How do you rate our media services?

[Steve Rymer]

I am not sure where to put this, but I am sure it can be moved if necessary.

Other posts on this forum have lead me to conclude that a number of members have a fairly poor opinion of our mass media services. So I thought I would pose the question(s).

How well do our media sources serve the public interest? What information is habitually censored or screened from us in order to preserve our delicate sensibilites? Accident or design? Which services illicit a thumbs up or thumbs down from you?

My personal favourite - the total western media blackout on Depleted Uranium...

Caution - GRAPHIC PHOTOS!

http://www.rense.com/general70/deathmde.htm

http://www.sfbayview.com/081804/Depleteduranium081804.shtml

http://www.sundayherald.com/40096

WHO Scientists’ Report into DU Cancer Dangers

Suppressed

An expert report by three leading radiation scientists cautioned that children and

adults could contract cancer after breathing in dust containing DU. But it was blocked from publication by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which employed the main author, Dr Keith Baverstock, as a senior radiation advisor. He alleges that it was deliberately suppressed. Baverstock also believes that if the study had been published when it was completed in 2001, there would have been more pressure on the US and UK to limit their use of DU weapons in last year’s war, and to clean up afterwards. “Our study suggests that the widespread use of depleted uranium weapons in Iraq could pose a unique health hazard to the civilian population,” Baverstock told the Scottish Sunday Herald. “There is increasing scientific evidence the radioactivity and the chemical toxicity of DU could cause more damage to human cells than is assumed.”

Baverstock was the WHO’s top expert on radiation and health for 11 years

until he retired in May last year. While he was a member of staff, WHO refused to give him permission to publish the study, which was co-authored by Professor Carmel Mothersill from McMaster University in Canada and Dr Mike Thorne, a radiation consultant . Baverstock suspects that WHO was leaned on by a more powerful pro-nuclear UN body, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). “I believe our study was censored and suppressed by the WHO because they didn’t like its conclusions. Previous experience suggests that WHO officials were bowing to pressure from the IAEA, whose remit is to promote nuclear power,” he said.

http://english.pravda.ru/world/20/91/368/1..._radiation.html

Here in the UK, my only regard for any the main TV news stations is Channel 4. I gave up reading newspapers a long time ago as a result of my weekend job whilst at University. It was in a petrol station and I got the chance to read all the papers - once you read all the papers one after another over a long period of time - you realize they are all toilet paper. Occasionally, the Independent, Guardian or Observer may suprise with the odd article, but not very often.

[Sid Walker]

How do you rate our media services?

As you've probably gathered from my posts else where Steve, my short answer is "not very highly". Indeed, I believe the western mass media and the misguided general popular belief in its essential veracity is the largest obstacle we have to making the world a better place.

At the risk of diverting thimportant thread from this main theme, I'd like to comment that I think you are technically in error when you say "the total western media blackout on Depleted Uranium"

Your own post immediately went on to cite a lonely reference to that story in the Sunday Herald.

What's happening, it seems to me, is almost what you describe - but with a subtle twist. Some important stories that counter the mainstream flow are reported by the mass media, once or twice. It's the lack of follow-up that's the killer. Unless stories are pursued, followed, expanded and developed, they are simply overlooked by the great majority of folk who derive their news info primarily from the mass media and simply won't notice a one in a thousand 'counter-story'.

That applies to DU. It applied to 9-11, 7/7, the Kelly murder and many other recent events. It also applied to the JFK assassination, for that matter, all those years ago.

In the days of JFK and the Warren Commission, however, most people had very limited ways of sharing info about stories that received poor if any coverage in the media. Now, with the web, it's quite easy. You do it. I do it. Lots of other folks do it too.

All of us, however, in order to share information and develop our theories via the internet, at some point (if not from the outset) lose our anonymity. We are traceable. In this era, with post 9-11 anti-terror laws that have essentially given the State unlimited power to arrest and detain, we are all potentially arrestable.

I believe a two-tier society is emerging. I'll keep things relatively simple by confining these comments to 'western' countries only. The situation is not identical in other parts of the world.

In the 'west', on the one hand the great majority of folk are simply duped on issues such as 9-11, 7/7, US electronic election fraud on a grand scale, the legitimacy of the 'War on Terror', the righteousness of Israel's position, the necessity for stringent 'anti-terror' laws and all the rest of it. These people are not all 'dummies', by any means. There are many, many intelligent people in this category. But they have been duped. I was among their ranks a few years ago. In my case, intellectual arrogance and bigotry were the key impediments to becoming better informed and more aware. The reasons are different for different people.

On the other hand, there is a minority that increasingly obtains alternative info about news and current affairs via the internet. This minority is growing more and more suspicious about mainstream verities that are essentially unquestioned by the majority. A growing number of us are outright disbelievers.

This second category is identifiable to the authorities.

Thanks to well-documented Israeli 'back doors' into the telecommunications surveillance systems of the USA and its key allies, all info on potential dissidents flows back to those with the requisite access within the Zionist movement (I don’t suggest the info is sloshed around carelessly, but what Mossad wants, Mossad can get). This was telegraphed to those in the relatively more aware minority by Fox News in its late 2001 4-part special. The release of that extraordinary story, without subsequent follow-up, was indeed a quintessential example of the phenomenon I'm describing: partial exposure of information counter to the dominant political paradigm via single instance coverage in the mass media, coverage that is overlooked and unnoticed by most folk, but which becomes widely known and discussed within the more informed minority.

If the new police state moved now to lock up ”internet dissidents", it would probably be counter-productive. Each of us has friends and relatives who would make a fuss and become radicalized and much better informed through the experience. Our numbers might swell, not decrease. Censorship would become THE issue - and the media would have a job sinking that story as thousands of irate middle class western families with grievances took the offensive. Better, for now, to let ineffective dogs sleep. They know where to find us.

In an "emergency", our various State authorities could quickly interdict any better-informed potential leaders of resistance who have sufficient information to know what we are up against and how it might best be countered. At that time, if God forbid it occurs, I'd anticipate closure of major alternative info websites and pursuit of those who speak out via the internet.

I say this not to ferment even more paranoia, but because I think realistic, informed analysis of what is really happening is important.

It is not a particularly pleasant to believe this is the world we live in. I'd much prefer to be wrong about all this (perhaps others can help cheer me about by showing how my analysis is off the mark?

[Guest Stephen Turner]

The four main planks of mass media manipulation are, spin, ommision, crusifying the "other" and dumbing down the population. All four appear to be in remarkably rude health. as most main media outlets are owned, and therefore controlled by the rich, and powerful, it should come as no surprise to realise in who's interests they serve. Read the thread "operation mockingbird"on the JFK section, for a clinical explaination of the CIA's manipulation of individual journo's, and whole newspaper/TV outlets from the 1950's to today..