TV News LIES

Even as headlines and broadcast news are dominated by BP's fire-ravaged, sunken offshore rig and the ruptured well gushing a reported 210,000 gallons of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico, there's another important story involving Big Oil and pollution -- one that shatters not only the environment but the essential First Amendment right of journalists to tell truth and shame the devil.

The director Michael Moore says that a federal judge’s ruling to allow Chevron to subpoena footage from the documentary “Crude” could have dire consequences on the documentary filmmaking process, and urged that film’s director to resist the subpoena if he can.

Mass media are media forms designed to reach the largest audience possible. They include television, movies, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, records, video games and the internet. Many studies have been conducted in the past century to measure the effects of mass media on the population in order to discover the best techniques to influence it. From those studies emerged the science of Communications, which is used in marketing, public relations and politics. Mass communication is a necessary tool the insure the functionality of a large democracy; it is also a necessary tool for a dictatorship. It all depends on its usage.

In the wake of the catastrophic oil spill currently occurring in the Gulf of Mexico, Media Matters reviews Fox News' fervent advocacy for offshore drilling. Its activism has including promoting Sarah Palin's "drill, baby, drill" mantra and pushing myths suggesting that drilling is environmentally safe.

The leaders of China, Russia and Rwanda are among the worst "predators of press freedom" according to Reporters Without Borders. The annual report from the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders, published to mark World Media Freedom Day, highlights the worst offenders of media censorship and violence.

Yesterday the BBC issued an apology for a joke told by Frankie Boyle on Radio 4 comedy programme Political Animal in 2008.

Today, however, the controversial comedian has lashed out at the BBC, branding them 'cowardly' and 'cravenly afraid of giving offence' after censuring one of his jokes.