ABC Hits Cardinal from Left, Plugs Pope's Critique of Capitalism --3/28/2005

1. ABC Hits Cardinal from Left, Plugs Pope's Critique of Capitalism
On Sunday's This Week, ABC's George Stephanopoulos harangued Washington's Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the left. In an interviewed taped on Saturday, Stephanopoulos told McCarrick that "the practices and opinions of American Catholics seem to be at odds with the teachings of the church." Stephanopoulos soon chided McCarrick for how during the campaign the Eucharist became "a partisan battleground" because a Cardinal "did express his view that any Catholic who votes for a pro-choice politician is committing a sin that he or she has to confess." McCarrick corrected his false charge, but Stephanopoulos remained undeterred as he pressed McCarrick to "respond to those Democrats who feel that the bishops have been more partisan than principled" and lamented how while "so much has been made of the Pope's anti-communism," the Pope "has had a very forceful critique of the excesses of capitalism, and it hasn't seemed to have taken hold in the same way."

2. Media Biased Against Religious, Few "People of Faith" at NY Times
Two Washington press corps veterans have conceded that the news media have a bias against religious believers. On CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday, New Republic Senior Editor Michelle Cottle asserted that journalists "behave as though the people who believe" in widely-held Christian values "are on the fringe." Steve Roberts, who noted how he "worked for the New York Times for 25 years," revealed: "I could probably count on one hand, in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, people who would describe themselves as people of faith." That disconnect hurt the media, Roberts suggested, in how "there was so much attention...on the rockers and the sports celebrities who were registering voters." Roberts asked: "And how many stories did we see about that compared to the pastors and churches in Ohio who were registering ten times as many voters?"

3. NPR's Totenberg Uses Schiavo to Push for Universal Health Care
Some journalists, on talk shows over the weekend, used the Schiavo case to forward their personal political agendas. On Inside Washington, NPR's Nina Totenberg contended that "if we really believed in an unmitigated, uncurbed in any way culture of life, we would be having universal health care." Colbert King of the Washington Post raised the school shooting in Minnesota and asked: "What about the guns that take away the life?" On the McLaughlin Group, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift castigated the Republican Party for only caring "about people before they're born and then really after they're dead. What about the time in between? That's when we need government involved."

4. GMA Seeks Kevorkian's "Very Interesting Perspective" on Schiavo
ABC decided that a convicted murderer had "a very interesting perspective" on the Schiavo case and so Friday's Good Morning America featured a taped interview, by phone from a Michigan prison, with Jack Kevorkian, aka "Dr. Death." Charles Gibson asserted that "one voice we haven't heard from" is Kevorkian's, as if he were so deserving of publicity, and touted how Kevorkian supposedly "brings a unique perspective to the issues raised by the Schiavo controversy." Though Kevorkian created a media circus himself a few years ago, Gibson asked him to condemn the activities around Schiavo: "When you see Congress begin to get involved, when you see this go through layer after layer in the courts, has it become something, in your mind, of a circus?" Gibson also highlighted the allegedly "interesting development" that Kevorkian has agreed to a book and movie deal.

5. CBS Uses "Guerrilla News Network" Video to Show a Homeless Vet
Without identifying the agenda of its source of video of a homeless veteran, the CBS Evening News on Friday night displayed an on-screen credit for "GNN.TV" and ran soundbites from a "filmmaker." In fact, GNN stands for Guerrilla News Network, a far-left outfit. CBS used the video to illustrate the contention that homelessness amongst Iraq war veterans is a significant problem. Anchor Bob Schieffer plugged the story: "He served his country in Iraq, but ended up homeless -- and he's not the only one." Focusing on Herold Noel, Byron Pitts intoned: "Like so many, Noel came home a hero, but he wound up homeless." But Pitts put the number of homeless Iraq vets at just one hundred, a statistically insignificant sliver of the more than 800,000 troops deployed to Iraq. Nonetheless, Pitts recounted how "filmmaker Dan Lohaus found" homeless Iraq vets "on the street and in shelters across the country."

