"The Onslaught" at Patspeer.com

[Martin White]

I read Pat's interesting listing of assassination related coverage yesterday. I pretty much underlines what I had noticed, even here in the UK where you would think that "we" would be a little more objective. Naïve of me, perhaps.

The BBC also ran an absolutely awful "minute by minute" account of events on Radio 2 that, seemingly, was put together entirely from the pages of the Warren Commission. At no stage did it even acknowledge any other viewpoint other than the WC view.

The BBC, once a bastion of independent journalism - despite being State-funded - has been going down the toilet for some years now. It has no journalistic integrity left.

It seems to me that there was more of a balance, perhaps even tilted towards the CT side, for the 25th and (less so) the 30th. I did not see a single pro conspiracy program on any mainstream or satellite channels in the UK. Nothing I saw even discussed the AARB or anything it turned up. The most balanced program I saw was the History Channel "Definitive Guide" that was - at best - 60/40 slanted in favour of the LN side. Even that program contained several outright lies and falsehoods, the most blatant of which was MacAdams saying that the Katzenbach memo said something that it didn't.

I am sick of being patronised on TV by talking heads saying the people believe in JFK conspiracies because "Oswald" doesn't balance "JFK" on the scales of life. That is rubbish, and they know it's rubbish. Do they think no one has looked at evidence?

[Ron Ecker]

I am sick of being patronised on TV by talking heads saying the people believe in JFK conspiracies because "Oswald" doesn't balance "JFK" on the scales of life. That is rubbish, and they know it's rubbish. Do they think no one has looked at evidence?

I often wonder if the TV talking heads have looked at the evidence themselves, or are they just parroting the party line. Even if they had looked at the evidence, they may not feel free to comment on it. That would be straying off the reservation, which can damage or even end one's career.

[Terry Adams]

"Oswald" doesn't balance "JFK"

You know Martin, this is usually the comment, or something similar, to explain how we conspiracy theorists see the assassination. How someone that was such a nothing could bring down someone so powerful. It is a shame that this is what is used instead of putting up real evidence that one has nothing to do with the other. I doubt that any of the shooters would have been considered a 'brunch buddy', but the people that were behind this horrible event probably shook his hand on many occasions.

[John Crites]

I think U S major media knows how absurd the lone nut theory is. Some know they are lying, and have their orders and desires to continue the lie. And get lots of $$$$ to do so. Then there are the others who lie to themselves either by not wanting to face the truth of what happened out of some form of twisted patriotism, or to ignorant to dig into the facts. Either way is just as damaging.

The money is in the lie. How many JFK scholars, aka those with the facts there is a conspiracy, have been on the major media in the last month compared to the lone loonies?

The truth seekers don't receive the military money. And that's the biggest business in America . That's what controls so much of our major media.

For example - How often will we hear from the msm that Bush, Cheney knew there were no WMD in Iraq before the invasion?

As far as the BBC carrying the lie? I am sorry for our friends in Britton that the cancer has spread to there as well.

[David Josephs]

I am sick of being patronised on TV by talking heads saying the people believe in JFK conspiracies because "Oswald" doesn't balance "JFK" on the scales of life. That is rubbish, and they know it's rubbish. Do they think no one has looked at evidence?

I often wonder if the TV talking heads have looked at the evidence themselves, or are they just parroting the party line. Even if they had looked at the evidence, they may not feel free to comment on it. That would be straying off the reservation, which can damage or even end one's career.

Hey there Ron,

Of course they didn't look at the evidence - it takes YEARS to look at the evidence - which has always been my particular pet-peeve... the CT crowd is not unified behind a proof for the message.

I say we can offer a simple picture worth a thousand words and an explanation which first makes the SBT impossible which in turn destroys the LONE NUT theory...

Discussing Oswald on the 6th floor is yet another problem of awareness of the evidecnce that is very hard to sort out and present simply.

[John Crites]

Speer did us all a favor with that summary of the media coverage over the last 2 months or so. He had to spend lots of hours of watching and composing. An excellent reference.

something is really crazy going on when Posner is featured as an expert on the assassination.

