Can Indy Media Stop the Corporate Media’s Hillary Bandwagon?

January 22nd, 2007
Published on Monday, January 22, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
Can Indy Media Stop the Corporate Media’s Hillary Bandwagon?
by Jeff Cohen
Prominent pundits seem ecstatic over Hillary Clinton’s entry into the presidential race just days after Barack Obama’s media-created candidacy became official. Media talking heads are having so much fun lately they don’t seem to notice that our political system is failing to address ever-worsening problems: social, environmental, fiscal and imperial.
Indeed, our country’s political decline in recent decades has been abetted by the decline in mainstream media. The same media outlets that were complicit in the disastrous Iraq war are bent on turning politics into an insular celebrity club in which only they get to anoint frontrunners.
If the torch of leadership passes from Bush I to Clinton I to Bush II to Clinton II, it will be a loss for our country – but a victory for a corrupt Beltway press corps that abhors fresh ideas, especially those that challenge its power and privilege. It was a frightened national press corps that vilified the netroots supporters of Democratic outsider Ned Lamont in defense of pro-war warhorse Joe Lieberman.
As for how these presidential aspirants would govern, I’m counting on independent media. The public needs to hear Kucinich’s step-by-step plan to end the war in Iraq. And Edwards needs to be asked: after the first 50,000 troops are withdrawn, what’s the next step?
As for Clinton and Obama, the vaguer their rhetoric, the more they seem to dazzle the establishment media (not unlike Chance the Gardner in “Being There”). It will be up to independent media to decipher their actual positions, and the political/financial interests of their funders and advisers.
LOL! Let the games begin! This should prove to be an entertaining Campaign/Election

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