What the hell is this?  I thought, of all places, that HISTARCH would be a
Monica-free zone.




At 06:40 AM 6/18/99 -0400, you wrote:
>Dear Reader,
>
>     Over the last decade or so, but most especially during the year
>1998, and continuing into the present year, a very large percentage
>of the citizens of this country have become very deeply disturbed and
>indeed alarmed by certain events. However, so far, few enough have given
>much open expression to this alarm, partly out of a fear of being taken
>for "nuts", and partly out of a nagging sense or fear that perhaps
>they really were a little off balance ("Since others aren't speaking
>up, I'd best repress these feelings; perhaps my perceptions are off,"
>etc., etc.).  This sense of alarm was given rise to by two growing
>convictions, which, while being products more of intuition than of
>empirical thought, were nevertheless extraordinarily powerful, and
>seemingly undeniable.
>
>     The first of these two convictions was that there was under way
>an unprecedentadly vicious, pervasive, nasty, unfair, and unrelenting
>campaign to discredit, humiliate, and stigmatize the president at all
>costs, partly by simply misrepresenting facts, and partly by ceaselessly
>and idioticaly fixating on insignificant transgressions on the part
>of the president, in a breakneck and absurd attempt to turn peccadilloes
>into grave sins.
>
>     The second of these convictions was a paralyzing sense of certainty
>that, although such a defamation campaign was certainly in progress,
>there was nothing that an individual citizen could do about it, considering
>the all-pervasive power of the press and media, and the apparent
impossibility
> of an individual to get his voice heard.  Many, in fact, felt that
>to even try confronting the media might somehow be "unwise", attributing
>to the media and their controllers a forbidding and austere
unapproachableness,
>a notion given currency by some of the more ridiculous depictions of
>media heads in films such as 'Network.'  This second conviction left
>people with a profound sense of powerlessness, and a sense that they
>were alone in their alarm.
>
>     The first of these convictions is absolutely correct.  The second,
>fortunately, is not, due to some recent developments, and it is becoming
>less and less correct almost daily.  It is becoming less so because
>there is now a rapidly growing number of conscientious, honest and
>responsible members of the press who have broken away from the traditional
>mainstream media, which latter have come more and more under the full
>control of powerful corporate entities, entities which have, to serve
>their own financial interests, distorted the business of providing
>news to the public to the point that once respectable news agencies
>have become littlle more than propaganda vehicles in many areas.  These
>breakaway newspeople have taken the initiative of establishing new
>non-corporately owned newspapers and journals, mostly online, that
>is, a sort of new free press.  They have done this to with the purpose
>of restoring to the public the sort of consistently reliable fonts
>of information on political issues without which no participatory democracy
>can function.  Most of the readers of the present e-mail list are
professional
>persons, scholars, etc., that is, persons accustomed to casting a critical
>eye on what they read.  The ring of authenticity, professionalism and
>sincerity in the articles from these new presses, which can be read
>quite free of charge at the Web addresses I have provided below will
>be immediately obvious to them.  Immediately obvious too will be the
>what, the who, the why, and the how of the almost unbelievable campaign
>against President Clinton.  This, the real major story of 1998, is
>coming to be referred to in mock irony as MediaGate, almost untouched
>by the mainstream media, due to their own prominent part in it.  Finally,
>immediately obvious will be the enormity of several genuine scandals
>which have been suppressed by this mainstream press, scandals of a
>non-sexual and really socially harmful nature involving many of the very
>persons who led the attacks on Mr. Clinton.
>
>     Start out by reading the two articles for which I have provided
>specific article links after this paragraph.  I assure you that, if
>you have been disturbed and bewildered by the types of feelings described
>above, you will be astonished, but also much relieved, by the enlightenment
>they will bring you.  And if you read these two items, I guarantee
>you you will then proceed to the other URL's listed at the end here,
>and click about in them for awhile, after which you will have a very
>clear picture indeed of what has been going on.  You will also be quite
>appalled at the depths to which once reliable organs have sunk in only
>a few years, organs such as The New York Times, The Washington Post,
>The Wall Street Journal, ABC, CBS, NBD, et al.  When organs such as
>these degenerate, they obviously will not do so in ways which will
>make that degeneration obvious to readers and viewers, and, until their
>unreliability becomes generally exposed, the fact that a great many
>people will continue to consider them to be the reliable sources they
>once were obviously presents tremendous dangers.  The information at
>the two URL's following will put that misconception to rest:
>
>     http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/1998/02/cov_24news.html
>
>          and
>
>     http://www.brillscontent.com/features/pressgate1_0898.html
>     (This, by Steven Brill, also includes a lengthy response by Kenneth
>Starr, as well as Brill's response back.  See also the related URL
>http://www.brillscontent.com/columns/rewind_0998.html)
>
>     You might also wish, before checking these two sites, take a look
>at the site for Harvard University's Shorenstein Center for the Press
>and Politics, especially the short monograph, "The Rise of the 'New
>News': A Case Study of Two Root Causes of the Modern Scandal Coverage,'
>by Prof. Marvin Kalb, who heads the Shorenstein Center.  It is revealing
>in itself, and also provides meaningful and helpful background to the
>works at the URL's above, and at the end here.  The URL for the monograph
>is: http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/presspol/news_events/82546_D-34.pdf,
>or you can order a hard copy from Harvard's Shorenstein Center, 617-495-8269
>(You need an Adobe Acrobat Reader to read the online version, unlike
>all the other addresses given here, which are plain Web pages.)
