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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector-www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substanceânot soap-boxingâplease! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'âwith its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright fraudsâis used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.Rather than stand behind his right to free speech, ABC pushed him into an embarrassing public apology, the kind of "confession" that the Chinese Communists demand of their dissidents.Our Unbrave Media World Continued:
ABC NEWS SUSPENDS PRODUCER FOR WRITING PRIVATE ANTI-BUSH EMAIL
A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Danny Schechter, Mediachannel.org
BuzzFlash, April 3, 2006
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/06/04/con06120.html
New York: Readers of my current BuzzFlash commentary on the unbrave world of media ("The Fear is in the Room") will note that I reference a DRUDGE REPORT "expose" of a private e-mail sent by an ABC GMA producer expressing his personal disgust with our President's way of communicating.Guess what's happened since that was published? The producer has been silenced!The Washington Post reports that the ABC producer in question, John Green, a 12-year ABC News Veteran, was suspended and forced to make a groveling apology to the White House, a gesture that sounds straight outta Stalinist Russia."ABC News suspended the executive producer of the weekend edition of 'Good Morning America' yesterday over a pair of leaked e-mails in which he used inflammatory language to slam President Bush and Madeleine Albright."John Green, whose unpaid suspension will last one month, apologized to the White House in a call to communications director Nicolle Wallace, while two ABC executives called the former secretary of state to apologize."The White House reportedly was "pleased" receiving the face-saving gesture.Talk about a chilling effect on personal expressions by any and all network producers. You can't even have a personal opinion and work in news anymore. One of two emails Green is being punished for was written back in 2004.Kerry Marash, ABC's executive in charge of editorial standards and a former colleague I once admired did the dirty deed of "disciplining" Green.This same VEEP of Editorial Standards was unwilling to discuss editorial standards in war coverage when asked for a meeting by anti-war and media reform activists on the third anniversary of the war. The request ended up on Kerry Marash's desk. She did not call back. Perhaps, ABC needs a new vice-president of viewer accountability.News employees should be entitled to personal opinions, and being open-minded doesn't mean being empty-minded. Yet these days, you can lose your right to free speech if someone leaks what you have to say. Walter Cronkite speaks out about the chilling of media speech in a statement on Mediachannel.org. He says: "Journalists shouldn't have to check their consciences at the door when they go to work for a media company. It ought to be just the reverse."Rather than stand behind their producer's right to free speech, ABC pushed him into an embarrassing public apology, the kind of "confession" that the Chinese Communists demand of their dissidents.Howard Kurtz reports in the Washington Post: "... two ABC executives called the former secretary of state to apologize."He adds, "No one is sorrier than John for the embarrassment that these albeit private e-mails caused to his colleagues and to the people who were the subjects of those comments," said ABC News spokesman Jeffrey Schneider. "John would be the first to say this has been a real lesson to him. John is abjectly sorry for all the comments that have come to light, and that's appropriate."In one of the e-mails, written during the first presidential debate in 2004 and leaked to the Drudge Report, Green wrote to a colleague on his BlackBerry: "Are you watching this? Bush makes me sick. If he uses the 'mixed messages' line one more time, I'm going to puke."Reporters could not speak to Green directly as Kurtz explains.""Green, who was not made available for comment yesterday, wrote his colleagues after that leak to say "how much I regret the embarrassment that this story causes ABC. It was an inappropriate thing to say, and I'm deeply sorry.""Deeply sorry." ABC "embarrassed?" ABC was not embarrassed when its own News President, former corporate lawyer David Westin, Marash and Schneider's boss, admitted publicly at Stanford University last year that ABC News was "not critical enough" in its coverage of the run-up to the invasion of Iraq."We let the American people down," he said at that time. He was not suspended or forced to kowtow to the Disney Board of Directors run then by Michael Moore nemesis Michael Eisner.Kurtz adds: "Both e-mails were disclosed at a time when public distrust of news organizations and their ability to be fair are at or near an all-time high."It is widely believed at ABC News that the e-mails were leaked by a former employee who has a vendetta against Green."Everyone who works at ABC News is unhappy with the situation because it reflects on all of us," Schneider said. But, he said, "I don't think the e-mails tell us anything about the show John Green was putting on the air every Saturday and Sunday, which is fair and balanced and down the middle."That last comment is revealing signaling to the White House and the public that there has not been, nor will there be, any "bias" against them. Note the use of the phrase "fair and balanced."News VP