ABC Hits Cardinal from Left, Plugs Pope's
Critique of Capitalism

On Sunday's This Week, ABC's George Stephanopoulos harangued Washington's Cardinal Theodore McCarrick from the left. In an interviewed taped on Saturday, Stephanopoulos told McCarrick that "the practices and opinions of American Catholics seem to be at odds with the teachings of the church." Stephanopoulos soon chided McCarrick for how during the campaign the Eucharist became "a partisan battleground" because a Cardinal "did express his view that any Catholic who votes for a pro-choice politician is committing a sin that he or she has to confess." McCarrick corrected his false charge, but Stephanopoulos remained undeterred as he pressed McCarrick to "respond to those Democrats who feel that the bishops have been more partisan than principled" and lamented how while "so much has been made of the Pope's anti-communism," the Pope "has had a very forceful critique of the excesses of capitalism, and it hasn't seemed to have taken hold in the same way."

The McCarrick-Stephanopoulos session was taped Saturday in an ornate setting, most likely a room at the Archdiocese of Washington, with a fireplace in the background.

After a discussion of the Schiavo case, Stephanopoulos moved on to the bigger picture:

Stephanopoulos: "On so many of these culture of life issues, the practices and opinions of American Catholics seem to be at odds with the teachings of the church: contraception, abortion. Does this create a crisis of authority for the church hierarchy?"
McCarrick: "Well, it certainly creates a crisis of good teaching and of strong teaching and of clear teaching and of compassionate teaching which is always important. But compassionate teaching cannot be teaching what is not true. So, as you go through your teaching of your people, you are to make sure that they understand why you are teaching this. And how this is related to the gospel, this is related to the teaching of the Lord. Once that is done, I think then -- then you can change the minds of your people."
Stephanopoulos: "You've been heading the American bishops task force on citizenship, and maybe it's a task you probably wish you wouldn't have taken on."
McCarrick: "No, I was the one who recommended that we had to get into this and as you know, no good deed ever goes unavenged."
Stephanopoulos: "We did find that out last year and during the election, which obviously was a very bitter election on a lot of sides, you warned that the Eucharist should not become a partisan battleground but isn't that exactly what happened?"
McCarrick countered: "No, I don't think so. I really think that the center held. I think that in some cases and some bishops made a decision on their, on how they saw the situation in their own diocese and their need to teach the people that way. Some made the decision to do that. But I think generally the bishops of the United States decided that this was not something which they wanted to do, and I think the Holy See basically was with us on that decision, those of us who made the decision that it was -- that we were not in favor of a confrontation at the altar rail."
Stephanopoulos: "Though Cardinal Ratzinger did express his view that any Catholic who votes for a pro-choice politician is committing a sin that he or she has to confess. Isn't that right?"
McCarrick corrected him again: "No, no. No, no, no. That was a mistake. He said that if you, if you vote for a pro-choice politician because that person is pro-choice -- is against life -- then you're committing a sin. But if you vote for that person for other proportionately grave reasons, then you are not. Then that is what we call remote material cooperation."
Stephanopoulos: "So the issue of abortion does not trump all other issues?"
McCarrick: "It trumps all other issues on the part of those who are directly involved in it. It does not trump all other issues for those who -- for whom it is a subsidiary reason, like if you're voting for a candidate who even though he is pro-abortion or she is pro-abortion is in favor of many, many other things and you don't vote for them because of their position on abortion, you vote for them because of those other positions."
Stephanopoulos: "A lot of high profile Catholic Democrats thought that the church had turned against them. Charlie Rangel, the Congressman, wrote an article to this effect. How do you respond to those Democrats who feel that the bishops have been more partisan than principled on this matter?"
McCarrick responded: "Well, I want to go to my dear friend Cardinal George in Chicago who said that, once talking to a group of Democratic politicians, he said, 'I think the Democratic church walked away, the Democratic Party walked away from the church and it lost its soul. Then he said 'I'm not sure the Republican Party had a soul,' so he tried to be equally evenhanded with everybody. But to be serious, I think that as you look at the Democratic Party platform and its strong anti-life position, even so strong that it makes it hard for a Democratic candidate to be pro-life, I think that, I would love to see them take another look at that and realize that there have been some wonderful Catholic Democrats who have been pro-life and who have, who were worthy of support. We have them in Congress now, and you think of Governor Casey in Pennsylvania and others like him. You know, I think that, I know Charlie Rangel and he's an old friend from my days when I was Vicar of Harlem, but I think maybe he's pushing the envelope too far on what he's saying."

