Domestic Terrorism: Not Newsworthy
In our country, we have a free press and no governmental control of the media. As long as the message fans the flames of the right war and points in the direction of re-election. Shame!
Last month, an east Texas man pleaded guilty to possession of a weapon of mass destruction. Inside the home and storage facilities of William Krar, investigators found a sodium-cyanide bomb capable of killing thousands, more than a hundred explosives, half a million rounds of ammunition, dozens of illegal weapons, and a mound of white-supremacist and antigovernment literature. CSMonitor
Big story, right? Huge, right? John Ashcroft throwing the curtain over the naked lady statue so that he can crow at the top of his lungs about how his Justice Department is keeping America safe, right?
So why haven't you heard about it? Well for starters, it could be because Ashcroft is not crowing about it, nor is anyone else at Justice. Not one press conference. Just a quietly issued press release. If that defies explanation, some Ashcroft critics think they have one: The suspects were named William J. Krar and Judith L. Bruey, not Mohammed or Omar or Khalid. They aren't Muslims, but alleged white supremacists. And they were caught right here in Texas. Austin Chronicle
Comments
Mainstream media has many blind spots which are becoming more apparent every day. International terrorism seems to be an easier subject to handle than good 'ol boy super patriots.
I am not an Ashcroft fan, but I don't think he has that much control of the media. He seems to have trouble getting his own message out.
Mainstream media also has a terrible time writing about any progress being made in Iraq or domestically.
Just you wait and see. Weblogs are in their ascendancy as corroborators, if not sources, of news. I predict we will be doing even more of this in the future.
Posted by: David | December 29, 2003 8:43 AM
Perfect justification for blogging
Posted by: Philp | December 29, 2003 11:35 AM
I'm sorry I don't catch your point. Are you lamenting that these people were victimized by over-zealous feds or that the media hasn't featured the story?
I too doubt that Ashcroft calls the shots at ABCCBSNBCCNNNYTLAT...so who is promoting the "right" war...not any of the aforementioned media giants.
Posted by: feste | December 29, 2003 2:21 PM
So, Feste, your explanation for why this large story disappeared from headlines?
I'm not a conspiracy fan and didn’t personally hang this one on Ashcroft, but you don't suppose misses all around is coincidence, do you?
Posted by: fredf | December 29, 2003 2:41 PM
I think the lone-crackpot-wacko-who-gets-caught-before-he-harms-anyone situation is the problems here. I agree that if he were named Mohammed, he would be news, because the feds would assume (and I venture to say rightly) that he wasn't alone. This guy may be a domestic terrorist deep in a plot to overthrow the government with a big huge organization, but ehhhh, doesn't sound like it. What's important to the feds in this one, I'd guess, is that it not look, smell, sound or feel like Waco, or that place up in Idaho where they killed too many innocent people.
Posted by: travelertrish | December 29, 2003 7:54 PM
Greetings Fred,
As a member of the free press, please don't put put too much faith in us man. I've seen the dark side and it isn't too bad, just human. There is no conspiracy, just your basic run-of-the-mill human error. When Clinton was president, I remember a hearing from Franklin Graham's local outlet stating that their hospital in Somalia had been bombed. We followed up and sure
'nuf, it had been obliterated and several Americans and local innocents died. Terrorists of some flavor or another were suspected but not one word other than in the Watauga Democat mentioned the event other than a tiny column in the Christian Science Monitor. It often bothers me that we do not hear all the facts first in the news. On a daily basis I read several 'wires' and blogs and tv and have learned to pull out what I consider fact over sensationalism. I still know that I miss alot .
Happy New Years to you, ann and Tsuga. hope you get my package soon. Marie
Posted by: Marie | December 29, 2003 8:27 PM
Here's another disturbing security related story that the "mainstream" media deemed unnewsworthy. I found it googling for something else...only the Modesto Bee and the Freepers carried the story off the AP wire.
Posted by: feste | December 31, 2003 4:12 PM