Propaganda Channel

This is a reactionary rant on a news snip-it about the new Pentagon Channel.  I have not watched a minute of this channel yet but I saw snippets of Rumsfeld being interviewed talking about the positive things going on in Iraq.  This infuriates me.  My tax dollars are being spent on a t.v. channel that tells me how great a job the military is doing.  To borrow an abused phrase "This is un-American." 

The premise of the station is to support the troops.  Now the troops everywhere in the US can get up to the minute military news. But does anyone think there will be realistic footage of what battle really looks like.  Will we see any funerals or shows on the fallen troops?  Oh, this negative information might hurt the troops?  I doubt it.  Our troops are extremely tough and brave.  They are also not stupid.  They know the realities of war much better than us civilians so I don't see the value in hiding the realities from the rest of us. 

By definition this is biased news.  Do you think if Microsoft created a channel to help developers that they would be promoting the values of Lynx?

This propaganda is going to be spewed to support warfare that I believe hurts my country's security and I am paying for it.  Can anyone say 1984?

Comments

[Peter]

How do you feel about NPR? I ask cause I listen to it nearly every day, I also just watched an awesome documentary on Castro on PBS.

Basically is it the military propoganda that kills you or the govt funding the programing?

[erik]

It is the government sponsoring programming that promotes its own actions that bothers me. The fact that it is military propaganda makes it even scarier.

By bringing up NPR and PBS, I am assuming that you are referring of them to be at least partially government sponsored. I rarely get to listen to NPR, although I wish I did. I enjoy watching PBS. I find both of these to be un-biased (many neo-cons / bushies might disagree) so it doesn't bother me as much. But ideally the government should not sponsor media.