Spying on journalists: The final nail in the coffin

[garybeck]

I believe that the recent news about NSA spying on journalists will be the final nail in the coffin for this administration. For 6 years now, the media has been propping up these killers and theives, giving them a free ride, making excuses, and covering up their crimes. Now that they know they are being watched too, just sit back and see what happens. Me thinks the media folks will not like this. There is surely a pile of more stories that they are sitting on, and they're going to come out now. And if they know their phones are tapped and their computers are logged, they'll meet in dark alleys to talk about it if they have to.

I read in a text book that what really put Nixon down was not the Watergate incident per se, but the fact that the public was completely fed up with him. If there wasn't such discontent perhaps the story never would have been reported. The same thing is happening now. The public has turned on Bush. The one last thing we needed to happen is for the media to turn. Of course Fox and many of the reporters will continue their BS, but just watch. There are a few good people there, who are really not going to like this spying on journalists thing, and they're going to do something about it.

[savemefromdumbya]

1. what's the saying?

can't think of it

[shain from kane]

4. Never get in an argument with someone that buys ink by the

barrel and paper by the ton.

Is that the one?

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. I ain't so sure, Gary.

This generation of journalists would be hard-pressed to summon up 1/10th the gumption and commitment to the unvarnished truth that one found in a Murrow or Trout or Anderson. Like so may others these days, their job as journalists is just a way-point where they spend their time waiting for their ticket to be punched so they can move onto the next career and economic level.

Many, many of them are also The Children of Reagan. Their perceptions of reality were formed by that era. It is unlikely they really understand the totality of that. Or care.

[ContraBass Black]

3. That coffin has a goddamn lot of nails.

The pallbearers are going to need a pair of cargo helicopters.

[Warpy]

5. Well, ABC has slightly edged out NBC as a model for

journalist conservatism, enabling, and best imitation of a lap dog, IMO, and they have already said they have discovered the tapping from their own end.

If they haven't changed their tune by now, they're not likely to.

What we're likely to see instead is a tidal wave of public cynicism regarding "official channels," and that means the major news media. People will largely abandon them. This is dangerous in the short term, meaning the rumors and false information will spread like wildfire. In the long term, the official channels will be supplanted by small outfits that don't owe their allegiance to GE, Disney or Viacom but to the country and their readers/listeners.

Nature abhors any sort of a vacuum, and journalists in this country working for the 6 corporations that own the whole of our major media have created one. Lying by omission is still lying, and the public is starting to catch on.

The final nail in the coffin is for corporate media. All that remains is for the corpse to realize it's been dead for years.

[newswolf56]

6. I disagree. The media (of which I am part) is much too compromised...

to fight back. It will merely continue on its bread-and-circus path, and to protect itself from the costs of defending reporters and editors, it will simply order those reporters and editors to cease and desist the practices that anger the regime, and to refocus on non-controversial sensationalism: Three Blonde Co-eds Missing in Timbuktu, Senator's Wife Caught in Drug Raid on Lesbian Love Nest, Varsity Grid Squad Charged in Cheerleader-Team Gang-Rape, Librarian Spy Ring Indicted under Patriot Act -- that sort of thing.

Thus nothing at all will be done about anti-media spying or any other genuine outrage -- the (pro-Bush/pro-fascist/pro-theocracy) corporations that control the media will not allow anything to be done -- and Bush will continue flushing our liberty down the commode of history.

But in some parts of the world -- Europe for example -- the dreadful reality of America will become ever more terrifyingly clear. And eventually...