Gee, guess what?

It turns out that Big Media -- AKA ABC CBS NBC FOX WB -- has been accepting money from the whitehouse in return for getting its anti-drug message accross via plot and story lines in TV shows.

The whitehouse even had script approval rights!

Who needs a "free" press?

A *cheap* press is apparently good enough for government work.

-- Ron Schwarz (rs@clubvb.com.delete.this), January 14, 2000

Answers

"Would you go to bed with me for $5 million?"

"Sure, I guess."

"How about $5?"

"Absolutely not! What kind of girl do you think I am?"

"We've already established that, my dear. Now we're just haggling over the price."

-- I'm Here, I'm There (I'm Everywhere@so.beware), January 14, 2000.

"On the whole, I'd rather be in Philadelphia".

Epitaph of W.C. Fields, author of the above dialog.

-- just another fields fan (my@little.chickadee), January 14, 2000.

I think they should keep any news that is worth quoting, blocked out for a couple more months with the Cuban boy crisis, and the joker over in France, and and a few other fluff pieces. We are all holding our breath in anticipation of those events. Do they, or do they not use toilet paper. Somebody belched was that noted? Surely they can find something else. When they run shy they start quoting something that happen to be news fory years ago, they start history lessons,on the propaganda forty years ago. Heaven forbid should they report any thing that pertains to us the ordinary citizen. Of course we can expect that of a media that like congress, is the best money can buy, which in turn is like our number one leader, Bill, the best money can buy. What do we have to complain about?

-- Notforlong (Fsur439@aol.com), January 14, 2000.

I started a thread on this yesterday. See:

hv.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002JHI

It's a 2 part story, with the 2nd part out today.

R.

-- Roland (nottelling@nowhere.com), January 14, 2000.

This story sucks. According to our local paper $22 million saved by the networks allowing them to sell their time to corporate advertisers because they were freed from the public service announcement obligations.

-- Lurkess (Lurkess@Lurking.Net), January 14, 2000.

Not sure how I feel about this, but it's interesting to me that people on this thread aren't drawing the distinction between entertainment and news programming. I'm not sure if that represents well-informed cynicism about the "infotainment" of today, or surrender to the shameless blurring of the lines by the networks.

-- Thinman (thinman38@hotmail.com), January 14, 2000.

Ron, this means not just the assinine commercials, but the script of the anchors, which are presented as "news", are actually received from the White House, and aired for money?!!!

BTW, I saw a commercial last night text "This is what your 13 year old knows about drugs". If anyone here saw it, then you would understand that it is a PRO use commercial. It is a "everyone else does it" (interpretation being so why don't you? these guys have jobs businesses...get with the program, get high to fit in and succeed).

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 14, 2000.

What precedence...gotta love it. yuck! This must have been the USSR's finest moment, to see this come into fruition.

-- Hokie (Hokie_@hotmail.com), January 14, 2000.

Of course there's not any howls of outrage from the electronic media or the press. But Heaven help us if it was Reagan in the White House and this story broke.

We'd never get away from it. All the news shows would be showing the entire movie "1984" as part of their evening news shows to show how bad the deed was. Maybe "Clockwork Orange", "Fahrenheit, 451", the Apple "1984" commercial and "Triumph Of The Will". Lots of pictures of old Adolph and Dr Goebels, too.

But since it's Klintoon and he's their guy, they won't give this story the light of day.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), January 15, 2000.