The story of the century

The link in my title is not to the ENTIRE story of the century, but a PART of it. No the story of the century has nothing to do with the Plame leak. The story of the century is organized media deception. I have seen story after story, photo set after photo set where there is undeniable proof that the media source has deliberately manipulated; changing the truth into a lie.

In this link FromthePen.com has shown two versions of the same picture of Condi Rice that appeared in different online versions of USAToday. He has provided links to each of these versions, which I clicked on and saw with my own eyes. What has happened is that someone in the photo room has taken the original photo and doctored Condi's eyes to make them look almost demonic; at the least the change detracts from her appearance.

Many might say this is a non-story, that the simple manipulation is harmless. I would strongly disagree. The little people like me depend on news outlets to provide accurate coverage of world events. Nobody can possibly on their own get a first hand account of all the events going on in the world, so we depend on news to view, research, document, photograph as it happened so we can take those precious facts and draw our own conclusions. That last sentence would be met with derision by many in the media I fear, who think it is their job to take the facts and transform them into what they want me to see.

The manipulation in the media goes deep. With every event, there are several key media people between me and the facts. I am at their mercy to decide what I should and should not see. If something happens and they don't want me to see it, they hide it. If it is something they want me to see, they present it bold, upfront and repeatedly. If something does not happen and they want me to see it, they will manufacture or manipulate so I see it.

What this picture represents should make everyone very angry. USAToday should find who manipulated the picture and plaster a 3/4 page picture of that person on the front page with a retraction in bold and an apology at the bottom. This story should be the lead story on every news station regardless of what happens in the Plame indictments. Of course it will not be, because to emphasize it, they know they indict themselves because they manipulate the news every day. We have heard stories of the old USSR and China and Iraq under Saddam where the government forces the media to censor and manipulate the news to keep the citizens uninformed or misinformed. It is a shame when this happens in the land of the free.