Media ramping up fear campaign. Like 2003 trying to force candidates to frame militantly

[madfloridian]

There was a long article by Noam Chomsky in FAIR in 2005.

The Military-Industrial-Media Complex

This is only one section of a long article that is a good read.

“Waving the flag”

Those patterns were on display in 2003 with the Iraq invasion, when FAIR conducted a study of the 1,617 on-camera sources who appeared on the evening newscasts of six U.S. television networks during the three weeks beginning with the start of the war (Extra!, 5-6/03):
Nearly two-thirds of all sources, 64 percent, were pro-war, while 71 percent of U.S. guests favored the war. Anti-war voices were 10 percent of all sources, but just 6 percent of non-Iraqi sources and only 3 percent of U.S. sources. Thus viewers were more than six times as likely to see a pro-war source as one who was anti-war; counting only U.S. guests, the ratio increases to 25 to 1.

Less than 1 percent of the U.S. sources were anti-war on the CBS Evening News during the Iraq war’s first three weeks. Meanwhile, as FAIR’s researchers commented wryly, public television’s PBS NewsHour program hosted by Jim Lehrer “also had a relatively low percentage of U.S. anti-war voices—perhaps because the show less frequently features on-the-street interviews, to which critics of the war were usually relegated.” During the invasion, the major network studios were virtually off-limits to vehement American opponents of the war.

For the most part, U.S. networks sanitized their war coverage, which was wall-to-wall on cable. As usual, the enthusiasm for war was extreme on Fox News Channel. After a pre-invasion make-over, the fashion was similar for MSNBC. (In a timely manner, that cable network had canceled the nightly Donahue program three weeks before the invasion began. A leaked in-house report—AllYourTV.com, 2/25/03—said that Phil Donahue’s show would present a “difficult public face for NBC in a time of war. . . . He seems to delight in presenting guests who are anti-war, anti-Bush and skeptical of the administration’s motives.” The danger, quickly averted, was that the show could become “a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.”)

At the other end of the narrow cable-news spectrum, CNN cranked up its own pro-war fervor. Those perspectives deserved to be heard. But on the large TV networks, such voices were so dominant that they amounted to a virtual monopoly in the “marketplace of ideas."

More about how the Phil Donahue show got cancelled for being anti-war. In the lead up to the Iraq invasion MSNBC did not want anti-war voices leading on their network.

Phil Donahue On MSNBC Firing: Chris Matthews Was 'Threatened' By Me

Legendary talk show host Phil Donahue appeared on HuffPostLive Thursday to talk about his firing from MSNBC, the media's role during the Iraq War, and his fraught relationship with Chris Matthews.

Donahue was a rare anti-war voice on television during the run-up to the war, but he was fired in early 2003, even though his show was a highly rated one on the network. A leaked memo later revealed that NBC executives considered him a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war."

As it turned out, one of the people reportedly pushing for Donahue to leave was Chris Matthews.

I love that Donahue pointed out to Chris Matthews that criticizing a leader is necessary and does not mean one hates their country.

There is already some of that going on now.

More about that:

Chris Matthews’ Role in MSNBC’s Donahue Firing

Gabriel Sherman’s piece in New York magazine (10/3/10) on the cable news wars includes a bit of history on MSNBC‘s firing of progressive host Phil Donahue in 2003; an internal memo at the timeworried that the showwould be “a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity.” Sherman focuses on MSNBC personality Chris Matthews–who sometimes claimshe was opposed to the Iraq War–and his desire to get Donahue fired:

"Donahue’s problems only increased when Chris Matthews let it be known that he wanted Donahue off the air. Matthews was a rising force at the network, with a reported salary of $5 million. He cultivated former GE CEO Jack Welch and had the ear of NBC CEO Bob Wright. (The two summered together on Nantucket.) Matthews saw himself as MSNBC‘s biggest star, and he was upset that the network was pumping significant resources into Donahue’s show. In the fall of 2002, U.S. News & World Report ran a gossip item that had Matthews saying over lunch in Washington that if Donahue stays on the air, he could bring down the network."

Any person, any politician questioning Bush or his push to war was not considered a good American. It's starting to feel a little like that lately.

Reporters are pushing candidates to talk about ISIS and terror.

Bernie Sanders called them on it. I realize that they are going to keep on until all candidates sound hawkish. But good for him for trying to overcome the media ISIS blitz.

