The WELL: inkwell.vue.276: Peter Phillips, director of Project Censored

#28: Peter Phillips (peterphillips) Wed 12 Jul 06 17:06

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 17:06:00 PDT

Steve,

Perhaps we do not know the exact reason the corporate media fails to cover important issues like the impeachment movement. We have theories on this that include self-censorship, advertisement pressure, dependency links, propaganda model, consolidation, and overt government pressure under national security concerns. Whatever the reason the facts are that very important news stories go under-covered or censored on a increasingly regular basis.

This statement cannot be disputed, which we prove every year with our Censored releases.

I think on impeachment these is a combination of pressures. Neither party wants a big impeachment blowup that undermines the power of the presidency. Both corporate parties want to prevent a massive grassroots popualist movement from arising that would undermine the impression of legitimacy of the current government.

50+ million eligible citizens didn't vote in 2004. It is not because they don't believe in Democracy they just didn't think it made any difference and the corporate media didn't lay out any major differences.

We have a phony democracy, our last two presidential elections were fraudulant, and million of people know it. I will do everything I can to encourage the impeachment of Bush and cheney and a populist movement for grassroots democracy and political reform in the US.

Most people know inately that corporations are not people. Why do they have rights of people. It is absurb and corporatons and their owners have gotten way to powerful in the US. It time for a non-violent social revolution and massive uprising to challenge the corporate power ruled over the the global dominance group.

Best Wishes and Thanks you for having me on we...com.

Peter [Read entire topic]

#27: Cynthia Dyer-Bennet (cdb) Wed 12 Jul 06 13:30

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 13:30:00 PDT

I hope Peter will come back and expand on his statements, Steve. I know he's been very busy this past week, though.

In any case, I want to thank Peter Phillips of Project Censored for joining us, and to thank Steve Rhodes for serving as moderator of this discussion. Though our virtual spotlight has turned to a new guest, it doesn't mean this conversation has to stop. The topic will remain open for further comment indefinitely. If you're able to stick around, please feel welcome to do so, Peter and Steve. If you've got to move on to other committments, we'll understand.

Good night, and good luck, as Edward R. Murrow would say! [Read entire topic]

#26: Steve Bjerklie (stevebj) Tue 11 Jul 06 16:46

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 16:46:00 PDT

I don't think #24 above answers my #16. You begin by stating, "Corporate Media is ignoring the impeachment issue because of dependency on the State Dept. Pentagon and White House for regular news feeds," then move on to a discussion of who belongs to the U.S. "ruling class" and what this class's agenda is and how influential it is.

But to look at your opening sentence for a moment, there's no news there: the news media has always been dependent on the State Department, Pentagon and White House for news feeds, of course. This did not stop the news media from covering the Vietnam War in a thorough and investigative manner, it did not stop the news media from jumping on the Watergate story, it did not stop the news media from covering the Iranian helicopter rescue and "Black Hawk Down" disasters, and it has not stopped the news media from informing us every day of the climbing body count in Iraq.

So why, please, is this news media choosing to ignore the "groundswell" of support for impeachment, as you claim? [Read entire topic]

#25: Peter Phillips (peterphillips) Tue 11 Jul 06 12:52

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:52:00 PDT

California Television Stations Caught in Fake News Study

By Peter Phillips, Caitlin Lampert, and Ned Patterson

Channel 40 news in Sacramento and Santa Barbara KEYT-3 channel 5 both aired fake news stories according to a recent study from PR Watch.

Fox news Channel 40 in Sacramento aired a news story on June 10, 2005 about a new dental technique that would check saliva samples to determine possible diseases. The story was aired as Fox news, but was actually a video news release made MultiVu, a PR Newswire Company, who were paid by the American Dental Association. Fox news repackaged the video by replacing the voice from MultiVu and using the same images to present their story without telling their audience that the source was from a pre-packaged video news release (VNR) paid for by the American Dental Association.

A report by the Center for Media Democracy (PR Watch) was released April 6, 2006. The study was compiled by Diane Faresetta and Daniel Price over ten months in 2005. The research shows how fake news stories are making their way into the American mainstream corporate news programs. Fake news stories, VNRs, are created by public relations firms on behalf of corporate clients and released to news sources for broadcast. Traditional journalism ethics have always demanded that reporters cite their sources and give objective honest accounts of news stories. The American public tends to believe news on television as unbiased, balanced and accurate.

Santa Barbara KEYT-3 channel 5 news, airs high tech stories by Robin Raskin, former editor of Family PC Magazine. Raskin does on-going news updates about personal computers and new technologies without telling the audience that she is being paid by Panasonic, Namco, and Techno Sources.

Similarly KOKH-25 in Okalahoma City shares stories on the latest technology advancements. On January 3, 2006 KOKH aired a feature story on the latest advancements in internet cable television. The technology featured in the report was limited to the Viiv media network platform from Intel. The entire story was taken from a VNR video created by D S Simon Productions and funded by Intel.

In Shreveport, LA, KSLA -12, channel 7 aired a two minute unedited VNR that discussed the vast changes in auto sales since General Motors launched the first online sales web site in 1996. Unfortunately, General Motors was not the first to have an automobile web site. The news reporters did not conduct independent research to fact check GM* claims.

