TheNextReport

CABLE NEWS - LEBANON MAKES WAY FOR JONBENET You have to hand it to the people that make the decisions at CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. They are so certain of the rank stupidity of the American viewing public that they seamlessly shifted their wall-to-wall coverage of the Israeli-Lebanese war to all JonBenet all the time. It is a well known fact that the tradition of insightful and in-depth broadcast journalism that began with Edward R. Murrow has been changed by corporate ownership primarily concerned with ratings and the bottom line. In the struggle for minds and eyeballs, the surrender of broadcast news to the realities of the marketplace is a phenomenon that Murrow himself struggled with towards the end of his career and is a problem that will continue to exist as long as there is commercial television. Americans have become so inured to the watering down of hard news programming and thoughtful analysis that they have come to expect little from their broadcasters. As an avid news consume

NASRALLAH VIOLATES LEBANESE SOVEREIGNTY In rejecting the French/US ceasefire proposal, the Lebanese government backed by the Arab League urged the world to accept their idea that Lebanese Army forces could be dispatched to the border with Israel, replace Israeli troops and make an international peacekeeping force unnecessary. We can assume that Lebanese President Siniora believes that the world has forgotten the threat his defense minister made on July 20th that the Lebanese Army would join Hezbollah in the fight if Israel launched a widespread invasion. Siniora is asking the international community to trust that a Lebanese Army force would somehow be able to control Hezbollah in spite of the fact that Lebanon clearly demonstrated its inability to do just that when given the opportunity under UN Resolution 1559 two years ago. Lebanon's government would like to believe it is still in a position to control events after Hezbollah invaded Israel from Lebanese territory and after the Je