After some talk about the Pope's health, Stephanopoulos rued: "So much has been made of the Pope's anti-communism and his role in bringing down communism, yet he also had a very forceful critique, has had a very forceful critique of the excesses of capitalism, and it hasn't seemed to have taken hold in the same way."
McCarrick shared Stephanopoulos' disappointment: "Yes, yes, and I'm sure that's one of his great sorrows and as I say as an American priest, an American Bishop, it's one of my sorrows, too. There's still so much, I think one of the great challenges of the church today is apathy, is indifference, indifference to religion, indifference to the things that the gospel teaches us. And I think that that must be a great pain that the Holy Father feels. But he, and because of that he works on it. Because of that now that communism has been in a great part laid to rest now he is working on these other things so you hear him speak so much more often now about the modern society, the materialism, the secularism of our society."

For a picture and bio of McCarrick: www.adw.org [1]

For the Web site for the "Cardinal Ratzinger Fan Club," a site devoted to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, "head of the Catholic Church's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," go to: www.ratzingerfanclub.com [2]

Media Biased Against Religious, Few "People
of Faith" at NY Times

Two Washington press corps veterans have conceded that the news media have a bias against religious believers. On CNN's Reliable Sources on Sunday, New Republic Senior Editor Michelle Cottle asserted that journalists "behave as though the people who believe" in widely-held Christian values "are on the fringe." Steve Roberts, who noted how he "worked for the New York Times for 25 years," revealed: "I could probably count on one hand, in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, people who would describe themselves as people of faith." That disconnect hurt the media, Roberts suggested, in how "there was so much attention...on the rockers and the sports celebrities who were registering voters." Roberts asked: "And how many stories did we see about that compared to the pastors and churches in Ohio who were registering ten times as many voters?"

"Media Bias on Religion" read the on-screen tag line during a segment of the March 27 Reliable Sources, which was taped earlier, that followed a look at Schiavo coverage. On the three-person in-studio panel in addition to Cottle and Roberts, who now teaches at the George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs, was Joe Watkins, a Philadelphia minister and radio talk show host.

Host Howard Kurtz proposed: "Let's broaden this to other religious-related issues: teaching of evolution in Kansas schools, a lot of coverage there, whether it should be required, whether creationism should be included; the Ten Commandments displays in Alabama and elsewhere; even gay marriage in San Francisco. Isn't there some built-in media bias by the East Coast journalists toward those who have a different view of these matters?"
Cottle agreed: "I think there is. I mean, it's not that they -- again, it's not that they say unpleasant things. But they do behave as though the people who believe these things are on the fringe, when actually the vast majority of the American public describes itself as Christian. You know, a huge percentage, somewhere between a third and a half, actually say that they believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. And another huge chunk would be comfortable with evolution being taught in the schools-"
Kurtz: "How does this match, say, the staff of the New Republic?"
Cottle: "This is not what you find in the Washington and New York media."
Roberts disclosed: "That is a very important point. I worked for the New York Times for 25 years. I could probably count on one hand, in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, people who would describe themselves as people of faith."
Joe Watkins: "That's right."
Roberts urged: "And I think one of the real built-in biases in the media is towards secularism. And I think that, when you talk about diversity, you want diversity in the newsroom, not because of some quota, but because you have to have diversity to cover the story well and cover all aspects of a society. And you don't have religious people making the decisions about where coverage is focused. And I think that's one of the faults."

