News Organizations Dimming the Lights

how true it is -- the news is no longer objective by any means. are journalists not getting paid enough? are journalistic ethics shot?

the news is simply regurgitated information through the news organizations pre-existing beliefs. this is a great story that uses basra as an example. how many have made sense of that? how many of us can figure out iraq? no matter what you read, it's like wading through garbage. that's why we need obama. he'll keep us informed.

depending on which news outlet you pay attention to you'll get a different story. we all know what we get at fox and we know what to expect from the new york times. do we ever get the truth? ever?

RCP: Yet despite the absence of any objective knowledge about what had happened, pro- and anti-war news organizations, talk radio shows, columnists, pundits and blogists leapt into the void -- invincibly ignorant of what had happened -- and immediately began making powerful arguments in support of their pre-existing positions. In the middle of a vital presidential election season, millions of American voters got misinformed on perhaps the central issue of the election that is critical to our national safety (whether misinformed for or against the war, we don't know yet).

Iraq Women Beheaded for Blush

By Arwa Damon CNN

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The images in the Basra police
file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion -- some
strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of
torture.

The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other "rules" that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.
"Fear, fear is always there," says 30-year-old Safana, an artist and university professor. "We don't know who to be afraid of. Maybe it's a friend or a student you teach. There is no break, no security. I don't know who to be afraid of."
Her fear is justified. Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, is a stronghold of conservative Shia groups. As many as 133 women were killed in Basra last year -- 79 for violation of "Islamic teachings" and 47 for so-called honor killings, according to IRIN, the news branch of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. One glance through the police file is enough to understand the consequences. Basra's police chief, Gen. Abdul Jalil Khalaf, flips through the file, pointing to one unsolved case after another. Watch Khalaf show evidence of the brutality »