TV News LIES

There are enough signs that New York’s system of providing public defenders is failing the state’s poor people that a broad class-action suit challenging the system can move ahead, the state’s highest court ruled Thursday, setting the stage for a sweeping battle in the courts and perhaps the Legislature.

As offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere boomed, a 2003 report warned that the industry wasn't taking time to find and fix the problems that commonly plagued blowout preventers — the supposedly failsafe mechanisms designed to stop oil spills such as the one now threatening the gulf coast.

Environmental carcinogens are responsible for a far greater number of cancers than previously believed -- a fact that suggests eradicating these environmental threats should be a priority for President Obama -- according to the report of a presidential advisory panel.

Senators have criticized Goldman Sachs Group Inc. for profiting from the housing collapse. And Congress is considering legislation to curb Wall Street risk-taking, including the use of financial instruments known as derivatives and of leverage, or methods that amplify returns.

Victims of a Florence priest who was defrocked for sexually and psychologically abusing his young parishioners are now demanding that his bishops be held responsible for keeping his crimes quiet.

The victims' appeal is the latest sign that clerical abuse in Italy, long so taboo that it was rarely spoken of much less acted on, is increasingly getting public attention and forcing the Vatican to confront the problem in its own backyard.

A German priest on trial for sexual abuse in South Africa acknowledged this week that similar charges against him in his home country are "correct in many points," his old diocese in Aachen said Wednesday.

Diocese spokesman Franz Kretschmann told The Associated Press that the priest had written a letter Tuesday to the Krefeld public prosecutors acknowledging "his guilt" and seeking forgiveness for the pain he caused to victims and their families.

Lawmakers crafting a sweeping farm bill in 2008 promised it would cut government payments to wealthy farmers. Two years later, little appears to have changed.

Data being made public Wednesday shows that the wealthiest farmers in the country are still receiving the bulk of government cash, despite claims from lawmakers that reforms in the bill would put more money in the hands of smaller farms. At the same time, a series of exemptions written into the bill has made it more difficult for the public to find out who is receiving what.

Mass media are media forms designed to reach the largest audience possible. They include television, movies, radio, newspapers, magazines, books, records, video games and the internet. Many studies have been conducted in the past century to measure the effects of mass media on the population in order to discover the best techniques to influence it. From those studies emerged the science of Communications, which is used in marketing, public relations and politics. Mass communication is a necessary tool the insure the functionality of a large democracy; it is also a necessary tool for a dictatorship. It all depends on its usage.