Some thoughts on the Complicit Media

[Ghost in the Machine]

I just had a weird thought about the media and their complicity in this failure that is the Bush administration.

What if they have been under threats to be shut down if they didn't report what they were told to report. Looking at it from a business end, it would seem to make sense to "go along" with what these scumbag neocan PNACer's want, and keep making their advertising dollars and sales.

Is there any way that the Dem led Congress could subpoena them, call them in for a hearing, something to that effect, and threaten to shut them down if they DON'T start reporting the truth? How would they react? Dumbya is going to be gone in 2 years (hopefully sooner!), but I have a feeling that the Dems are going to retain the majority for a long time coming. Which way would they go? We could introduce legislation to effectively stop the chimperor from shutting them down and in the same token, be ready to shut them down if they remain complicit.

These are serious questions (to me) that popped in my head earlier that I really don't know the answers to. Anyone have any ideas or input on this?

I've got to get back to work now, but I'll check back in later. I just had to get the questions out of my head so they aren't stuck there all day...

PEACE!

Ghost

[mmonk]

1. If they were shut down by the government for reporting,

someone would catch on. It's all about greed.

[Taxloss]

2. Threaten to shut down the media unless they say what you want them to say?

I think the First Amendment would have something to say about that ...

[bryant69]

5. There's the problem - there's no doubt that the media has acted badly

But almost any governmental mechanism we create to punish them, to force them to act in a more responsible manner could also be used to force them to say what you want.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Ghost in the Machine]

16. Ummm....

has this mis-administration cared about the Constitution or Bill of Rights so far??

Freedom comes with a price, and that price is great responsibility. I don't think the First Amendment was designed to protect propaganda, slander, false advertising and knowingly spreading false information to benefit a political party.. or anyone else for that matter.

With whistle-blower's protection coming back, maybe there's more hope. It does seem here in the last week or 2 that the media is starting to turn on the neocons and their failed policies.

PEACE!

Ghost

[blm]

3. Bush's buddies BOUGHT control of most broadcast media in the 80s and 90s.

They don't have to be forced into what to do or threatened. They just get the day or week's talking points and run with them.

[Ghost in the Machine]

17. VERY good point! n/t

[Lerkfish]

4. its never this direct or obvious, its more subtle

a managing editor pulling a reporter aside and telling them to stop being biased against bush, with an implied threat of losing their job.
A news meeting run by a republican editor who deftly downplays stories on anti-war protests as not being of interest to the general readership.

and on and on.

amazingly, all it takes is two or three top editors per paper to completely derail good reporting, and to do it without being obvious or blatant.

[EFerrari]

8. Or the CEO of CNN sending down a memo to caption Afghan

casualities with a reference to 9/11.

And our media has usually behaved in this manner when our government needed a war. :shrug:

[Lerkfish]

9. yup, go back to Hearst and yellow journalism

media have been complicit in affecting public permission to enter wars since they existed.

However, I think the relaxing of FCC monopoly rules have made this process easier when Clear Channel controls every radio station, for example.

[EFerrari]

10. Local media is in terrible trouble.

:(

[Ghost in the Machine]

19. This makes it a *little* clearer for me to understand...

thank you such a good example. I'll be the first to admit that I don't have a clue as to the inner workings of a newspaper, radio or TV station.

Then again, I own a restaurant... but hadn't worked in one since I was 16 years old when opened this one 3 months ago....

PEACE!

Ghost

[CrazyOrangeCat]

6. It's hard to figure, Ghost . . .

. . . people going to expensive colleges to learn the dying art of journalism. They get a job, and they are literally squelched by religious, corporate nutjobs. The Neo-Cons have a stranglehold on this country because of it. It started with Operation Mockingbird, a CIA program in the fifties. They've been slowly insinuating themselves into the media for fifty years. I've thought about it a lot, and my best friend is a trained journalist who now does something else . . . and there doesn't seem to be a way to get the truth out to the masses, which is what finally happened in the Vietnam situation. But . . . us nasty liberals gotta keep trying.

[LiberalEsto]

12. I left journalism because of the bias

I wrote for newspapers from the time I was 15 (high school events) back in 1967. I worked for several NJ papers, including a major daily in Newark for 11 years. I loved my career. I rarely encountered political interference from publishers.

When we moved to Maryland, I worked for a small local daily for a few years. What killed it for me was working with a new managing editor who was a neocon. He immediately started forcing out reporters who weren't right-wing enough to suit him.

The paper had always been liberal, but he got rid of all liberal columnists and brought in right-wingers. He tried to force me and others to slant our stories heavily against Democrats and progressives. Thirteen people left this small daily within a year of his arrival. In 1997 I figured $8.50 an hour wasn't enough to take the crap he dished out, and quit. After he finished wrecking the paper (it no longer exists) he went on to the Heritage Foundation, a bastion of neocons.

