Neat! Next stop, the Wall Street Journal!

Let me just say, that I learned from the best.

I think many of the news organizations in the IMM rely on their national governments for a huge chunk of their funding, and they must toe a “party line” to maintain this favor. This makes them propaganda organs, not for-profit news organizations. As such any analysis that depends on “market forces” such as profit motive, has to fall short.

Here your thesis would be served by a disection of the monolithic “IMM” you discussed. Time’s short, I know, but if one could trace the personal and financial links between the individual news organizations and their national and international political patrons, we could learn much about this surrender of “critical judgement.”

I posed CNN’s early complicity with Al Jazeera as just one example. Other targets of scrutiny should be Germany’s NWI, Canada’s CBC and, don’t forget the Arab News.

BTW, (re my original question) this gullibillity renders them cannon-fodder for our Psy-ops guys! (Anyone else think this, too?)

-Steve

“…does anyone besides me think this may be “Psyops” in action?”

For purposes of my thesis, it does not matter who produced the images only the media’s credulity in airing it. Perhaps it was an operation aimed at making the media look like idiots. The very fact that it was widely disseminated even though its origins are completely unknown says a lot about the media’s standards and practices.

(I’m one who suspects Abu Ghraib, and the heavily-publicized military trials were psyops, too. Don’t know, just smells fishy.)

Following up on Orion’s comment: do y’all remember when CNN announced its “disconnection” from Al Jazeera? I think it was engineered just before our military moved publicly into Afghanistan. Up to that point, these two partners had extensive and mutual financial, programming and news-gathering operations. And, while together, they aired many of AQ’s videos threatening America.

This sudden journalistic dissociation deserves much more scrutiny.

-Steve

CBS, CNN, ABC, NBC, et. al. are the terrorists’ de facto propoganda arms.

Orion

I am sympathetic to the “its all about the Benjamins” explanation. It does explain why they show the dramatic images but it doesn’t explain why they also disseminate names, goals and demands.

Put it in front a jury. See what Americans think of news organizations profiting from the murder of our military men and women.

So, they get to spin bad news because, well, it brings eyeballs to the advertisers. Which is, after all, the real media game. Follow the money – who is paying whom, and for what?

I pay my satellite providers to *not* advertise to me. MM are paid *to* advertise to me. It’s their job.

Simple as that.