The Main Stream Media and Oiiilllllll

When The Diplomad shut their doors, one of the two sites they suggested we follow was this one: New Sisyphus (the other was The Daily Demarche) Not a bad call at all -- today, New Sisyphus treats us with a wonderful long post about the Main Stream Media and their treatment of several topics. It is a long post so I am only going to post a short excerpt or two -- go there and read the whole thing, you will not be dissapointed...

The Sickness of the MSM: It's All About the Oiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllll! President Bush is thought to have ordered the invasion and occupation of Iraq in order to secure control of that country's vast oil fields for his friends and contributors in the oil industry, especially Vice President Cheney's former company Halliburton. This is taken as an article of faith among many, especially for many in our universities, our cultural industries, and in our press. Hundreds, if not thousands, of essays, articles and reports have been circulated in the past 3 years about the motivations of President Bush when it comes to Iraq. Typical examples of the genre can be found daily at The New York Times, Washington Post or the Los Angeles Times, but the real genesis of such reports can be found in the left-wing of the Blogosphere and, significantly, in the reports of the �human rights� or �peace and justice� NGOs. (NGOs as a rule seem blissfully, and wonderingly, unaware of the damage to those sound concepts they do when they advance a partisan political position under their banners.)

New Sisyphus cites some examples of this reporting and remarks:

Except on the lunatic Chomsky-Cockburn-Nader fringe, such reports are always careful to harp only on the �appearance� of ethical impropriety and conflicts of interest mostly because hard evidence has been much harder to come by. It appears obvious to most Americans that the mere fact that both the President and the Vice President were active in private business in the energy sector cannot, by itself, cause the executive to take a pass and recuse itself from foreign policy decisions touching upon oil. The Presidency is not a District Court judgeship; he was elected to take those decisions, with the full knowledge of the American people that Bush was, and to a certain extent remains, an oil man. But this theme, this meme, was picked up by the opposition, both domestically and in other countries, and, since it was an objective fact that many had these concerns, the MSM picked them up and amplified them. It no longer was sufficient to prove such improprieties or conflicts of interest, the story was that millions believed they existed. The result has been, for just about every day since Iraq became an issue, a relentless pounding of the President and Vice President, not on the basis of fact, but on the basis of allegation and innuendo. After all, it�s news when the NGOs and foreign political parties think that the war is an oil grab; it�s news when thousands shout �No Blood for Oil!,� it�s news when a new report from the Soros group of NGOs charge shoddy contracting practices with regard to Halliburton, it�s news when the Pentagon finds over-charging in Halliburton contracts. So, no problem, right? No bias here. Nothing to see here. Please move along.

There is a lot more to read -- links to sources, quotes and other damnable FACTS. We just hatesssses these factssesss (sorry -- channeling an earlier incarnation)