... that led rather directly to getting away with murder. (If, that is, you'll accept the civilians killed in a couple immoral wars and the deaths of prisoners never charged with anything as murder directly under the authority of the executive branch-- it's much more direct than the vastly larger number of poverty-related deaths in this country and around the world.)

How False Narrative Works for the corrupt and evil, against our common needs. By Robert, Sam and Nat Parry.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/17/5299/

That could have just as easily been the headline of a recent Washington Post story. The media would rather treat it as an amusing sideshow to a presidential campaign (feel free to argue that their opening paragraph is objective). But the article really should have been about laws and liberties that matter to a lot more people than the (still substantial) number of directly affected mostly conservative libertarians.

Crackdown on four women, one of whom made a statement of fact (about herself and a large majority of U.S. citizens) that also happened to express her opinion (and that of a vast majority of the world's people)

This is a case study in how obedience is maintained. No silent protest can be allowed against even the most unpopular president in history, if the establishment can pull the platform out from under the dissenters.

Powerful testimony by Keith Gottschalk regarding the window on how reporters are treated regularly opened to us by the Cleveland Plain Dealer's dealings with workers who do not have to make their way in the media world, and so could blow the whistle.

http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2007/11/cleveland-plain-dealer-deals-w.html

Great post and great comment.

With experience at five daily newspapers, I sadly can't say I was too surprised at how this went down although I think that in this case, the focus is a bit off.

Re: the question of whether people want choice in the newspaper industry

(Almost) everyone wants choice
...
By itself, a bias for choice is interesting but not particularly surprising. What's surprising is the magnitude of this desire.
...
More people watched more video on YouTube last week than watched the top ten shows on network television.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/11/meatball-mondae.html
(on the Long Tail)

The term (which derives from the Latin word for "root," and thus implies change beginning at a system's roots) was given this [political] sense by Charles James Fox in 1797 when he demanded "radical reform" consisting of universal manhood suffrage.

This is despicable.

It goes on Root Truth because it's so blatantly despicable that the news media should be covering it in a way that conveys its despicableness. But of course the media is a key part of how the despicable and absurd can be presented as ordinary and commonplace. George Orwell's line about imprecise words softening the outlines of hard facts like a soft snow on a garden.

(Actually Orwell's quotation is nothing like that, but it makes the same point.)

Glenn Greenwald puts it this way: "What Happened to the Senate’s ‘60-Vote Requirement’?"

Good men try to find a solution to things. Evil men try to find someone to blame.

Here is an excellent resource put together by the PeoplesNetwork collective forged from the idealism and practical experience of years publishing the NewStandard. This is version 2 of their Contributor's Handbook, and it outlines their full journalistic process – what is asked of reporters, what reportecs can expect of editors (separation of roles does not necessarily mean separate people; the NewStandard practiced "balanced work complexes" as a way of sharing various kinds of work).