StarSuckers

Starsuckers is a feature documentary about the celebrity obsessed media, that uncovers the real reasons behind our addiction to fame and blows the lid on the corporations and individuals who profit from it. Made completely independently over 2 years in secret, the film journeys through the dark underbelly of the modern media. Using a combination of never before seen footage, undercover reporting, stunts and animation, the film reveals the toxic effect the media is having on us all and especially our children. Chris Atkins presents Starsuckers as a series of five lessons on fame in the modern world: how children are persuaded that fame is something they want, how television and the media reinforces the importance of celebrity and the efforts to attain it, how the mind and body reinforces our need to follow the activities of well-known people and strive to join their number, how the press became addicted to celebrity coverage, and how the art of promoting fame has led to celebrities and their handlers controlling the press instead of the press having say. Along the way, Atkins demonstrates how celebrity news with no basis in fact gets into print, why newspapers will run press releases almost verbatim, how parents will eagerly sign away the image rights to their kids, how certain mass scale charity events end up helping the performers far more than the causes they designed to support, and how publicists keep accurate but unflattering stories out of the news.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

'The New York Times' Bias Journalism Covers Up True Facts

The Advocate
By Herb Denenberg, The Bulletin

Published: Monday, December 15, 2008

This column will explain why The New York Times has probably killed more people than Hitler.

That might sound outlandish at first, but it is a conservative estimate based on what The Times has done. It was instrumental in covering up the millions murdered by Stalin in his enforced famine in the Ukraine and by his various purges. That’s a well-established fact of history (See A. J. Taylor, Stalin’s Apologist: Walter Duranty: The New York Times’ Man in Moscow. The Times helped give power and credibility to Fidel Castro, whose dictatorship continues to kill and enslave (see Anthony Depalma, The Man Who Invented Fidel: Castro, Cuba and Herbert L. Matthews in The New York Times).

The Times, then as now the leading paper in America, covered up the Holocaust, by treating it only in tiny back-page stories (See Laura Leff, Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper). Had The Times exposed the unspeakable horror of that Holocaust, it might have been prevented or drastically minimized. And The Times is now giving aid and comfort to our enemies in general and terrorists in particular. And when I say The Times you can add the mainstream media, as it follows the same party line.


But there’s good news. The New York Times is dying but it can’t die fast enough. So help it along. It is now clearly so pro-terrorist and so anti-American and hate-America that it has to be viewed as a dangerous enemy to America that has to be fought and defeated. Don Feder, who heads a new attempt to boycott The New York Times, put it perfectly in a column published on its site at www.boycottnyt.com: “The Times is notorious for its attacks on patriotism, the market economy, religion, national morality and national security. Thus whatever weakens The New York Times strengthens America. For the Gray Lady, let the bad times roll.”


The boycott is sponsored by one of the best of the media watchdogs, Accuracy in Media (AIM). The Times has a long history of getting important issues wrong, but when it becomes virulently pro-terrorist and anti-American, it’s time for Americans to wake up and do what they have to do to an enemy of America — boycott The Times. You can start by signing the petition that is being managed by the Boycott The New York Times site (the address appears in the preceding paragraph) and canceling your subscription to The Times. Boycott The Times, its advertisers, its Web site, and its hard copy edition.


But what makes this even more shocking is that The Times is just the one media outlet that is the icon of the pro-terrorist hate-America movement. It is just the pyramid top of the mainstream media, which follows the same line and often echoes The Times. That would include most of the nation’s major papers such as The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

It would include the major television networks that have news shows such as ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and PBS. You can add NPR, national public radio. And there are the big weekly news magazines, Time and Newsweek. Boycott them all.

But let’s come back to The Times. Recall it’s history on some major issues:
Its Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, was responsible for covering up Stalin’s genocidal campaigns, including forced starvation in the Ukraine, and purges in the 1930s that cost millions of lives. Another Times reporter, Herbert Matthews, was responsible for giving Fidel Castro power and success. Finally, The Times virtually ignored the Holocaust, and covered it only with back-page and short stories. Even The Times has been forced to admit these errors.


But now it has gone too far with its journalism that is not only biased but is also totally dishonest, all in support of those who would destroy America. As one book on the subject suggested in its title, The Times can no longer be trusted (See Bob Kohn, Journalistic Fraud: How the New York Times Distorts the News and Why it Can No Longer Be Trusted.)


Mr. Feder and the Boycott The New York Times campaign is doing an important public service by documenting the abuses that the once great newspaper commits. The Times can only be described as residing at the bottom of the journalistic sewer.


In one of Mr. Feder’s latest postings on the Boycott Web site, he shows how The Times is firmly on the side of the terrorists. He does this by his analysis of how the Times reported on the recent Mumbai massacre.
 From Nov. 27, 2008 to Dec. 1, in six “alleged” news stories The Times refused to call the terrorists Muslims or Islamic extremists. Instead, they were called “gunmen,” “militants,” “assailants,” and “terrorists.”


The only hint of the terrorists’ motivation came when they were directly quoted, complaining about the treatment of Muslims in India and Kashmir, or when they were calling for the release of “mujahedeen prisoners.” The Times refuses to recognize the connection between Islam and worldwide terrorism. This is so despite the fact that virtually all the terrorists are Muslims and they even use names that admit their Muslim connection — jihad-this or Islamic-that. What’s more, they seem to automatically quote the kill-the-infidels verses of the Quran.

Mr. Feder calls this “the greatest denial of reality in the history of journalism.” If that’s not bad enough, The Times often gets the facts wrong or seems to tell outright lies. The Nov. 30 story described the murders as “indiscriminate.” How indiscriminate could they have been when Muslims were released and non-Muslims were murdered? How indiscriminate could they be when Americans, British and Jews were specifically targeted? How indiscriminate could it be when the medical examiners said that the Jewish victims were subject to the most extreme torture? Of course, The Times in thousands of words of coverage never bothered to mention that the victims’ bodies showed signs of torture.

The Times is not content to give aid and support to the worldwide Islamofascist war to kill all Americans and destroy Western civilization. In their love of terrorists and America haters, they even give platforms to unrepentant domestic terrorists.



The boycott site has a devastating critique of an op-ed piece by unrepentant terrorist William Ayers (the close associate and friend of our president-elect) that The New York Times ran on Dec. 6. On Boycott The New York Times Web site, Mr. Feder writes, “The Real Bill Ayers’ published on Dec. 6 is sickeningly dishonest and so easily refuted that no newspaper that adhered to even minimal standards of journalism would run it So, naturally, it was published in The New York Times.”

Again, Mr. Ayers repeats that lie, “I never killed anyone.” Translated that means you can blow up buildings and it’s quite OK if you never killed anyone (by luck rather than design). Mr. Ayers then says that the organization he founded, Weather Underground, only placed “several small bombs in empty buildings.”

Translation: You can go around bombing the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol if you use only several small bombs rather than many big ones. Mr. Ayers and the demented The New York Times apparently think that unless you use many big bombs, you’re only engaging in civil disobedience when you blow things up. And here’s the real kicker, from Mr. Ayers: “The Weather Underground crossed the lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense.” Dig that. He’s not even sure if blowing up the U.S. Capitol crosses the line of common sense. Well, perhaps it did, but Me. Ayers by his language is not sure. And I guess that means blowing up buildings isn’t terrorism but merely sort of an innocent trespass. Now you know why they say liberalism is a mental disorder, one that certainly afflicts Mr. Ayers and The Times. Now you know how Mr. Ayers and The Times live in the land of Orwell, where lies are called truths and where terrorist bombing is called peace making.
 


Here are the facts that Mr. Ayers and The Times ignored in sanitizing, euphemizing, rationalizing, and justifying terroristic murders by Mr. Ayers, as compiled by Mr. Feder:


l. “He says the Weather Underground was created after a bomb exploded in Greenwich Village, taking the lives of ‘three of our comrades.’ The bomb was intended for an upcoming dance at Fort Dix, where it could have killed hundreds of soldiers.”

