"Their objective was not simply to tame the press but to transform it...." [View All]

[buycitgo]

......to "tranform it into an unwitting mouthpiece of the government; it was one of Gergen's guiding assumptions that the administration simply could not govern effectively unless it could "get the right story out" through the "filter" of the press."

sound familiar?

well, that story begins with Reagan, at least in terms of our current political miasma. of course, it started back as far as the first PR guy for the first shaman, back around the time they started trying to explain why things needed to be the way they needed to be. gotta keep the hunter/gatherers hunting and gathering, right?

point is, the "minions" who are really running things have really learned their lessons exceptionally well

the Thanksgiving mediagasm is all one needs to be reassured there no longer exists any sort of meaningful filter, and it's so very obvious that, rather than learning their lesson of abjectivity back in May, the press has become even MORE craven, groveling even more obsequiously, if possible, than before.

the one disagreement I have with the heading quote is that the press has clearly crossed the line (with very few feebly voiced exceptions) from "unwitting mouthpiece" to Pravda-like, self-designated apparatchiks.

Do we have any recourse?

Is our side of the spectrum content to allow the likes of freepsters, crazed Xtian Reconstructionists, and fat rich blowhards take off with the last vestiges of our democracy, just 'cause they seem to be more MOtivated?

what's a poor, disenfranchised leftwimp to do?

I know, start by getting out from behind the box and DO something.

good idea, but now it's time for a nap.......

EDIT
got the quote here:

David Gergen, former White House director of communications, confirmed shortly after leaving the administration in January 1984 that President Reagan and most of his advisers had come to believe that the basic goal of their approach to the news media-"to correct the imbalance of power with the press so that the White House will once again achieve a 'margin of safety' "- had finally been attained.

Most expansive of all was Michael Deaver, the first-term deputy chief of staff and a virtual surrogate son to the Reagans. Deaver wrote in his memoirs that up until the Iran-contra scandal broke, "Ronald Reagan enjoyed the most generous treatment by the press of any President in the postwar era. He knew it, and liked the distinction."
How Reagan managed to elude critical news coverage for so long baffled many political observers, not least news executives and journalists themselves.

"I don't know how to explain why he hasn't been as vulnerable to the onslaught of the American press as some previous Presidents; it is a hard subject for me," said ABC News executive vice president David Burke. Agreeing with Ben Bradlee about the extraordinary kindness of Reagan's press coverage, he continued, "I wonder why. It isn't because he intimidates us. It isn't that he blows us away with logic. So what the hell is it?"

Burke, a former top aide to Senator Edward Kennedy, finally settled on a variation of the Great Communicator theory, long favored by journalists and White House aides alike for explaining Reagan's positive public image. The key, in this view, was Reagan himself. His personal gifts-an amiable personality, sincere manner, perfect vocal delivery and photogenic persona-made him the television era equivalent of the Pied Piper of Hamelin; he played a tune so gay and skipped ahead so cheerily that others could not help but trust and follow him.

To attack such a man ~ was unthinkable. "You just can't get the stomach to go after the guy," explained Burke. "It's not a popularity thing, it's not that we're afraid of getting the public mad at us. I think it is a perception that the press has in general of Reagan, that he is a decent man. He is not driven by insecurities, by venality, by conspiracies and back-room tactics."

Tom Brokaw, anchor and managing editor of the NBC Nightly News, also felt that Reagan got "a more positive press than he deserves," a feat for which Brokaw credited the White House staff as well as the President.

"In part it goes back to who he is," said Brokaw, "and his strong belief in who he is. He's not trying to reinvent himself every day as Jimmy Carter was.... Ronald Reagan reminds me of a lot of CEOs I know who run big companies and spend most of their time on their favorite charitable events or lunch with their pals and kind of have a broad-based philosophy of how they want their companies run. Reagan's got that kind of broad-based philosophy about how he wants the government run, and he's got all these killers who are willing and able to do that for him."

The "killers" primarily responsible for generating positive press coverage of Reagan were Michael Deaver and David Gergen, and if they did not exactly get away with murder, they came pretty close. Deaver, Gergen and their colleagues effectively rewrote the rules of presidential image-making. On the basis of a sophisticated analysis of the American news media-how it worked, which buttons to push when, what techniques had and had not worked for previous administrations-they introduced a new model for packaging the nation's top politician and using the press to sell him to the American public.


http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Ronald_Reagan/On_Bended_Knee.html

clearly, they've gotten a lot better today than they were fifteen-twenty years ago, and I also think the public has gotten even more apathetic than they were then. how else could a vicious cretin like Boo-sh, Reagan without the brains/charisma, have gotten as far (sunk as low?) as he has? People just barely pay attention.

remember, well into the 2000 selection campaign a goodly percentage of the drones didn't even realize that there was more than ONE George Bush.