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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Machaon who wrote (4005)	4/16/1999 12:00:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

If you keep demanding that you be fed only government dictated censored news, you might get it some day. That's exactly what I DON'T want. But it's exactly what we tend to GET today from the major media. This is not merely my opinion, but the opinion of many highly responsible journalists. In exchange for access to high officials and perks, many reporters and many major media principally parrot the government line. The problem is that they are NOT fullfilling the role of the free press--to investigate independently, to qestion, to challenge. Eisenhauer warned us of the industrial-military complex. Today we have a government-press complex. CNN is not government owned, as the media in Serbia are, but it is basically government-controlled. It is free in the sense that the government doesn't formally own it, but it is certainly not free in the sense that the founders of our nation envisioned. Examples abound. Just in this war, the press reported as fact the story they were fed by the government that Serbs had murdered moderate Kosovan leaders; surprise, surprise, the leaders turned up alive and well. The press reported as fact the story they were fed by the government, that the Serbs had burned the homes of these leaders; surprise, surprise, the houses were found to be untouched. The press reported as fact the story they were fed by the government, that the three captured soldiers were abducted from Macedonian territory; surprise, surprise it now turns out that we admit that they "inadvertently" strayed over the border, and I am sure that when the truth comes out we will find out that they had intentionally invaded Yugoslav territory. The press reported as fact the story they were fed by the government, that the U.S had bombed military vehicles and the Serbs then turned around and murdered civilians to be able to blame it on NATO; surprise, surprise, the pilot now admits that he bombed the tractor. The U.S. press didn't "correct" these stories until AFTER the facts came out in the international press and even the U.S. media couldn't hide the truth any longer. Neither you nor I know how many other stories of atrocities or other "facts" will eventually turn out to have been U.S. government inventions just like the claim of the Serbs killing the tractor passengers was a complete U.S. government fabrication. But I'm willing to bet that if the full truth ever emerges, there will be many more stories fed to our "free" press by the government and printed by the press as true without any investigation or verification that will turn out to be total fabrications. (Remember the Tonkin Gulf incident? More government fabrication to justify military intervention.) I don't for a moment believe that the press in Serbia is free. I am astonished that you would think for a moment that the press in this country is free.