For some time now I have been very disappointed and displeased with PBS’s news coverage. Very mellow, non-controversial, no-balance reporting – as opposed to the recentlly discontinued Bill Moyers Journal hard-hitting pieces. The only difference to the commercial stations is the lack of reports on local fires and babies falling out of windows.
Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
“A multi-part FAIR exposé of PBS's most prominent news and public affairs programs demonstrates that public television is failing to live up to its mission to provide an alternative to commercial television, to give voice to those "who would otherwise go unheard" and help viewers to "see America whole, in all its diversity," in the words of public TV's founding document.”
Among other rather troubling findings, this one irks me the most.
“-- On segments focusing on the Afghan War, though polls show consistent majorities of Americans have opposed the war for more than a year, not a single NewsHour guest represented an antiwar group or expressed antiwar views. (Emphasis mine) Similarly, no representative of a human rights or humanitarian organization appeared on the NewsHour during the study period.”
Published on Tuesday, October 19, 2010 by FAIR
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Saturday, October 16, 2010
$80,000 to Kill or Miss- Poof ... Gone
Here is a thought: How much common sense does it make to use a high-tech, high-priced piece of U.S. weaponry, a huge shoulder-fired rocket called Javelin, in Afghanistan? “Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it's fired by a guy who doesn’t make that in a year at a guy who doesn’t make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.” (from Sebastian Junger’s book WAR, see below))
In the article Publish or Perish: Getting a Read on American War Nick Turse reviews writings on the current wars and compares them with the literature on the Vietnam war. He writes “… there is much to be learned from Junger’s in-print version of Americans-at-war. His blow-by-blow accounts of small unit combat actions, for instance, drive home the tremendous firepower American troops unleash on enemies often armed with little more than rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Page after page tallies up American technology and firepower: M-4 assault rifles (some with M-203 grenade launchers), Squad Automatic Weapons or SAWs, .50 caliber machine guns, M-240 machine guns, Mark-19 automatic grenade launchers, mortars, 155 mm artillery, surveillance drones, Apache attack helicopters, AC-130 Spectre gunships, A-10 Warthogs, F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers, B-52 and B-1 bombers, all often brought to bear against boys who may be wielding nothing more than Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifles -- a state of the art weapon when introduced. That, however, was in the 1890s.”
Check out the whole article at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/14-7 published by www.CommonDreams.org
With a fraction of the moneys spent on these deadly toys, how many jobs could we “grow”, how many hungry children could we feed, here and the world over, how many homeless people could we help? Too much horse sense, probably! And not really profitable.
In the article Publish or Perish: Getting a Read on American War Nick Turse reviews writings on the current wars and compares them with the literature on the Vietnam war. He writes “… there is much to be learned from Junger’s in-print version of Americans-at-war. His blow-by-blow accounts of small unit combat actions, for instance, drive home the tremendous firepower American troops unleash on enemies often armed with little more than rifles and rocket-propelled grenades. Page after page tallies up American technology and firepower: M-4 assault rifles (some with M-203 grenade launchers), Squad Automatic Weapons or SAWs, .50 caliber machine guns, M-240 machine guns, Mark-19 automatic grenade launchers, mortars, 155 mm artillery, surveillance drones, Apache attack helicopters, AC-130 Spectre gunships, A-10 Warthogs, F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers, B-52 and B-1 bombers, all often brought to bear against boys who may be wielding nothing more than Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifles -- a state of the art weapon when introduced. That, however, was in the 1890s.”
Check out the whole article at http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/10/14-7 published by www.CommonDreams.org
With a fraction of the moneys spent on these deadly toys, how many jobs could we “grow”, how many hungry children could we feed, here and the world over, how many homeless people could we help? Too much horse sense, probably! And not really profitable.
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