A caller on C-SPAN asked this question:

[kentuck]

She said, paraphrasing, "How come the media reports on what the Democrats failed to do instead of reporting on what the Republicans prevented the Democrats from doing?" She asked why the media says that the Democrats failed to get the 60 votes needed to start bringing the troops home? Why didn't they ask why the Republicans blocked the 60 votes needed to start bringing the troops home?

I thought it was a very thought-provoking question and one that strikes at the heart of the problem with the media in this country. Why does the media assume that the Republicans, even when they are in the minority of all opinion polls, have the correct position on all issues?

The Democrats are assumed by the corporate media to have the "wrong" position - no matter what the issue might be? It doesn't matter if it is about healthcare for children, taxcuts for the wealthy, Social Security, or the war in Iraq, the Republicans are portrayed as having the "correct" position and the Democrats are challenging the status quo. Not only do the citizens need to take a long hard look at the media in this country but the media needs to take a long hard look at itself.

[Rabo Karabekian]

1. Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, AEI, etc...

I think it has something to do with the Republican think-tanks getting their memes/studies into the hands of the MSM. I'm not sure how exactly it is they do this, but I'm sure articles, and probably entire books have been written on this.

[gratuitous]

2. Let me guess what the reaction was

"Ha, ha, ha, another moonbat from the liberal fringe! I have no idea what she was talking about. Ha, ha, ha!"

[Cerridwen]

3. I know you know this, but I feel like typing. :D

It's called, framing the debate - or in this case, the conversation and perception.

It's why some of us are so adamant about the use of language and the meaning of words and the value applied to those meanings.

Calling someone aggressive paints a different picture than calling someone assertive.

Saying someone is tenacious registers differently than saying they are stubborn.

Words have meaning and value and can be positive or negative; neutral is kinda hard to find.

The media has been playing this game for a long time. There are decades of research on marketing and language. It's damned frustrating how easy it is to manipulate someone's perceptions using a few "simple" words.

Then there's the use of images...I won't go off on that.

[kentuck]

4. But should the media be doing the framing for the Repubs ??

That is the issue.

[Rabo Karabekian]

6. Unfair

Of course not, that's not objective.

[Cerridwen]

9. Of course not.

The media's job, the social contract they have with We, the People, is to keep us well informed so that we may do our civic duty.

Personally, I think we should be able to sue them for breach of contract. But, I digress.

When corporations take over media outlets, corporations get out the message most profitable to them. That is why the news should never go anywhere near a profit margin or bottom line; ever. Edward R. Murrow and many others warned of this.

They've consolidated their ownership and their message. The repub party of business and status quo, fits their bottom line quite nicely.

[hootinholler]

17. There's the rub...

The 'social contract' never really existed except in the morality of the press owners. As long as both sides own presses, it's sort of ok, when the presses are consolidated into a monopoly, not so much.

Now the airwaves are owned by the people, and our gatekeeper was the FCC, but, when an administration subverts that, then it kinda sucks too.

-Hoot

[annabanana]

11. As long as the Repubs are the more "corporate-friendly" party

and the media does not have the necessary fairness constraints, they will continue to do so.

[TahitiNut]

20. Well, it seems some Democrats are trying hard to change that ....

... by being even more "corporate-friendly." As long as the People snore, that effort might be "successful."

[tom_paine]

23. Of course not. But the Bushies spent countless billions of dollars

and influence to make this happen. It was a massive operation that involved, among other things, the construction of a Mighty Wurlitzer which can obfuscate any crystal clear truth, or launder any long-debunked lie, in the minds of a massive majority.

This is all predicted by advances in the Sciences of Lying, which are advertising, public relations, marketing, and psychology (psychology, at least, has many good benefits to offset the evil it does when misused, unlike these other disciplines).

The most powerful tool that psychology has handed all 21st Century Bushies and Tyrant-wannabees was that the MORE people in a given group, the more easily predictable their responses to "stimuli", which in this case is Bushie Propaganda and Lies.

But we cannot forget who failed the most here, our Democratic Leadership and us, as well.

