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. Hasta la vista, CNN Sheila Samples
09/14/03: Okay. I give up. I can no longer
defend CNN as a credible "news" organization. Well,
actually, I could, but like Melville's Bartleby -- I prefer not to.
When billionnaire Ted Turner unveiled his marvelous
24-hour news creation in June, 1980, I was there. I was there as
network conglomerates and corporate behemoths gathered their
territorial wagons in a circle and nervously derided Turner's vision.
Although they withheld support and advertising revenue, Turner never
looked back. Singlehandedly, he established CNN -- brick by
ethical brick -- on his own -- as the most trusted name in news.
I was there ten years later when Rupert Murdoch, the
ravenous right-wing media tycoon, grabbed a piece of the action
with his FOX News Network, and CNN was caught like a deer in a Mack
Truck's headlights. In spite of repeated comical assertions to
the contrary, there is nothing fair nor balanced in the way Murdoch's
bunch of barking heads and cackling pundits built its
mean-spirited reputation.
I submit that the JACKAL News Network more
aptly describes Murdoch's voracious venture and -- since I
am relatively sure Murdoch has not copyrighted that particular title
-- I will henceforth refer to his network as "JNN."
From the first day, JNN established itself as a rollicking,
hypocritical, right-wing "all day singing and dinner on the
grounds" picnic for the Republican Party in general and --
beginning in 2000 -- for George W. Bush in particular.
Yes, I hung in there, a bewitched glutton for
punishment, as CNN fought for ratings by taking a frenzied wrong
turn at every journalistic branch in the road. I was there as CNN
honcho Walter Isaacson disgraced both himself and the network by
scurrying through the halls of Congress, plaintively begging for the
job as handmaiden to the stars. Upon his triumphant return, CNN
"hard news" soon took a back seat to more tabloid pursuits.
CNN helped to create the shadows of doubt that
resulted in releasing back into society a national football
hero who most likely not only viciously slaughtered his wife and
her friend, but splattered his own
"beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt" DNA over a two-block area.
The down side to this debacle could be that CNN also created
Greta Van Susteren in the process, who wasted no time in bolting to
JNN where the seeds of her spin could flourish in more fertile soil.
CNN led the pack in a malicious crusade to overturn
two legal elections and destroy a sitting president for
almost having sexual relations with a plump intern who literally "thong-armed"
him into disgrace. In spite of what CNN said, that woman -- Ms.
Lewinski -- was old enough to know better. And so was the
president, although to be impeached for lying about a sexual tryst is
rather laughable, considering the lies of the current
administration that have catapaulted us into bloody chaos in the
Middle East. But that's another story -- and one you probably
won't see on CNN...
I stayed with CNN, even as it abandoned all pretence of
journalistic expertise and joined forces with JNN and -- with
no verifyable facts and while successfully drowning out continued
declarations of Modesto police that Gary Condit was not a suspect
-- tag-teamed the California Democratic Congressman to political
death over the disappearance of intern Chandra Levy.
They each cleaned up their act, however, when Lori
Klausutis, an aide to Florida Republican Joe Scarborough, was found
dead in his office in July 2001, and -- to this day -- each has
meticuously refused to mention it. Scarborough, who had just
been reelected, suddenly felt the time-worn urge to spend more time
with his just-divorced family and fled Congress. He is now being
rehabiliated, ala the devious Oliver North and the ghoulishly bloated
Henry Kissinger -- in the media. But that's at least three
other stories that, alas, you will not find on CNN.
I stayed with CNN throughout all the state-level
news tragedies of missing children and murderous moms, thinking
that, somehow, the national tragedies of our raped and pillaged
economy, job losses, presidential environmental mischief, the
discarding of critical social programs such as Head Start, the
disarray within the Pentagon as Donald Rumsfeld's shadow government
goes head-to-head with the people's government -- would at least
generate a blip on CNN's radar screen. Yeah. I know.
Must have been something I ate...
