Monday, September 15, 2008

On the Media: Instruments of War; Cooking the Books

Instruments of War
On the Media

As reported in The New York Times [on April 20, 2008], CNN, MSNBC, NPR and others have turned, again and again, to military analysts – retired members of the armed forces hired by broadcast and cable networks – for their supposed expertise on the war. Only, it turns out, the analysts were often coached by the Pentagon in what the Times said were “hundreds of private briefings.” Among those named was Maj. Robert Bevelacqua, a former Green Beret and Fox News contributor through 2005. Bevelacqua discusses his own role in the march to war.

To Listen to the Report

Cooking the Books
On the Media

To get a read on the vital signs of our increasingly shaky economy, media turn to those all-important stats: unemployment, consumer price index, GDP. But Kevin Phillips, political and economic commentator, says that for decades administrations have been altering the definitions of those stats to paint a rosier outlook.

To Listen to the Report

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