The Leadership, who was tasked with stopping something like the engineering of False Realities, simply slept and slept and slept until it was too late. Vigorous, loud opposition to this in the beginning, as well as counter-measures (what, I cannot begin to guess, but smarter people would figure it out) to restore the integrity of at least factual, data-supported truth.

But now, not even that is enough to even slow down the Bushie Lie Machine. I have often joked that if the Mighty Wurlitzer needed to fool 1/3rd of the nation into believing 1 + 1 = 2 is a Liberal Lie, it could.

Once I thought that was a massive exaggeration. Now it is at best a minor exaggeration and I am not sure it is exaggeration at all (how I wish we could see this experiment in action, and what the astonishing results would likely be - people, myself included, are so goddamned weak-minded when it comes to blindly accepting something if they see it on TV...crazy, especially NOW).

Anyway, kentuck, you know all this, but I just thought I'd answer the question you posed.

No, they shouldn't, but they ARE and it has been institutionalized. I'll say it again... "institutionalized". Conventional Wisdom. Set in Concrete. So much so that people don't even realize they are being captured by it's evil spell. Which is the hallmark of good advertising and public relations everywhere. It is a basic tenet.

We could have stopped it early on, but now it is too big and entrenched. If it can be stopped at all now, it will take a generation. And there are simply not enough left in this country who give a shit to fix that (though I hope I am wrong about this).

I no longer bat an eye at this constant pro-Bushie commercial that the toadying MSM has become in the last decade or two. It is what it is. It is an institution, like it or not.

We have to understand the magnitude of the problem, before we can find solutions.

Finally, the Busheviks have had wild, runaway success with their installation of Goebbels v2.0 as Conventional Wisdom in Old America (doubly so under the BushPutinist State) because the Democratic Leadership did NOTHING to oppose it, stammering cluelessly for decades, in essence, "yes, you're right...I am a liberal piece of shit, but my position on the issue is valid."

You think the Bushies are going to let us restore integrity to the media without a vicious fight (even if enough people with courage and integrity could be found in this tyrannized nation at this time) to defend their Infrastructure of Lies?

Now, if they allowed us two decades of a free hand, as we allowed them, then maybe...

[glowing]

24. That quote on the bottom by brownbeck kind of pisses me off.

I was born into a house where my mother worked. My grandmother and babysitter were more like my mother's than my own. Now, I try to erase that aloofness that I felt by overdoing for my child. I work 56 hours away from the home. And I work all different shifts to make it possible for my child not to be in daycare. This means that my husband I become passing ships in the night. So here I am, stuck trying to be the perfect wife, mother, and worker. I'm tired. The feminist movement only achieved jobs for women. The pay is still unequal, and a lot of that pay goes to financing the extra car, insurance, daycare, and taxes. However, without my additional paycheck, we would not be able to pay for the house that we live in. Damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Women and men should have joined together in this fight. If two people are now working from a household, they are producing more time labor. Instead of women working 40hrs, men should have insisted on working 32 hours because women were adding an additional 24 hours of productivity. Then there would be more time for yard work, soccer games, and time with the children.

I don't like this forced rut I'm stuck in. I don't appreciate as greatly the women's movement. They worked against men, rather than try to include men. I think most people understand that a marriage is equivalent in love and getting things done. Why we put a wall between the genders completely baffles me. So, now, I'm stuck working crappy hours and trying to raise my child like I wish I had been raised.. on top of that still having to pay the bills and do the laundry and cook the meals and bathe the child and, and, and, and, and.... I'm being worked to death. Guess that's the point, let me die before I get to retire and use my s.s. or my 401K (if I ever work at a co that provides one)... Isn't it sad, college educated, and working for shitty wages with absolutely no benefits.... To boot, I only have a 16hr work day for Thanksgiving. Hope you all enjoy your families...BECASUSE the feminist screwed me.

