Where do Americans get their news and views? Most likely from their fave news outlet….FOX, NBC, ABC, CNN and the rest of the establishment called the “fourth estate”……
I have never been a fan of the MSM especially in the past decades….I lost any respect for “journalism” when corporate America started sucking up the outlets….I said then it was a bad idea and so far my opinion has not been altered.
But these days the media is more like a propaganda machine than a group of journalists….the media is owned wholly by corporate America and will do their reporting that benefits their owners not educate the public.
The government has its enemies and the media is used to demonize those enemies….whether it is Iran, Russia, ISIS, Syria on and on….granted some of them are truly evil in scope….but that is not the media’s concern…theirs should be reporting the events and situations and the people decide who they think is a demon….
As the West is sucked deeper into the Syrian conflict and starts a new Cold War with Russia, the mainstream news media has collapsed as a vehicle for reliable information, creating a danger for the world, writes Robert Parry.
Does any intelligent person look at a New York Times article about Russia or Vladimir Putin these days and expect to read an objective, balanced account? Or will it be laced with a predictable blend of contempt and ridicule? And is it any different at The Washington Post, NPR, MSNBC, CNN or almost any mainstream U.S. news outlet?
And it’s not just Russia. The same trend holds true for Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua and other countries and movements that have fallen onto the U.S. government’s “enemies list.” We saw the same pattern with Saddam Hussein and Iraq before the 2003 U.S. invasion; with Muammar Gaddafi and Libya before the U.S.-orchestrated bombing campaign in 2011; and with President Viktor Yanukovych and Ukraine before the U.S.-backed coup in 2014.
Source: The Danger of Demonization – Consortiumnews
Do you, my readers, think the media is doing their job or are they just arms of the propaganda machine of the government and corporate America?
I get particularly angry when the anchors show their personal bias with their voices and expressions, also when they refer to their own channels TV shows are are blatant commercials for them; never mind their world political bias. dru
It is true….these people offer opinions not news….chuq
Slightly off topic..
But for your amusement…..
‘I Am So Owed.’
Think Americans are Angry Now?
Wait until Hillary’s in charge!
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/think-americans-are-angry-now-wait-until-hillarys-in-charge/
Good link….thanx
Hey Penn, i’m amused! dru
Golly Gosh…grin ..no one has called me that for a very long time….you have taken me back.
🙂
I largely agree. But you forgot (arguably) the biggest factor of all….laziness.
Just hand these fuckers a press release. Refer to yourself as “the most successful Hitler clone still alive” in your press release and they’ll run it as “fact”. Shit, give them a fucking Tweet from The Twit Zone even…and they’ll just read it on air as if it was the 100% truth. They don’t give a fuck, especially if it gets ratings.
A couple years back, I was at a party gathering to select a candidate to run in an upcoming Canuckistan election. I was seated right next to (what passes for) the press, one newspaper dork and a smoking hot TV reporter. Except for her VERY frequent smoke breaks (she absolutely reeked of smoke), the reporter spent the entire time with a coffee in one hand and her phone in the other….even while the leader of the party was giving her speech! She didn’t pay ANY attention to anything going on in the room. Nor did she talk to anyone there. In her report, there was a brief clip of the leader and the winning candidate. But it was all speech video and one lone question to the leader answered with canned “talking point” bullshit.
And she’s actually the best reporter in town! Seriously.
When you’ve got such lazy, uninspired, “journalists” with such mammoth corporate oligopolies sitting above them, these lazy fuckers are going to take the easy way out every single time.
Plus the corporations drive the stories…look at what is happening in Israel….it is NOTHING like the reports we are getting…
That more of an American thing. Until recently at least, the rest of the world gets a considerably less inaccurate picture of Israelistine.
Other than the FOX Noise crowd, I generally resist the temptation to apply direct motivations to newsrooms. However, as long as you keep your boss from being unhappy…who in turn keeps their boss from being unhappy…who keeps their boss…etc…you can be a lazy, no-talent, hack who produces absolutely nothing of value. From what I’ve seen, it’s more about “avoiding their anger” than making them happy. And quality? Fuck dat noise! It’s ALL about profit.
