Media Watch: Go-To-Guy

[Update: Yesterday, Tuesday March 6, 2007, after I posted this comment, Brian Williams went on the air at 6:30 PM Eastern and admitted that Monday, March 6th was a very violent day in Iraq. He didn't outright say he had been wrong, but...]

NBC's Brian Williams had long been considered the right-wing's go-to guy. But something happened to Brian Williams as he filmed the aftermath of Katrina. Brian Williams was, albeit temporarily, reborn as a journalist. He'd ask tough questions, even to power. He did one story after another finally asking where we are headed, why, and to what good? He'd run reality checks to refute false claims. Brian Williams, it seemed, was a changed man. Not any more.

Recently, around the time fluff and good-news hack, Katie Couric, took the anchor over at CBS, Williams began ending broadcasts with fluff. More fluff encroached. And last, night the old Brain Williams fully emerged, fawningly touring Iraq on the Bush good-news tour. Williams made sure to point out that he was doing so without flack jacket. "Good news" must be reported. And Williams is just in time for Americans to buy-into a new war product roll-out in Iran. The implication is: "Isn't forcing 'democracy' at gunpoint swell? Let's do it again."

Reporting only, or especially "good news" is not news, but propaganda. That's unfortunately what the Bush administration gives us. We do not need the media doing it too. Yet the media ditto-heads the propaganda, like the robot chorus they are.

So, here we are. The one network which halfway tried to report is packing it in and jumping on the Bush train-ride to hell. And US citizens will flunk more current events quizzes, and on and on...

PS: Instead, why not watch Democracy Now with Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales. Find a means of getting it by going to www.democracynow.org Get it from the web, satellite TV, Progressive Radio, and some cable outlets.