Wilson Ray: Is The Media 'Retarded' or Guilty of 'Group Think'?

(Southerner Daily News) "On Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" the other night, Jon Stewart asked CNN's Wolf Blitzer if the media failed the country by not asking tough questions of the Bush administration prior to Sept. 11, 2001, and in the run up to war in Iraq last year.
    Borrowing a line from the 9/11 Commission report, he asked, was the press also guilty of "group think," or just "retarded?"
    LOL.
    Putting aside the politically incorrect term "retarded," Blitzer said no one in the national press corps is afraid to ask tough questions, even though Bush comes up with nicknames for everyone as a way to make them cower. But he admitted the national press corps may be guilty of the same kind of "group think" the commission said held back the U.S. intelligence agencies from connecting the dots from al Qaeda suicide attackers to American Airlines to the World Trade Center.
    So where is the call for a national commission on the failure of the news media on 9/11 and the run up to war in Iraq?
    As far as I can tell from googling and surfing the Web, not even the bloggers are asking that question. Under the First Amendment, freedom of the press in America is believed to be sacrosanct. And with the increasing trend in corporate ownership and control of the news media, no one would call for independent or, dog forbid, government oversight of the media.
    The only anti-media movements that have gained steam over the past 25 years or so stem from right wing talk radio and cable news attacks on the liberal media, although there is an attempt in this presidential election cycle to also attack the newly risen "conservative media" embodied in the cable talk news on Fox.
    Only serious thinkers like Noam Chomsky and Jeff Cohen at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and the liberal Jewish newspaper The Nation, have the chutzpah to take on the corporate media on questions like these. Their criticism is totally lost on the vast majority of Americans, however, who hear nothing about it on local TV news and read nothing about it in their local newspaper.
    Is it any wonder why? The chain newspapers are so concerned about dropping below a 20 percent return on investment and losing circulation to the Internet that management will go to great lengths to avoid offending anyone by doing stories that might suggest there is corruption in America on par with the rise of Nazi Fascism in Germany in the run up to World War II.
    In communications research, there is a theory called "the spiral of silence" that attempts to explain why the German people went along with genocide. It's not my favorite theory, but something like it could be constructed to explain where we are now in America.
    If you don't believe me, consider this. We are already being bombarded with the story of the week planted by the FBI and Attorney General John Ashcroft that there is "credible intelligence" that terrorists are planning to blow up media trucks at the Democratic Convention in Boston.
    For most TV news viewers, I suspect it was easy to miss the line in the announcement that the Boston threat is not from Islamic jihadists linked with al Qaeda. This threat is said to come from an unnamed group of "radical domestic terrorists."
    Why, afterall, would al Qaeda hit the Democratic convention? It's the Republicans, Bush, New York and Washington they are after. But the national news media moved the story without asking any tough, critical questions about its varacity.
    In trying to check out the report myself, I did one of the logical things. I hit the Southern Poverty Law Center Web site to see if they have any new information about such a group. Nothing there, although there is an interesting story about the rise in hate violence by suburban teens.
    Could it be that this trumped up threat on Boston is simply a cynical attempt to funnel more pork barrel law enforcement money to Republican constituencies around the country? Or was it just designed to scare the press?
    If you think this question is out of the mainstream and dismissible as a "conspiracy theory," consider another trial balloon launched by Republican Congressman John Culberson of Texas last week. It seemed so ridiculous to me I didn't even bother to post the headline on the Southerner Daily News front page. But there he was on CNN with Wolf Blitzer, saying someone in local law enforcement tells him there is a "growing trend" in Muslim terrorists taking Hispanic sir names and sneaking across the border into Texas.
    The implication is, we need to spend another billion dollars or so to protect El Paso from them "evil terrorists," in addition to "them pot smoking Mexians." Law enforcement officials from every small city and county around the country are getting into the anti-terrorism game, looking for new grant money to prop up their operations from the Homeland Security Department. Does anyone seriously think al Qaeda would consider hitting Wetumpka, Alabama?
    LOL.
    I can't find on the Web at least a single shred of evidence to support this story, but there it is. One of the sites I did find, with a number of articles linked showing that America is increasingly becoming a police state, is the Unknown News. Go there and scan a few of the headlines and you may see the trend I'm talking about.
    Spreading the fear of "terrorism" may work to boost law enforcement budgets, but it remains to be seen if it will work for the president in his reelection bid.
    It might, if the American media doesn't start demanding answers to some important questions.
    For starters, what is the name of this new radical domestic "terrorist" group that wants to kill TV reporters covering the Democratic Party's convention in Boston?
    Is the acronym by any chance CREEP?
    Is it funded by black-budget money from the Saudi's? Or maybe opium or hashish proceeds from Afghanistan?
    Or is it a figment of Karl Rove and Ashcroft's imagination? If so, why would they lie to the American press and the people without consequence?
    If there is a real threat, we will know soon enough.
    If not, will some smart, or dare I say liberal news reporter, editor or news director ask why we take these stories without some proof?"