Fox News ignores reports of Blackwater bribes
While Fox News has devoted its attention to organizations that have no business receiving money from the government, it seems they are slacking on the job now.
Featured below is an article from MediaMatters.org, a left leaning organization as you’ll notice from the way the article is written and the comments at the bottom. The original title is “After aggressively promoting ACORN videos, Fox News ignores reports of Blackwater bribes” but as you’ve noticed, I decided to cut the first part of the title out. While many people hated the fact that Fox News for once did its job well in exposing corruption involved with our tax dollars, others were glad to see ACORN defunded, even if it won’t be permanently. People are concerned about government waste and fraud, and rightly so with our record multi-trillion dollar deficits.
This is really the way the media works though. All of the major media outlets are owned by a handful of people, and these people either belong to the Republicans or Democrats. Each party has its own special interests they have to protect and a lot of the protection comes from these media outlets. This is why both sides are hypocrites when they proceed to call out one another for not covering something. This article does have merit though, which is why I’m posting it here. I just want everyone to be aware that left or right, they’re in it for themselves and the people with money and power, they could care less about the average person. So read on with an open mind, and don’t fall into the back and forth that they want you to become wrapped up in so you ignore the real issues.
On the evening of November 11, Fox News personalities did not discuss reports from the previous evening that officials at Xe Services, formerly Blackwater Worldwide, had authorized $1 million in bribery payments to Iraqi officials in the aftermath of a fatal shooting involving Blackwater security guards. By contrast, Fox News devoted more than one hour on September 10 to discussing videos of conservative activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles posing as a pimp and a prostitute while asking for assistance from employees at an ACORN office.
Top executives at Blackwater Worldwide authorized secret payments of about $1 million to Iraqi officials that were intended to silence their criticism and buy their support after a September 2007 episode in which Blackwater security guards fatally shot 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, according to former company officials.
Blackwater approved the cash payments in December 2007, the officials said, as protests over the deadly shootings in Nisour Square stoked long-simmering anger inside Iraq about reckless practices by the security company’s employees. American and Iraqi investigators had already concluded that the shootings were unjustified, top Iraqi officials were calling for Blackwater’s ouster from the country, and company officials feared that Blackwater might be refused an operating license it would need to retain its contracts with the State Department and private clients, worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually.
Four former executives said in interviews that Gary Jackson, who was then Blackwater’s president, had approved the bribes and that the money was sent from Amman, Jordan, where the company maintains an operations hub, to a top manager in Iraq. The executives, though, said they did not know whether the cash was delivered to Iraqi officials or the identities of the potential recipients.
Blackwater’s strategy of buying off the government officials, which would have been illegal under American law, created a deep rift inside the company, according to the former executives. [The New York Times, 11/10/09]
A Media Matters for America review of Fox News programming on November 11, the night after the story broke, indicates that no Fox News host or guest discussed Blackwater or Xe Services, according to transcripts available in the Nexis and Factiva news databases.
We need media that will drag the special interests groups out into public for everyone to see their misdeeds. It won’t happen as long as we keep voting Republican and Democrat though.
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