INFORMATION AGE

A study came out this week showing young people increasing use the internet as their source of news. A few months I read that large percentage of older people are not even on-line and rely solely on television for their information. This could explain how the Bush administration succeeds in promoting its self-serving and deceitful agenda. Television stations skew the news.

If you don't believe it, consider this recent piece on Alternet, Television's Myopic Global Eye.

AIDS killed three million people around the world last year, more than two million of them in Africa. The three major U.S. television network evening news programs devoted a combined total of 39 minutes to the problem in 2003.

The American Geophysical Union and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences both concluded last year that greenhouse gas emissions almost certainly contribute to global warming which is altering the Earth's weather and climate in potentially catastrophic ways. The three evening network news devoted a total of 15 minutes to the issue in 2003.

Over the same year, the United States invaded and occupied Iraq, an operation in which some 8,000 people may have been killed, the same toll as that imposed by AIDS in a single day. The three major U.S. television network evening news shows devoted a combined total of 4,047 minutes to Iraq in 2003.

It is statistics like these, compiled annually by ADT Research of New York, that make UN Secretary General Kofi Annan observation last month sound ludicrously understated. ''All of us – leaders, politicians, diplomats and journalists – have been very focused on Iraq this year," he told reporters at his year-end press conference. ''We simply haven't paid enough attention to the many other pressing challenges facing us."

Too many Americans, who don't have the time or the inclination to seek out alternate sources therefore don't get a real picture of the state of the world.

If Africa was virtually invisible on network news, however, so was Latin America, for all practical purposes. The U.S. response to violence in Colombia and repression in Cuba were the top-rated Latin American stories of the year, with each receiving 18 minutes on the three networks.

Read the whole article. This is why we all need to seek out the truth on our own. Bush is truly employing the mass media as his personal 'weapon of mass distraction'. Don't be fooled again. Vote in 04, like your life depends on it and remove this deceitful regime from office.