This week on CounterSpin: At pre-trial hearings to determine where the U.S. government mistreated or even tortured him, former army Private Bradley Manning was heard from for the first time in more than two years. Descriptions of Manning by the few reporters who attended the hearings clashed with earlier mainstream portraits of Manning as a troubled, brooding misfit. But the corporate media largely responsible for those impressions of Manning were largely AWOL from the hearings. We'll be joined by Michael Ratner, co-founder of the Center for Constitutional Rights, to talk about the media and the Bradley Manning trial.
Also on the show: Is the idea of the public airwaves being governed to serve the public interest just a joke? The entity charged with representing the public in media policy, the FCC, sure sends that message when it moves again and again to let media companies that already own media own more, without even considering the impact on diversity. What’s the FCC latest gambit and what do folks who define the public interest as something other than healthy profits think of it? We’ll hear from Joseph Torres of the group Free Press.
LINKS:
"The few reporters who attended the hearings clashed with earlier mainstream portraits of Manning as a troubled, brooding misfit. But the corporate media largely responsible for those impressions of Manning were largely AWOL from the hearings." ~ TD http://fair.org/counterspin-radio/michael-ratner-on-bradley-manning-hearing-joe-torres-on-fcc/
A good place to start reading this morning – with New York Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan’s critique of her paper’s (near non-)coverage of Bradley Manning’s dramatic testimony at his military trial. Speaking of rare public comments by Manning’s lawyer, she wrote: “It was part of a fascinating few days in the history of the Manning story — resonating with implications for free speech, national security and the American military at war — but you wouldn’t have known much about it if your only source of information was The New York Times. The Times didn’t cover Mr. Coombs’s remarks and, far more important, did not send a staff reporter to the first eight days of a pretrial hearing in the case, including riveting testimony by Private Manning. As a matter of news judgment, giving so little coverage to the hearing is simply weird. This is a compelling story, and an important one.” Tom
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/public-editor/an-empty-seat-in-the-courtroom.html
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