Remind me - why did the mainstream media sell out to the right wing?

[begin_within]

[Moochy]

1. Capitalism

[jobycom]

2. The right wing bought the MSM when Reagan deregulated the media

Allowing people like Murdoch, GE, Time Warner/AOL, Cox Entertainment and Sinclair to buy up enough local and national news outlets to completely control what gets published or broadcast.

[Vincardog]

4. Ya got it in one.

[NYCGirl]

14. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Reagan got rid of the "equal time" law,

Clinton signed the media consolidation bill.

[jobycom]

25. Yeah, Reagan started the process, Clinton finished it.

Bad on him. He was trying to get other things passed through the Republican Congress and gave up too much on that one.

[Greyhound]

26. You are not wrong. Clinton has always been a repug in dem clothes. n/t

[Neocondriac]

3. Follow the..

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$ !

[StellaBlue]

5. same corporations

that own them (notice I didn't say 'who own'!!!), own the government.

Capitalism, indeed.

They are all about money. Not even entertainment. And hoping to see any actual news is just nostalgia.

[NYCGirl]

6. Because the people who own most of the mainstream media are rightwingers.

[Caution]

7. you answered your own question "sell out" meaning $$$$$$

[wtmusic]

8. When the price got high enough nt

[RagingInMiami]

9. They want FCC to further deregulate the media

And allow single companies to own all the news sources in a city, including newspapers, TV stations, radio stations, etc. It's already like that thanks to the right wingers.

So they kill off the competition, making it unnecessary for them to actually do their job because there is no fear that a competing institution is going to scoop them.

[gratuitous]

10. Doomp do-do-do do doot doot doomp do-do-do

Money!

GE (which owns NBC) makes money off of war. Viacom (which owns CBS) gets fat tax cuts for its overrich CEO Sumner Redstone. Disney (which owns ABC) ditto. If someone's stuffing money into your pockets faster than you can possibly spend it, and lavishing more and more on you, when would you tell them to stop?

[in_cog_ni_to]

11. Corporations own the media. Corporations pay the government

through lobbyists to buy favors. The government pays favors in return for favors from the media (PROPAGANDA) and that there is our vicious circle.

FASCISM. Plain and simple.

[cry baby]

12. the right wing owns the media through corporations.

It's the new United States of Corprations. Hail to the CEO!

[Beelzebud]

13. Because the right-wing literally owns them...

[dogday]

15. M O N E Y

who has it? who is getting it? how can you get it?

[OnionPatch]

16. Because they want favors

They want deregulation of the media, first and specifically. More generally, the MSM are owned by Republicans who own multinational corporations and they want less regulation and less taxes. That's basically all it boils down to. No regulation. Then they can pollute, exploit and defraud all they want. It means lots and lots of money for them. And no taxes on top of it? CEO heaven. It all boils down to money. Greed and money.

[Double T]

17. It's ALL about the paycheck........

if you want a paycheck, you support the neocon and republican cause. Wonder how it feels to be a political and capitalist whore?????

[begin_within]

18. But weren't they making good money before they sold out to the RW?

[ret5hd]

19. the CORPORATIONS bought them...

they didnt sell out...they were SOLD, to the CORPORATIONS.
News dept's aren't money generators...they're money protectors.

General Electric isnt going to let the news dept report on something that will cost them money.

[OnionPatch]

20. In other words, did they have enough money already?

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!! :rofl:

When you're a greedy, anti-regulation capitalist, there is no such thing as enough. The money they used to make when things were more fair is NOTHING compared to what they can and are making now. NOTHING. PEANUTS. No, peanut SHELLS!!

[Kingshakabobo]

21. Yesterday, there was a DU thread about how Peter Jennings left a 50million

dollar estate.

Count the money.


it's de monee

[otohara]

Telecommunications Act 1996

and hopes of even more consolodation in the future. The people spoke and blocked more consolodation for the time being. The broadcasters won't give up on consolodation and know their friends are with the GOP, not the Dems.

Hear that giant sucking sound?

[mestup]

28. Molly Ivins used to really scream about that Act.

http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/1/2002/256

Molly Ivins
July 24 2002
-snip-
"For those of you not afflicted by Alzheimer's in recent years, Bob McChesney, the media critic and professor at Southern Illinois, sums it up nicely: "The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was one of the most important of the last 50 years. It was also the most corrupt and undemocratic bill of the time: It was of, by and for special interests. Most of the congresspeople who voted for it didn't even know what they were voting on."

He understates. The bill was actually written by industry lobbyists, each of the several components of telecom snarling at one another like wolves over a piece of meat as they ripped up 70 years worth of regulatory experience. The wolves united once the bill hit the floor to push it through. We few, we happy few, who raised hell about it at the time had it condescendingly explained to us that the magic of the marketplace would take care of all our doubts."

[ComerPerro]

22. $$$$$$

[lateo]

23. Because the right-wing owns them.

It's all about the dollar bill ya'll.

[vi5]

24. I'll present a different opinion on this....

..than what everyone else seems to be answering (captalism...$$$$, etc).

I think that stuff plays a part in it but the bigger issue is that the right knew exactly what they were doing when they spent years if not decades accusing the media of having a liberal bias. As a result the media started to go reflexively in the other direction so as to remove anything even slightly resembling a liberal bias. Hence the "presenting both sides" garbage we see day in and day out now on TV.

I heard this once described as the equivalent of "working the ref" in hockey which is if you keep accussing a ref enough times of making bad calls, eventually he'll start to overcompensate in the opposite direction.

Plus, (and going back to the money part of it) I think they realized that there are big bucks to be had in the sickly loyal right wing base who will buy, read, watch anything that is directed at them and reinforces their own world view, facts be damned. There are built in dollars to be had there, more so than with the left who are much more fractured and less inclined to use their buying power.

[Talismom]

27. When you can't understand why, follow the $$$$$! n/t

[HawkerHurricane]

29. They've ALWAYS been right wing.

But news programs tried to just report the news. For doing that during the 1964 campaign, they were accused of being liberally biased.

Once the accusation was out there, they could let thier Republican bias show in a effort to counter the accused liberal bias.

Remember this: Fair Media to a Republican means it's biased against them. "You're either with us or against us".