by David Swanson

By any serious standard of journalism, impeachment should be in the news right now. This illustrates the worst problem with our media. It’s not how they cover stories. It’s how they do not cover stories.

A Newsweek poll a while back said that 51 percent of Americans want Bush impeached and 44 percent do not. That’s about double the support there was for impeaching Clinton when it was in the news every single day.

Dozens of cities have passed resolutions for impeachment. State legislatures have introduced the same. One outgoing congresswoman introduced articles of impeachment in December. Dozens of scholars have written books advocating for impeachment. There are DVDs, forums, marches, rallies, protests. A week ago, we packed a huge ballroom for an impeachment forum, and to make it easy, it was the ballroom in the National Press Club. The media couldn’t make the elevator trip to be there.

And of course, the evidence of impeachable offenses is clear and overwhelming, but rarely presented in the media.

The number one reason that Congress members and their staff tell you in private that they are not yet impeaching is fear of the media. The number two reason is fear of Nancy Pelosi.

The number one reason that well-meaning citizens tell you they don’t want impeachment consists of a PR strategy. People want to present an image that does not include what the corporate media says impeachment is. It is a long journey to move from seeing this as smart and strategic to seeing it as a self-defeating surrender to the corporate media.

And the independent media isn’t where it needs to be either. In part, this is because it tends to retell corporate stories in a more honest way, rather than telling stories that have been untold.

Read More at Political Affairs Magazine

Filed under: Blog, In the News, Mainstream Media, Cover Up

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