Later, during a discussion of why no network has a reporting covering religion full time, Roberts suggested that "religion coverage has been ghetto-ized. It's been marginalized. It's never considered a plum assignment. It's never considered a stepping stone to bigger things. Everybody wants to cover the Congress or the White House, not religion.
"But I think in the last campaign, we saw a perfect example of this. There was so much attention, say, on the rockers and the sports celebrities who were registering voters. And how many stories did we see about that compared to the pastors and churches in Ohio who were registering ten times as many voters?...And that was a perfect example of how the mainstream press missed an enormously important subject. Because they were not familiar with those churches. They weren't comfortable in those churches. They weren't members of them. They didn't see what was happening.
Watkins: "They don't see church members as people like them."
Roberts: "I agree."

For The New Republic's page for Cottle's articles: www.tnr.com [3]

For a picture of her, on a CNN page for an old CNN show, Take 5, see: archives.cnn.com [4]

For GWU's bio page for Roberts, a White House reporter for the New York Times during the Reagan years, with a picture of him: smpa.gwu.edu [5]

For a picture and bio of Watkins, a Saturday morning host on WPHT Radio and "pastor of the Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, the oldest African-American Lutheran Church in Philadelphia," go to: www.thebigtalker1210.com [6]

NPR's Totenberg Uses Schiavo to Push
for Universal Health Care

Some journalists, on talk shows over the weekend, used the Schiavo case to forward their personal political agendas. On Inside Washington, NPR's Nina Totenberg contended that "if we really believed in an unmitigated, uncurbed in any way culture of life, we would be having universal health care." Colbert King of the Washington Post raised the school shooting in Minnesota and asked: "What about the guns that take away the life?" On the McLaughlin Group, Newsweek's Eleanor Clift castigated the Republican Party for only caring "about people before they're born and then really after they're dead. What about the time in between? That's when we need government involved."

-- The final comments on the March 26/27 Inside Washington, a weekly public affairs show carried on Saturday night on NewsChannel 8, a cable channel run by the owner of Washington, DC's ABC affiliate, and on that ABC affiliate, WJLA-TV, on Sunday morning:

NPR reporter Nina Totenberg: "If we really believed in an unmitigated, uncurbed in any way culture of life, we would be having universal health care that paid for every conceivable medical treatment in the world."
Colbert King, a Washington Post editorial writer and columnist, got the last word: "And, if we really believed that, we would do something about what happened on that Indian reservation in Minnesota where ten people died this week. What about the guns that take away the life?"

-- McLaughlin Group over the weekend. Eleanor Clift: "There's something odd about a party that worries about people before they're born and then really after they're dead. What about the time in between? That's when we need government involved."

GMA Seeks Kevorkian's "Very Interesting
Perspective" on Schiavo

ABC decided that a convicted murderer had "a very interesting perspective" on the Schiavo case and so Friday's Good Morning America featured a taped interview, by phone from a Michigan prison, with Jack Kevorkian, aka "Dr. Death." Charles Gibson asserted that "one voice we haven't heard from" is Kevorkian's, as if he were so deserving of publicity, and touted how Kevorkian supposedly "brings a unique perspective to the issues raised by the Schiavo controversy." Though Kevorkian created a media circus himself a few years ago, Gibson asked him to condemn the activities around Schiavo: "When you see Congress begin to get involved, when you see this go through layer after layer in the courts, has it become something, in your mind, of a circus?" Gibson also highlighted the allegedly "interesting development" that Kevorkian has agreed to a book and movie deal.

