WTF? A few weeks ago, CNN praised Sicko for being "fairly accurate"

[Halliburton]

but their recent hit piece trashed moore for "fudging the facts."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/06/28/sicko.fact.check/index.html#

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. the power of the advertising dollar at work

that is all it is.

[Cooley Hurd]

2. Their big pharm sponsors complained...

[gollygee]

3. They must have finally gotten Karl's memo

We know he's been having email problems.

[ThomCat]

4. I'm sure all that insurance companies and trade groups

have been pressuring CNN. No channel wants to have a lot of pissed off advertizing customers.

[hvn_nbr_2]

5. It took awhile to get their marching orders. nt

[tom_paine]

6. That got in before the Operation Mockingbird v2.0 types got on board

I haven't seen it yet, but I believe that within every media organization these days there are three groups, from largest to smallest:

1) Corporate Go-Alongers - They're well-to-do or rich, so they have no contact any more with the common people who once provided America with some of the finest journalists the world has ever known, they are just going along with the Company Line. In any job and walk of life there are Corporate Go-Alongers. In most jobs, this is not necessarily a bad thing in some measure, but journalism, like lawyering and doctoring among others, has severe consequences if people stop being passionate about what they are doing and just want to go-along.

2) Loyal Bushie Comrades/Shills - These are a uniquely American invention. No Afrikaener Broederbund needed to coordinate strategy, but between the Embedded Black Ops People (only at the largest organizations, I'm sure), the Operation Mockingbird v2.0 bunch (even in the 50s, the CIA joked that you could buy a journalist for less than a good hooker, how much easier today?), the Loyal Bushie Comrades, and any other subgroup I am missing, all operate generally the same which is to get away with pushing the envelope of Bush Partisan Loyalty snuck in, whether it be the "mistakes" of Faux News, like listing Foley as a D or conflating a photo of Conyers with the alleged criminal Jefferson, to the pervasive way the word Democrat is used as the Bushies desire it, instead of Democratic, etc. ect., ad infinitum nauseum, it seems clear that whatever the composition, there are a substantial number of Loyal Bushie Comrades/Shills who function EXACTLY like the Afrikaener Broderbund when they kicked out the Liberal British (look it up, it is an important part of history).

3) Honest journalists and columnists - This is by far the smallest group and if you want to pin our national woes on any one primary thing (impossible, but fun) it is this lack that has allowed the corporations to so easily neuter the mightiest and freest press in the world within a generation. Most are lefties, however the growing number of them on the right has been thrown into sharp relief lately, even though we may disagree with them on policy we cannot take issue with their honesty.

To sum up: Group #3 had their say early on, now groups #1, with #2 in tow, MUST be heard from. Honestly, it is even amazing to me now at this late date that Group #3 was even allowed to speak at all until the gameplan was known...no one needs to issue orders, just watch O'Reilly, Hannity, and others for the Party-Dispensed Talking Points. THAT is why CNN seems to be speaking with two voices. Because it is.

So sad, what America has become. Maybe we can still save it from the authoritarian abyss into which we stare.