Parrying Parry: Why Hope Still Lives on Downing Street

[dweller]

by David Michael Green

So much is spot on in Robert Parry's discussion of the media and the Downing Street Memos scandal. But not
(necessarily) his conclusion.

Parry's certainly been around, and around the capital block, longer than I have, but I remain considerably more
hopeful than he does about the ultimate power of the DSM revelations.

Let's recap this fast-unfolding mini-story. It begins with 'congressional hearings' held on Thursday by Congressman
John Conyers, along with thirty or forty other House Democrats. Of course, they weren't real hearings, since
Republicans couldn't possibly be less interested in investigating the topic under discussion, the DSM scandal.
Conyers literally barely got a room in the capitol for the hearings, and what he did get was a tiny SRO box in the
basement, overstuffed with cables, cameras and sweaty people. But whatever and wherever these hearings were or
weren't, the important thing is that they were nevertheless held.

Next, so-called reporter Dana Milbank filed perhaps the ugliest hit-piece of so-called coverage I've ever seen, printed
in Friday's Washington Post. It was a virtual primer on how not to report, a near-perfect précis which inadvertently
cataloged everything wrong with that which goes by the increasingly farcical name of journalism in America today.
Can you say 'vicious smear job'?

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0619-21.htm

this is in response to:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=132770&mesg_id=132770

dp