h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Having just read your column on the Peace Marches, I'd like to add a couple of bits of info to the mix:

1. Academics and intellectuals have *not* ignored the situation. They have spoken out in their hundreds and thousands, over and over again, despite being targetted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (http://www.goacta.org/flashindex.html), a right-wing organisation headed by Lynne Cheyney, wife of the Vice-Pres. This organisation maintains and makes public a list of anti-war/anti-Bush administration intellectuals and academics, labelling them "unpatriotic", and lobbying to have them either sued to shut up or fired. The ACTA published in Feb 2002 a document entitled 'Defending Civilization: How Our Universities Are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It', outlining its attitude to "unpatriotic" educators and educational institutions. You can find articles about this at:

The Guardian (2001): http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4322832,00.html

Common Dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/views01/1213-05.htm

The National Catholic Reporter: http://www.natcath.com/NCR_Online/archives/121401/121401o.htm

It's all just so much worse than you might have thought... Of course, you won't find this in mainstream US news, because:

2. The US news services have failed to provide decent investigative reports for many year, mainly due to finances. They have to run their news stations as businesses, not public services, and so cannot afford to offend their sponsors (some years ago Chrysler, for example, sent out a letter requiring over 100 local newspapers, radio stations, and TV news stations to sign a form giving the company a veto on any news stories it didn't approve of. Almost every letter came back with the form signed). They also have to make a profit, and, as Greg Palast (www.gregpalast.com), the man who broke the story of the voting irregularities in Florida and other states in 2000, explains investigative reporting requires heavy investment. The mainstream commercial US press has a long history of accepting press-releases from the government as fact, without checking up. The 1991 Gulf War highlighted the extent of the US press's complicity when it had every press company sign a contract stating that they would only report what the US government gave them permission to report. Only the British news media refused. So add this abject failure in the area of investigative reporting (Greg Palast tells a fab story: when he submitted his story on the Florida voting irregularities to a major US news company, they told him they couldn't accept it because it was factually inaccurate. He asked how they'd found inaccuracies, and they said "We phoned Jeb Bush's office, and they said so.") to the Bush administration's bullying tactics, and there's your reason for lack of reporting on the marches. Even now, they're barely giving it air-time (the printed press are better).

So, anyway, that's that, and thank you for your time and patience

All the best!

Glad to hear from someone who must be as frustrated as I am by the hypocricy and double standards of the American government's policies which are rapidly deteriorating into 'police state' methods and mentalities.

I am going to copy and paste your posting to the bottom of my article A971632 so it will be more accesible to future readers.

Thanks for your reaction and the interesting links.

~jwf~

That link should be A971732.
peace
jwf

Hey, those of us with functional brains need to stick together!

Seriously, it is incredibly frustrating, and very frightening. When you look at the PATRIOT Acts part 1 & 2, when you look at the challenging of Miranda, when you look at the general air of unease over "anti-American" sentiments, and when you look at the administration and its advisors themselves, it all begins to look truly scary. I was never one for conspiracy theories, and I'm still not, but some conclusions are pretty much inevitable.

That wasn't very cheery, was it???!!!

All the best

By the by, Robert Fisk's look at White House/Pentagon "script approval" for news coverage of the impending war is at http://argument.independent.co.uk/commentators/story.jsp?story=381438

Interesting stuff.

Yes, very interesting. I'll be posting that in a couple of places tonight. Thanks.

The answer to some of the question about control of the media lies in the 1996 revisions to the Telecommunications Act. The so-called 'de-regulation' of radio and television broadcasting has in fact become a conspiracy to destroy independent stations and bring all media under a very few select corporate umbrellas.

Until 1996 there laws which prohibited ownership of more than 8 or perhaps 12 radio stations and not more than 2 in one market. Today a Texas company (Texas you say ) called Clearchannel owns more than 1200 radio stations across America . In some markets they now own every outlet, because once they have two or more they can offer special 'combo' advertising rates that put the independents out of business and force them to sell out.

There were laws prohibiting the ownership of all media (radio, tv and newspaper) in any one market. This was to guarantee against monopoly pricing of advertising rates and ensure that more than one editorial voice was available. These laws were recinded in the 1996 Act, so now in many markets all the news outlets (radio, tv and newspaper) are served by one single 'newsroom' which takes its editorial direction from the corporate owners.

It is sad that Freedom of the Press has been stripped away in the past six or seven years and no one has been allowed to report on it.

peace
~jwf~

Oh, yes, we decided a little while ago that Clearchannel are Evil. Wherever you go along the interstate, there are billboards proclaiming the wonderful news that Clearchannel are bringing us more choice. Yeah, right.