[Cerridwen]

26. Well, I can't argue with logic like that.....n/t

[glowing]

34. I know a lot of women like me of the same age. Raised by a system

and sorely hating that system, yet stuck with it. Now its not that I don't like the ability to work. That I appreciate..... I just don't appreciate what we lost because of the movement, and we lost the freedom of choice. It is not a choice for most families to have one person in the household stay at home, or at least work less.

[Truth2Tell]

5. The Democrats don't need 60 votes

to stop funding the war. They only need 40 to filibuster war spending.

So both the caller and "the media" are wrong. The caller has swallowed the lies, and the media has helped both Parties tell them

[kentuck]

7. True...

Good point.

[kentuck]

10. An interesting scenario would be...

if when Reid folds and gives Bush just what he wants in funding for Iraq, 41 Democrats filibuster their own leader. Reid and the Republicans would have 59 votes to give Bush the funding but 41 Democrats would block it with a filibuster? Would that be possible?

[Truth2Tell]

16. Theoretically, yes.

But the leadership would collapse before that would happen. The fact is that there are not really 40 Democrats prepared to take what they mistakenly fear would be the political heat involved in actually cutting off funding for the war. They fear being accused of abandoning our troops in the field, however ridiculous this assertion is. They lack the confidence in their own ability to frame the debate themselves, so they kowtow to the frames set by Republican minority.

In other words, the Democrats (or more than 1/2 of them) don't want to actually use their real powers to end the war - instead they have decided to posture against the war but to let it continue as a political foil until after January 2009.

The problem with this strategy (among others) is that it is grotesquely cynical. And because it places the political fortunes of the Democrats higher on the priority list than the lives of American soldiers – it cannot at all costs be admitted to. Hence the memes like “we need 60 votes,” or “the Republicans are keeping us from stopping the war.”

This is still my Party, but it’s making me sick.

[Laelth]

33. Very nicely said!

I'd rather take the political heat for doing the right thing than to avoid the heat by doing the wrong thing. I think the American people respond to strength, and I'd like to see our leadership actually stand for something other than future partisan victory.



-Laelth

[hisownpetard]

8. Compliments to the caller. Excellent question. nt

[annabanana]

12. And what WAS the response?. . . n/t

[kentuck]

14. Pedro was the host...

He just let it ride...I didn't hear any responses to it.

[truedelphi]

13. I loved it 1 day when watching C Span and a caller stated that there was essentially no difference

Between the two parties and that the debates were such shallow
and time limited events with such slanted questions that he realized that he
wasno longer part of the America that he had grown up in.

For a second I thought Brian was gonna poop his pants, but then he did that
"Well one lone guy is entitled to his opinion" saying the words
with the facial expression that indictes another looney tune had
gotten free for the day without his meds.

[Cha]

29. Yeah, I wonder what

brian is thinking when he's got that "look" on his face?

"The majority better not catch on or we're dead meat?".

[truedelphi]

30. If they admit it is NOT a demcorcy, the whole pretense

Of there neding to be a C Span would be obvious and they would not be allowed the funding, I GUESS.

[Cha]

32. It's all about the

brainwashing and I'm surprised the masses don't know, YET!

That's why this is so encouraging to me. I caught on in 1999 and I hadn't seen a tv for years before that.

[SteveM]

15. "more PhDs on K Street than in all right-wing parties of Europe..."

To paraphrase the two authors of THE RIGHT NATION. The Far Right is highly intelligent, better educated to its task than any definition of an "opposition," sublimely aggressive and indefatigable to a fault. It knows -- even now -- how to steer and frame the debate on T.V. and print MSM. (It is helped hugely by an unwillingness of the Democrats to do the same, out of fear of the Far Right.) Example? What was the issue Dem. presidential candidates used recently to go after H. Clinton?

3 topics MSM will not cover honestly and thoroughly:

(1) Foreign policy when U.S. is on the brink of or during early phases of an invasion;
(2) War on Guns;
(3) War on Drugs.

Number (3) above provided the prototype for Patriot Acts 1 and 2 (by G.W. Bush's own reckoning); Number (2) has, ironically to some, reduced MSM to the ONLY effective gun-control special interest group (besides some entrenched Democratic Party bureaus remaining in the coastal cities, Chicago and a few states); Number (1) above never has been covered well when the U.S. has been on the brink of any invasion; only after something blows up do we hear some self-recrimination.

