(1888PressRelease)
October 23, 2006 - CBS has, apparently, a not so secret publicity function in its news division chartered with carrying out “co-op advertising” for its VIP sponsors and political allies.
For CBS some of these quid pro quo arrangements have surfaced as scandals.
“Please know that nothing is more important to us than people’s trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.” - Dan Rather - after the “60 Minutes” Air National Guard report during the 2004 presidential campaign.
In a 2005 LA Times op-ed piece, Van Gordon Sauter, the President of CBS News in the first half of the 1980s who also put in a stint as Executive Vice President of the CBS Broadcast Group, revealed that he "stopped watching" CBS News "some time ago".
Now another special interest report is in the offing, this time from CBS’ “48 Hours”. While this report isn’t as high profile or capable of changing the out come of an election it is nevertheless sobering in its implications.
According to the promo on their website, “Peter Van Sant examines a March 2003 murder that doctors say might never have occurred if Jeremy Perkins, a 28-year-old paranoid schizophrenic, had received proper treatment to control his psychotic delusions...” The report will assault a religious creed and pillory its adherents while impertinently advocating the supremacy of institutional psychiatry, a movement termed a pseudo-science by its critics.
What their promo isn’t plugging is this: “48 Hours” Executive Producer, Susan Zirinsky, is a virtual shill for the mental health industry. Her parents built, owned and ran Gracie Square Hospital, one of the largest privately owned psychiatric hospitals in the United States. Gracie Square conducted race based ETC experiments on patients over an 18 month period in 1999 and 2000.
Zirinskys’ husband, Joseph Peyronnin, CBS News Vice President through the mid 90’s, was an honoree at a 2004 Mental Health Association of New York City gala emceed by Lesley Stahl of CBS’s "60 Minutes".
According to TNS Media Intelligence CBS received nearly $600,000,000 in pharmaceutical ad revenues in 2005, the most of any network.
