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Date: Tue, 30 Sep 1997 12:35:37 -0700
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From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: The Government-Media Complex Exposed (fwd)
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<snip>
>
>http://www.worldnetdaily.com/btlines/970930.btl.FEDPOWER.GovernmentMediaPar
tnership.html
>
>WorldNetDaily
>September 30, 1997
>
>The Government-Media Complex Exposed
>
>By Joseph Farah
>
>Americans once worried about the military-industrial complex. It’s still
>a concern, but a much more ominous and imminent threat to our freedom is
>what I call “the government-media complex.”
>
>Even some establishment press organizations are beginning to worry about
>and expose the cozy relationship between these two powerful institutions
>that, in a free society, are supposed to be natural adversaries. Last
>week, the Wall Street Journal published a particularly good illustration
>of the way the government-media complex works in real life.
>
>The front-page story by reporter Kevin Helliker described a U.S. Fish
>and Wildlife Service raid four years ago on the Montana home of Paul
>Berger, 72, and ill with emphysema.
>
>“Yet when federal agents got a warrant to search his ranch,” Helliker
>wrote, “they assembled a force large enough to take on Rambo. At dawn,
>21 men converged on the Berger ranch. They had a stockpile of weapons, a
>caravan of trucks and an airplane.”
>
>What was the high crime Mr. Berger was suspected of committing?
>Poisoning eagles that were preying on his sheep -- accusations, by the
>way, that came from former employees who hadn’t worked on the ranch for
>years. The agents who served the warrant the day of the raid wore wires
>-- not, however, to feed a government recorder, but a Cable News Network
>tape.
>
>“And three of the men who spent 10 hours scurrying around his ranch that
>day, dressed in the same street clothes as federal agents, didn’t belong
>to the government at all: They worked for CNN, the news network of Time
>Warner Inc.’s Turner Broadcasting unit,” the Journal reported.
>
>Though no evidence of eagle poisoning was found, Berger was charged with
>the crime. A jury of his peers found him innocent. That didn’t stop CNN
>from broadcasting a story on “Earth Matters” pronouncing the raid a huge
>success.
>
>Now, Berger and his wife are suing the federal government and CNN for
>violating their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and
>seizure. His attorneys point out that the warrant never even mentioned
>the presence of CNN, which he claims is guilty of trespassing.
>
>This case should raise some fundamental issues for the media. It is
>becoming routine for the press to cooperate with government authorities
>in covering law enforcement operations. In recent years, we have
>witnessed the tragic results of such ties. Most everyone now realizes
>that the initial raid on the Waco church was little more than a
>publicity stunt by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. It
>turned into the worst law enforcement disaster in the history of the
>United States.
>
>Did the media’s presence inspire cowboy theatrics by the police? And, in
>other similar arrangements, does the press give the government too much
>leeway in shaping the content and timing of its stories?
>
>In the Berger case, CNN signed an agreement giving the government
>control over when -- if ever -- the network would show the documentary.
>CNN, aware that the government was improperly serving the warrant, did
>nothing to interfere or report the violation. The editors back in
>Atlanta also served up a piece that made it seem Berger was admitting to
>the federal agents that he had indeed poisoned eagles, when, in fact, he
>told them he had laced several sheep carcasses with poison designed to
>kill coyotes terrorizing his flock.
>
>That’s the how the government-media complex works in its most insidious
>form. But you can see other examples virtually everyday in your daily
>newspaper and on the network news shows. How often do you see government
>waste, fraud, abuse and corruption exposed by the press? It’s extremely
>rare, these days. What we do see, however, is the press cooperating with
>big government by making hysterical claims, promoting junk science scare
>stories, fanning the flames of phony crises -- all in the interest of
>some new government bureaucracy, regulation or tax.
>
>The big media have signed an unholy pact with the devil. They’ve decided
>that it serves their interest more to work with the government than to
>expose it on behalf of the people.
>
>The primary role of the free press in a free society is to serve as a
>watchdog on government. That’s what the founders of this great nation
>had in mind when they enshrined in the First Amendment special
>protections for the news media. They would turn over in their graves if
>they could see the way this ideal has been betrayed by the big media
>whores who have jumped into bed with big government.
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Joseph Farah is Editor of the internet newspaper WorldNetDaily.com and
>Executive Director of the Western Journalism Center, an independent
>group of investigative reporters.
>
>©1997, Western Journalism Center
>
>˙-˙-˙-˙-˙-˙-˙-˙-˙-˙-˙-˙-˙-˙-˙-˙
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>
>
========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell, Sui Juris : Counselor at Law, federal witness
B.A., Political Science, UCLA; M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine
:
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