More on the Intentional News Blackout on Stephen Colbert's Send-up of Bush and the Lapdog Press

http://www.seeingtheforest.com/ comments that when “Don Imus was the speaker at the 1996 Correspondent's dinner and his talk insulted President Clinton along the lines of the ongoing "conservative movement" narrative. Whitewater, Susan McDougal getting payoffs, Clintons getting indicted, missing billing records... The press had a field day -- coverage everywhere. NY Times, TV Notes;Imus in the Spotlight” Mike Wallace of CBS's 60 Minutes was beside himself with glee. The rest of the media hawked it to death.

“This is no big deal, except when compared with this week's press response to Stephen Colbert's appearance Saturday. The only way to describe the press response is: intentional blackout. The New York Times, for example, wrote an article about the dinner and did not mention Colbert in the article at all. A scan of Google News finds almost no coverage outside of the blogs.”

“In 1987 Ronald Reagan ordered the FCC to abolish the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcast media to provide balanced coverage of issues. Majorities in the Congress voted to restore the Fairness Doctrine and were blocked by Republican vetoes and filibusters. (Any time you hear a Republican complain about the "liberal media" ask them why it is Republicans, not Democrats, who oppose the Fairness Doctrine.) Following that, Republicans began to allow fewer and fewer large corporations to control more and more of these information channels. (PLEASE click the links. More here and here.)”

Read more about this here.

Remember if you don’t like the bias of the media, Vote Democratic to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine to restore balance and accountability in the media.

Update: Remember last year at the Washington Correspondent's dinner, President Bush presented a video comedy routine where he was looking for the WMD that inspired him to invade Iraq and cause 2400 US service members to die and 18,000 of our troops to be wounded: many of them blinded, or maimed for life. In Bush’s side-splitting gag he was looking under the cushions in the Oval Office saying, “Gee, I’m sure those WMD are around here some place.” The Washing Press Corps went wild laughing hysterically at this. Yeah, that’s comedy. Joking about the reason we started a war that’s cost almost as many American lives as September 11, and caused between 30,000 and 120,000 Iraqi civilians to die. But Stephen Colbert making jokes about the press failing to do their job reporting on the Bush Administration and about the Bush Admin’s incompetence at doing their jobs is going over the line. So while the press gushed over Bush’s jokes about why we are at war and Don Imus’ skewering of Clinton they are silent or dismissive of Colbert.