Fix Our Broadcast Media Mr. President

Last tuesday was indeed a glorious day. Before millions in our nation's capital and around the world, Barrack Obama became our 44th president. He has a huge task ahead of him. Obama inherited two wars and an economy in tatters. I'm not exactly exuberant of his political-centrist picks for his cabinet, but I believe Obama had to go centrist due to the dire state of affairs confronting the nation. He had to hit the ground running and picking a more left-progressive cabinet might waste precious time fighting the GOP in the conformation process. That said I believe the president must address the issue of America's failure of a news media. Yes. The same news media that failed to investigate and ask the hard questions concerning the build-up to the Iraq War. With a few exceptions the major networks, ABC, CBS NBC as well as CNN and MSNBC capitulated to the full court press of an administration hell bent on going to war. We later discovered after the fact that the Bush adminstration was being spoon fed disinformation-misinformation by Iraqi malcontents like Ahmed Chalbi and straight-up crackpots like the Iraqi defector known as "Curveball". The New York Times had to print a mea culpa concerning it being used as a sounding board for the disinformation of Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans through its reporter Judith Miller. We must have unbiased and fair reporting. Not the gung-ho for war theatrics and special effects laden tripe presented during the build-up and invasion of Iraq. During a anti-war demonstration in New York in 2003, I asked some British nationals why the majority of their country was against the war and ours was for it he replied, 'I think we get better news than you get here'. Quoting part of  a  May 7, 2003 article by Mark Weisbrot, he states, ...."Americans may have a lower literacy level than other high-income countries, but they are not any more stupid than anyone else. The people of Europe-including the British and Spanish whose governments joined the "coalition of the willing"-overwhelmingly opposed the war because the media in those countries, while presenting Bush and Blairs statements, also gave the other side of the story".  Phil Donohue was kicked off MSNBC because they thought his probing questions of the war was unpatriotic. We must institute reforms and safeguards to prevent such complicity by the broadcast media from ever happening again. We must rebuild the firewall between the bank and the journalistic aspects of our broadcast media. We should have had more of a presence of people who tole us from the get-go that the war would be a disaster. Instead, we got a chorus line of political war hawks and former admirals and generals. A successful democracy in one that is informed. Over the last several years folks from both sides of the political spectrum has called for lessing of corporate control and the reform of our broadcast media. I hope that the Obama administration will take call for media reform seriously. 

Kenneth Sullivan

Producer-director of

Ground Zero Television