>> Nothing liberal activist organizations haven’t done, reporting some dire environmental or health warning based on junk science, in the hopes of gaining sympathy and/or public funding.

This difference? HALF A BILLION of YOUR tax dollars paid for this.

Remember when the conservatives used to get their panties in a bunch over 90 million spent for the arts? But half a billion for covert propaganda targeting our own citizens? Noooooo problem man. It’s all minor.

John, did you read the thread from your “The Clogging Factor” column? Here’s a nice quote from that thread: “My pet cat Mona Lisa eats telephone salesmen.” Just wonderful.

I don’t see how or why we’ve gone backwards from the fully threaded days of Usenet.

I would think they’d only fool those w/ no critical thinking skills, although unfortunately that’s a large % of the US population.

j.

We could use a proper threaded forum to carry forward some of these topics. Aside from the proto-flamers who think these topics reduce to I’m a Liberal/I’m a Conservative, nyah, nyah! — you have aggregated a fair number of folks with widely-varied, often-differing points of view — who might enjoy a longer discussion than the short period before something scrolls off the page.

I’d love to have, say, a thorough discussion with T.C. about the important of engineering and architectural trends — or a general round on mobility for those who are [or will be] challenged and might benefit from the recent 4-wheel Segway design. I think any of these would continue to reach out and expand participation in the larger blog.

The main NYTimes article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/politics/13covert.html?

A good interview
http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21493/

We’re talking HALF A BILLION of YOUR tax dollars to secretly PROPOGANDIZE YOU!

“verycheeky” may think this is a liberal payback for Dan Rather, but I think is a MAJOR SCANDAL and needs full investigation. Heads should roll.

HALF A BILLION TAX DOLLARS! Get your mind around that.

On top of that, lots of people think it is in direct violation of specific anti-propoganda laws.

Hank

Hank

On that note, I doubt there will hell to pay over underreported architectural trends. I think my world would still be the same if I hadn’t read here about that new French bridge/viaduct.

I doubt that there will ever be any repercussions from these episodes. The Republicans will not do it to themselves and the Democrats will not bring it back up if they ever return to power.

You might fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, and that is just what the Republicans have done in the past decade. Regardless of how history views Bush, the damage is being done today.

Dan Rather is a responsible journalist. Through his career he has consistently been a good, impartial reporter. He might have made an error of judgment, but instead of attacking him, lets start discussing Novak or O’Rielly.

Just my 2 cent rant.

“Old news” some will say, but this guy seems like the first credible source from inside the media to truly make the case.

The governement handing premade reports to lazy news organizations merely exploits this trend.

I don’t see why this is the government’s fault, and why phrases like “state run” media come up. Clearly the decision to run the reports lies with the news organizations. Goverment is just playing the PR game like the private sector does.

Obviously it should stop. But it highlights the weaknesses in the media, not the power of government.

P.S. Where can I look up the “standard rules of journalism.”