ABC delayed the airing of the segment, which they trumpeted as an "Only on GMA" feature, until the 8:30am last half hour of the show -- so maybe they weren't as proud it as Gibson implied. During Gibson's narration of the taped and edited interview by phone with Kevorkian, ABC displayed "Only on GMA" next to a photo of Kevorkian with this below: "On the Phone: "Dr. Jack Kevorkian "Thumb Correctional Facility Lapeer, Michigan"

The MRC's Jessica Barnes took down the March 25 segment:

Gibson led the 6:30 half hour: "We're going to start going back to the Terri Schiavo case. So many people have had so many opinions about what has played out in recent days, but one voice we haven't heard from. A man with a very interesting perspective on all of this is Dr. Jack Kevorkian. You remember him, a leading advocate of assisted suicide. Well, he's been in prison and he's not been doing interviews -- this is his first in six years.
"You may recall that Dr. Kevorkian, the man who assisted so many suicides, was sent to prison for performing what he called a mercy killing in 1998. And so I had a chance to talk with him by phone and he shared with me his thoughts on the Terri Schiavo case.
"When last we saw Dr. Jack Kevorkian, he was headed to prison, punishment for one death, but he claims to have helped more than a hundred people commit suicide. Kevorkian brings a unique perspective to the issues raised by the Schiavo controversy."

Gibson to Kevorkian: "Dr. Kevorkian, I'm interested in your reaction. This country has been so preoccupied and so focused in recent days on the Schiavo case, and I'm curious, since this is so much a part of the debate that you raised in this country, your reaction."
Dr. Kevorkian, on phone: "It's dismaying to see this type of medical situation go through with these procedures, how complicated they have become."
Gibson: "When you see Congress begin to get involved, when you see this go through layer after layer in the courts, has it become something, in your mind, of a circus?"
Dr. Kevorkian: "Yes, of course. What bothers me is the bit of hypocrisy in this. When the President and the Congress get involved because all life is sacred and must be preserved at all cost, they don't say the same thing about men in a death row cell. Their life is just as sacred."
Gibson narrated: "Kevorkian does believe some good will come from the current debate."
Dr. Kevorkian: "It has raised the consciousness level concerning this issue and many more people now are going to be willing to face it squarely and discuss it among their families and in society in general."

Gibson concluded: "Dr. Kevorkian, who started so much of this debate, 76 years old now, won't be up for parole until at least 2007. One interesting development. After for so many years avoiding book and movie offers, he has now given the okay for a project on his life to begin. He says he will not benefit financially from any project based on his life, but as I talked with him, his lawyer was also on the phone and said it is time for people to know the real Jack Kevorkian."

For the Michigan Department of Correction's page on offender #284797, convicted in 1999 of second degree murder: www.state.mi.us [7]

CBS Uses "Guerrilla News Network" Video
to Show a Homeless Vet

Without identifying the agenda of its source of video of a homeless veteran, the CBS Evening News on Friday night displayed an on-screen credit for "GNN.TV" and ran soundbites from a "filmmaker." In fact, GNN stands for Guerrilla News Network, a far-left outfit. CBS used the video to illustrate the contention that homelessness amongst Iraq war veterans is a significant problem. Anchor Bob Schieffer plugged the story: "He served his country in Iraq, but ended up homeless -- and he's not the only one." Focusing on Herold Noel, Byron Pitts intoned: "Like so many, Noel came home a hero, but he wound up homeless." But Pitts put the number of homeless Iraq vets at just one hundred, a statistically insignificant sliver of the more than 800,000 troops deployed to Iraq. Nonetheless, Pitts recounted how "filmmaker Dan Lohaus found" homeless Iraq vets "on the street and in shelters across the country."

