Guest editorial by Ernest A. Canning

There have been a few occasions during my 62 years when I heard something profound that stuck with me.

The year was 1969. I was attending a freshman college history class, shortly after returning from Vietnam, when my professor said:

His words came back to me as Brad Friedman and I simultaneously made guest appearances on Live from the Left Coast with Angie Coiro.

While the topic was Afghanistan, a concern emerged over the splintering of the Left as a product of what Coiro described as strident "rhetoric," such as the suggestion that President Obama was a "sell-out" or the announcement by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) that he intended to introduce a privileged resolution to stop the "criminal enterprise" in Afghanistan. The concern was the potential for that "rhetoric" to adversely impact the Democratic Party in the 2010 and 2012 elections.

Unfortunately, in part due to technical difficulties they had on the show that night, I failed to adequately articulate my concerns, which go to the core of the Progressive dilemma in U.S. electoral politics....

I'll be sitting in for Angie Corio on Live from the Left Coast on Green960 (KKGN-960AM) in San Francisco tonight (Friday) from 6p - 8p PT (9p - 11p ET).

Scheduled for tonight's Media-Reform-a-Palooza:

• FRANK SCHAEFFER, former rightwing fundamentalist leader, author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back on his "Letter to Rupert Murdoch" calling for an end to Fox "News'" inciting of violence, and his endorsement of VelvetRevolution's StopDomesticTerror.com campaign.
• SUE WILSON, filmmaker of Broadcast Blues on the the epic fail of the FCC to carry out their duty in overseeing the corporate abuse of our public airwaves and the Democrats failure (see my article "The Media Need a Fair and Balanced Doctrine" at Alternet to do anything about it.
• PLUS: Supporting the White House attempts to hold Fox "News" accountable and your calls on all of the above (866-960-5753)!

You can listen via the live Internet stream here or here if you're not in the Bay Area. Please tune in, stream in, call in and join the LIVE online chat room during the show at lftlc.com/LIVE!

POST-SHOW UPDATE: I'm delighted that our friends at KRXA 540am in Monterey, CA also decided to pick up and simulcast last night's show as well! Thanks to those who tuned in and called in!

Thanks to the good folks at LFTLC.com for removing commercials, these "hours" are appx. 40 mins each...

HOUR 1: White House v. Fox "News". And Frank Schaeffer on the looming danger of rightwing extremism...
Download MP3 or listen online below...

HOUR 2: Sue Wilson on reforming the media...
Download MP3 or listen online below...

Jim White, 1936 - 2003

A few personal observations... I doubt that I'd be involved in radio at all these days myself, were it not for the many late nights, as a child, in the dark, when I should have been sleeping, listening to Jim White broadcast over the 50,000 watt KMOX blow-torch in St. Louis, MO. Back in the days when talk radio was something very different than what it has now become...

Guest Editorial by Ernest A. Canning

"We killed the President that day. You could have been a part of it --- you know, part of history. You should have stayed. It was safe. Everything was covered in advance. No arrests, no real newspaper investigation. It was all covered, very professional." - Sworn deposition testimony provided in Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby, Inc. by Marita Lorenz, Fidel Castro's former girlfriend and CIA asset, recounting what her CIA recruiter, convicted Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis, told her after the assassination of JFK.

Sibel Edmonds' recent on-air revelation that, prior to 9/11, Osama bin Laden was relied upon by the Bush administration as a Central Asian asset, added one more disturbing piece to an incomplete puzzle, which, as could be expected, lent itself to a number of comments asking whether 9/11 was "an inside job." These, in turn, were summarily dismissed in another comment as "conspiracy theory."

Where does this concept of dismissing inquiry into momentous events as "conspiracy theory" come from?...

Guest blogged by Brad Jacobson of MediaBloodhound

From the aftermath of the 2003 "shock and awe" bombing campaign all the way through Thanksgiving Day 2008, major US news outlets have nearly uniformly blacked out or downplayed reports of the Iraqi death toll. But a recent Associated Press article reveals the depths to which these outlets are still willing to delve to censor this information.

In the November 27 article "Iraqi Parliament OKs US Troops for 3 More Years," by Christopher Torchia and Qassim Abdul-Zahra, AP editors approved the following characterization of Iraqi deaths suffered since the US invasion:

How's that for a statistically rigorous accounting? With the exactitude of a third-grader's book report cribbed from a novel's dust jacket copy, the AP --- America's #1 wire news service --- blankets US news outlets with a quantification of Iraqi casualties that would've made Stalin proud.

The response from the guy who works at the real NYTimes alone --- after he claims "we've been all over the Bush administration since day one, we set the standard for coverage of the Iraq War" before the reporter mentions the name "Judith Miller" --- makes this a must-see video (appx. 2 minutes)...

Thank you to those who dare to dream, even if such dreams are little more than saying out loud what we all know to be possible. Even that much, incredibly, in 2008, seems to have become the impossible for so many, in a country which once saw nothing as impossible.

More on the special (fake) edition of the NYTimes here. Hat-tip "Floridiot" in BRAD BLOG comments.

Guest Blogged by Brad Jacobson of MediaBloodhound

Considering many of the staggering results of Thursday's New York Times/CBS News poll, overall media coverage and examination of the findings have been less than thorough. With the seeming sea change that has occurred, when comparing public opinion before both conventions to public opinion now (the period measured in the poll), you might think it would garner at least as much attention as, say, lipstick-on-a-pig palooza.

Taken as a whole, findings of this poll --- some noted in Thursday's national media discourse, some not --- paint the bleakest picture yet for the McCain/Palin ticket.

Had this been a study showing liberal bias in the media, it would have been all over the place by now. But as the study offers evidence that it's McCain, not Obama, who has been given an edge by network media reporting since the start of the general election campaign, it seems we better help "catapult the propaganda" a bit.