>
>     Our nation, as you will see from these alternate sources, is in
>a dire predicament indeed due to big money interests manipulating the
>news to their own ends, and due also to a related very recent practice
>on the part of news agencies to discard the old rule that a journalist,
>if at all possible, should find two confirming sources for any lead
>he comes upon before commiting it to print.  Often reporters settle
>now not just for one confirmation, but even none at all, putting themselves
>on the level of a Matt Drudge.  The term "MediaGate" (or "PressGate")
>is coming to be used by the new free press and mediawatch organizations
>to refer to the present deploable state of the mainstream media, and,
>since MediaGate IS the media, they will say nothing about it.
>
>     The media refuse to change.  Even the government has had very
>little success in trying to make them more responsible.  But, thanks
>to the rise of this new free press, whose honesty, candidness and,
>yes, fearlessness will astound and refresh you (especially after the
>mushy nonsense and disinformation we have been offerred of late), this
>no longer need be a problem at all.  We can simply go around them,
>and, in a fairly short time I think, either eliminate them, or force
>them back on track.  The only problem at the moment is that awareness
>of the availability of these new presses, and awareness of the depths
>to which the traditional media have fallen, has not yet spread far
>enough.  That is why I am posting this message to a large number of
>listservers (e-mail lists), choosing intentionally those which contain
>a large number of subscribers.  The largest publicly accessible lists
>to which registered members can post messages have 1000 to 2000 members,
>with a few approaching 3000, and there are many hundreds, if not thousands
>with memberships between 500 and 1000, and my hope is to reach some
>50,000 to 100,000 persons, many of them educated and civic-minded
>people.  If you have an automatic dispersal mechanism in your e-mail
>program, via which you can instantly send this on to all your e-mail
>correspondents, I implore you, as good citizens, to do so.  When an
>individual becomes informed about corporate media misdoings, that is
>good, but when he also knows that millions of others know, that is
>much better, for it emboldens him or her.  Also you might drop a short
>message of your own to your e-mail group, and tell them not to delete
>this message, but read it, even though it does not deal with the groups
>usual topics.  I believe this is justified considering the importance
>of the message.
>
>     The articles at the following sites will leave you well-informed
>indeed about our situation:
>
>     http://www.salonmagazine.com
>     This is the online journal Salon, the most prominent of the new
>presses, founded and edited by David Talbot.  It is as scrupulously
>reliable as a news source can get, and many of the most highly respected
>journalists, as Joe Conason, Murray Waas, Mollie Dickenson contribute
>to it, providing the public with much information which they would
>not be able to get out through the mainstream media.
>     In particular, concerning both MediaGate and the attacks upon
>the president, see the following:
>     http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/special/clinton/whitewater.html
>     http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/1998/01/23list.html
>     http://www.salonmagazine.com/news/1999/03/15news.html
>
>     http://www.brillscontent.com
>     This is Steven Brill's journal, like Talbot's utterly scrupulous
>and reliable.  Its specialty is reporting ON the traditional media
>and press, and it also has a list of star contributors, as does Salon.
>>From the homepage, click the "ARCHIVE" link, which takes you to a series
>of links (clicks) containing the contents of all past issues.  As with
>Salon, all the articles can be read or printed out free.
>
>     http://www.thenation.com
>     This is The Nation:  Digital Edition, the online variant of the
>much respected print weekly, The Nation.  It is famous for its incisive
>reporting.  At the home page, click down to the heading "RECENT", where
>click the link "Starr and Willey."  Also, for some startling insights
>into some probable truly dreadful activities of the two previous
administrations
>(activities the enormity of which show clearly the absurdity of a year-long
>fixation on presidential sexcapades), click "Search", after which click
>in the box and type in:  Contras crack C.I.A. , then click "Go", for
>a series of articles exposing not only horrendous doings, but also
>the frantic efforts of the major media to discredit the stories, efforts
>successful enough to have convinced many discerning readers that the
>story probably belongs to the area of urban myths.  You can decide
>from this and articles in the following.
