“Did you know that a third of children in America are overweight? Michael Jackson didn’t have a heart attack, his play-date rolled over on him.”

Bill Maher’s “New Rules & Commentary” – 07/17/09

~Walter Cronkite, CBS Evening News, February 27, 1968.

“I think there are a lot of critics who think that [in the run-up to the Iraq War] . . . . if we did not stand up and say this is bogus, and you’re a liar, and why are you doing this, that we didn’t do our job. I respectfully disagree. It’s not our role”

~David Gregory, MSNBC, May 28, 2008.

David, (far left) behind Rover at The Imbecile’s D.C. Press Club Annual piss up:
http://chrisbearde.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/gregoryrove.jpg

Can anyone imagine any big media stars — who swoon in reverence both to political power and especially military authority — defying military instructions that way, let alone being proud of it? Halberstam certainly couldn’t imagine any of them doing it, which is why, in 1999, he wrote:
Those to whom the most is given, the executives of our three networks, have steadily moved away from their greatest responsibilities, which is using their news departments to tell the American people complicated truths, not only about their own country, but about the world around us. . . .
Somewhere in there, gradually, but systematically, there has been an abdication of responsibility within the profession, most particularly in the networks. . . . So, if we look at the media today, we ought to be aware not just of what we are getting, but what we are not getting; the difference between what is authentic and what is inauthentic in contemporary American life and in the world, with a warning that in this celebrity culture, the forces of the inauthentic are becoming more powerful all the time.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/18/cronkite/print.html

WASHINGTON — The chief negotiator for the political standoff in Honduras said Thursday that the two camps in the crisis had agreed to a number of compromises, including the formation of a so-called unity government and amnesty for crimes committed by both sides.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/17/world/americas/17honduras.html