Most libs/progs, out of cultural prejudice (the GOP is a party of angry white men, etc.), cannot concede the intelligence and education (practical as well as lettered) of the intelligentsia of the Far Right. This prejudice cripples the analysis of any kind of lib/prog group. By now libs understand how aggressive the Far Right is, but they are disturbed at how durable it has proved. It's an outlook thing: The Democratic Party cannot describe itself (let alone advance legislation to promote specific policy) well enough for the average American to list in a sentence or two. This is because the Democratic Party has no clue as to what they see down the road. The GOP (more specifically the Far Right) has every intention of enacting radical legislation to effect policy which will fundamentally change how we perceive ourselves and our nation. This a a fairly long-range goal, but they are absolutely bent on it and mean to see it through, even if opposed by significant numbers in the GOP.

Since the late 60s, the Democratic Party has been unfit to counter the GOP and does not really qualify as a political party.

[BadgerKid]

18. How much is the two-party system also a factor?

i.e., if you don't/can't blame one party, blame the other.

I could see that with multiple parties, you could get a party Z friendly MSM saying something like "The X and Y parties teamed up against the Z party."

[Mika]

19. I'll make it easy for ya..

.. Clinton did it!

[Acadia Blue]

21. Oh yea, I keep thinking the same thing. F---ing media, f----ing media.

[tblue37]

22. This was the headline for an _LATimes_ article published in

The Lawrence Journal-World (Lawrence, KS) on Thursday, Sept. 20.

“Senate Democrats Fail to Pass Troop Withdrawal Bill”

http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2007/sep/20/senate_democra... /

I found a similar title in the same paper just about a week ago.

[kentuck]

25. Excellent example!

“Senate Democrats Fail to Pass Troop Withdrawal Bill”

Not "Senate Republicans Block Troop Withdrawal Bill" ? Why not?

Since the majority of Americans, according to all the polls, favor withdrawal of our troops, why the one headline and not the other? It makes the Democrats look like failures while the other headline would have made Republicans look like obstructionists.

It is the same tactic when a Democrat and a Republican are on the news talk shows. The Democrats have to validate their every position while the Republicans are coddled with totally different questions about more trivial issues. The Republicans are not subjected to the same aggressive questioning and the Democrats positions are looked upon as somehow unworkable, incredible, and illegitimate. The body language of the hosts dismisses the Democrat as not on the same level with the Republican.

Since the majority are on the side of the Democrats on the issue of the war in Iraq, it is the Republicans that should have to respond to why they wish to keep our troops there? They should be asked for how long? How many deaths? How much money? When would it be appropriate for us to withdraw our troops? Instead, they get asked questions about Hillary, immigration, or about who gets the support of Pat Robertson?

[tblue37]

27. Also, the headline subtly implies that the Dems failed

to even bring up the issue of troop withdrawal, not that they tried to get it done and didn't succeed because they Republicans blocked them.

[Cha]

28. Because..

they're(repukes-corporatemediawhores) embedded together and our only path to victory is for more and more people to realize what this c-span caller does and totally tune the propoganda out.

Thanks so much, kentuck, for posting this..I love it when another person gets wise to corporatemediawhorism.

[Blashyrkh]

31. Because the media is fucking bought and paid for. All commercial news is propaganda. End of story.

[doc03]

35. Simple if they reported it that way all the

Right wing talking heads would scream liberal bias.

[truedelphi]

36. I'd love it if every week for several hours C-Span had to give its microphone over to

Mike Malloy or Bill Moyers - that would be a C Span worth watching.

[B Calm]

37. I love common sense questions! You'd think the press would

had said after a few days into the Iraq invasion that Saddam doesn't have WMD's, he isn't using them against an invading army. But.. hell no that is using common sense. Instead they chose to push the bigger lie that Saddam must have moved them. Like he was going to use them for a rainy day??