I don't trust the press any longer.

Began getting my news online from int'l sources back in 2000. As the MSM - money sucking media - spread more and more lies for the Repubs I stopped believing anything I read or heard unless I had offshore verification &/or original source documentation.

was anxious to report hard news and earned my trust.