Open Letter to Mainstream
News Media: Time to Call
For Pres/VP Impeachment
Yes, this means you, New York Times, Washington Post, NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, Time, Newsweek, and all the other mainstream news organizations that have let the Bush administration off the hook for the last six years!
By J. F. Miglio
Dear Editors,
Let's start off with a little realism. We all know the mainstream news organizations that you work for are owned and run by multinational corporations that care more about making money than protecting democracy.
We also know the big-name reporters of your news organizations care more about holding onto their six-and-seven-figure incomes than crossing their corporate masters and writing scathing exposes about the Bush administration.
And it goes without saying the Bush administration has made it a common practice to reward news reporters who play ball with them and make it very difficult for reporters who don't.
Given this scenario, is there any chance mainstream news organizations like yours will finally catch up to a majority of the American public and call for the impeachment, or at very least, the resignation of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney?
During the Clinton era, many of the nation's top newspapers, including USA Today, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Seattle Times, called for Bill Clinton to resign. So why the reluctance with Bush and Cheney?
I thought you guys were supposed to be "liberal," but most liberals I know are demanding impeachment. So maybe you're not so liberal. Or maybe you are liberal, but you're just too frightened to invoke the wrath of your corporate bosses, who aren't so liberal. Is that any way for a journalist to act? Shame on you!
How do you think Thomas Jefferson, who valued freedom of the press perhaps more than any other institution, would feel about your craven behavior? Remember his famous quote: "If I had to choose between a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I would choose newspapers without a government."
Well, what's done is done. You have shirked your responsibility for over six years by cheerleading for the Bush regime and supporting its unnecessary war in Iraq, by downplaying its larceny and incompetence, by equivocating about its unconstitutional malfeasance and intrusion into civil liberties.
And now you're ignoring a call for impeachment. The alternative press and millions of individual U.S. citizens have been calling for it for quite a while. This publication called for impeachment over a year ago. Click here. And last month Dennis Kucinich officially filed articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney. Click here
Despite this, you continue to keep your head in the sand-- make that quicksand!-- when you know damn well you could make all the difference in the world. Imagine, for a moment, if all the editors of the New York Times, the Washington Post, NBC News, etc. came out in the same week and called for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney!
You could change the course of history. You could prevent Thomas Jefferson from turning over in his grave. You could help redeem yourselves in the eyes of American citizens and help restore democracy to a country spiraling into a black hole of neo-fascism.
All it takes is an act of courage. If just one of you editors cast fate to the wind and called for impeachment, you know the rest of your fellow journalists would follow, because in their hearts, they know it is the right thing to do.
The question is, which of you has the balls to stand up for freedom of the press and do it?