Schneider appears briefly in my film "WMD: Weapons of Mass Deception" insisting that ABC News played it "straight down the middle" in its coverage of Iraq. His boss David Westin later contradicted him.News Dissector Danny Schechter is blogger in chief for Mediachannel.org. His latest books are "When News Lies" and "The Death of Media." Comments to [EMAIL PROTECTED]-------------------CRITICIZE GEORGE W. BUSH AT YOUR OWN RISKSo, now even private heresy against the Church of Saint George the W. is a punishable offense within the corporate media. Lovely.As you've no doubt already heard, John Green, the executive producer of the weekend edition of "Good Morning America" has been suspended without pay for one month and, perhaps worse, forced to make a groveling apology to the White House.His unpardonable crime? In a private e-mail sent during the first presidential debate in 2004, he wrote to a colleague, "Are you watching this? Bush makes me sick. If he uses the 'mixed messages' line one more time, I'm going to puke."That's it. One uncomplimentary comment expressed in private (later leaked) about Bush and he gets hammered.I guess Ari Fleischer knew what he was talking about when he said Americans need to watch what they say.(There was a second e-mail critical of Madeleine Albright, but anyone who believes that had anything to do with the action taken against Green probably also still thinks there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.)Well, I have a question: If this is the journalistic standard - that no criticism, even in private, of any national leader or presidential candidate is to be tolerated among "objective" journalists, then where are all of those other journalistic heads on the end of a stake?Where, for instance, are all of the reporters disciplined because they couldn't hide their contempt for Al Gore in election 2000? The ones who couldn't stop talking about how arrogant they thought he was, and how he exaggerated everything? And unlike Green's e-mail comment about Bush, these journalistic attacks on Gore weren't limited to private discussions among the journalists themselves (although there were a lot of those): There were also all of those very public attacks, often based upon untruths, or at best half-truths, offered up with relish, such as the endless false allegations that Gore had claimed to have personally invented the Internet.Bunk from the start, but they kept repeating it anyway.(An excellent discussion of media lies about Al Gore during the 2000 campaign can be found in Al Franken's book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, at chapter 7).So how many of these newspeople, who not only viciously attacked a presidential candidate (and sitting vice president), but, in some cases, deliberately stretched the truth in doing so, were suspended or otherwise punished as a result of this breach of the much vaunted duty of objectivity and political neutrality? I don't know of any. How about you?But I guess that's not surprising. After all, on an even more serious issue, has any major journalist paid a price, any price at all, for carrying Bush's water on Iraq? For helping to sell the American people on quite possibly the biggest foreign policy blunder in the nation's history? For being dead wrong on almost every issue that mattered in the months leading up to the war?Again, let me know if you can think of any, because I sure can't. (And no, Judith Miller doesn't count; she wasn't encouraged to resign, at least principally, because of her WMD reporting.)But, hey, at least they suspended John Green for that private e-mail criticizing Bush.And, of course, we can also take solace in the knowledge that four CBS employees were fired, and Dan Rather was pushed into early retirement, as a result of an alleged mistake made regarding certain documents in presenting an essentially accurate picture of Bush's failure to fulfill his service obligations with the Air National Guard.So let's not hear any whining about there being no accountability within the media. There's accountability, all right. It's just somewhat selectively enforced.If you help start a disastrously ill-conceived war leading to thousands of deaths through sloppy and dishonest reporting, you just keep on truckin' on. But if criticize Bush, prepare to take your swatting.What explains this inconsistent treatment? One possibility, of course, is that it reflects the pro-Republican bias of the management of the multinational corporations that own the media outlets; one always tends to judge the mistakes of ones friends less harshly than those of someone whose work is helping the other side. Or perhaps this tendency to come down especially hard when it's a conservative ox that's being gored, merely reflects the media's tiresome routine of bending over backwards to try to disprove the right wing's fallacious claims of liberal bias. Or maybe it's a little of both.I don't know. But I do know this: If there is any justice in this universe, the next time some boob uses the phrase "liberal media" in describing today's major news media he'll be struck dead by lighting. Then, when he gets to the Pearly Gates, Saint Peter will tell him, "I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I can't let you in, you're going to hell.""But why?" the man will plead."We heard what you said about there being a liberal media," Saint Peter will reply sternly. "And there's simply no room in heaven for anyone that stupid."All hear the word of the Lord.Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at:
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