BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week: Bill Keller
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
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Welcome back to the BuzzFlash.com GOP Hypocrite of the Week.
How could the Executive Editor of the New York Times be the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week? I mean after all, the Times endorsed Kerry and, as BuzzFlash has noted, generally posts traditionally liberal editorials.
And, BuzzFlash links to New York Times articles almost everyday.
So, is BuzzFlash.com being disingenuous for naming the Executive Editor of the New York Times our GOP Hypocrite of the Week?
No, not at all. Because, Bill Keller is a prime example of a mainstream newspaper editor who doesn't appear to read his own paper's editorials or learn much from its occasional news stories that point out the daily failures and lies of the Bush Administration.
As we noted in a recent BuzzFlash editorial, the United States citizens need an investigative reporter to break open the untold story of the subservience of the mainstream press to the Bush Administration.
In that editorial, we lay out some of our case as to why Keller is a Republican White House lackey and note: "If the role of journalism is to challenge authority by seeking out the truth behind the official statements, the New York Times fails miserably, with a few exceptions here and there. It in no way conveys the radicalism of the people in the White House, nor runs longer investigative pieces on their chronic deceptions and dishonesty. It pretty much accepts their news handouts at face value."
Former Ambassador Joe Wilson noted that the mainstream media seems to think that presenting a fact from a critic, you need to balance it with a lie from the White House. The media pretends that they can't make a judgment between two competing claims to "facts," even when one side (the Bush "spin of the day") can easily be shown to be a lie.
Furthermore, the New York Times news pages don't in anyway take into account the unprecedented totalitarian-state-like manipulation of the media that has been undertaken by the Bush administration. On a daily basis, the New York Times news section tacitly participates in this propaganda machine, the likes of which hasn't been around since Goebbels or the former Soviet Union.
Recently, Laurie Garrett, a courageous reporter resigned from Newsday, owned by the Tribune Corporation, because, "The leaders of Times Mirror and Tribune have proven to be mirrors of a general trend in the media world: They serve their stockholders first, Wall St. second and somewhere far down the list comes service to newspaper readerships."
Garrett, a Pulitzer Prize winner, made it clear that she was also including the New York Times in her lacerating criticism: "This is not a uniquely Tribune or even newspaper industry problem: this is true from the Atlanta mixing rooms of CNN to Sulzberger's offices in Times Square. Profits: that's what it's all about now."
And profits will be impaired by Bush Cartel retaliation if the New York Times upsets the White House by exposing the charade of this presidency and the radical extremism of the Republican Party.
Bill Keller shares an important attribute with Bush. He is deemed likable and amiable by the Eastern Establishment and the political poobahs. He's a salesman at heart, a guy whose job is to diffuse criticism of the New York Times as it deftly maneuvers between being a straw horse representative of the "liberal press" to the right wingers --(who know it represents no real threat to their Potemkin rule) -- and the pro-democracy movement that sees its news coverage as inherently biased in what it doesn't cover.
Laurie Garret said, "This is terrible for democracy. I have been in 47 states of the USA since 9/11, and I can attest to the horrible impact the deterioration of journalism has had on the national psyche."
Bill Keller, you've done your job well, giving off the congenial appearance of fairness, while leaving the betrayal of democracy beneath the Oval Office rug unexposed. Light and truth would be a threat to the bottom line.
Until next week, just remember our motto at BuzzFlash.com: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.
Catch up with you soon.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL