COMMENT FROM THE WEBMASTER: Here you will see only a handful of articles pertaining to 'Big Brother's - Ministry of Truth' - please check our 'Latest Headlines' from the main menu above to see up-to date stories.

• Bush "Planted Fake News Stories on American TV" - Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products. Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.

• BBC to Time-Delay Live Sensitive News - The BBC will introduce a time delay for live broadcasts of sensitive news events such as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States and the school massacre in Beslan, Russia, the company said Thursday. The several-second delay will allow editors time to cut scenes deemed too shocking, the broadcaster said.

• Local Television’s Dirty Little Secret - An exposé by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) and Free Press reveals that corporate propaganda has infiltrated local television news across the country. CMD, which conducted the investigation, caught 77 local stations that had slipped corporate-sponsored “video news releases” — segments promoting commercial brands and products — into their regular news programming. These advertisements were passed off to unsuspecting viewers as legitimate news reports.

• EU seeks to regulate television on the net - EUROPE wants to begin to regulate the internet for the first time by introducing controversial rules to cover television online. Brussels is considering regulating areas such as taste and decency, accuracy and impartiality for internet broadcasters. More broadly, it is thinking about relaxing rules governing the frequency and amount of advertising on television.

• Bush TV ad pulled over doctored crowd scene - George Bush's campaign team has been forced to pull a television advert after admitting a picture of the president addressing the troops in Iraq had been digitally enhanced. The election ad showed President Bush addressing the Republican National Convention before cutting to a photograph of a group of soldiers at a rally in New York. But the liberal weblog, DailyKos, showed that the same faces appeared several times in several different places within the same crowd shot.

• TERRORIST 'CHIEF' IS US SPIN - TERROR mastermind Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi is a largely fictitious bogeyman invented to help an American propaganda war in Iraq, it was claimed last night. Senior US military and intelligence officers admitted they have "overstated" the importance of the Jordanian-born al-Qaeda chief. Evidence has emerged that spin doctors also bombarded the "home audience" with exaggerated stories about al-Zarqawi, who is rumoured to have personally decapitated British hostage Ken Bigley in 2004.

• Oscar-winner Dreyfuss campaigns against “shaped news” - Richard Dreyfuss has challenged the establishment for decades and now the maverick actor and activist is taking on the mainstream media. The Oscar-winning star says an obsession with delivering instantaneous news and images provides too little context for audiences to reflect and understand what is happening in the world.    (Alt. Backup Link)

• "We need to be told": John Pilger Nails the Capitalist Media - When journalists report propaganda instead of the truth, the consequences can be catastrophic - as one largely forgotten instance demonstrates.

• It's propaganda time - CRITICS OF THE Iraq war are outraged over the revelation that the U.S. military has been paying millions of dollars to plant pro-American, Pentagon-written propaganda articles in Iraqi newspapers and to buy off Iraqi journalists with monthly stipends. But in my opinion, it's about time. Information is a critical part of any war, and the U.S. has for too long — to its own detriment — ignored this powerful and essential tool, a tool especially well-suited to the globalized Information Age.

• The propaganda we pass off as news around the world: A British government-funded fake TV news service allows mild criticism of the US - all the better to support it - A succession of scandals in the US has revealed widespread government funding of PR agencies to produce "fake news". Actors take the place of journalists and the "news" is broadcast as if it were genuine. The same practice has been adopted in Iraq, where newspapers have been paid to insert copy. These stories have raised the usual eyebrows in the UK about the pitiful quality of US democracy. Things are better here, we imply. We have a prime minister who claimed in 2004 that "the values that drive our actions abroad are the same values of progress and justice that drive us at home". Yet in 2002 the government launched a littleknown television propaganda service that seems to mimic the US government's deceptive approach to fake news.

• BBC links to MI6?: Is John Simpson naive or unlucky or is he working for MI6? - Nicola Jones, writing in New Scientist, 19 November 2001, pointed out that 'Taliban nuclear documents' found by BBC reporter John Simpson were identical to a spoof article. In 2001, John Simpson claimed he had found documents strewn on the floor of a Taliban recruitment centre in Kabul. He claimed these documents apparently described how to build a thermonuclear device.

