Posts tagged “Fox News”

“The situation ended without incident as students gradually left the scene.”

This policeman is captured on film as he is about to smash his baton down upon his victim on Friday, November 20, 2009, outside Wheeler Hall on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley.

Image: @thedailyclog

This policeman is captured on film as he is about to smash his baton down upon his victim on Friday, November 20, 2009, outside Wheeler Hall on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley.

The headline here is taken from CNN’s shameful coverage of the events of the past week at the University of California system. It refers specifically to a UCLA protest, while the image above comes from UC Berkeley, but it is apropos nonetheless. Remember, the UCLA protest included students being maced, beaten with batons, tasered, and arrested. There is no bastardized version of the English language in which it is possible to make such incidents equate linguistically to “ended without incident.”

CNN is lying to you. MSNBC makes no mention(1, 2) of the police brutality in California or New York City. Fox News? They have been hosting a 24/7 webcam feed for over a year so they can keep an eye on the protesters outside the Marine recruiting station in Berkeley, but they have not made a single mention of the UC protests, at least nowhere I can find online. And of course no one is talking about the students in Vienna marching on the US embassy in support of the UC uprising or the occupations of the various Universities across Europe or how this is a global movement in favor of free or cheap education.

Corporate media are not interested in giving you the truth. They have a singular interest: maximizing profit for their shareholders. That’s why you should consider donating to independent media outlets, places like Democracy Now!, IndyMedia and little ol’ me! If you find yourself at a site that is giving you information that you are not getting from CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and their ilk, throw a dollar or two at the proprietor of the site. You would be amazed at how far that would go if everyone did that. So, check out my brand new, ass-kicking, Ruth Gator Binsburg donation button if you are so inclined. But even if you can’t spare a square, keep fighting the good fight!

Thanks, @erinacb!

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Factoid: Katie Couric’s Salary vs. NPR’s Budget

Katie Couric‘s annual salary is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined. Couric’s salary comes to an estimated $15 million a year; NPR spends $6 million a year on its morning show and $5 million on its afternoon one. NPR has seventeen foreign bureaus (which costs it another $9.4 million a year); CBS has twelve. Few figures, I think, better capture the absurd financial structure of the network news.Michael Massing
Columbia Journalism Review

Via BoingBoing

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In case you are worried about Obama talking to your kids…

Watch as Fox News lies to the public, trying to scare the hell out of everyone about Obama. Then, 30 minutes later, they finally recanted and admitted that both G.H.W. Bush and Reagan both did the EXACT same thing. Full video of the Bush speech after the jump.

This is for my Dad and all the other parents out there who have very selective memories. Last night, he told me that if his kids were still in public school, he wouldn’t want them being spoken to by the President, preaching his agenda. Funny, it didn’t seem to bother him when his kids actually were in public school, being spoken to by the President, preaching his agenda. In the clip above, you can watch as my brother and I were violently propagandized by George H.W. Bush back in 1991.

I was an innocent seventh grader and my poor little brother was just a naive second grader when the bad man came into our classrooms to touch…our…minds. Sure, shortly after the speech by H.W., I started collecting Gulf War trading cards and wearing my hair in a buzz cut. But look, America, I turned out to be the single-payer and socialized education advocating, anti-Fed, anti-war radical that you all know and love! (Side note: poor Kevin really never was the same.) So really, don’t worry about letting that scary man talk to your kiddies while they are in an institution of learning, where they are supposed to be exposed to a diverse range of ideas!

From the beginning, the whole “Obama is going to ‘pied piper’ your kids” controversy struck me as ludicrous and yet I couldn’t figure out if I was missing something. I’m pretty damn skeptical of all things political and yet this wasn’t setting off my alarms. Was there really something specifically wrong with the President addressing the youth of America? When did we reach the point as a society where parents would pull their kids out of school so that their kids wouldn’t hear a message from the freely-elected leader of their nation? How is this any worse than having kids watch any other presidential address? It’s almost as if everyone is starting to listen to me about our electoral system, propaganda, police state, etc., but for the stupidest reasons. Wouldn’t that just be my luck?

Watch the agonizing loss of my innocence (aka G.H.W. Bush’s Education Speech) after the jump…
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