Reply #53: What the fuck are you talking about?

[FighttheFuture]

In 1996, Gore did support the ongoing Media Deregulation in the Telecom deregulations. However, he opposed further deregulation in 2000 when running for President, realizing the damage it was causing. This was at a great cost to him as the media did thier hack job on him (just like they did to Dean a few weeks after he mentioned on one of the NBC Sunday shows he would go after the media).

Here's an interesting article:

Bush earned this vital assistance at the start of the campaign when he became the only competitive candidate in either major party who pledged to completely deregulate the broadcasting industry. Such a change in government policy offered a financial bonanza to the media companies, because their profit margins would increase as mergers resulted in less competition. Gore had supported the partial deregulation of the telecommunications industry in 1996, but prior to the 2000 campaign announced that he opposed the changes advocated by the New York Times Company and the other major communications conglomerates. The vice president claimed that further consolidation of media ownership would deprive Americans of much-needed diversity in reporting.

Gore’s principled decision to oppose media deregulation was the most decisive factor in the presidential election. For most of his career, The New York Times had portrayed Gore as a “boy scout” - a man of “personal rectitude” - but those descriptions were nowhere to be found in 2000. The Times and the other news subsidiaries of America’s media businesses methodically applied a journalistic makeover to the vice president; by the time they were finished, Al Gore’s reputation had been stained with unsubstantiated allegations of duplicity. The Times aggressively promoted the Bush candidacy for the purpose of gaining the deregulation necessary to achieve corporate profit objectives. Without the distorted coverage that presented an honorable candidate as a liar and vice versa, the election would not have been close enough to steal.

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In fact, the serial sliming of Democrats has absolutely nothing to do with Clinton or Gore or Dean or Kerry – it is all about the profit motive. The anti-Democratic bias in the media is directly proportional to the level of consolidation of the industry. While it is true that mainstream reporters are excruciatingly shallow, that is because journalists of substance who will not conform to the corporate agenda are unwelcome at the major media outlets.

What remains at America’s metropolitan newspapers and national broadcasting networks are the reporters who are willing to trade their integrity for high-paying jobs. In 2000, these mercenaries savaged the Democratic nominee because their employers viewed anything else as being unacceptable. In 2004, they will do exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason.