It’s amazing the way corporate ownership affects the news coverage. Today is a perfect example. While CNN’s website features a teaser for a broadcast piece with the headline “Go inside the world of illegal dogfighting! The secret subculture exposed by an NFL star's indictment” (the exclamation point, by the way, has not been added), a lead item on the continuing investigation into the death of former NFL defensive back Pat Tillman, and another on a 12-year-old girl killed by a softball—not to mention more coverage of the NBA betting scandal—the real news goes unreported.
A third person was arrested today in—get this—the biggest ever Army contract-rigging and bribery case to come out of Iraq. We’re talking about $15 million of taxpayer money, public servants, and contractors sucking at the teat of the LOGCAP contract for Iraq (check out this month's Forum in the magazine for more on that particular gem).
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s part of a July 26 report from the AP:
“A third member of a Texas family has been arrested in connection with what a federal official says is the largest Army contract-rigging and bribery case to emerge from the Iraq reconstruction effort.
"Carolyn Blake, a former schoolteacher, was charged Wednesday with laundering money and conspiring to accept $3.1 million (euro2.26 million) in bribes from contractors.
"Blake is accused of working with her brother, Maj. John L. Cockerham, a contracting and procurement officer assigned to Fort Sam Houston, who was arrested Monday on charges that allege he took $9.6 million (euro 6.99 million) in kickbacks and anticipated receiving $5.4 million (euro3.93 million) more for rigging military supply contracts.
"His wife, Melissa Cockerham, 40, was also arrested Monday on charges she accepted bribery payments for her husband and helped conceal them.
"Investigators say the payments occurred in 2004 and 2005, with the money being deposited to banks in the Middle East and then moved to offshore banks in the Caribbean.
"‘This is the largest bribery case that's come out of the Iraq reconstruction experience,’ Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, told the San Antonio Express-News.”
And as if that isn’t salacious enough for the mainstream news organizations, here’s something else uncovered by a local Texas paper, the San Antonio Express-News:
“It was unclear how the government learned about the bribes to Cockerham, but various sources told the Express-News that the case is one in a pattern of contract-rigging and bribery cases at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait, involving multiple members of the military, including some who died under mysterious circumstances as investigators closed in.”
Hmmmm. One might think there’s a story there, eh? But why bother doing difficult reporting work when you can take us “inside the illegal world of dogfighting!”
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Comments on this entry:
Funny, I don't see this company shucking the mundane, silly trappings of self-absorption and skin to turn to hard news. It'd be one thing for a hard news organization to levy this complaint against another, but Playboy? Please.
Money. Mouth. Some assembly required. Or just stick to the boobs and cars and "finer things."
malren's premise is illogical and untenable. There's a rule about who's allowed to critique and who's not? That just plays into the hands of oligarchs and those who hold the means of (information) production. CNN runs a tagline that reads "The Most Trusted Name in News" while spoon feeding sensationalist ratings-boosting, car ad-selling schlock to a misinformed public that becomes more paranoid and addicted with every bullshit story.
Going a step further, the televised media's presentation of the Vick story, for example, is more gratuitous, vicariously thrilling and pornographic than anything Playboy magazine has ever photographed.