She was called a cafe philosopher, the Anna Kournikova of TV news, a "slut" out to murder innocent Jewish children. Ultimately, after winning an AP award for her reporting and an Emmy for her work at NBC news, Ashley Banfield was fired. Not for her refined blond looks or signature glasses. Ashley was fired for violating the essence of modern mainstream reporting: she had the nerve to ask tough questions and tell us the truth.
And we are all the worse for it.
There was glee in many hearts including mine when MSNBC hired the brilliantly outspoken Rachel Maddow to follow the Keith Olbermann's righteous fulminations. But in hindsight I realize NBC's move was brilliant in its cynicism. You see for all their eloquence and devastating dissections of the neo-con agenda, Keith and Rachel are not reporters. They may provide critical analysis and underreported stories but in the end their work can be also dismissed as opinion, a sop to the left eager for an entertaining alternative to the kooky and far-better-fed right.
Ashley Banfield lost her career because she wanted to be something more than a pretty face and corporate mouthpiece. No doubt her colleagues at NBC took a furtive glance at their 6 figure paychecks and buried her shoes.
"the Fox effect is very concerning to me. I'm a journalist. Fox has taken so many viewers away from CNN and MSNBC because of their agenda and because of their targeting the market of cable news viewership, that I'm afraid there's not a really big place in cable for news. Cable is for entertainment, as it's turning out, but not news.
I'm hoping that I will have a future in news in cable, but not the way some cable news operators wrap themselves in the American flag and patriotism and go after a certain target demographic, which is very lucrative. You can already see the effects, you can already see the big hires on other networks, right wing hires to chase after this effect, and you can already see that flag waving in the corners of those cable news stations where they have exciting American music to go along with their war coverage.
Well, all of this has to do with what you've seen on Fox and its successes. So I do urge you to be very discerning as you continue to watch the development of cable news, and it is changing like lightning. Be very discerning because it behooves you like it never did before to watch with a grain of salt and to choose responsibly, and to demand what you should know."
--Ashley Banfield, speaking at Kansas State University in 2003
Amen, girl! Those of us fighting to stay awake still miss you.
I take back every harsh comment I have had for Katie Couric. Perhaps she simply sees the way the winds are blowing-- but whatever has stirred the transformation I applaud her improved reporting. Here she takes on the all important voter purge issue if a bit tepidly:
"[I]n-person voter fraud is nonexistent. It doesn't happen, and ... makes no sense because who's going to take the risk of going to jail on something so blatant that maybe changes one vote?" --Republican campaign consultant Royal Masset.
Kudos to Senator Obama. Since the so-called Mainstream Press Has Failed to expose the systematic voter suppression behind the ACORN smokescreen the Obama Campaign has sent a letter of complaint to the Attorney-General. The complaint charges that the current bogus voter fraud investigation is directly related to the illegal firing of US attorneys. Read the campaign's letter here:
The most distressing thing about the way most Americans get their news is that the most dangerous lies can be amplified while the truth is ignored. Outright slander is obscured by false-equivalencies. TV networks no longer do very much actual reporting but when they do their reports are either amateurish or presented with obvious bias.
Take the issue of ACORN and voter registration fraud. According to the following CNN report Acorn deliberately submitted incomplete and falsified voter registrations. But what they do not mention is that ALL registrations received by ACORN must be submitted to the state election boards and contrary to CNN's claim, it was ACORN that first notified the boards in question about the discrepancies.
Here was Acorn's reply completely missing from the so-called "news report"
ACORN has submitted 1.3 million applications nationally and over 23,000 in Indiana.
ACORN engages in comprehensive quality control procedures, every card is called through three times.
ACORN flags and turns in three kinds of cards, those that it can verify, those that are incomplete, and those that it flags as problematic. It turns those in labeled in a special way and are very conservative in terms of what it flags as problematic. It has stacks of problematic cover sheets.
The Lake County Board of Elections refused to acknowledge the categories of cards when ACORN turned them in, or sign its paperwork. The Lake County Board knew about the questionable registrations today because ACORN flagged them for the board. For example, the Jimmy John’s card is one that a caller had flagged and labeled as problematic. ACORN can get that caller to talk to the press.
As the BRADBLOG confirms: Acorn must, by law turn in every form to election officials --- even if they find a registration to be fraudulent when they call the phone number submitted on the form, or if the forms are otherwise suspect or incomplete.
Under Indiana election law, early voting can only take place in a county clerk's main office. This makes it difficult for voters in places like Lake County were that office is a far distance away from where most voters live. To correct that imbalance, the law gives each board of elections the authority to approve early voting centers elsewhere in their county.
The Democrats on the elections board agreed to add more centers but then in September the two Republicans voted against doing so. Their explanation? They claim that Lake County Democratic chairman Rudy Clay made an agreement to allow satellite voting during the primaries but not during the general election. Unsurprisingly the more populous areas (like Gary, 96,000) have large numbers of poor and minorities who tend to vote Democratic.
The CNN piece ignores all of that. Instead, what followed on "Anderson Cooper" was the reporter's "analysis" in which Griffin suggests that by submitting forms filled out by Wiley Coyote or members of the Dallas Cowboys ACORN is seeking to perpetuate voter fraud. One wonders if Griffin actual believes his ludicrous assertion or is simply too dumb to be considered a serious reporter. As for Anderson Cooper, he is proving to be quite the propagandist.
But here again, is the neoconservative "genius"-- otherwise known as "catapulting the propaganda". Many of us are concerned about voter suppression, voter purge and electronic vote tabulation. By trumpeting ACORN as a straw-man the Republicans are able to deflect the real story. As the The New York Timesreports : thousands of voters have been illegally purged from the rolls in several swing states. This is the real story about what is happening in this election. Millions of potential Democrats are being purged from the roles by Rove operatives with the help of our politicized Justice Department and right wing judges.
As Lori Minnite, a professor of political science at Barnard College, who has spent the last eight years studying the role of fraud in U.S. elections, explains: "the Republican crusade against voter fraud is a strategic ruse. Rather than protecting the election process from voter fraud -- a problem that barely exists -- the true aim is to justify questioning the eligibility of thousands of would-be voters -- often poor and minority citizens in urban areas."
Illegal Funding
From the Washington Post: IN 2006 Karl Rove requested help for handpicked Republican candidates in the months before the November elections and the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy complied by supplying half-million-dollar grants to create news conferences for two congressmen and a senator, earning a Rove aide's accolade of "superstar" after the election.
"visits to Utah, Missouri and Nevada were among at least 303 out-of-town trips by senior Bush appointees meant to lend prestige or bring federal grants to 99 politically endangered Republicans that year, in an orchestrated White House campaign. [ ] Although federal law prohibits the use of public funds or resources for partisan political activities -- most of these trips were paid for by taxpayer funds,"
Here we have proven historical abuse by high-level Republicans in the Bush Administration, yet the fact that citizens are being disenfranchised for the sake of the GOP merits scarcely a word on CNN or the three major networks. They are too worried about all those illegals that will be showing up to vote as Mickey Mouse.
