You've Been Propagandized Part II

Or maybe it's part 2000 or 100,000. Who knows? Not even the media knows because it is part and parcel of the problem.

Attempts to be "objective" usually result in the media simply giving you two people's view of whatever (if you're lucky to actually get two unfiltered views) without critical analysis or real attempts to get accurate information. Even a blogger can get the same information from thousands of miles away and make better or at least equally factual analysis of the situation.

In it's modern version, the American press is no longer the American press serving the American people. They believe they have a wider audience they are responsible for so they believe they need to give the other side equal time and it is almost always uncritical simply quoting from them or showing their videos. It is almost as if Goebbels sent Leni Reifenstahl's pictures and movies to the media and they simply showed them without comment or acted as if they were completely accurate, reprinting or repeating there words and images as facts.

It's no doubt difficult to decide if someone is giving you accurate information and images from 9000 miles away. It's probably more difficult when the images and words seem to reflect your own ideological perspective. But, one of the most egregious acts a media organization can do is to be confronted repeatedly with the fact that an employee is indeed presenting you with inaccurate and often completely staged images and stories and still try to protect him, even present him as an award winning journalist, all the while talking about journalistic integrity.

And that is what happened. We aren't talking Dan Rather and Mary Mapes. That was pretty egregious. We are talking about a current and ongoing employee that is pretty obvious has participated with the insurgents in their attacks as a propagandist. Note that I do not equate a journalist who simply ends up with some insurgents or at the site of an attack and presents information from their side (though that is a very thin line), but one that is consistantly able to move within these groups without danger and, worse yet, actually presents obviously staged photos as fact and provides information about the acts in the photos as fact while the incidents either did not happen, were not actually happening at the time of the events or were being represented as greater or different than actual events.

And they are going to keep protecting this guy and acting like he is a real journalist?

Shame. Shame. Shame.