Parry argues that by "suggesting that [indicted former Dick Cheney aide 'Scooter'] Libby committed no real offense beyond trimming a few facts when questioned by overzealous investigators" about having leaked Valerie Plame Wilson's CIA identity to the New York Times' Judith Miller,the major U.S. news media is again missing the point. The real significance of the Libby trial is that it could demonstrate how far George W. Bush went in 2003 to shut down legitimate criticism of his Iraq War policies as well as questions about his personal honesty.

In his speech kicking off the National Conference on Media Reform, the public broadcasting icon "announced his return to the airwaves" and described exactly what media reformers are up against.As ownership gets more and more concentrated, fewer and fewer independent sources of information have survived in the marketplace; and those few significant alternatives that do survive, such as PBS and NPR, are under growing financial and political pressure to reduce critical news content and to shift their focus in a mainstream direction, which means being more attentive to establishment views than to the bleak realities of powerlessness that shape the lives of ordinary people.

While mainstream commentators astute enough to question claims of Iraqi WMDs were often "slandered by supposedly respectable commentators...who in the tradition of Joe McCarthy made ominous claims about how critics of the war were actively pro-terrorist," the "gross incompetence" on display in William Kristol's analyses of "the most important issue facing America today" has not altered the "bizarrely upward trajectory of [his] career path" toward a prime column at Time, "America's leading news weekly"—which Campos describes as "the journalistic equivalent of handing the former captain of the Exxon Valdez a case of whiskey and the command of a fully loaded supertanker." A small sample of Kristol's penchant for acheiving "maximum possible error":Since the start of the war, Kristol has claimed that "there's almost no evidence" Iraqi Shiites wouldn't be able to get along with Sunnis; that it was a mistake to worry that Iraq "would fracture into feuding clans and unleash a bloodbath";.. that the situation in Iraq wouldn't get worse in 2006, and thus opposition to the war would prove to be an electoral disaster for Democrats.

One blogger takes the occasion of the "irrepressibly corrupt" Kenneth Tomlinson's announcement that he "is jumping ship rather than face the newly elected Democratic majority in the senate that would be unlikely to reconfirm him" as chair of the Broadcasting Board of Governors to remember thatThis is the same Kenneth Tomlinson that paid $15,000 in payments to two Republican lobbyists that were not disclosed to the Corporation [for Public Broadcasting]’s board. This is the same Kenneth Tomlinson that had taken overtly partisan steps to remake the CPB as a publicly financed Fox News—hiring Tucker Carlson and Paul Gigot and recruiting a former co-chairman of the Republican National Committee as president of PBS. This is the same Kenneth Tomlinson engaged in ethically questionable tactics to discredit Bill Moyers, former host of PBS’s Now.

Taking on the premise of a USA Today article that "pulled out all the stops" when "decrying the fact that 'globalization' is losing support around the world and that countries are embracing "long-discredited economic strategies.'"It specifically notes nationalization and credit controls.... But many countries have effectively managed government enterprises and the list of successful developing countries is full of countries that use capital controls, such as China, India, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Chile. (Maybe USA Today can find a reporter who has heard of these countries for its next piece on the topic.) The policies that the article considers consistent with globalization might better be described as "long-discredited economic strategies." Latin America embraced this path with enthusiasm and had a quarter century of stagnation. Russia followed the globalization path and saw its economy shrink by more than 40 percent.

Wikipedia's democratic media technology is utilized in a new Wikileaks.org effort to help anonymous whistleblowers increase "transparency in government activities." Citing a U.S. Supreme Court assertion from the Pentagon Papers case that "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government," the site's primary interests are oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to those in the West.... Wikileaks opens leaked documents up to a much more exacting scrutiny than any media organization or intelligence agency could provide.

A look at corporate TV coverage of George W. Bush's recent speech provides more evidence that "for the newscasters, this war debate is now only between the Congress and the White House."PBS ran the Democratic response by Sen. Charles Durbin who explained why his plan can’t work and won’t work. No one else did.... As for the public and the anti-war movement, they were briefly heard chanting slogans outside the White House but not seen on CBS.... The substance of the speech...was not subjected to any scrutiny. There was no analysis of likely consequences, especially the threats to attack Syria and Iran. In short, there was no reporting. How is this possible on an event that had been hyped for a week and whose key tenets were well known BEFORE it was delivered?

While averring that Martin Luther King Jr. "understood that a free, diverse and adventurous press was essential to social progress," Nichols reminds us of the angry media backlash when King expanded his activism beyond basic civil rights.When King began in 1967 to express outspoken opposition to the war in Vietnam, historian Taylor Branch recalls..."the most damaging public reaction that he had from the white press." The Washington Post went so far as to declare that, with his opposition to the war, "King has diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people." Similarly, King's attempts to advance an economic justice agenda [were] dismissed as a both futile and dangerous. Things have only grown worse as media consolidation has led to a dumbing down of our mass communications.

In "an urgent demand for media activism" at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis, Swanson makes a call to "put impeachment on the table and the airwaves":By any serious standard of journalism, impeachment should be in the news right now.... 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.... 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.Swanson provides you the resources for “urging pollsters to poll on impeachment, writing letters to editors, calling talk shows, calling producers, and protesting at media outlets," as well as how to “create a short video of yourself... and why you want impeachment” for YouTube.

Democratic FCC Commissioner Michael Copps calls for "local stations that are actually local," "strengthen our democracy" and "look and sound like America"—while noting that "you deserve all this on free-over-the-air TV and radio" because "by the way, you have already paid for" it.Half a trillion dollars. That's a conservative valuation of the airwaves that our country lets TV and radio broadcasters use—for free.... It's just about the biggest chunk of change that our government gives to any private industry. And what do the American people—who own the public airwaves, by the way—get in return? Too little news, too much baloney passed off as news.... Too little of America, too much of Wall Street and Madison Avenue.... It's one hell of a bad bargain, don't you think?