Yes Dorothy there really are people who want to control what you think, and if facts contradict their agenda, then the facts must be wrong, or so they would have you believe. If lying propagandists can successfully deny facts, distort or divert attention from them, or best of all keep certain facts hidden from you altogether, they can successfully manipulate you to believe in a false movie-set kind of worldview. There's frequently a thin facade of ideology hiding the manipulators' agendas, and they will mightily strive to suppress any disturbing facts which might contradict those agendas.

In addition to facts, propagandists also attempt to eliminate or discredit ideas, and they have been behaving poorly in this way for a long time. In 1611 Galileo came to the attention of the Inquisition for his Copernican views which somehow threatened the infallible authority of the Roman Catholic Church. In 1616 a religious committee declared to the Inquisition that the propositions that the Sun is the center of the universe and that the Earth has an annual motion are absurd in philosophy, at least erroneous in theology, and formally a heresy. In 1633 Galileo was formally interrogated by the Inquisition for 18 days, threatened with torture, and ultimately imprisoned to indefinite house arrest, which ended with his death in 1642. Today's suppression of ideas is somewhat less heavy-handed, but if the Religious Right has their way we can expect more Inquisitions in our future.

It's too bad that most traditional media haven't fully adjusted yet to the online world which can hold their feet to the fire in spite of their worst intentions. Hopefully in some cases the exposed complicity of some media elements supporting the Bush propaganda machine will be shameful enough for them to reconsider their unethical positions and move them to do their jobs more responsibly.

The link to this story is now dead (www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000729669) about publisher David Copley of San Diego's Union-Tribune censoring stories critical of Bush, but he's just one example of someone calling himself a journalist who apparently could stand to learn what ethics means. The lack of journalistic ethics is so bad these days that Fox News has become a joke, they even went so far as to argue in court that they have a right to lie and distort the news, and they won!