[Peace-discuss] Fwd: [sftalk] Grace News - Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
Alfred Kagan
akagan at uiuc.edu
Tue May 27 08:51:59 CDT 2003
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>Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 20:40:35 -0700 (PDT)
>Subject: [sftalk] Grace News - Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
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>> Grace News
>> By Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
>>
>> The U.S. government this week launched its Arabic
>> language satellite TV
>> news station for Muslim Iraq.
>>
>> It is being produced in a studio -- Grace Digital
>> Media -- controlled
>> by
>> fundamentalist Christians who are rabidly
>> pro-Israel.
>>
>> That's Grace as in "by the Grace of God."
>>
>> Grace Digital Media is controlled by a
>> fundamentalist
>> Christian
>> millionaire, Cheryl Reagan, who last year wrested
>> control of Federal
>> News Service, a transcription news service, from its
>> former owner,
>> Cortes Randell.
>>
>> Randell says he met Reagan at a prayer meeting,
>> brought her in as an
>> investor in Federal News Service, and then she
>> forced
>> him out of his
>> own
>> company.
>>
>> Grace Digital Media and Federal News Service are
>> housed in a downtown
>> Washington, D.C. office building, along with Grace
>> News Network.
>>
>> When you call the number for Grace News Network, you
>> get a person
>> answering "Grace Digital Media/Federal News
>> Service."
>>
>> According to its web site, Grace News Network is
>> "dedicated to
>> transmitting the evidence of God's presence in the
>> world today."
>>
>> "Grace News Network will be reporting the current
>> secular news, along
>> with aggressive proclamations that will 'change the
>> news' to reflect
>> the
>> Kingdom of God and its purposes," GNN proclaims.
>>
>> The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the U.S.
>> government agency
>> producing the television news broadcasts for Iraq,
>> likes to say it is
>> the BBC of the USA.
>>
>> BBG runs Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, and
>> Radio Sawa -- Arabic
>> language radio for the Middle East.
>>
>> "Our mission is clear," BBG's Joan Mower told us.
>> "To
>> broadcast
>> accurate
>> and objective news about the United States and the
>> world. We don't do
>> propaganda, leafleting -- we are like the BBC in
>> that
>> respect."
>>
>> Well, then why hook up with Grace?
>>
>> BBG's Joan Mower said that Grace Digital Media is a
>> mainstream
>> production house used by all kinds of mainstream
>> news
>> organizations.
>>
>> "Grace will have nothing to do with the editorial
>> side
>> of the news
>> broadcast," she said. "They are renting us
>> equipment,
>> space, studio.
>> The
>> Grace personnel we use include technicians,
>> production
>> people but no
>> editorial people."
>>
>> But Mower said she couldn't get us a copy of the
>> contract between BBG
>> and Grace Digital media. Nor could she say how Grace
>> Digital was chosen
>> as the production studio.
>>
>> Grace News Network proclaims that it will be a
>> "unique
>> tool in the
>> Lord's ministry plan for the world."
>>
>> "Grace News Network provides networking links and
>> portals to various
>> ministries and news services that will be of benefit
>> to every Christian
>> believer and seeker of truth," according to the
>> company's mission
>> statement.
>>
>> The CEO of Grace News Network is Thorne Auchter.
>>
>> The same Thorne Auchter who began the dismantling of
>> the Occupational
>> Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) under
>> Presidents Reagan and
>> George Bush I.
>>
>> Auchter did not return our calls seeking comment for
>> this story.
> >
>> While it's unclear whether Grace News Network
>> actually
>> produces any
>> news, it has produced a documentary movie titled
>> "Israel: Divine
> > Destiny" which it showed at the National Press Club
>> in
>> September 2002.
>>
>> The film is about "Israel's destiny and the United
>> States' role in that
>> destiny," according to Grace News Network.
>>
>> Grace News said that it could not make a copy of the
>> film available to
>> us at this time, since it is now undergoing
>> post-production editing.
>> Nor
>> could it provide a transcript.
>>
>> The mainstream media has documented strong and
>> growing
>> ties between
>> right-wing Republican Christian fundamentalists and
>> right-wing
>> Sharonist
>> Israeli expansionists.
>>
>> This alliance is personified in Ralph Reed's Stand
>> Up
>> for Israel, a
>> group formed to "mobilize Christians and other
>> people
>> of faith to
>> support the State of Israel."
>>
>> President Bush has very strong ties to
>> fundamentalist
>> Christians, most
>> notably Franklin Graham, the son of Rev. Billy
>> Graham.
>>
>> Last week, Franklin Graham delivered a Good Friday
>> message at the
>> Pentagon, despite an uproar over his previous
>> slander
>> of Islam as "a
>> very evil and wicked religion."
>>
>> Don Wagner, a professor of religion and director of
>> the Center for
>> Middle Eastern Studies at North Park University, an
>> evangelical
>> Christian college in Chicago, has written
>> extensively
>> about what he
>> calls Christian Zionism, whose leaders he identifies
>> as, among others,
>> Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Gary
>> Bauer,
>> and Franklin
>> Graham.
>>
>> "Christian Zionists have historically pointed to
>> Genesis 12:3 - I will
>> bless those who bless you. And the one who curses
>> you,
>> I will curse,"
>> Dr. Wagner said. "They have interpreted this to mean
>> that individuals
>> and nations who support the state of Israel will be
>> blessed by God. It
>> has come to mean political, economic, and moral
>> support, often
>> uncritically rendered to the state of Israel."
>>
>> Grace News Network seems to fit the mold.
>>
>> Joan Mower says that BBG is currently producing and
>> transmitting six
>> hours of news into Iraq including a dubbed version
>> of
>> the daily evening
>> news from ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and PBS, plus three
>> hours
>> of original news
>> programming from BBG.
>>
>> BBG says it sees no problem in having Grace produce
>> the evening news
>> broadcast for Iraq.
>>
>> Given the brewing anti-American revolt through all
>> sectors of Iraqi
>> society, maybe it should reconsider.
>>
>> We called Grace Digital Media to speak with Cheryl
>> Reagan.
>>
>> Her secretary told us that she has been away in
>> extended vacation for
>> more than a month -- in Israel.
>>
>> When will she back? we asked.
>>
>> No one knows, the secretary said.
>>
>> Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington,
>> D.C.-based Corporate
>> Crime
>> Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the
>> Washington,
>> D.C.-based
>> Multinational Monitor,
>> http://www.multinationalmonitor.org. They are
>> co-authors of Corporate Predators: The Hunt for
>> MegaProfits and the
>> Attack on Democracy (Monroe, Maine: Common Courage
>> Press;
>> http://www.corporatepredators.org).
>>
>> (c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
>>
>
>
>=====
>On the steel torsos of their missiles, US soldiers scrawl messages:
>'For Saddam, from the Fat Boy Posse.' A building goes down. A
>marketplace. A home. The day after American forces illegally invaded
>and occupied Iraq, a CNN correspondent interviewed a US soldier. "I
>wanna get in there and get my nose dirty," Private AJ said. "I wanna
>take revenge for 9/11." To be fair to the correspondent, he did
>weakly suggest that there was no real evidence that linked Iraq to
>9/11. Private AJ stuck his teenage tongue. "Yeah, well that stuff's
>way over my head," he said. - Arundhati Roy
>
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--
Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA
tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu
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