{"article":{"id":2340,"heading":"open letter to insidious CNN.com's political editors","author":"thrush","created":"2000-08-18 23:33:10","modified":"2005-08-15 00:24:06","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 07:24:06","article":"

The only ink you give the rising Green party today is a story in

which you characterize Nader's whitehouse bid as \"hovering between

3 and 5 percent support in most polls.\" You may feel it's safe to

get away with this manipulative outrage because you think it's subtle

enough that folks won't pay much mind to such a terse insertion

near the end of a story. Well we're simply no longer letting you

get away with this typical practice.



Your unforgiveably slanted journalism actively deceives by keeping your

television-consuming audience in the dark as to the following realities:

- The polls you're generalizing about are of the popular vote, as opposed


to the electoral vote, which is the system we must presently function


under. Among other important details about polls which you absolutely


avoided going into are: what question was asked? what question was


asked immediately preceeding the one you've extracted out for the


purposes of the misleading generalization in CNN copy? what kind of


freaks answer their telephone at supper when it's almost all


megaconglomerates' marketing organs, employing prisoners to do this


phone soliciting at appalling wages?

- Many crucial states have Nader at levels triple what you're stating


in this offhanded mention. 9%+ in California and double-digits in


other of Gore's must-win states has the DLC running scared (running


even further to the Right than usual?) and such corrupted organizations


as CNN participate in de facto perception management by repeating


misleadingly arbitrary sets of summary data.

- The elections in the USA are effectively now run by television networks


which amount to propaganda factories that rally around their common


cause: the commodification of all of our existences. What continues to


be the basis of a weak argument that we need to vote for evil (the whole


\"evil of two lessers\" fear-trap that we've suffered under recently..)


is something I keep hearing out of the \"conventional wisdom\" punditry:


Nader isn't yet in the pollingnumbers horserace, therefore he never


will be and therefore doesn't deserve coverage. Well that thinking sure


is an insult to our great country's eventful history. This is a big


topic which deserves much discussion, but suffice it to say that wealthy


elites' media are quite happy to use as a cop-out this self-fulfilling


prophecy. They just cant come to grips with the fact that Nader can and


will win, just as soon as they embrace actual change instead of their cozy,


incestuous corporate pork circles.

This serves as an excellent illustration of the nauseating degree to

which our corporatocracy has rendered the \"fourth estate\" into a truly

irresponsible puddle of homogenized, subservient goo.

Had you wanted to even begin to remotely flirt with an even-handed,

journalistically principled presentation of different views, you'd have

included a web link to Nader's actual writing. His weekly column in fact

has dealt with the usury nature of today's credit industry on multiple

occasions:

http:\/\/www.sfbg.com\/nader\/114.html<\/a><\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"image\/gif","summary":"let us keep on the case of the corporate media. getting in front of eyeballs will\r\nbring about mass appeal, as if by magic.","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2000\/08\/obey.gif","filesize":"1.8 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2000\/08\/2340.php","image":{"original":"\/uploads\/2000\/08\/obey.gif"}},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}