The American Government has a wide array of resources available with which they can disseminate information regarding their activities, both at home and abroad. These resources include but are not limited to press secretaries, communications chiefs, and leaked documents that are released to the American news media. In the pages that follow I intend to prove that while independent American news media work mainly at exposing US government lies, the mainstream American news media work to effectively transmit those lies to the news viewing American public.It should be noted, first of all, that the dominant US news media do sometimes expose government lies. This should not be surprising, however, as exposing lies, scandals, and half-truths is a huge part of the news media's responsibility to the American news viewing public.
Keywords: Media manipulation, cover-ups, government scandals, government censorship, journalism ethics
[...] In addition, they lack the associations with the US Government that give so much of the major American news media their pro-Government tinge. These differences in interest allow the American independent press not to propagate Government lies, but to expose them. Another reason that American independent press are in a better position to uncover US Government untruths is because they tend to be farther from power. Journalists and editors from many prominent newspapers are routinely invited to extravagant parties and dinners. [...]
[...] The crooked relationship between Big US Media and the US Government does not exempt the independent media in America from Government censure, however. Instead of journalists being influenced not to expose lies because they consider themselves “friends” with those very lying bureaucrats, news people working for independent presses have been subject to much more menacing forms of censure. Underground newspaper offices have been pilfered and destroyed and equipment and files have been stolen. Reporters that dared to write what the US Government didn't want the public to know have been badgered by the FBI. [...]
[...] Independent news media, free from these driving corporate forces, can investigate government lies without worrying about what Boss” will think, or if some system-hugging editor will censor it because won't sell” or advertisers will withdraw.” The most unfortunate aspect of this whole conundrum is that those in a position to expose government lies are only able to do so because of their limited exposure. The forces that cause capitalistic interference and passive, lazy reporting are the same forces that make the mainstream press widely viewed, widely absorbed, and widely molded by the liars in power. [...]
[...] But with the mainstream American news media as they are, the US Government can tell all the lies it wants and be secure in the fact that most of them will be reported and received as objective truth. Information will be managed by an institution that relies so heavily on lies and spin that it can be hard, even when a lie is beginning to be exposed, to separate lie from truth. Without the independent press to provide a sliver of hope in the sea of corporate greed- heads sucking down Martinis with the very liars they should be exposing, there would be nothing but “officials saying” and “administrations reporting.” As one weary American journalist assigned to report on the Iraq War said, “There's an effort to manage the news, and they're pretty good at (Control Room). [...]
[...] The US Government understands how this untimely behavior can annihilate the impact of such reporting, so they do everything in their power to use time as a tool against the US news media. During the 1983 invasion of Grenada, for example, reporters were restricted by the Reagan Administration from accessing the island. The Reagan White House didn't even inform the press of the invasion until it had already begun. When reporters were finally allowed onto the island, they found that Reagan had lied about Soviet weapon warehouses on Grenada. [...]
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