Common Dreams website completely fails to cover A22 Bush protest

Why are you being so damn critical of everyone? Commondreams is an amazing site that deserves recognition. They usually use mainstream, foreign, and independent press to tell the movement side of things. It is an effective tactic. They printed the AP story at:

 http://commondreams.org/headlines02/0823-01.htm

Yeah, it was the AP story... BUT they have a window with links to Portland Indymedia's coverage. This shows that they concider Indymedia to be an important ally.

If you marginalize everyone who dooesn't tell the story exactly how you want it portrayed, then you will eventualy find yourself alone with no allies.

Maybe you missed this AP article, which does a good job of documenting some of the rise of facism.


 link to www.newsday.com

Overview of Changes to Legal Rights

By The Associated Press

September 5, 2002, 11:44 AM EDT

Some of the fundamental changes to Americans' legal rights by the Bush administration and the USA Patriot Act following the terror attacks:

* FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Government may monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terror investigation.

* FREEDOM OF INFORMATION: Government has closed once-public immigration hearings, has secretly detained hundreds of people without charges, and has encouraged bureaucrats to resist public
records requests.

* FREEDOM OF SPEECH: Government may prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation.

* RIGHT TO LEGAL REPRESENTATION: Government may monitor federal prison jailhouse conversations between attorneys and clients, and deny lawyers to Americans accused of crimes.

* FREEDOM FROM UNREASONABLE SEARCHES: Government may search and seize Americans' papers and effects without probable cause to assist terror investigation.

* RIGHT TO A SPEEDY AND PUBLIC TRIAL: Government may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial.

* RIGHT TO LIBERTY: Americans may be jailed without being charged or being able to confront witnesses against them.

Copyright © 2002, The Associated Press

As an out-of-stater, perhaps I can lend some perspective. When peaceful Americans get pepper-sprayed and shot at with rubber bullets for expressing their discontent with a sitting pResident, yes, that IS a big story. In fact, it's a historic event. The fact that Common Dreams doesn't mention it in that regard makes about as much sense as the Nation spending its energy trying to debunk 9-11 "conspiracy theorists"

responding to: "BUT they have a window with links to Portland Indymedia's coverage. This shows that they concider Indymedia to be an important ally."

yes, they have that window now. that was not there originally. i was one of the folks who wrote to them and took them to task for their unforgiveable inclusion of that rancid pile of shit lies AP story. the window appeared sometime after that. i am *slightly* impressed at their apparent responsiveness in this case, but i would be more impressed if they'd yanked the AP and Oregonian stories entirely, but i guess that might've been embarassing for them. and oh heavens you can't do something like that which would admit error.

and it is absolutely an error for a website that claims to be progressive to print the corporate lies of the Oregonian and AP. those outlets are the enemy, pure and simple. without corporate media propaganda, people would have a much better chance of seeing how they're being fucked over by the powers-that-be. common dreams is playind directly into the hands of our oppressors by reprinting that bullshit.

so there's a little window now. who really cares. the damage is done. the damage was printing propaganda from the enemy in the first place. they've got to change a lot more before they will be allies of us.

this isn't about "marginalizing" commondreams. this is about calling them on their shit. this is about getting the Truth out there. this is about saving ourselves. in the case of A22, commondreams was spreading Lies, and that needed to be pointed out. this isn't a whine, it's a roar. and it ain't the last one.

Commondreams has run lots of the "anti-conspiracy" hit pieces published by The Nation. Anything to the left of Nader is generally deemed taboo on that site, though it has no problems with running Tom Friedman's screeds on "friendly imperialism".

Am not critical of everyone. Only some someones - and will continue to be so. If you don't like it when someone expresses criticism for liberal institutions, then you could use a dose of reality.

And it is not about having it presented exactly as I want it. It is a matter of being truthful and accurate.

A few days after A22, the AP article on Common Dreams did NOT have the box with a link to portland indymedia.

The majority of people who read that article on Common Dreams when the news was fresh, likely never saw a link to indymedia and all the first hand accounts that were up there because the link was not up there at the time. So for most of those people, there was nothing to counter the AP lies.

That said, perhaps the letter I wrote to them prompted that link to go up there, so that is something worth noting.

The AP article is very misleading. It suggests the number of people there was far smaller. It presents a picture of the situation that was inaccurate enough that it is in effect, lies.

I strongly disagree that it is a good tactic to reprint and repost corporate media lies, especially when at that time, that is all Common Dreams posted. Common Dreams betrayed all the people on the streets of Portland by posting the lies that were told about them!

Too many progressive minded people still think it is somehow important to cater to the corporate press. Too often people prostitute themselves hoping to get a single good sound byte. I so often hear the phrase, "that article wasn't too bad" or "well, it could have been worse".

It is time to stop sucking up to the corporate media, covering up for their lies, pretending they are anything but the propaganda arm for the destroyers of this planet. This is a crucial time right now, and it demands a hard truth be told.

Common Dreams 'coverage' of the A22 Bush Protest, a crucial moment right now, was abysmal and they aided the corporate media to mislead and lie to the people, and they should be taken to task for it.

Don't get me wrong,

I was at the protest, the AP article IS absolute bullshit. Anyone who was there knows that there was NO VIOLENCE in the crowd. I agree with you that commondreams fails to cover some important events.

I also think that the Portland protest was only one event out of hundreds that happened that week and, even thought I love Portland, I not so sure that there needed to be much more coverage from a newsource that deals with issues on an international scale.

My comment to Raven wasn't about the absolute virtue of Commondreams. But as everyone keeps yelling since Quabec: EMBRACE A DIVERSITY OF TACTICS.

I have noticed that Common Dreams tends to stick to safe, op-ed pieces. It only covers the things which are common knowledge, like Enron, but stears clear of the heinous, illegal and covert-ops type stuff. It could very well be one of these decoy Operation Mockingbird type websites which gets folks to focus on some of the less ghastly things our government is doing, like the CIA selling drugs in this country, and mind-control experiments. The hard-hitting, investigative journalism is missing from Common Dreams, just like in the Nation and even the Progressive. I think they are all CIA funded disinformation rags.