Just some quick Open Thread links below the fold to drive home the importance of Wikileaks:

Murray Supporters Threatened By Man Brandishing A Meat Cleaver And A Knife

According to KOMO TV. in Seattle.

Spokane Police have arrested a man waving a meat cleaver at Sen. Patty Murray's supporters before her debate with Dino Rossi.
Officer Jennifer DuRuwe says 50-year-old Johnny J. Sieler was holding a knive and yelling profanities while he drove past a group of Murray supporters just before 5 p.m.

Michael Collins

(Washington, DC) Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern and investigative journalist Robert Parry spoke at the National Press Club in Washington, DC last night. They were guests of The McClendon Group which holds periodic meetings at the press club featuring investigative reporters and newsmakers. Parry publishes and reports at Consortium.News.com. McGovern is on the steering committee of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

They focused on the risks of integrity in both journalism and government service. Parry had a successful career with AP and Newsweek, where he was a leader in Iran-Contra reporting. McGovern's career in intelligence spanned three decades and put him in front of presidents and cabinet members for daily intelligence briefings by the CIA, among other duties.

From Karoli at Crooks and Liars where they have video of a very possible suspect carrying what looks pretty clearly like a can of gas and a pipe:

"Captured Warriors"

How ya like that for fair and balanced?

At least they kindly removed any and all doubt as to which side they are on.

(H/T Saramerica who tweeted this one out title to link.)

Instead of real news being reported on in the traditional media we get this BS.

I guess they aren't corporaty enough and refuse to follow the politically dictated media narrative so they don't deserve to be covered wall to wall like a bunch of ranting and raving lunatic teabagrrrs screeching a mouthful of insurance corporation nuts do.

Those willing to report news have always taken risks not because they are adventure seekers or egomaniacs its because they believe the public has the right to know. History is littered with governments and regimes that have sought to silence the media.
Even with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact media repression continues unabated. Asia has a large number of governments which repress the ability of the media to report on a wide range of issues. China goes to great lengths to subdue the press. Here are few examples from a report complied by the International Federation of Journalists (pdf file) for 2009.

Xinjiang Riots

Both Rachel Maddow and KO on Countdown picked up this video of mine and I caught it late last night after others pointed it out to me. The video of some seriously insane Dodd bashers was also picked up at some of the bigger Blogs around the net, yesterday. Some material that I xposted from ePluribus Media to dKos, yesterday, and reposted today to get a few more eyeballs on it.

Josh Marshal points to a post at TPM DC where they picked up the Dodd suicide video, as did The Political Carnival where GottaLaff was nice enough to link back here when she found out I did the video. Also, it was put up early yesterday morning by tparty at MLN when I pointed it out to them. Thanks kindly for picking it up. Via avahome, AMERICAblog picked it up too. I guess it is going a bit viral now? Well? "Dump Dodd" was complaing that they didn't get any exposure from the event... You are welcome! snickers. More Below The fold...

Posted with permission of Nicholas Benton, owner/editor of the Falls Church News Press.

by Nicholas Benton

The dismal state of American journalism was further demonstrated in the past week in a couple of cases that were called out in compelling ways by critics.

Keith Olbermann of MSNBC TV News took Fox News' Bill O'Reilly down in one of the more eloquent and truth-telling commentaries this week, expressing appropriate outrage for O'Reilly's pattern of incendiary rhetoric aimed at Dr. George Tiller, the abortion doctor who was gunned down in a Kansas church last week.

Olbermann called O'Reilly's relentless use of terms like "Dr. Tiller the Baby Killer" to describe the doctor as tantamount for inciting murder and domestic terror, and called on the American public to "quarantine" Fox News, insisting it not be aired in lobbies, restaurants, bars or wherever it is apt to be shown on a screen in a public place.

Promoted. Originally posted 2009-06-06 11:10:50 -0400. -- GH

As we have been hearing over the past several months, more and more newspapers are finding themselves up against the ropes and shutting down.

I'm not going to get into the printed press' blame game and their claims that if a local newspaper goes under, less "reliable reporting" will be available to the public.

No here in this posting it's not about loss, but gain and opportunity.

While it will be three years next month when I was caught up in the nationwide CBS Radio downsizing, I still keep in touch with former co-workers and do still on occasion listen to or at the very least visit the website of one of my former stations, WTIC-AM in Hartford, CT.

by Tommy Christopher (posted at the request of Alex Lawson).

Wednesday's DC Tax Day Tea Party may not have been huge, but it certainly was interesting. For 3 and a half hours, 500 or so people braved the at times heavy rain to express their frustration at a litany of ills. Although the demonstrations are ostensibly about taxes and government spending, the protesters' signs covered a wide range of topics.

While there were a few rousing chants by the crowd, there was far more heckling about the poor audio than anything else. One organizer apologized for having only "a little girl voice," to which a man in the crowd screamed "Then let someone else talk!"