My basic newspaper career options here would be the Washington Post (except I doubt they would hire me for a variety of reasons) and a Post-owned, Republican weekly chain that I don't want to work for.

When I see the kind of rotten, biased reporting that goes on almost everywhere today, I'm glad I left journalism. I work as a marketing writer. But I am heartsick to see what has happened to the media in the past decade or more.

[CrazyOrangeCat]

13. Thanks for your account.

I lived in Morristown in 1989-90. I'll bet I read your stuff in a certain Newark daily . . .

:D

[LiberalEsto]

14. Yup

The Star-Ledger. Worked in the Middlesex County bureau, then got sick and was on disability for a year, then worked part-time out of Newark the last couple of years.

I'd go back there in a minute if I lived in NJ. It's privately owned by the Newhouse family, and my friends there don't experience the kind of pressure that goes on elsewhere.

[EFerrari]

15. I think my local paper just lost one of their most talented reporters.

It will be the net gain to the profession he's entering but a terrible loss for the paper. :(

[Ghost in the Machine]

21. Yes, we *must* keep trying, even to the point of

nonviolent civil disobedience. I'm trying my best to be in D.C. on the 27th. It isn't always easy for me to get away, but it would be my first protest, and I think it would be awesome to be there.

If only we could get this happening in every city in every state in the Country, the media couldn't ignore it or hide it any longer. When the Truth is marching in your face, there is no way to hide it, and no way to keep it from the masses.

PEACE!

Ghost

[Jackpine Radical]

7. The same people who own the media

own the Republican Party. Both the media and the politicians dance to the tune of the Capitalist Band. The so-called Cultural Conservative masses are nothing but willing dupes, and their leaders--the likes of Robertson and Falwell--are simply their Elmer Gantry-style managers. That's what Fascism is all about: an unholy alliance between corporations and government. In Nazi Germany, the media were under government control; here, they're under corporate control. All that really means is that our Fascist system has a somewhat different internal structure than the Nazis did. We have also "privatized" large portions of our war machine, unlike the Nazis. The end result is similar, except that we have more efficiently intertwined the tentacles of the corporate and governmental beasts.

[Ghost in the Machine]

23. "we have more efficiently intertwined the tentacles of the corporate

and governmental beasts".......

Can we just throw a bucket of cold water on them, or squirt them with a hose?

Seriously though, I like your analogy and the tie-in to Fascism and the Nazis.

PEACE!

Ghost

[in_cog_ni_to]

11. CNN WAS threatened by KKKRove during the 2000 election, BUT that's no excuse to do what they have

done. They could have done what the Ukrainian journalists did during the Orange Revolution. They are WHOLLY complicit in what has happened to this country.


BOB GARFIELD: And I'm Bob Garfield. For two weeks, the world has watched as Ukrainians poured into Kiev's streets to protest the awarding of the recent presidential election to Prime Minister Victor Yanukovych. But for days, Ukrainian TV had offered nary a glimpse of the so-called Orange Revolution. Most of Ukraine's major TV channels complied with government edicts on how to cover the news, and that meant ignoring the demonstrations in support of Victor Yuschenko, the opposition candidate who alleged widespread vote rigging. After years of state censorship, the crippled election coverage drove a handful of TV journalists to quit.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Last week, the few became the many. Dozens walked off the job to join the protests, and hundreds signed a petition demanding the right to report what they saw. At one point, a sign language interpreter on the state-owned channel UT-1 went off script and signed on live TV that she would no longer lie for the government. Finally, on Thursday, the media owners capitulated and broadcast images of the protests. Many reporters returned to work. Many, but not Fedir Sydoruk, a reporter a the channel called 1 + 1. In October, he and six of his colleagues were the very first to resign, but they haven't been welcomed back. He joins me now on the line from Kiev. Welcome to OTM.

http://www.onthemedia.org/yore/transcripts/transcripts_120304_media.html

[malaise]

18. If they were threatened then explain

why GE, Disney, Warner Brothers et al are among the biggest Rethug supporters.

[Ghost in the Machine]

20. Maybe because of the tax breaks for the top 1% companies?

:shrug:

The uber-rich support the political elite, who in turn provide these huge tax breaks, helping line the pockets of the uber-rich, who in turn support the political elite.... see the big circle it can continue to go in? They're just keeping each other rich and in power, IMHO.

PEACE!

Ghost

[malaise]

25. Maybe -good point n/t

[mmonk]

22. The media in this country no longer serves the interests

of the people of this nation. I hope Kucinich has success in getting the fairness doctrine back, I really do.

[Ghost in the Machine]

24. The really sad part about this is that it's true....

It's well past time that We, the People start standing up for our rights and regain control of our government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Listen folks... this Country belongs to ALL OF US! Not just the select few who seem to think that they own it. Stand up already, and fight for your freedoms... before you have nothing left to fight for... except maybe your very existence...

PEACE!

Ghost