CBS's piece followed the same storyline as a February 8 Christian Science Monitor story, "Back from Iraq -- and suddenly out on the streets," which also focused on Herold Noel. See: www.csmonitor.com [8]

Friday was the second time the CBS Evening News highlighted homelessness amongst Iraq war veterans. As recounted in the April 26, 2004 CyberAlert:
Just in time for the fall campaign, CBS News has rediscovered homelessness in America, pairing it with the plight of veterans returning from Iraq. Saturday CBS Evening News anchor Mika Brzezinski connected the case of Pat Tillman, the NFL star turned Army Ranger killed in Afghanistan, with a woman who couldn't get along with her mother and so had to live elsewhere, as she teased the broadcast, "A tale of two soldiers: One honored in death, the other homeless in life." Reporter Kelly Cobiella relayed, without any doubt, the claims of a self-interested advocate: "There is no federal shelter to care for veterans. The burden falls on cash-strapped cities like New York which struggles to provide shelter for hundreds of veterans from World War II to Iraq. It is a growing problem, says Mary Brosnahan Sullivan with the Coalition for the Homeless." See: www.mediaresearch.org [9]

The April 27 CyberAlert followed up: Saturday's New York Times paired, on its front page, the killing in Afghanistan of NFL star-turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman and the plight of supposedly homeless Army veteran Nicole Goodwin -- just as did the CBS Evening News that night, as highlighted in the April 26 CyberAlert. See: www.mediaresearch.org [10]

Earlier this year, NBC hopped on the subject, as reported in the January 26 CyberAlert:
NBC Nightly News on Tuesday night found a direct connection to President Bush in a poster veteran to illustrate the supposed problem of homelessness amongst soldiers returning from Iraq: A woman Bush put his arm around during his Thanksgiving stop in Iraq in 2003. Mike Taibbi asked: "An Iraq war vet with no place to live? Well, it turns out that Varetta Barnes is only one of about one hundred veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who tumbled quickly into homelessness." Her solution, Taibbi relayed, "was to re-enlist for active duty, hoping for a job as a recruiter, but also willing to return to Iraq" because "at least the Army means a job and a home." A hundred vets out of the hundreds of thousands who have been in Iraq is hardly a significant number. See: www.mediaresearch.org [11]

Back to the March 25 CBS Evening News, Schieffer plugged the upcoming story: "And coming up next: He served his country in Iraq, but ended up homeless -- and he's not the only one. We'll look at why it's happening."

Schieffer introduced the subsequent piece by admitting his naivete: "The war is taking its toll on Iraqis and Americans in many ways. Byron Pitts is in Baghdad, working a side of the story that, frankly, I didn't know about."

Pitts began, from Iraq: "Well, Bob, according to the Department of Veteran Affairs, there are now at least a hundred Iraq war veterans who are now homeless. For some, this war, this place is simply more than they can bear."
Pitts, over video of Herold Noel walking outside in snow: "For 25-year old Herold Noel, this winter, like this war, has not been kind. When Iraqi Freedom began, Private First Class Herold Noel was a soldier in the U.S. Army's Third Infantry Division, pounding a path into Baghdad."
Noel: "I fought for this country. I shed blood for this country. I watched friends die."
Pitts: "And like so many, Noel came home a hero, but he wound up homeless."
Noel, in New York City, opening back door of what looked to be a new model Jeep Grand Cherokee: "This is where I keep all my stuff."
Pitts: "He started living out of the back of his jeep when most of his clothes and all of his military medals were stolen at a homeless shelter."
Noel: "If ever I need to go on an interview, I got my tie, got my shirt, so I keep it as clean as I can."
Pitts to Noel: "For a job interview?"
Noel: "Yeah."
Pitts: "When the war in Vietnam washed up the first wave of veterans in need of shelter, the Department of Veteran Affairs had no homeless programs at all. Today, they provide services in every state, still as many as 275,000 vets will likely sleep out in the cold tonight.
Pitts to Peter Dougherty: "Why weren't all the lessons of Vietnam learned this time so there wouldn't be any homeless veterans?"
Peter Dougherty, Department of Veterans Affairs: "Most of the veterans that we're seeing have a mental health and a substance abuse problem. Those problems are the underlying factors."
Pitts: "Herold was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. Unemployed, married with three kids, he couldn't get a job."
Noel: "The physical war is over. The mental war has just begun."
Pitts to Dougherty: "The system is better than it was during Vietnam?"
Dougherty: "The system is a whole lot better that it was before."
Pitts: "But there's a 'but' there, sounds like."
Dougherty: "Well, no, the 'but' is that we have to find them."
Pitts: "Filmmaker Dan Lohaus found them on the street and in shelters across the country. Herold Noel was one of them."
Pitts to Lohaus: "So this is a soldier at his breaking point?"
Lohaus, with on screen text identifying him only as a "filmmaker," in front of computer screen showing his movie: "This is a solder at rock bottom."
Noel in his car, in the Lohaus film, identified on screen as "When I Came Home, GNN.TV": "I put applications in. I did all that. They lost my application three [bleep] times."
Pitts: "This time, a city housing agency has given him the runaround yet again."
Noel, in his car in the film: "I fought for my country, man. My country shouldn't be doing this to me, man."
Pitts praised Lohaus: "It's powerful stuff."
Lohaus: "It's terrible to know that he's not the only one crying in his car."
Pitts to Lohaus: "This may sound like an insensitive question, but why should anyone care about Herold, about the others?"
Lohaus: "If these are the folks who are protecting us, and we are treating them this way, who is going to sign up? Who's going to do it next time?"
Pitts concluded: "Still, Herold Noel is one of the luckier ones. Just recently, an anonymous donor heard Herold's story and is paying his rent for a year. Tonight, one Iraq war veteran is off the street, but somewhere soon another could well take his place."