If we are to believe our own lying eyes by reading
international coverage of journalists on the ground, Dubya's war
on "terror" in Iraq is terrifying indeed.
Everywhere but in the US news media, Operation Enduring
Freedom is leaving a sea of blood in its wake. However, if we
are to believe CNN, war is not hell; it is merely
"heck." There is no blood on either side worth
mentioning, no depleted-uranium danger, and no guerilla
warfare methodically destroying US troops on a daily basis.
There are no reverberations of dissent. No voices
crying in the national wilderness.
The only bodies we've seen on CNN were the cleaned-up
and reconstructed Uday and Usay Hussein, Saddam's evil spawn. CNN
seems to be a bit confused as to how many coalition troops, or Iraqi
civilians for that matter, have been slain. But then, you
can hardly blame them because, like former Central Command (CENTCOM)
General Tommy Franks said -- "We don't do body counts..."
Well, let me help you out a little here, because I
do "do" body counts. As of September 10,
according to cryptome.org, (http://cryptome.org/mil-dead-iqw.htm#August%202003) which
offers a daily chart and lists the names of US troops killed in
action, we have lost 296 soldiers and marines since Bush's "feel
good" shock and awe assault on Iraq. The body
count that seems to be of no consequence to CNN or other US media is
the number of slaughtered innocent Iraqi civilians which, at last
count (http://www.iraqbodycount.net/)
was 6,118 confirmed and a total of 7,836 reported.
If you're waiting for updates from CNN on the thousands
of wounded Americans, it might be quicker if you just turn off the
TV and camp out in the bushes at Andrews Air Force Base,
where troops are shuttled back from the war front in the dead of
night...
It's been painful, but I'm nothing if not
faithful, and I stayed the course. I was there
throughout CNN's pitiful, downward spin into journalistic
Alzheimers. Ted Turner jumped ship long ago, which is a
diplomatic way of saying he was forced to walk the
plank because a loose cannon like Turner couldn't be trusted to
stand mute as his once-proud CNN was turned into an
obedient, impotent state-controlled propaganda machine...
There are a few things I wish I could ask CNN before
I go. Not important, really -- just curious...
.Why have you never mentioned that your top political
analyst, William Schneider, is a research fellow at the right-wing
think-tank, American Enterprise Institute?
.Why has Arnold Schwarzenegger become -- like
George W. Bush -- your charge to keep? C'mon, after digging into
Scott Peterson's lurid conversations in order to publicly trash and
convict him of murder before his trial, why not air Arnie's
"gang-bang" remarks to Oui Magazine?
.With your round-the-clock, round-the-year obsession
with campaigns and elections, why are you not frantically
investigating the controversy surrounding touch-screen voting
machines? Are you not concerned with the possible irreparable
harm to the "fair and balanced" voting process in this great
nation?
.Why haven't you delved into the reasons George Bush
made a recess appointment to slide Daniel Pipes, the dangerously bigoted warmonger, to
the US Institute for Peace?
.Why did our current vice president and our former
president make a recent trip to Saudi Arabia?
I wish I could say it was something really, really
serious that made me put down the remote control and back away from
the TV. But no -- it was the recent silly and totally
irrelevant Tucker Carlson/Brittany Spears tabloid circus act
which CNN regurgitated nonstop for two days as if it had any
bearing whatsoever on anything at all and who gives a shit whether
that vacuous, gum-chewing twit "trusts" the president or if
maybe she just happened to "remember" what CNN did to
the Dixie Chicks...?
Carlson: "Do you trust the president?"
Spears: (smack, crack)..."Do I trust the
president?" (chew, blink, grin, smack, smack) --
"Yeah. I do. We need to trust everything he says and
just be faithful..."
That's it, CNN. I give up. I'm outta here.
Hasta la vista, Baby...
Sheila Samples is an Oklahoma freelance writer, a former US Army
Public Information Officer and contributing editor for AxisofLogic.com
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