America Supports You Freedom Walk: why are news orgs participating?

[Logansquare]

From a letter to Romenesko's blog for journalists. If you haven't seen what's coming down the pike for September 11, 2005, look at our new state-sponsored march toward a complete control of the press:
http://www.asyfreedomwalk.com/

Letter url: http://poynter.org/forum/?id=letters


Why are news orgs participating in this event?
8/11/2005 3:13:04 PM

From CHRISTOPHER HAYES, contributing editor, In These Times: Yesterday we learned that the Department of Defense is planning a massive "America Supports You Freedom Walk" for the fourth anniversary of 9/11. Bracket for a moment the heinous company in which this this places the Bush administration (Cuba, Iran, and China, just to name a few of the regimes that regularly utilize state-sponsored marches and rallies as propaganda tools), and bracket for a moment the fact that this march for "freedom," which will take place on public streets, apparently requires participants to register with the DoD. There's one aspect of this whole mess I'm surprised hasn't received more attention. Check out this paragraph from the Pentagon's press release:

"The walk was made possible with the help of several local in-kind supporters, including Stars and Stripes newspaper, Pentagon Federal Credit Union, Subway, Washington Post, Lockheed Martin, WTOP, ABC/WJLA-TV Channel 7 and News Channel 8, and the Washington Convention & Tourism Corporation, according to the Freedom Walk Web site."

I count four different media outlets in that list. Funny, I thought it was the role of the press to challenge not collude with the government when it attempts to disseminate propaganda. And propaganda this is, let's be very clear. One supposes that the suits at the Washington Post Company who OK'ed the partnership with the DoD figured the sentiment of "supporting the troops" is so anodyne as to be wholly uncontroversial, akin to news anchors wearing flag pins on their lapels. If the rally were sponsored by some independent group of citizens, that'd be one thing (though still strange), but it is being organized by the United States military, the same entity currently administering and promoting an increasingly unpopular war, one that remains the single biggest news story in the nation and the subject of much public debate. This is a not a "support the troops" rally but rather, a "support the war" rally. Media outlets simply have no business granting their imprimatur to such a crudely political stunt.

[Avalux]

1. Good question.

at the risk of being poo-pooed for Nazi comparisons - reminds me of the fantastic parades staged by Hitler with state-run media participating. Pure bullshit propoganda.

[PATRICK]

2. The tactics, the pain, the oppression

but none, none of the benefits of communism which seems to have bequeathed its statist playbook to the recidivist fascists. All the perks of socialism are going to the elites, who in communist regimes of course grabbed the best, but in unfettered cannibalism so profoundly counter intuitive and irrational as to defy definition.

The five year plan is currently a four year plan now feebly connected to an election cycle made almost impotent. The paradise promised by the RW is raped in advance and less believable even as a dream even were they to permit anything good to happen to anyone without gleaning most of the bucks away on the mere hope of it. Corporations are enshrined, protected and almost mismanaged by the rules so that there will be no competition except against the consumer.

Communism as an extreme form of socialism applied to a bedrock of capitalism did not work. Reasons and experience. But the demonic gorging of the systematically insane greed machine defies any logic or analysis.
If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, what is the road we are now forced to march upon? An even darker bedlam of chaos and dissolution?