Here are some interesting bits lifted from various places:
- FoxNews: Senator Wants ‘Human Shields’ Punished
- Big Brother taping and archiving peace protests: Coulter, a veteran activist and no rookie at demonstrating, said she asked the identification technician why police were taping the crowd. “She told me: ‘This is a crime scene,’ ” Coulter recounted. “Since when is people exercising their right of speech and assembly a crime? Now democracy is a crime?”
- LA Times: U.S. Expands Clandestine Surveillance Operations: The number of secret searches approved by Ashcroft since the 9/11 attacks is triple those authorized in the previous 20 years.
- Pentagon, media agree on Iraq war censorship: Reporters to be “embedded” in military Another clause states that all interviews with military personnel should be on the record—an attempt to prevent the leaks that occurred during the Vietnam War, when servicemen anonymously divulged damaging information or expressed disgust about the conduct of the war. In the Iraq war, military staff will face disciplinary action for saying too much.
- CNN imposes new “script control”: CNN became notorious after it revealed following the 1991 Gulf War that it had allowed Pentagon “trainees” into the CNN newsroom in Atlanta. According to Fisk, however, CNN “is not alone in this paranoid form of reporting. Other US networks operate equally anti-journalistic systems.”
There is ample evidence for this assertion. During the Gulf War, NBC’s Tom Brokaw echoed the White House and the dominant media mantra when he told viewers that the US was not responsible for civilian casualties. “We must point out again and again that it is Saddam Hussein who put these innocents in harm’s way,” he said.
Today, in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, the media routinely presents unadulterated pro-administration propaganda as news, citing sources such as “senior defense officials,” “administration officials,” “some American intelligence officials,” “military officials” and “defense officials.”