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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (872)	3/6/2005 1:25:51 PM
From: tonto	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9838

Thanks for your response. As I wrote, I would think otherwise about the journalists and their peabody dreams...but maybe journalists no longer are driven as they should be. It just seems very strange that people have walked away from a story of that magnitude.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (872)	3/7/2005 9:11:31 AM
From: LPS5	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9838

This is certainly not the case in sophisticated areas such as metropolitan New York where at least half of the citizens agree that the official story is crap and want a real investigation into 9/11. As evidenced by what? I'd like to see a link or some other documentation backing that assertion. I'm inclined to believe that you are equating, or allowing the equation of, skepticism about the investigation with acceptance of the raft of conspiracy theories currently circulating. Prove me wrong. If you can point out the profit possibility to them, they'd be on this in a New York minute. Absolutely. I hope you're not suggesting that any such opportunities haven't been examined - I'm sure they have. Such is the efficiency of markets. If there were such a conspiracy - hell, even if the facts were compelling enough, newsworthy enough, to raise interest and consequently raise ratings, even if briefly - introducing such a story would be a foregone conclusion. For any journalist or medium of journalism, delivering such a story holds the promise of untold wealth and fame; think Drudge and the Lewinsky affair as a recent example. In my opinion, that's the proverbial icing on the cake: even beside the evidentiary shortcomings (which are plentiful indeed), why has no one - no one - with a good chunk of the eyes and ears of the public sought to report on this issue? Am I to believe, as is evidently being suggested, that the conspiracy is that all-encompassing? The only place you'll find brave muck raking journalism today is in the rare corners of alternative media and across the Internet, the last great hope of an informed democracy. That's one way of looking at it. Other people, myself included, believe that although there are occasional, rare nuggets of valuable reporting done off the beaten track, for the most part the 'alternative media' is an offshoot of the growth of the internet, whereby the barriers to having a public voice are effectively removed. It's hardly 'brave' to pay a monthly fee to an ISP, slap together a few webpages, and post opinions. Add to that the growing indistinction among Americans of the difference between reporting and editorials, and what I believe is a tendency among many Americans to attribute truthfulness to anything in print and, well, the growth of 'alternative media' is readily explained beyond a rather charitable estimation of some growing hunger for information among the populace-at-large. The American sheeple have no expectations, other than to be alternately titillated or bored by the latest load of crap dumped on them by the infotainment industry. Again, I agree completely. In fact, I don't see conspiratorial websites as terribly different than the next crashing, stinking heap of sitcoms to land in the 8pm to 10pm timeslot on the major television channels: both offer a quick fix of low-level excitement, require little or no expenditure of thought, and pander to that most basic of instincts among the healthy portion of the bell curve - escapism. Perhaps more accurately phrased, mitigation. In the closing five minutes of the half-hour program, there is resolution. The couple reunite, the lost money is found; catharsis delivered. Commensurately, the last paragraph of the conspiracy theory editorial suggests that things are bad, and getting worse; that facts have only just begun to surface, and that you better keep your eyes open or else. Ceteris paribus, the laugh track is simply a reciprocal correlate to the emotional language and uncritical fact filtering of the conspiracy hypothesizer. Both keep you coming back for more. e