• VIDEO - White House Pushed UK to Kill al-Jazeera Bombing Story: Bush wanted to bomb Arab news network to prevent reports on Falluja attack - On Wednesday, Downing Street threatened The Daily Mirror with prosecution under the Britain's Official Secrets act for the disclosing a memo that indicated Blair had convinced Bush not to bomb the Arab language news network al-Jazeera. News organizations in the U.K. can no longer report the contents of the memo but a report from London's Channel 4 News questions this first and historic use of the Official Secrets Act against the press. Their reporting concludes that White House pressure led to the threat of legal action against The Daily Mirror.

• US military news stories were paid advertisements: senator - The US military intended news stories that were placed in Iraqi newspapers to be "paid advertisements," but some ran without disclaimers that they had been paid for, a US senator said Friday. Senator John Warner, after being briefed by defense officials, said the Pentagon was still gathering information on the extent of the secret program and whether Iraqi journalists were paid by the military to write favorable stories.

• NBC Stuck to Sunny Rebroadcast of Last Year's M&M's - NBC did not interrupt its broadcast of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade yesterday to bring viewers the news that an M&M balloon had crashed into a light pole, injuring two sisters. In fact, when the time came in the tightly scripted three-hour program for the M&Ms' appearance, NBC weaved in tape of the balloon crossing the finish line at last year's parade - even as the damaged balloon itself was being dragged from the accident scene. At 11:47 a.m., as an 11-year-old girl and her 26-year-old sister were being treated for injuries, the parade's on-air announcers - Katie Couric, Matt Lauer and Al Roker - kept up their light-hearted repartee from Herald Square, where the parade ends. 

• THE BETRAYAL OF THE MEDIA: It us unfortunately common practice in the media to label as mad or bad, anyone who talks out on the new world order (at least as a negative). Often presenting the person(s) as crazy, manipulative to ones own end (i.e. fame or fortune), racist or having too much time on ones hands. Here we shall see a prime example of how the British media portrays such a person. (With an option to view the video at the end).

• Documents Show Nixon Deception on Cambodia - Even after Richard Nixon's secret war in Cambodia became known, the president persisted in deception. "Publicly, we say one thing," he told aides. "Actually, we do another." Newly declassified documents from the Nixon years shed light on the Vietnam War, the struggle with the Soviet Union for global influence and a president who tried not to let public and congressional opinion get in his way.

• Bush Administration Media Collusion Memos Surface - In a disturbing turn of events for an administration already plagued by sagging poll numbers and waning support for the Iraq war, Friday's revelation that the Bush Administration issued direct guidelines for programming to media outlets is troubling even die-hard conservatives. Late Friday a series of memos between senior Bush Administration officials and management at Viacom, Inc. were leaked calling for the media giant to focus on stories and programming choices that "reinforce the Administration's positions" and to "ignore and/or discredit points of view in opposition to the Bush Administration's foreign policy objectives for the purposes of National Security."

• Rude voters 'are copying Paxman' - Voters are becoming more rude to politicians - and the BBC's Jeremy Paxman is to blame, a senior Tory says. Caroline Spelman said she was "shocked" by the hostility she encountered from the public during the general election. "The practice of not allowing people to finish their sentences has really caught on," she told a fringe meeting at the Tory conference in Blackpool. "I think the public feel it is perfectly OK to be just as rude as Jeremy Paxman," she said.

• VIDEO - White House Pushed UK to Kill al-Jazeera Bombing Story: Bush wanted to bomb Arab news network to prevent reports on Falluja attack - On Wednesday, Downing Street threatened The Daily Mirror with prosecution under the Britain's Official Secrets act for the disclosing a memo that indicated Blair had convinced Bush not to bomb the Arab language news network al-Jazeera. News organizations in the U.K. can no longer report the contents of the memo but a report from London's Channel 4 News questions this first and historic use of the Official Secrets Act against the press. Their reporting concludes that White House pressure led to the threat of legal action against The Daily Mirror.   (Alt. Backup Link)

• 1984 RELOADED - Our editorials exist to provide a degree of perspective on cinematic trends and ideas beyond the limited range of a single review. One area that we at The Cinematic Verses repeatedly return to in discussion is how life imitates art. While the debate over which drives the other is a topic for another day, we have decided to document some of the more bizarre crossovers, and expand our editorials from an exclusive focus on how film compares to film, but also how film compares to real life. Along those lines, I've been having a profound sense of déjà vu in relation to the news over the past few months, and I suddenly realized that the great tradition and balancing strength of political satire was triggering it. Here are a few notes documenting certain connections; feel free to draw your own conclusions.

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