As we all know, for the most part the corporate news media still gives Bush a free pass and they do not villianized him like he deserves. BradBlog recently cited a report by Eric Boehlert from Media Matters that documents this failure.
This failure of the press to fairly cover the most egregious violations of the law leds me to ask, "Even though there is compelling evidence of war crimes and the perpetrators are still in office, why does a double standard still exist and why does the Mainstream News Media (MSM) consistently miss the mark on the biggest stories? Doesn't this behavior make these news organizations complicit with war crimes?
For a closer look on how some of the top stories are generated, follow me on the flip.
I started my research into this subject at Google News. As one might expect, most top stories have a high number of related stories. I wanted to know what was really behind all those numbers? So I decided to check.
First I clicked on a group to see all ??? news articles. Then I started browsing through ALL of the articles. [If you do this, make sure that you include articles that are omitted.] As I went through the pages and pages of related stories, I started to notice a pattern. When I sorted by date and went to the earliest related articles, there were many articles that had the exact same title. This was an interesting find.
Also what I found, were many news sites that looked very similar to each other; cookie cutter like in appearance. For example, I compared rural Arizona "newspaper" called the Prescott Herald and a Saskatchewan "newspaper" called the Pierceland Herald. Prescott Herald is from onelocalnews and the Pierceland Herald is from newsone.ca, but what I really loved was comparing the local advertisements the most.
These are from the Pierceland Herald,
Please support local business!
AJ Power Supply
"Get your mojo going!"
4120 Industrial Ave
687-4525
Burt‘s Kitchen
"Let‘s do lunch!"
7070 Airport Road
687-3900
Fergie‘s Dog Wash
"Wash and Dry, $9.99"
204 Donald Street
687-4543
Dr. Weston, DDS - Dentist
"Get your teeth checked!"
#50 - 700 Smyth Drive
687-1077
Star Air and Heat
"Your heat and air specialists!"
2145 Industrial Ave
687-9099
Prescott Motors
"Come get a deal"
540 Main Street
687-4533
Cutline Hair Stylist
"Get a new style!"
560 Main Street
687-6761
Pierceland Herald
"Your local news source"
#1 - 410 Donald Street
687-8891
And these are from the Prescott Herald,
Support Local Business
AJ Power Supply
Get your mojo going!
4120 Industrial Ave
787-4525
Burt‘s Kitchen
Let‘s do lunch!
7070 Airport Road
787-3900
Fergie‘s Dog Wash
Wash and Dry, $9.99
204 Donald Street
787-4543
Dr. Weston, DDS - Dentist
Get your teeth checked!
#50 - 700 Smyth Drive
787-1077
Star Air and Heat
Your heat and air specialists!
2145 Industrial Ave
787-9099
Prescott Motors
Come get a deal
540 Main Street
787-4533
Cutline Hair Stylist
Get a new style!
560 Main Street
787-6761
Prescott Herald
Your local news source
#1 - 410 Donald Street
787-8891
Looks familiar huh?
Now check out the other related newspapers on the links to the lower right. They look like carbon copies of one another. These are more sites that fall under OneLocalNews umbrella. OneLocalNews used to be known as NewsOne dot ca. Notice the Pierceland Herald is missing from this list. The Pierceland Herald falls under newsone.ca, but that is being phased out and migrated to LocalNewsLeader. There are more sites that used to be a part of newsone, but they now fall under LocalNewsLeader with a slightly different look. Here are some examples of those:
To see the relationship between LocalNewsLeader and OneLocalNews click on Sky Valley News here:
http://www.localnewswatch.com/... . Tada! The Sky Valley News (LocalNewsWatch) now looks like OneLocalNews sites.
There are literally dozens of these sites and they literally influence which stories get picked up for top stories and determine how they will be presented. My hunch is that these sites are associated with the Defense Intelligence and DoD CIFA, of which the Department of Defense has already admitted to using propaganda news in Iraq, and form the basis of what we see in our daily news.
This is how it works. A story like Chinese satellite kill challenges U.S. was posted at 04/14/2007 13:59:06 where it gets picked up off the AP wire. This one says 10 minutes ago. If they want the story to take off, it goes back through the system and comes out with a new time. Here is another one posted by the same writer at 04/14/2007 13:59:07 titled Heated space race under way in Asia "7 minutes ago". Both stories hit the wire only one second apart. If it is a story they really want to take off, it will be recycled. Usually within 30 minutes to an hour.
Google then starts grouping these "related articles" from the several established mirrors. The ones that are reposted a second time get multiplied across all of the mirror sites again, adding to the increased number of "related" articles, when in fact it is the same article getting picked up by Google 30 or more times.
Sorting by date can give you a good perspective on how spin fits into this and how it is accomplished.
Take this example,
Leahy: Bush aides lying about e-mails
04/12/2007 13:28:47
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 29 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - President Bush ‘s aides are lying about White House e-mails sent on a Republican account that might have been lost, a powerful Senate chairman said Thursday, vowing to subpoena those documents if the administration fails to cough them up.
"You can‘t erase e-mails, not today. They‘ve gone through too many servers," said Leahy, D-Vt. "Those e-mails are there, they just don‘t want to produce them. We‘ll subpoena them if necessary."
30 minutes later, this story hits the wire,
Leahy says Bush aides lied about e-mails
04/12/2007 13:58:28
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press Writer 1 minute ago
WASHINGTON - President Bush ‘s , , ) said Thursday, vowing to subpoena those documents if the administration fails to cough them up.
"You can‘t erase e-mails, not today. They‘ve gone through too many servers," said Leahy, D-Vt. "Those e-mails are there, they just don‘t want to produce them. We‘ll subpoena them if necessary."
"The purpose of our review is to make every reasonable effort to recover potentially lost e-mails, and that is why we‘ve been in contact with forensic experts," he said.
As you move forward through time, you get a good feel for how the original story morph's into what we eventually see and read in the larger media outlets. Add in a few real local newspapers that flush out the story. Or have a trusted TV affiliate pick up the story and give it a little more political spin from the original wording and you have a system.