"We are grateful to the Washington
Post, the New York Times, Time magazine and other great publications
whose directors have attended our meetings and respected the
promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been
impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been
subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But,
the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a
world-government. The supranational sovereignty if an intellectual
elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national
auto-determination practiced in past centuries"--
David Rockefeller in an address to
a Trilateral Commission meeting in June of 1991
John Swinton, who
worked for the New York Times, honed in on the problem facing mankind in
these times.
He was
called "The Dean of His Profession" by other newsmen, who admired him
greatly and was asked to give a toast before the prestigious New York
Press Club in 1953, he made this candid confession: "There is no such
thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You
know it and I know it.
"There is not one
of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know
beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for
keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others
of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who
would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the
streets looking for another job.
"If I allowed my
honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four
hours my occupation would be gone.
"The business of
the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to
vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his
daily bread.
"You know it and I
know it, and what folly this is toasting an independent press.
"We are the tools
and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks,
they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and
our lives are all the property of other men.
We all have
been tirelessly
screaming
about issues related to Congressional leaders abdicating their
main responsibility of 'oversight.' We have been outraged for
way too long at seeing 'no' accountability whatsoever in many
known cases of extreme wrongdoing. I, and many of you, believe
that the biggest reason for this was, and still is, the lack of
true journalism and media coverage -- which acts as the
necessary pressure and catalyst for those spineless politicians
on the Hill and in the Executive branch. Or, at least it's
supposed to. So, in our book, the MSM has been the main culprit.
Well, here is a chance to turn the tables......More Source
Sotomayor, Gingrich, and
the Demise of Our Press Corps
by Eric Boehlert
Last week's press coverage of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's nomination
to the Supreme Court was
gruesome in
so many
ways, as reporters routinely fell down and failed to reflect
even the most basic tenets of journalism.
One of the most
disturbing examples of how fundamentals were ignored involved
Sotomayor's now-infamous quote from eight years ago about a
"Latina woman" judge reaching a "better conclusion" on the bench
than her white male counterparts. Sotomayor made the comment as
part of
a speech she gave at University of California, Berkeley, in
2001 in which she explored what it would mean to have more women
and minorities on the bench......More
