Media's Isolated Flights Of Fiction Less Damaging Than Skipping Story
DAYTONA BEACH NEWS JOURNAL
by Pierre Tristam
We're living through fabulist times, which shouldn't be confused with fabulous times. The two words are next-door neighbors in the dictionary but have as much in common as George W. Bush and George Carlin. The first makes stuff up like Zane Grey on speed, the other deconstructs it with punch lines. Carlin has a glut of material to work with these days because from the president on down, fabulism is everyone's branding iron of choice. Corporations invent profits. Big oil companies invent big oil deposits. The military fakes heroic feats and global alliances. The Treasury fakes impending surpluses. Researchers fake data. Employers fake time-clocks. Employees fake illnesses. Insurers fake coverage. Priests fake trust. Entertainment passes off for fact, propaganda passes off for news and advertisers begin to look like truth-tellers. Is it any wonder that the nation's big news media have produced some of the biggest fabulists of them all? I'm referring to Jayson Blair and Jack Kelly. At The New York Times, Blair fabricated and plagiarized national stories by the dozen, most notably about the Washington, D.C., sniper and Pfc. Jessica Lynch, who -- to be fair to Blair -- was the inspiration for compulsive fabrication mediawide. At USA Today, Kelly took his fabrications global, inventing Egyptian and Pakistani terrorists, a Starsky and Hutch-like hunt of Osama bin Laden, Cuban exiles a-drowning, and the flash-portrait of a suicide bomber just before he blew himself up. Click on following link to read more: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0518-05.htm

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BBC NEWS
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3725225.stm

Holding Halliburton Accountable
ALTERNET
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http://alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18718

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THE OREGONIAN
by James Mayer
http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/1084881910205370.xml