Space Eagle Productions

This morning, I got a "Breaking News" story from CNN that said this:

"Plane crashes into building"

The building was in Austin, TX where my sister used to live and some of my friends still live. The email had a link to watch the coverage live, so I immediately clicked on it.

The reporter is trying to link it to 9/11 by leading with questions to direct the interview toward a 9/11 scenario. He was trying to make a frightening story of terrorism out of the incident. I watched the report from the beginning and as soon as they said the IRS was housed in the building, I figured out the scenario and posted this comment:

Yeah. In my mind, since the building housed the IRS, this is a likely scenario:

Dude gets behind on his taxes.

House is being foreclosed on.

He burns his house, steals a plane, and crashes into the building that houses the IRS.

So, with FOX News recently winning its court battle that allows it, and subsequently all other news stations, to misinform, or in layman's terms lie, on its "news coverage" is CNN trying to be the new FOX News? Are the other stations soon to follow? Does this mean that U.S. citizens will no longer be able to get news that relies on facts and will only get news that's Fascist hype?

Jane Akre and her husband Steve Wilson, former employees of FOX-owned-and-operated station WTVT in Tampa, Florida, sued FOX under the Florida whistle-blower law and were awarded a US $425,000 for which FOX sued. It was determined in court that WTVT's (Fox) argument that the FCC's policy against the intentional falsification of the news -- which the FCC has called its "news distortion policy" -- does not qualify as the required "law, rule, or regulation" under section 448.102.[...] Because the FCC's news distortion policy is not a "law, rule, or regulation" under section 448.102

For the uninformed, only FoxBGHsuit.com, InjuryBoard,com, ThirdWorldTraveler.org, CeaseSPIN.org, Purefood.com, Relfe.com, SourceWatch.org, OrganicConsumers.org, TheCorporation.com, and DailyKos.com and a couple others even reported on the FOX lawsuit. I linked to the FOX lawsuit on my Multiply blog at http://spaceeagle.multiply.com. Not one of the major media outlets covered the story at all. he Daily Kos quoted the following:

"During their appeal, FOX asserted that there are no written rules against distorting news in the media. They argued that, under the First Amendment, broadcasters have the right to lie or deliberately distort news reports on public airwaves. Fox attorneys did not dispute Akre’s claim that they pressured her to broadcast a false story, they simply maintained that it was their right to do so."

Evidently, CNN was paying attention and decided to do some FOXy coverage of its own. Most intelligent viewers could probably easily spot the hype, but how many of the less-informed were scared needlessly by this type of coverage? How long will it be before the other U.S. television news stations follow suit and decide to do some FOXy coverage of their own simply for the sake of ratings? With jobs and pay declining, prices rising, homes being foreclosed on by the very banks for which the taxpayers are now footing the bills of their bail-outs, how many more of these types of incidents will we see?

Sources:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2010/02/18/vo.tx.plane.hits.building.news8austin?iref=allsearch (See "Witness Describes Plane Crash")

http://www.philly2philly.com/politics_community/politics_community_articles/2009/6/29/4854/fox_news_wins_lawsuit_misinform_public

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/30/201231/262

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Akre

Copyright © 2010 Cal Jennings