Sanders. I Will Not Buy Into ‘Their’ Plan To Ignore America’s Problems To Talk About ISIS

Sticking once again to his populist economic message in two speeches at New Hampshire universities, Sanders warned that the all-powerful “they” are using ISIS to distract voters away from America’s systemic problems.

“As a nation and as a people, we have got to understand that our country faces a myriad of very serious problems… if you turn on the TV, what they now say is, ‘Well we’ve got one problem, it’s ISIS,” Sanders said, launching into a sarcastic impression of the “they” on television this week.

“‘We don’t have to worry about old people not having enough to eat. We don’t have to worry about having more people in jail than any other country. We don’t have to worry about the disappearing middle class. We don’t have to worry about economic and wealth inequality…we don’t have to worry about institutional racism, or a broken criminal justice. We don’t have to worry about that. All we should focus on now, 24/7, is ISIS,’” Sanders said.

“Here’s what I say,” he went on, “I say that ISIS must be destroyed and I say that we have got to build a coalition which destroys ISIS. But I say that we are a great enough country and a smart enough country that we can destroy ISIS at the same time as rebuild a disappearing middle class. We can do both.”

In the video above from the Huffington Post, Phil Donahue quotes Chomsky saying that if a president wants to go to war....he can go to war.

It's our job as citizens to make sure all voices are heard.

[hifiguy]

1. They are merely following the orders of their corporate masters,

and those who own their corporate masters. War is good for business and profits for the oligarchy are the only goal.

[madfloridian]

2. And it's so obvious.

I would think some with good thinking processes would be embarrassed.

[madfloridian]

3. More from the FAIR article: Spinning civilian deaths.

http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/the-military-industrial-media-complex/

At the outset of the Gulf War, NBC’s Tom Brokaw echoed the White House and a frequent chorus from U.S. journalists by telling viewers (1/16/91): “We must point out again and again that it is Saddam Hussein who put these innocents in harm’s way.” When those innocents got a mention, the U.S. government was often depicted as anxious to avoid hurting them. A couple of days into the war (1/17/91), Ted Koppel told ABC viewers that “great effort is taken, sometimes at great personal cost to American pilots, that civilian targets are not hit.” Two weeks later (1/29/91), Brokaw was offering assurances that “the U.S. has fought this war at arm’s length with long-range missiles, high-tech weapons . . . to keep casualties down.”

With such nifty phrasing, no matter how many civilians might die as a result of American bombardment, the U.S. government—and by implication, its taxpayers—could always deny the slightest responsibility. And a frequent U.S. media message was that Saddam Hussein would use civilian casualties for propaganda purposes, as though that diminished the importance of those deaths. With the Gulf War in its fourth week (2/9/91), Bruce Morton of CBS provided this news analysis: “If Saddam Hussein can turn the world against the effort, convince the world that women and children are the targets of the air campaign, then he will have won a battle, his only one so far.”

In American televisionland, when Iraqi civilians weren’t being discounted or dismissed as Saddam’s propaganda fodder, they were liable to be rendered nonpersons by omission. On the same day that 2,000 bombing runs occurred over Baghdad, anchor Ted Koppel reported (1/23/91): “Aside from the Scud missile that landed in Tel Aviv earlier, it’s been a quiet night in the Middle East.”

[FloriTexan]

4. Kicking for the reminder....

Thanks for making sure we don't forget!

[Doctor_J]

5. no doubt about it. look around du to see how easily the people can be

led to believe pretty much anything. I think that the Sanders is a racist didn't really catch on like they hoped, so "Sanders is soft on terrorists" is the next volley. Same thing the right wingers have been flinging at liberals for decades.

[madfloridian]

6. It's been so obvious.

[hifiguy]

7. The people who make those pathetic arguments are digging through the bottom

of the barrel immediately next to the one Il Douche is burrowing into.

[leftcoastmountains]

8. Quite frankly they are

making a boatload of money off the incident in San Bernardino. As
a person who lives about 20 miles up the hill from that "event", I resent it.
I love that Bernie basically told the MSM to go to hell today! I resent that
Trump is using it to further his campaign and that the rest of MSM is following right
along. It's always about fear and war. Ever see Bowling for Columbine? More of the
same! The media will always remind us to be afraid be very afraid, oh and while you are at
it, turn your wallet over to us!

[madfloridian]

9. There's big money in making us afraid.

They are so blatant about it.

[steve2470]

10. k&r nt