Static
Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back
Introduction
Unembedded
Either you are with us, or with the terrorists. -President George W. Bush,
addressing Congress, September 20, 2001
As Hurricane Katrina ripped into America's Gulf Coast in late August 2005, the
Bush administration had a crisis on its hands. Not the tens of thousands of
people who had been abandoned in downtown New Orleans. Not the levees that had
been breached, drowning the city.
No, the big disaster that the Bush administration acted decisively to solve
was its loss of control over the news media. Images were coming out of New
Orleans of a disaster of biblical proportions-and a federal response that
ranged from inept to nonexistent to blatantly racist.
So the administration acted on instinct: The Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA) requested that the media not photograph the dead bodies that were
floating down the main boulevards of New Orleans. The military followed by
announcing a "zero access" policy for journalists. A FEMA spokesman said ... read full excerpt from: Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back ebook