According to PR Watch *the number of media formats and outlets has exploded in recent years, television remains the dominant news source in the United States. More than three-quarters of U.S. adults rely on local TV news, and more than 70 percent turn to network TV or cable news on a daily or near-daily basis, according to a January 2006 Harris Poll. The quality and integrity of television reporting thus significantly impacts the public's ability to evaluate everything from consumer products to medical services to government policies.*

VNR use is widespread. Pr Watch found 69 TV stations that aired at least one VNR from June 2005 to March 2006 covering over half the population in the US.

For more information see: http://www.prwatch.org/fakenews/findings/vnrs

Peter Phillips is a professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and director of Project Censored a media research organization, Caitlin Lampert is an undergraduate sociology major at SSU and Ned Patterson is a graduating senior in sociology. [Read entire topic]

#24: Peter Phillips (peterphillips) Tue 11 Jul 06 12:49

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:49:00 PDT

#16 Steve,

Corporate Media is ignoring the impeachment issue because of dependency on the State Dept. Pentagon and White House for regular news feeds. After that corporate media is interconnected with the Global Dominance Group who are pushing a pro-military agenda of US forward deployment for total police state control of the world.

The leadership class in the US is now dominated by a neo-conservative group of some 200 people who have the shared goal of asserting US military power worldwide. This Global Dominance Group, in cooperation with major military contractors, has become a powerful force in military unilateralism and US political processes.

A long thread of sociological research documents the existence of a dominant ruling class in the US, which sets policy and determines national political priorities. C. Wright Mills, in his 1956 book on the power elite, documented how World War II solidified a trinity of power in the US that comprised corporate, military and government elites in a centralized power structure working in unison through "higher circles" of contact and agreement. Neo-conservatives promoting the US Military control of the world are now in dominant policy positions within these higher circles of the US. Adbusters magazine summed up neo-conservatism as: "The belief that Democracy, however flawed, was best defended by an ignorant public pumped on nationalism and religion. Only a militantly nationalist state could deter human aggression *Such nationalism requires an external threat and if one cannot be found it must be manufactured."

In 1992, during Bush the First's administration, Dick Cheney supported Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz in producing the *Defense Planning Guidance* report, which advocated US military dominance around the globe in a "new order." The report called for the United States to grow in military superiority and to prevent new rivals from rising up to challenge us on the world stage.

At the end of Clinton's administration, global dominance advocates founded the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Among the PNAC founders were eight people affiliated with the number-one defense contractor Lockheed-Martin, and seven others associated with the number-three defense contractor Northrop Grumman. Of the twenty-five founders of PNAC twelve were later appointed to high level positions in the George W. Bush administration.

In September 2000, PNAC produced a 76-page report entitled Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century. The report, similar to the 1992 Defense Policy Guidance report, called for the protection of the American Homeland, the ability to wage simultaneous theater wars, perform global constabulary roles, and the control of space and cyberspace. It claimed that the 1990s were a decade of defense neglect and that the US must increase military spending to preserve American geopolitical leadership as the world's superpower. The report also recognized that: "the process of transformation * is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event such as a new Pearl Harbor." The events of September 11, 2001 presented exactly the catastrophe that the authors of Rebuilding America' Defenses theorized were needed to accelerate a global dominance agenda. The resulting permanent war on terror has led to massive government defense spending, the invasions of two countries, and the threatening of three others, and the rapid acceleration of the neo-conservative plans for military control of the world.

The US now spends as much for defense as the rest of the world combined. The Pentagon's budget for buying new weapons rose from $61 billion in 2001 to over $80 billion in 2004. Lockheed Martin's sales rose by over 30% at the same time, with tens of billions of dollars on the books for future purchases. From 2000 to 2004, Lockheed Martins stock value rose 300%. Northrup-Grumann saw similar growth with DoD contracts rising from $3.2 billion in 2001 to $11.1 billion in 2004. Halliburton, with Dick Cheney as former CEO, had defense contracts totaling $427 million in 2001. By 2003, they had $4.3 billion in defense contracts, of which approximately a third were sole source agreements. At the beginning of 2006 the Global Dominance Group's agenda is well established within higher circle policy councils and cunningly operationalized inside the US Government. They work hand in hand with defense contractors promoting deployment of US forces in over 700 bases worldwide.

There is an important difference between self-defense from external threats, and the belief in the total military control of the world. When asked, most working people in the US have serious doubts about the moral and practical acceptability of financing world domination.

A more in-depth review of the global dominance group's agenda and a list of the 200 advocates see: http://www.projectcensored.org/downloads/Global_Dominance_Group.pdf [Read entire topic]

#23: Peter Phillips (peterphillips) Tue 11 Jul 06 12:05

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:05:00 PDT

#15

Don,

There are lots of independent alternative press groups forming all around the country. You can post your letter at www.Indymedia.org any tme you want. I recommend finding the closest webbased news site to your home and posting letters and op-eds there. [Read entire topic]

#22: Peter Phillips (peterphillips) Tue 11 Jul 06 11:49

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 11:49:00 PDT

#19

Advertising pressure have been with media ever since we went commercial after the civil war. Noetheless some media have been better at resisting advertiser pressures than other. Consoikdation of media and consolidation of corporate advertisers have worked against freedom of the press and the first amendment's public's right to know.