I may be new to this forum, but have been trying to get Posner for over 15 years to answer the questions pertaining to the so called interviews with Tague and Boswell, and produce the relevant documentation

[Larry Hancock]

John, my experience with the media is that in many cases they assign a research assistant who just googles books on the subject and picks authors who have the best sales,

calls them up and that's about it. I've worked with a number of program folks over the last few years - for minor things like radio and a few articles, my books don't sell well

enough to bet me on even a B call list - but its pretty clear how things work.

I've had two entertaining experiences that seemed to validate that view. I got booked on to a radio broadcast because some assistant assumed that the title "Someone Would Have Talked" suggested I was

obviously someone to speak against the possibility of conspiracy - the host was neither pleased nor happy, the interview certainly didn't go with his plan and a tense time was had by all. In another instance a major British publishing house wanted me to edit a book on conspiracy - after a bit of email exchange it turned out they wanted to do a "laugh at the conspiracy nutcases" book. Once my views became clear to the the calls stopped and the job went to somebody else...darn.

Experts, in media terms, often seem to be defined as the people who sell the most books, make the most entertaining media appearances (read "attitude") and/or have positions or a historical presence that validate the individual's authority - having worked in advertising it seems rather similar to the selection of spokespersons. Perhaps I'm a bit too cynical but I don't think the depth of background research is all that great - then again that's because I never get the calls Posner does...grin. That's humorous, the fact that Gerry McKnight and John Newman don't get them is just plain sad.

[Pat Speer]

I'm still adding to the list, btw. If anyone has a link to any of the programs I missed while in Dallas, or major newspaper articles I overlooked, please post them here.

I think Larry is wrong, btw, and suspect sales has almost nothing to do with who gets picked to be on these programs.

Jim Douglass was nowhere to be found. It would be interesting to find out if he was even asked. Joan Mellen was nowhere to be found. David Talbot, as well, was nowhere to be found. Anthony Summers was nowhere to be found. David Lifton was nowhere to be found. Groden and Lane were in what--one program apiece?

No, instead we had Posner, Myers, and Mack--"experts"who hadn't published anything on the assassination in years, and whose books never sold to begin with--and John McAdams and Tom Stone--college professors without a background in history or science who've never published anything the public ever cared about, and whose only claim to fame seems to be that they'll say anything to sell that Oswald acted alone.

Edited December 11, 2013 by Pat Speer

[Larry Hancock]

Pat, it would be interesting to look at total sales but I suspect you would find that Posner leads most of the others you listed by a large margin...of course as John Simkin points out, it could also depend on how and where they do their searching, what their editorial guidance was and who shows up first. Still, would be interesting to rank sales. Gary's position is critical for his visibility, as is the fact that the museum does have a goodly number of available film and other resources. McAdams would certainly show up quickly in any search on the subject....as John's notes on searching suggest. Actually the few referrals I get generally come via Lancer because it shows up in many searches.

I may indeed be wrong on book sales and perhaps it is largely a search phenomena, I do know for sure though that most media outlets keep lists of individuals to be used as resources

on certain subjects, which is one reason some of the same people show up over and over.

Now having said that, I'm not naive enough to think that the selection of individuals does not have some match to the editorial direction of the show....I'd also point out that a great number of

folks in this years specials were from within the media itself or had some link to the contemporary coverage of the assassination or the Kennedy administration.

All of which is idle speculation against one outstanding fact, the news media are simply not going to stand up one day and say hey, we, the established networks, news services and our whole

industry plus all of our most respected predecessors and the people who received our awards over the last few decades - including the most beloved nightly news figures in America - missed the biggest investigative story of the last century - but trust us, we are on top of it now. That is just not going to happen. The most you are going to get is just what we got - hey, I might have missed something but nobody else has come up with any solid proof of conspiracy so its unlikely we will ever know for sure. Which of course is just about the best we did get. The worst was, hey, lets look at the Russians and Cubans again. And if you haven't fully realized how badly we got had on that, read Jim D's review of Shenon's (sp?) Warren Commission book on CTKA.

Edited December 11, 2013 by Larry Hancock

[Jim Phelps]

Congratulations----you just proved shot from Dal-Tex Building!!

I think this is correct !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iAtx5YT8To0

Edited December 11, 2013 by Jim Phelps