RI: When John Pilger says that he had never been as concerned about the state of the media as he is today, we should get really worried. In his interview with McNeill he says, "I think there are a lot of reasons to be very concerned about the information or the lack of information that we get. There's never been such an interest, more than an interest, almost an obsession, in controlling what journalists have to say."
To Pilger the most significant way journalists are used by American government is in what he calls a 'softening up process' before planned military action. "We soften them up by dehumanizing them. Currently journalists are softening up Iran, Syria, and Venezuela,"Pilger said.
Normalizing the Unthinkable
John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Charlie Glass, and Seymour Hersh on the failure of the world's pressBy Sophie McNeill
03 June 06 - Information Clearing House
The late journalist Edward R. Murrow might well have been rolling in his grave on April 21. That's because Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a lecture that day in Washington, DC to journalists at the Department of State's official Edward R. Murrow Program for Journalists.
For the Bush administration to use the memory of a person who stood up to government propaganda is ironic to say the least. Secretary Rice told the assembled journalists that "without a free press to report on the activities of government, to ask questions of officials, to be a place where citizens can express themselves, democracy simply couldn't work."
One week earlier in New York City, Columbia University hosted a panel on the state of the world's media that would have been more in Murrow's style than the State Department-run symposium. Reporter and filmmaker John Pilger, British Middle East correspondent for the Independent Robert Fisk, freelance reporter Charlie Glass, and investigative journalist for the New Yorker Seymour Hersh appeared together at this April 14 event.
>>>> Continued @ ICH