Mr. Feder doesn’t mention another key fact. Witnesses to Weather Underground planning, say Mr. Ayers personally told bomb makers to put in nails and other metal parts to maximize injury and pain to victims. And they also said, when someone told Mr. Ayers what they were doing might kill people, he replied that such incidental damage is inevitable because of what they were trying to accomplish.

Mr. Ayers and The Times knew that the WeatherUnderground planned to kill and maim and in fact did so. But like The Times, Mr. Ayers is an adept liar. The Chicago way apparently includes not only corruption but also pathological lying.


2. “In the Weathermen’s ‘Days of Rage’ (Chicago 1969), 300 of the Marxists storm troopers attacked police and the public, and destroyed millions of dollars of property through arson and vandalism.

3. “The organization, of which Ayers was the co-founder, planted 30 bombs and was responsible for bombing of the New York City police headquarters, the Capitol and the Pentagon. In a 2002 commentary (also in The Times) Mr. Ayers wrote, ‘I feel we didn’t do enough.’


4. “The Weather Underground was a self-proclaimed revolutionary community organization. As a fellow community organizer perhaps that’s why Mr. Ayers and Barack Obama got along so famously.


5. “One policeman died in the police headquarters bombing. A bank guard and two policemen were murdered in the course of a Weatherman bank robbery. There were hundreds of injuries resulting from the terrorism of Ayers and his buddies, including a U.S. Attorney who was paralyzed for life.


6. “In the op-ed, Mr. Ayers claims he was demonized during the 2008 campaign, in an effort — to smear Mr. Obama. In fact, Mr. Ayers and Mr. Obama’s relationship was a legitimate issue. Either Mr. Obama is incredibly dense or he didn’t care about the bloody trail Ayers and Co. cut across the ’60s and ’70s.”

As we’ve learned already on many occasions, Mr. Obama, the smartest man on the planet in the eyes of his supporters, never has the foggiest ideas about the bad things his associates always seem to be about. I don’t know about you, but in view of the above accounting, I view the mainstream media and its support of terrorists and hate-America types as a mortal threat to national survival, and as a personal threat to every single American.

That’s why I put such a high priority on exposing the biased, dishonest and fraudulent journalism of the Times and the rest of the mainstream media. That’s why everyone should get involved. Here are a few items to consider for starters:


1. Go to boycottnyt.com and sign the petition.


2. Boycott The Times it hard copy and online edition, and its advertisers. And boycott the rest of the mainstream media which follow The Times party line. You might want to start with The Philadelphia Inquirer.


3. Start getting more of your information from alternative media, so you get some balance and so you see more than the loony left positions advocated by the mainstream media. There are all kinds of Internet sites such as townhall.com, frontpage.com and hotair.com.

There are all kinds of good newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal, The Bulletin and Investor’s Business Daily. There are solid conservative magazines such as The Weekly Standard and the National Review.

Among the most valuable sources are the conservative talk radio hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, Bill Bennett, Laura Ingraham, Michael Medved, Michael Savage, Monica Crowly and Mike Gallagher.


4. Support some of the organizations that are fighting the biased mainstream media and the stealth jihad. One of my favorites is David Horowitz’s The Freedom Center. You might consider a contribution to the boycott, which can be made at its Web site.


5. Educate yourself on media bias. One of the best sites is maintained by Accuracy in Media (AIM) at www.aim.com, and its boycott The Times site, which is also rich in media bias information. There are two good Web sites that specialize in reporting out of the Middle East: camera.org and honestreporting.com.


The likes of The New York Times are literally putting you in real and direct danger of murder and mayhem by terrorists. So act accordingly. And start now.

Herb Denenberg is a former Pennsylvania Insurance Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commissioner, and professor at the Wharton School. He is a longtime Philadelphia journalist and consumer advocate. He is also a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences. His column appears daily in The Bulletin. You can reach him at advocate@thebulletin.us.
http://thebulletin.us/articles/2008/12/15/commentary/herb_denenberg/doc4945ccfa59b20611707511.txt

Monday, December 15, 2008