The Washington Times and Rupert Murdoch's Fox News fill the roles that Pravda served in the Soviet Union or "state news services" provide in Cuba, Saudi Arabia, China or other enlightened regimes. The Moon-Murdoch axis crafts the "news" versions of the Bush Big Whoppers, which are then spread through think tanks and talk shows until repetition transforms mendacities into conventional wisdom.There is no truth in "Pravda" and Pravda is what the media has become. We have discussed the US press recently here and here. Lew Rockwell discusses the Republican pundits who are shills, paid and unpaid for the administration. While Bush throws the word freedom around the administration is doing everything that can to make sure that Americans don't have any. When the "free" press becomes Pravda liberty is ancient history.
To oppose the emperor is to risk the wrath of the agit-prop machine. The Times and Fox led the charge against CBS' Dan Rather for reporting about memos on Bush's National Guard service. The memos were forgeries, a fact no one has accused Rather of knowing at the time of the report.
Yet, by the same standards, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz and the rest of the right's echo chamber should be flogged for their high-decibel insistence that, first, Bush had proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and then that weapons had been found (Boortz was still making that claim just days before the election). Then that the White House occupier hadn't lied after all because it was the CIA's fault that the information was wrong (forget those purges of intelligence folks who insisted on reality-based analysis) and, in any event, the reason we really went to war was to bring liberty to the Iraqis. Bait and switch.
Update
Jill at Brillaint at Breakfast has another New Pravda story. A must read, liberal press my ass.
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