Below is the beginning of David Knowles' coverage of the LA Times coverage of a new study from George Mason University's Center for Media and Public Affairs. The new study offers empirical evidence underscoring what most folks who honestly study the corporate media already know: Democrats get a far tougher time than do Republicans in the corporate mainstream media.

For those self-proclaimed "conservatives" who continue to buy into the nonsense of the "liberal media" canard (no matter the dearth of actual, hard, real-world evidence to substantiate it) please note this study does not come from one of those 'liberal elitist think-tanks.' Rather, it was led by a man hailed by "conservative" propagandists, such as Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck, for his previous studies on media bias. We have a feeling those same "conservatives" may accidentally not notice his latest study.

Take a look...

Guest Blogged by Arlen Parsa of TheDailyBackground.com

As readers of The BRAD BLOG know, former comedian Al Franken will be the Democratic candidate running against incumbent Republican Senator (and Bush Buddy) Norm Coleman this November in Minnesota. The seat is a prime pickup opportunity to for Democrats this year, and Coleman is running scared. Franken was on CNN Monday night and was subjected to a truly awful interview by Campbell Brown. If you can stand to watch this lousy excuse for an interview, check it out:

The four questions that Brown asked him were essentially...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

For much more on the medias role in spreading lies and propaganda about Al Gore see Robert Parry's informative, "Al Gore v. The Media" at Consortium News, "The Press vs. Al Gore" at Rolling Stone and many a post at The Daily Howler and Media Matters.

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Are bloggers journalists? More importantly, should bloggers receive the same privileges the government bestows upon “professional” journalists including, in most states, protection from the forced disclosure of confidential sources of information by way of journalist shield laws?

These are some of the questions congress has been considering over the last month as part of the “Free Flow of Information Act of 2007.” As The BRAD BLOG often relies on confidential and whistleblower sources we have been tracking the issue closely.

With this backdrop, The BRAD BLOG jumped at the opportunity to interview the guy who literally wrote the book on the subject, D.C. constitutional law attorney Scott Gant. Released in June, We're All Journalists Now: The Transformation of the Press and Reshaping of the Law in the Internet Age, has enjoyed favorable reviews and led to appearances by Gant on C-Span's BookTV and The McLaughlin Group, where the host commented that the book was “A great read, an easy read and it breaks new ground, quite groundbreaking.”

Part 1 (7:32) of our interview above covers all things related to the shield law. Part 2 (8:30) of the interview above concentrates on access privileges and other benefits that journalists receive from the government that may be important to bloggers. Both follow below...

Guest Blogged by BRAD BLOG's D.C. Correspondent, Margie Burns

It was a big day on Thursday in the national capital, with several flaming surges hitting the news at once – the Washington Post hooking up with the MSM campaign to put “Hillary” over the top before the magic deadline of October 15 (more on that later, elsewhere); Rep. Henry Waxman and the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee holding a powerful hearing on Iraqi corruption; the blocking of Hans von Spakovsky's nomination to the FEC; and discussion of a proposed federal shield law for journalists (full text of bill here), which was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee today to the full Senate.

While I was able to sit in for hearings on two of the items above, space and time regrettably being constraints, I'll cover only the proposed shield law for the moment. Right up top, I have to say that I have qualms about it. A real leak, by a whistleblower exposing a crime or some danger to the public, is one thing. But protecting journalists from exposing a politically motivated ‘source’ trying to plant misinformation is another. This bill, as it was debated in committee and written about in papers yesterday, might equally protect both, if it protects either...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio, and David Bender had a great discussion about RFK Jr.'s Live Earth speech on the July 14, 2007 Ring of Fire on Air America Radio. The show opened with a laughing Papantonio asking, "So Bobby, what in the hell did you do this last weekend, my God, hate-mail is flying, Hannity is attacking you, I mean what's up?" You can hear RFK Jr. reply that he "just told the truth, man, just told the truth" in the ten minute audio clip from the radio program (below). The video of the Live Earth speech can also be viewed here at BRAD BLOG.

And there is plenty more truth telling in the Ring of Fire audio clip (above) which includes RFK Jr. elaborating on his Live Earth comments about treasonous corporations:

RFK Jr.'s appearance on Glenn Beck, also at BRAD BLOG, is also discussed briefly. Finally, Bender repeats RFK Jr.'s call to fight lying pundits like Hannity and Beck through their advertisers (many of which can be seen in this video mashup).

Guest blogged from D.C. by Margie Burns

Beneficiary of yet another political outing, the Washington Post ran an article on Thursday June 21, 2007, titled “Political Hiring in Justice Division Probed,” strongly alleging further personnel atrocities committed in the DOJ by former Civil Rights Division administrator Bradley Schlozman.

Not to throw the baby out with the bathwater --- this is not a defense of Schlozman --- but regrettably all the allegations were made by unnamed sources. So who are the unnamed administration sources, and why are they engaging in this maneuver?

Here, along the lines of the "numbers" speech by Erin Brockovich as played by Julia Roberts, is the rundown:

Number of grafs, total, in the two-page article: 29. Number of named sources: 2. (See below.) Number of items attributed to unnamed sources: at least 17. Number of unnamed sources, total: uncertain, but ranging from at least 6 to perhaps at most 16.
0
Graf 2: “ . . . according to four lawyers who said they heard the account from Dugan.”

Graf 3: “In another politically tinged conversation recounted by former colleagues, . . .”

Graf 4: “That account was challenged by six officials in the division who said in interviews that they either overheard him . . .”

Graf 14: “Appellate lawyers said that before Schlozman arrived, the small staff enjoyed a collegial work environment . . .”