It looks like my intuition was right. There was a big story behind this friday's document dump, but it wasn't any of the ones I tried to pick up on.It turns out this Friday's Doc dump from the DOJ was HUGE!!!
WASHINGTON - The Justice Department weighed political activism and membership in a conservative law group in evaluating the nation's federal prosecutors, documents released in the probe of fired U.S. attorneys show.
The political credentials were listed on a chart of 124 U.S. attorneys nominated since 2001, a document that could bolster Democrats' claims that the traditionally independent Justice Department has become more partisan during the Bush administration.The chart was included in documents released Friday by the department to congressional panels investigating whether the firings last year of the U.S. attorneys were politically motivated - an inquiry that has Attorney General Alberto Gonzales fighting for his own job.
"This is the chart that the AG requested," Monica Goodling, Justice's former liaison to the White House, wrote in a Feb. 12 e-mail to two other senior department officials. "I'll show it to him on the plane tomorrow, if he's interested."
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You can always tell the worst stories are being buried when the MSM posts fluff on a Friday afternoon.
So, here we are 5:30 pm on a Friday. The MSNBC Masthead is about the legacy of Jackie Robinson. Nothing against Jackie Robinson, he's a personal hero of mine and especially my 7 year-old, baseball-obsessed nephew. But, in the last few weeks there's been such a stunning spiral of dizzying corruption eminating from the Bush Administration and the corrupt right, that you'll forgive my cynicism as I question the earnestness of MSNBC's stirring tribute.
What big stories aren't being headlined right now?
Here's a quick list of cricial stories that are currently being dumped:
1. 5 Years of Rove Emails Deleted.
2. Wolfowitz impeding removal from World Bank after getting his girlfriend a $200,000 job at State. [also here and here]
3. Katie Couric repeats debunked Fox "News" Madrassa/Obama smear.
4. Abstinence-Only Education fails.
5. Will Senator Domenici retire over US Prosecutor firinigs?
6. If you're gonna fire IMUS, ya gotta get Rush, Glen Beck, O'Rielly, and others.
7. Bush usurping unprecedented power under theory of "unitary executive".
So, what's MSNBC thinking? Do they think that after weeks and weeks of wall-to-wall scandal, that we're just too tired to go into the weekend with another round of horrifying stories weighing down our Bush enthusiasm, or is Jackie Robinson's legacy more critical to the nation than say a massive constitutional crisis? I'm just askin'.
In Russian the word "pravda" means "truth," and of course the old Soviet Communist Party newspaper was "Pravda." The word "izvestiya" means "news," and the official Soviet government newspaper was "Izvestiya." These authorized news outlets were "transmission belts" for official policy.
Twenty years before the Soviet Empire collapsed, I recall a young Russian professional grinning and telling me over a glass of vodka: "V 'Pravdye' nyet izvestii, i v 'Izvestii' nyet pravdi." In other words, "In 'The Truth' there is no news, and in 'The News' there is no truth."
Members of the Soviet intelligentsia knew very well that their official media were feeding them lies and spin, and they became adept at reading between the lines, noticing what was not reported, and seeking out alternative sources of information and entertainment, such as the BBC, VOA, Radio Free Europe, and bootleg cassette tapes of American and West European jazz and rock music. In my travels through the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe even in those days of heavy-handed state and Communist Party propaganda control, I was constantly impressed by the curiosity and intelligence of Russians and East Europeans, who generally knew much more about the U.S. and the West than American cultural and political elites knew about the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Remember in this context Gerald Ford's astonishing debate comment in 1976 about Poland being free?
The U.S. MSM have created a new kind of transmission belt. They emulate the role of "Pravda" and "Izvestiya" in relaying official policy, spin, and outright lies, but they add the diverting techniques of Fleet Street tabloid sensationalism to print and electronic media. The current MSM media monster may well be mostly the result of market forces: "The latest on Anna Nicole-Smith and the paternity test! Tonight on News 11!" "Imus Fired! Is Rosie next? Tonight on News 7!" If people can be induced to watch, advertisers can be induced to pay. More people can be induced to watch or read sensationalist hype than can be induced to watch or read well-researched hard news.
However, more than merely market forces are at work. The efforts of such media magnates as Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch have arguably been outright malevolent in intent. Fox News has become the official 'Pravda' of neocon Neverland. Under Fred Hiatt's editorial hand, the "Washington Post" has in recent years moved toward becoming the "Izvestiya' of Republican-run government. Even the "New York Times" served as a reliable transmission belt for neocon pretexts to invade Iraq, as with Judith Miller's unquestioning shilling of Administration leaks on alleged Iraqi WMD. Oh, and remember that the "New York Times" sat on its story regarding the Bush Administration's illegal warrantless wiretapping program for more than a year. The editors buckled to White House demands not to print the story before the 2004 election. Breaking the story before the election might have had an effect on the election! Bush might have lost! Heaven forbid!
So where can information-hungry Americans turn to find hard news and cogent, well-researched analysis, as well as entertainment offering different perspectives? Right here. The blogosphere. Places like Raising Kaine, Daily Kos, TPM, MyDD, Informed Comment, Salon, McClatchy, etc. We can also look to foreign news services, knowing full well that they will have their own characteristic slants and agendas. I make a point of checking BBC, Al Jazeera, Haaretz, Novosti, and Xinhua each day. We can sample foreign films, such as the brilliant "Pan's Labyrinth," "Lives of Others," and even "Babel."
And we can still watch "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" to find some really lucid news analysis, far more trenchant than any provided by the MSM.
Even the Soviet government and Communist Party never figured out how to exert complete control over the flow of information to Soviet citizens. Let's hope that the neocons and their enabling corporatist media fail here as well.
Reuters (especially good on international news compared to U.S. sources) http://www.reuters.c...
Reuters Alert Net (which allows me to zero in on particular areas of the world I'm interested in): http://www.alertnet....
And I sometimes read the PR Newswire service to catch up on all the institutional propaganda: http://www.prnewswir... Talk about having to read between the lines! But once in a while I uncover a real gem, or find a new source for a certain viewpoint.
I'll have to try Novosti.
Oh, and http://www.fark.com/ which lists mostly oddball items also has occasional serious news pieces not found elsewhere, and posts major breaking news stories almost as soon as they're listed.
I've added your links to my bookmarks. At this rate, I may have no time left in the day to do anything except read online news.