WMD = Weapons of Mass Deception

I got satellite over the weekend and found a great information source, LinkTV. While watching today, I saw a program called Weapons of Mass Deception, and feel compelled to post a blog about it. Many know that I have been beating the drums about the media for the past several years, when I became aware of bias in the reporting of stories about the criminal justice system.

From the Link TV online program description: “This film explores the hidden story of the distorted media coverage during the Iraq war. There were two wars going on in Iraq – one was fought with armies of soldiers, bombs and a fearsome military force. The other was fought alongside it with cameras, satellites, armies of journalists and propaganda techniques. One war was rationalized as an effort to find and disarm WMDs – Weapons of Mass Destruction; the other was carried out with even more powerful WMDs, Weapons of Mass Deception. The TV networks in America considered their non-stop coverage their finest hour, pointing to the use of embedded journalists and new technologies that permitted viewers to see a war up close for the first time. But different countries saw different wars. Why?”

The film is included, on DVD, in a new book by former network producer Danny Schechter (ABC, CNN). Schechter makes a great argument for return of the media back to the people and out of the hands of the corporate conglomerates. (Click here to find out more on the book and film.)

Award winning, veteran independent journalist, Bill Moyers has now joined the call to repeal the Telecommunications Act of 1996. On January 12, 2007 he gave a speech at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, TN. (Click here to read the speech.)

The Wikipedia entry on him states: “When he retired in December 2004, the AP News Service quoted Moyers, ‘I’m going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee. We have an ideological press that’s interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that’s interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don’t have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people.’”

What Schechter and Moyers are saying is that what we see on the network and cable news is not the real news. It is in fact at best irresponsible yellow journalism, at worst it is pure propaganda. At the end of the day, we need to reclaim our media from the large corporate conglomerates, and reinstate the Fairness Doctrine or we stand to loose our democracy. There are other issues as stake here as well, such as the erosion of the middle class and civil liberties. However, these issues all will ride on the outcome of what we allow to happen to the media.

Will we stay a republic, founded on the democratic principles of Jefferson, Adams, Paine, and others, or will we become an oligarchy, or worse, a totalitarian state?