Additionally Homeland Security has added to the pressure.

Corporate Media and Homeland Security Move towards Total Information Control By Peter Phillips

Freedom of information in American society is in danger because corporate media needs to maintain access to official sources of news. Consolidation of media has brought the total news sources for most Americans to less than a handful and these news groups have an ever-increasing dependency on pre-arranged content.

The 24-hour news shows on MSNBC, Fox and CNN are closely interconnected with various governmental and corporate sources of news. Maintenance of continuous news shows requires a constant feed and an ever-entertaining supply of stimulating events and breaking news bites. Advertisement for mass consumption drives the system and pre-packaged sources of news are vital within this global news process. Ratings demand continued cooperation from multiple-sources for on-going weather reports, war stories, sports scores, business news, and regional headlines. Print, radio and TV news also engages in this constant interchange with news sources.

The preparation for and following of ongoing wars and terrorism fits well into the visual kaleidoscope of pre-planned news. Government public relations specialists and media experts from private commercial interests provide on going news feeds to the national media distributions systems. The result is an emerging macro-symbiotic relationship between news dispensers and news suppliers. Perfect examples of this relationship are the press pools organized by the Pentagon both in the Middle-East and in Washington D.C., which give pre-scheduled reports on the war in Iraq to selected groups of news collectors (journalists) for distribution through their individual media organizations.

Embedded reporters (news collectors) working directly with military units in the field must maintain cooperative working relationships with unit commanders as they feed breaking news back to the U.S. public. Cooperative reporting is vital to continued access to government news sources. Therefore, rows of news story reviewers back at corporate media headquarters rewrite, soften or spike news stories from the field that threaten the symbiotics of global news management.

Journalists who fail to recognize their role as cooperative news collectors will be disciplined in the field or barred from reporting as in the recent celebrity cases of Geraldo Rivera and Peter Arnett.

Journalists working outside of this mass media system face ever-increasing dangers from *accidents* of war and corporate-media dismissal of their news reports. Massive civilian casualties caused by U.S. troops, extensive damage to private homes and businesses, and reports that contradict the official public relations line were downplayed, deleted, or ignored by corporate media, while content were analyzed by experts (retired generals and other approved collaborators) from within the symbiotic global news structure.

Symbiotic global news distribution is a conscious and deliberate attempt by the powerful to control news and information in society. The Homeland Security Act Title II Section 201(d)(5) specifically asks the directorate to *develop a comprehensive plan for securing the key resources and critical infrastructure of the United States including*information technology and telecommunications systems (including satellites)* emergency preparedness communications systems.*

Corporate media today is perhaps too vast to enforce complete control over all content 24 hours a day. However, the government's goal is the operationalization of total information control and the continuing consolidation of media makes this process easier to achieve.

Freedom of information and citizen access to objective news is rapidly fading in the United States and the world. In its place is a complex entertainment-oriented news system, which protects its own bottom-line by servicing the most powerful military-industrial complex in the world.

For the majority of Americans who depend on corporate media for their daily news, this monolithic news structure creates intellectual celibacy, inaction and fear. The result is a docile population, whose principal function within society is to simply shut-up and go shopping. The powerful would like us quiet and consumptive and the corporate media is delivering that message on a daily basis. [Read entire topic]

#21: Peter Phillips (peterphillips) Tue 11 Jul 06 11:45

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 11:45:00 PDT

#17

The three biggest stories not being covered by the corporate media are questions on 9/11 espicially Building 7, Voter Fraud in 2004,(eight million votes were changed in the voting machines in 13 states) and peak oil. [Read entire topic]

#20: Peter Phillips (peterphillips) Tue 11 Jul 06 11:43

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 11:43:00 PDT

I have been on NPR's On the Media two times and both times found them to be professional, and very analytical regarding media issues in the US. They tend to be corporate media oriented without a deep understanding of mainstream independent media . [Read entire topic]

#19: Gail Williams (gail) Tue 11 Jul 06 11:41

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 11:41:00 PDT

I'm curious as to how you feel advertisers fit into the decisions to not run certain news.

Since I work for The WELL, part of Salon.com but not part of editorial operations, I have gotten an interesting semi-outside perspective on these matters.

For example, the following section took hundreds of hours of labor, continues to take bandwidth, and no advertiser wants leaderboard banners or pageturners or other such bill-payers on it. This lack of reventue was anticipated from the outset, and there was no barrier to taking on the large project based on not being able to pay for it, but how often can entities do that when they are ad or even sponsor/donor supported?

>The Abu Ghraib files: >http://www.salon.com/news/abu_ghraib/2006/03/14/introduction/ >279 photographs and 19 videos from the Army's internal investigation

Is there a way to organize to effectively pressure or reward companies for advertising unpopular content, or does that inevitiably pull the culture-wars ad retaliation gambit that already happens now and then into a more mainstream role, and make newsrooms more timid? [Read entire topic]