I always remind myself that Micheal Moore had “news-magazine” shows on NBC & FOX! He did as he pleased and he only had trouble once. (The Medicare Olympics where he declared Cuba#1, Canada#2 and USA last. The network forced him to swap Canada & Cuba.) “As long as I got ratings, they’d let me do anything.”
Now the corporations advertising on the news…they probably have a lot more control over content than the corporations that own the media.
Actually, it’s been going on for longer than we all think about much… I remember how the only real news about what was going on in Vietnam was coming from the soldiers who were returning. TV was showing some of it, but, even then, it was accompanied by complete lies about why it was happening at all. Then, for all our conflicts since then, the news from war zones has not included live action, or unedited video, until the advent of the internet, when it became too difficult to censor all of it….I remember in the 70’s, some high ranking army general made a statement to the effect that “if we showed what happens at the front, there’d never be any wars again.”, thus indicating the military’s reluctance to allow further uncensored film of actual combat.
Today, though, think of it…. probably seven billion people only know what they see on TV, or through corporately controlled news sources. Even those who use the internet are fewer than can have enough of a balancing effect on that large a number of clueless minds….
So, ultimately, I suppose it’s as it always in, in reality…. We are responsible for ourselves, and that’s as good as it’s going to get….
gigoid, the dubious
That is the shame of it all…they only know what they see….(he said shaking head) chuq
The whole truth might not have gotten out during Vietnam, but a lot of truth did. And considering the chaos they were reporting on and the mountains of utter bullshit the government buried them under on a daily basis, it’s hard blame reporters all that much. But the important difference between then & now is that most reporters back then were trying to do a good, professional, job. It’s almost the complete opposite now.
America has been at war (a minimum of 2 wars at any given time) for a decade and a half!. Where is the damn coverage? And when it is covered, how often is it covered from anywhere OTHER than the White House/Pentagon Press Rooms? Today’s reporters just sit in front of podiums, wait for press conferences, grab the press releases, stuff their faces at the free-food table and unquestioningly print/air whatever is in the press release…often without even proof reading it. If only they worried about the real story half as much as they worried about their hair & make-up.
That said, TV (& print media) is where all the news consumption is. In theory, the Internet is great. New voices. New stories. In practice, it’s actually a disservice to the public. Studies show the average Internet user spends about 30 seconds a day on news (or something equally ridiculous). Hey, there’s a lot of nip-slips and cat videos to wade through first!
As for quality, the majority of that 30 seconds is the on-line version of mainstream corporate Media. (They control homepages, buy their way into better websearch results, etc) As for the rest of what’s out there…for all we know, the rest could be the result of chimps typing on keyboards. Because people aren’t forced to do otherwise, they will gravitate to whatever sources confirm their preexisting opinions, no matter how ludicrous or fact-free.
And that only makes the mainstream media worse. They know America isn’t paying attention to them anymore, so they’re free to just phone it in and cash their cheques. They don’t have much of a reputation left to protect, just a remaining audience to entertain.
What you have related in all the above is not a surprise to me, and, in fact, echoes many of my own observations. I think the most reasonable way to respond is to note that all of what you say comes back to one point, which is the failure of the American people, and, people in general world-wide. to take personal responsibility for their actions, and their beliefs. Most of the world has abrogated the use of their mind’s power to reason, in favor of accepting anything they are told by someone they regard as an authority, whether it is about religion, government, or money (the triad of illusions upon which society has been brainwashed to believe), which allows them to live their lives in complete ignorance, as slave wages for their entire lives, all convinced they are ‘free’….
I think it was G.B. Shaw, or one of his contemporaries, who noted that people usually get the government they deserve….
it’s all a personal choice, whether to be a free human, or, a brainwashed slave.
gigoid, the dubious
Free thinking will get you in trouble these days….LOL What the Hell…I am old and do not succumb easily,,,been a problem child my whole life and I refuse to bow down now….chuq
I rest my case….
*wink*
g