massive failure of intelligence Arianna Huffington: 'A wake-up call for the media oligarchy?' Posted on Saturday, September 15 @ 07:00:35 EDT --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By Arianna Huffington, Arianna Online The phrase "massive failure of intelligence" became one of this week's numbing cliches. But what no one is talking about is another, equally serious, intelligence failure. It is the failure of the media to properly estimate the intelligence of the American people by catering to the lowest common denominator in pursuit of ratings and, of course, money. As shocking as the four-pronged attack was, it shouldn't have been quite so surprising. Only seven months ago, a congressionally mandated federal commission released a prophetic report predicting this kind of terrorist assault on U.S. soil, concluding that the question was not if a terrorist attack on America could happen but when. The U.S. Commission on National Security, headed by former Sens. Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, found that "despite the end of the Cold War threat, America faces distinctly new dangers, particularly to the homeland" and identified "homeland security as a primary national security mission." The Commission chairmen continued to lobby the administration to heed its recommendations as recently as last Thursday when Hart called Condoleezza Rice. A key conclusion of the Commission was the need to replace the hodgepodge of agencies that currently deal with terrorist threats and attacks -- including the CIA, the Justice Department, the Defense Department, FEMA, U.S. Customs and the Coast Guard -- by the National Homeland Security Agency. Like the rest of the report, this simple and sensible suggestion was ignored. Don't feel bad if you didn't hear about this report. Despite its far-reaching implications, very few people read it. Indeed, very few reporters read it. Or, if they did, very few of them reported that they had read it. In fact, the Hart-Rudman report received practically no play either in print or on television. "What happened this week," Hart told me, "ought to call into question what is important in our society and how the media cover it. But no one is asking this on TV, and I'd be amazed if there was a single discussion on the board of any newspaper asking: Did we do our job? There seems to be no self-reflection, no understanding by the media that they have a job under the direction of the Constitution to inform, not just entertain, the American people." http://www.smirkingchimp.com/article.php?sid=3271&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Wheelchairs and special Ed.
by Captain Nemo
When F.D.R. addressed congress a few days after Pearl Harbor, none of the major news media reporters mentioned his polio, or his wheelchair. They were carefull for nearly 12 years to avoid writing or talking about it on the radio.
Now, a similar phenomenon is occurring, but with a different malady. Aparrently most of the reporters for the major media outlets have been given orders not to mention that the current "commander in chief" has attention deficit disorder, or something similar.
The way they have decided to handle it is to say that they were suprised that "The president" could manage to remain "focused" long enough to deliver a speech or two last month.
David McCulloch, the historian, said that he found it challenging to talk to the public about Bush's speech on one occasion. He was able to put a positive slant on it by saying that; "before now, people were beginning to wonder whether Bush could focus, but he rose to the occasion."
One reporter said something to the effect that "it is OK that the president doesn't read books, he is busy doing things".
A couple of years ago, the courts ruled that law students taking the bar exam should be given more time than other test takers if the student has a recognized for of learning disability. I thought maybe the tests for people in medical school will be next. It's OK to be incopetent, as long as you have doctor's permission.
It may be that the standards for MDs are not lowered yet, but it shure looks like the standards for "commander in chief" have been lowered considerably.
Diagnosing Bush Is there a root dysfunction to his use of language, his style and his disastrous education policies?
By Jock Gill for Democrats.com
"This is very timely as a number of careful observers have diagnosed President Bush II from afar as both dyslexic and having ADHD, [Attention Deficit Disorder, Hyperactivity Disorder](It is almost certain that if you are dyslexic you are also ADHD to one degree or another). This is what is most likely behind his relatively unengaged management style and his unwillingness to master the details of public policy – even his own administration’s policies. Bush obviously has to wrestle with the written and spoke word. "
The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder
by Mark Crispin Miller
A review
From Publishers Weekly
'Miller, a New York University professor of media studies, has fashioned
a devastating compendium of President George W. Bush's grammatical gaffes,
syntactical shipwrecks, mind-boggling malapropisms and simply dumb comments.
Page after page (after page) of quotations, suggests Miller, reveal that
Bush is a man who, while not stupid, is prodigiously illiterate and woefully
uneducated. Further, and compounding the problem, Bush could not care
less about these shortcomings. How then, Miller asks, and this is his
larger concern, did someone in Miller's opinion so obviously unqualified
to be president convince so many voters that he was? Miller's answer is,
in a word, television: Bush succeeded on TV not despite his
"utter superficiality," but because his superficiality blended seamlessly
with the vacuous culture of the tube. It was not simply that Bush's handlers
were able to manipulate his image, attempting to construct out of his
ignorance an anti-intellectual "good ole boy" persona, but that news
professionals in the medium were all too willing to go along with this ploy.'
