State of the Media

Leslie Griffith used to anchor the KTVU News (FOX affiliate) in San Francisco. I met her on a panel a year or so ago; she has many stories to share about being censored:

I wrote and produced a story on Ringling Bros. Barnum & Baily Circus and its abuse of the endangered Asian elephants performing around the world. The abuse is well documented by a few brave members of the USDA and Ringling workers as well.

Ringling is owned by Kenneth Feld, who according to documents in two lawsuits against him, is a bad dude indeed with friendly ties to not only the Las Vegas Mafia but just about every conservative media corporation in the country -- including News Corporation. (ala Judith Regan) Kenneth Feld and Michael Eisner own Disney on Ice together. Disney owns ABC.

I won a National award for the elephant abuse story. In that story I used the Circus' OWN video to make my points. Hard to argue with that -- one might say! But that does not stop the Corporate media or corporate Cronyism.

Next thing I knew, high profile Ringling Bros. attorneys flew into The San Francisco Bay Area and complained to my bosses that their eyes were playing tricks on them. What viewers witnessed in my reports did not really happen. In other words, viewers did not really see what they saw. That took a lot of nerve since the video was taken by RINGLING ITSELF and obtained by me through my sources.