>
>     http://www.consortiumnews.com
>     This is The Consortium, founded and edited by Robert Parry.  While
>Parry, unlike Talbot and Brill, has been accused by some of overzealousness,
>he is generally quite reliable.  He is famous among journalists for
>being the reporter who first broke the Iran-Contra affair, and his
>several periodical publications are subscribed to by Harvard's Library,
>as well as many others.  See especially:
>     http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/clinton.html
>     http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/crack.html
>     http://www.consortiumnews.com/050899b.html
>
>     http://www.rain.org/~openmind/flashcon.htm
>     The Real News Page.  While more a grass-roots production, not
>as professional as the above, this is honest and informative.  It publishes
>information at its site irregularly, but it provides a wealth of useful
>information and useful perspectives.  See especially:
>     http://www.rain.org/~openmind/back66.htm
>     http://www.rain.org/~openmind/mediagat.htm
>
>     http://www.american-politics.com
>     A good site which gathers information from all over and provides
>meaningful commentary on the Web.  The following is quoted from their
>site:  "American Politics Journal is the fastest-growing political site
>on the Internet.Our daily commentary is  read by America's most powerful
>decision makers and opinion makers Five days a week, we tear the lid off
>the funny business that passes forpolitics, press coverage, justice and
>punditry in America.We pull no punches.  We speak truth to power.  And we
>even manage to find a chuckle or two in the process!  Tell your friends
>they can subscribe for FREE by filling out the form at
>http://www.american-politics.com/subNEW.html
>
>     For some other grass-roots new free press links (clicks), see
>the links list at http://www.rain.org/'openmind/stop11.htm, including
>sources of varying degrees of reliability, although the above are the
>best, and certainly sufficient in themselves.
>
>     For those with no Web access, the following printed works will
>be more than sufficient to get a pretty good picture of the situation:
>
>     Bagdikian, Ben H. 'The Media Monopoly.'  Boston, Beacon Press,
>1997. (Bagdikian is dean emiritus at the Graduate School of Journalism
>at Berkeley.)
>
>     Dershowitz, Alan M.  'Sexual McCarthyism:  Clinton, Starr, and the
>Emerging Constitutional Crisis.'  New York, Basic Books, 1998. (Dershowitz
>is the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and
>is one of the country's most prominent legal scholars.)
>
>     Hamill, Pete. 'News Is a Verb:  Journalism at the End of the Twentieth
>Century.'  New York, Ballantine, 1998. (Hamill is former editor-in-chief
>of 'The New York Post, and a lifelong newspaperman.  The book is published
>in the 'Library of Contemporary Thought' series.)
>
>     Lyons, Gene.  'Fools for Scandal:  How the Media Invented Whitewater.'
> New York, Franklin Square Press, 1996. (Do not think this valuable
>work is dated, for it makes the background of the events of 1998 much
>clearer  Lyons is a former editor of 'Newsweek', and currently is a
>newspaper columnist, and a book reviewer for 'Entertainment Weekly.'
>The book was co-authored by the editors of 'Harper's Magazine.')
>
>     McChesney, Robert W.  'Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy.'
>New York, Seven Stories Press, 1997. (McChesney is Associate Professor
>of Communication at the University of Illinois, and a widely-respected
>expert in his field, who has written and contributed to a large number
>of works on the press and media.)
>
>     Retter, James D.  'Anatomy of a Scandal:  An Investigation Into
>the Campaign to Undermine the Clinton Presidency.'  Los Angeles, General
>Publishing Group, 1998. (Retter is a freelance writer who has developed,
>written and produced properties for NBC, CBS, HBO, and Turner Broadcasting.
>
>     The following two articles are also revealing:
>
>     Kalb, Marvin, "The Starr Subpoenas and the Strange Press Silence."
>'Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics,' vol. 3, no. 4 (Fall,
>1998), pp. 1-5.
>
>     Korner, Victor A., "Has the Press Succumbed to the Independent
>Counel?:  The Secret Law of Compelled Disclosure."  In the same journal
>and number, pp. 114-19.
>
>                   _______________________________
>
>     In closing, I would like to apologize for intruding upon this
>mail-list with a communication unrelated to its theme.  I certainly
>would not have done so had I been able to come up with a different
>means to disseminate this information, which I sincerely believe deals
>with a situation which represents a genuine threat to democracy as
>we have known it.
>
>     Thank you sincerely for your time and patience.
>
>Douglas W Sims
>[log in to unmask]
>