Schieffer then asked Pitts: "Why do you think the VA hasn't done a better job on this? Obviously they're doing better this time around than they did in Vietnam but you might have expected they would have learned more from that experience than perhaps they have?"
Pitts answered from Iraq: "Well Bob, it comes down to resources. When talking to the folks at VA, they say the system is better now. For instance, during Vietnam, a veteran might have to wait ten months to receive services. Now that system's back down to about ten weeks. They admit the system's better, but it's still not perfect."

A check of the "GNN.TV" Web address determined it stands for "Guerrilla News Network." Amongst the "headlines" on it at about the time Friday the Pitts piece aired:

- "Democracy -- or is it the US military -- on the march
- "Capitol bill aims to control 'leftist' profs
- "Terrorism, the Law and Guilt by Association
- "Schwarzenegger May Face UK Libel Trial
- "No Bull: Animal Rights Group to Stage 'Running of the Nudes'
- "Is Bush's empire coming unstuck in Iraq?"

Amongst the "articles" highlighted:

- "Saddam and 9/11: Americans still believe Bush's war propaganda
- "New Undeclared Arms Race
- "Military Free Zones
- "Why Iraq Withdrawal Makes Sense
- "Democracy: Coming to America
- "Some Justice for the Other 9/11"

The film CBS showcased, When I Come Home, is listed as a "work in progress." See: www.gnn.tv [12]

GNN.TV's newest film: "Bush Boys." See if you can follow this: "In early 2004, DJ Danger Mouse became world famous for his 'Grey Album,' the Jay Z/Beatles mash-up that sent hundreds of lawyers into convulsions. Months earlier, Danger Mouse had dropped his acclaimed hip-hop record Ghetto Pop Life. 'Bush Boys,' an anti-Bush anthem with lyrics by MC Jemini, was part of that masterpiece. The video for 'Bush Boys' is a collaboration between Danger Mouse and his longtime friend, video producer Alex Motlagh, who had access to CNN's vast library. The video was first seen in 'Under the Influence,' a compilation DVD by Atlanta's film collective YETI. subMedia put the video online on April of 2003 and since it has been downloaded over 100,000 times. 'Bush Boys' will be included in subMedia's upcoming DVD/Zine 'Molotov.'" See: www.gnn.tv [13]

If any of that is not news to you, you're ahead of me.

-- Brent Baker [14]