| Report of the Special Prosecutor |
T
The Military Solution Scwarzkopf and Gorbachev were about to negotiate a withdrawal of Hussein's forces, when Bush and Powell opted for a "ground war", because they wanted one. The only way to understand this is to use the new discoveries in anthropology and evolutiponary psychology. (It is called alpha male primate behavior.) following is a quote: Behind Colin Powell's Legend: Part Four Robert Parry & Norman Solomon in Consortium News, December 26, 2000 http://www.consortiumnews.com/122600a.html ... But the behind-the-scenes reality often was different. Time and again in the march toward a ground war in Kuwait and Iraq, Powell wavered between siding with Schwarzkopf, who was willing to accept a peaceful Iraqi withdrawal, and lining up with President Bush, who hungered for a clear military victory. The tension peaked in the days before the ground war was scheduled to begin. Iraqi forces already had been pummeled by weeks of devastating allied air attacks both against targets in Iraq and Kuwait. As the clocked toward a decision on launching a ground offensive, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to hammer out a cease-fire and a withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. President Bush and his political leadership desperately wanted a ground war to crown the American victory. Schwarzkopf and some of his generals in the field felt U.S. goals could be achieved through a negotiated Iraqi withdrawal that would end the slaughter and spare the lives of U.S. troops. With a deadline for a decision looming, Powell briefly joined the Schwarzkopf camp. On Feb. 21, 1991, the two generals hammered out a cease-fire proposal for presentation to the National Security Council. That last-minute peace deal would have given Iraqi forces one week to march out of Kuwait while leaving their armor and heavy equipment behind. Schwarzkopf thought he had Powell's commitment to pitch the plan at the White House. But Bush was fixated on a ground war. According to insiders, he saw the war as advancing two goals: to inflict severe damage on Saddam Hussein's army and to erase the painful memories of America's defeat in Vietnam. At the NSC meeting, Powell reportedly did reiterate his and Schwarzkopf's support for a peaceful settlement, if possible. But sensing Bush's mood, Powell substituted a different plan, shortening the one-week timetable to an unrealistic two days and, thus, making the ground war inevitable.
fringefolk \'frinjfolk\ n
people who rise up to protest when the constitution is unraveled: Fringefolk
Betty Bowers has a well designed site: Betty Bowers is a better Christian than you!
This game takes only minutes to play, and is very rewarding: New Supreme Court Game!
Political and movement news sites:
Bartcop Political news and humor
Buzzflash News
Bush Brother's Banana Republic
Allied Forces Million Voter march
Political and movement news sites:
Bartcop Political news and humor
Buzzflash News
Bush Brother's Banana Republic
Allied Forces Million Voter march
Get your own Free Home Page![](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0393041832/ref=pd_sim_books/104-0398986-8957544">
The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder</a>
</p></CITE>
<hr>
<p>
<a href="http://www.newsabuse.com/">newsabuse.com</a></p>
<p>
Robert Shogan. <CITE>Bad News</CITE>
</p><p>
Robert Shogan. <CITE>Bad News : Where the press goes wrong in the making
of the president</CITE>. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001. 308 pp. $26.00.
ISBN 1-56663-346-X.
</p><p>
Political Science Network
Reports and Reviews
</p><p>
<BLOCKQUOTE><CITE> Robert Shogan’s Bad News is one of the many books that will
spring from the political reporting of the 2000 presidential
election. Despite the picture of George W. Bush and the
description of the election in the cover, however, Bad News is
much more than a narrative about the electoral controversy.
Indeed, the election is discussed in only the last chapter.
Shogan is more concerned about the interactions between
politicians and journalists.
</p><p>
The consequences of the now infamous election left many people
pointing fingers at each other, but Shogan makes it certain in his
preface that politicians and journalists have blamed each other
for electoral shortcomings since the very first election.
</p><p>
...
Journalists were also less than prudent with their reporting
of the debates between George W. and Al Gore. They declared
Gore loss the first debate because of his sighs and grimaces
at Bush’s responses. However, the networks disparately focused
on Gore when Bush was speaking, so not all viewers got the
same picture. Rules set by the Presidential Debate Commission
supposedly kept reporters from covering Gore’s reactions while
Bush was speaking, yet the next day CNN made a great issue of
Gore’s off-camera demeanor with clear footage. Polls stated
that voters thought Gore won the debate, but many journalists
were convinced otherwise. Journalists were even less punctilious
elsewhere. Regarding the Bush-Gore election fiasco, journalists
and news reporters rushed to gain "short-term recognition without
reckoning the cost to their profession and the public" (p. 243).
Furthermore, the television networks should have reported
"what they knew, not what they expected to happen . . . that
the election was still too close to call" (p. 265).
</p><p>
Shogan does not explain where the press generally goes wrong
in presidential coverage. He does something better; he describes
some of the media problems of contemporary presidential elections
and tells journalists what they should have done differently.
Journalists undoubtedly will be offended by one of their own
telling them what to do but not always telling them how.
In one of the few exceptions, Shogan says journalists do not
have to be directed by public opinion. When polls showed that
the public did not want journalists to question George W. any
longer about possible cocaine use, he was still frequently asked.
The error here is that it should have been explained in the
media why the question was important.
</p><p>
Despite Shogan’s similar remedies offered throughout his book,
politicians and journalists will still point their fingers at
each other. This 250-year tradition makes it easy for Shogan
to blame both politician and journalist for the current travails
of political news coverage. The politicians "practice their
deceptions and distortions" and journalists oblige them (p. 243).
In depicting this relationship, Shogan appears curiously unbiased.</CITE>
</p><p></BLOCKQUOTE>
<A HREF="http://home.megagate.com/pjfagan/reports/badnews.htm">Political Science, "Bad News"</A>
</p><p>
<a href="http://www.bartcop.com"><IMG SRC="no_gop.gif" border=0></a></center>
</p><p>
<hr>
<a href="issue.htm">| Last Years Issues Page |</a></p>
<hr>
<pre>
Powell lies in cover-up of Iran Contra
from :Executive Summary, Independent Council){kind=link}