We have a problem with our journalists

[joemurphy]

Bill Moyers' article in the thread below this one is highly insightful. We do have problems with government secrecy, corporate commercialization of the media, and a problem with those same corporate interests allying themselves with a political party's agenda. The Bush administration does everything in secrecy; today most major media outlets are under the control of a handful of wealthy corporations who are in turn run by a handful of corporate executives; and too often these controlling media moguls are lap dogs for the Bush Administration agenda. Fox News is the most egregious example, but there are too many others.

But our problems run deeper than that. The Judy Miller and Bob Woodward cases point up another problem -- journalists themselves have all too often become willing hand puppets of an administration that spoon feeds them the Republican Party line under the guise of calling it "news". In fact, journalists are the news -- appearing regularly on cable television spouting Republican talking points and agreeing with Republican pundits. They're celebrities in their own right and often they're millionaires.

In the past, crusading journalists viewed the powerful as adversaries -- potentially corrupt or sinister wielders of control that had to be monitored, challenged, and distrusted at every turn. Reporters ferreted out stories through hard work, poring over documents, piecing strands together -- all in the name of reporting truth and informing the citizenry. Today we don't have many Ernie Pyles, Edward R. Murrows, I. F. Stones, or Walter Cronkites. Today, our war journalists are "embedded" or hiding in hotels in the Green Zone. Now, a "scoop" is only what an "unnamed, but highly placed official" tells the reporter and not something the reporter ferrets out for himself. And our reporters are lazy. They are all too willing to put whatever that anonymous source tells him (or her) into print or videotape and spew it back to the public without analysis, backup research, or cautionary warnings about the source's biases or potential ulterior motives. This is the kind of "reporting" that has gotten us into a war in Iraq and that is keeping us from getting to the bottom of the outing of Valerie Plame.

We need to restore the limited ownership rules that Reagan eliminated that were originally put in place to prevent corporate conglomerates from buying up radio and television stations and networks while simultaneously owning newspapers and news magazines.
We must break up the existing conglomerates and make the corporations divest. Absent the restoration of such rules and such "trust-busting" our news media's reporting will continue to be what it is: insipid, monolithic, lacking in diversity of opinion. We'll continue to have the mini-Pravadas that we have now -- capable ownly of spewing out the prevailing party line and calling it journalism.

We also need real reporting. Journalism today -- at least on television -- is dominated by henna-haired twenty year old beauty queens who have been taught to read teleprompters but lack any real training or knowledge about what they are actually reporting. Talk shows aren't thought provoking. Moderators don't ask the right questions. The editors are toadies under the thumb of corporate directors interested only in maintaining their cozy relationships with the politicians that allow them to operate their media monopolies. It's all great for those in it. The only losers are the reading and viewing public.

To call what we have now a "free press" is an exhaltation of form over substance. It's corporate pablum laced with Republican talking points replete with loudmouthed morons powerful enough to make or break a politician's -- usually a Democratic politician's -- career.

So today, if you want thought or insight or truth -- you need to go to the internet and judiciously read the blogs. You need to watch C-Span. You need to come to on-line forums like DU. And you need to think and put all the facts together yourself. Our press doesn't do it for us anymore. It doesn't even try.

If and when the Democrats retake control in 2006 or 2008, we've got to address these problems. Doing so will be difficult because those wealthy few controlling the media in our country won't give up their control easily. But Moyers is right, if these problems aren't addressed, we'll be a poor excuse for a country.

[spindrifter]

1. Bravo, joemurphy,

and another thing that people need to be wary of is the book author-journalist. Both Jmiller and BWoodward apear to have had so much hold on their editors because they were stars that they are/were able to get by with little or no editorial supervision, monitoring, call it what you will. The book is the thing. How prestigious to have the award-winning, book writing journalist on your paper. The issue becomes: what is the content? What did it take to get to the content? What is the writer's position on the content? Maybe they need to be off the paper while collecting info and writing their books--and go before an editorial board prior to coming back. Sounds harsh--but maybe it protects the integrity of journalism.

[joemurphy]

6. Excellent point. Our two "best" papers -- the NYT and the

Washington Post-- are now full of highly paid (and even millionaire) reporters. And they've been compromised. We got better journalism from young hungry sharks eager to work long hours and dog their targets. Now journalism seems to be about attending cocktail parties of the rich and famous. Too many of our famed journalists are fat cats who have grown used to farting on silk cushions.

[spindrifter]

7. Smells the same

whether on the cold metal chair or on the silk cushion, eh. I agree that the hungry sharks used to do a better job. We now have people worrying about how fast they can fill the bank accounts and whether they have the right haircut for the soundbyte shot on the TV news. Meanwhile there are those of us amateurs out hear mining the internet for info.

[BlueEyedSon]

2. Links please?

What thread? What Moyers article??

[joemurphy]

4. It was excerpts from his book:

Here's the thread:

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x5414880>

[madeline_con]

3. "... go to the internet and judiciously read the blogs ..."

IMO, as the population ages, there will be less stock put into every stupid thing said and done on U.S. tv.

People will be more likely to have a broader world view, because of the proliferation of computers and the internet.

Right now, many are too old, or so they think, to even own or try to use a computer. Meanwhile kids growing up today are exposed as tots, and see them as second nature. Things are evolving quite quickly. :)

[joemurphy]

5. The big boys will be moving to control the Internet soon too.

It's only a question of time.

[madeline_con]

12. They need tech guys.

I read they can't do a 2 word search with Defense Dept. computers.

Also, it's hard to keep up with tens of millios of bloggers and MSG board members, who's got time to read all that?

Whatever technology they come up with to 'keep an eye on things', a way around it will be developed.

[tiptoe]

14. Google Hired Neocon Dan Senor: Former Carlyle Grp & Scot McClellan Deputy

Face of the Neocon hired by Google earlier this year:

Lookout, France! Google hires neo-con headbanger
Axis of Do No Evil
By Andrew Orlowski
Published Tuesday 24th May 2005 09:42 GMT

The company that prides itself on "Doing No Evil" isn't taking any chances with its latest executive appointment. Dan Senor, the company's new Global Communications and Strategy VP, has a CV guaranteed to have Register columnist Otto Z Stern firing a celebratory fusillade skywards from his compound in New Mexico.

A former Senior Associate at the Carlyle Group, Senor was briefly Scott McLellan's deputy as White House spokesman before becoming head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq's information department. The White House web site bills him as Senior Advisor to Presidential Envoy L. Paul Bremer III. Fox News hired Senor as a panelist in February. While in Iraq Senor showed his loyalty by going jogging in a Bush-Cheney '04 tracksuit.

Not everyone is impressed.

"I have come to associate his triangular, brush-cut head with an unceasing stream of bullshit. He's Ari Fleischer without the charm," writes one grump. "Hiring this guy is a repulsive move."
...

For source links and commentary:

Google going Neo-con?
...
I can just imagine, how, with the will and the means, they could control access to information by controlling search results on Google.

Scary thought.

Notice, once again we have to go to a foreign news outlet to get this story.

[many a good man]

8. Just another consequence of our "winner take all" society

In the good old days reporters weren't paid much more than the average Joe. They weren't in it for the money and the glamor. They were driven by their muse.

Nowadays they can see what it takes to get those six or seven figure incomes. They want to hobnob with the powerful, feel special, and make big money. What's a little kowtowing to the corporate masters since everybody else does it, too?

Just a few decades ago the banker, the lawyer, the doctor didn't make all that much more money than the average skilled worker. The gulf between the rich and the middle is expanding geometrically. Everybody wants to get into that top 10% group because the sky's the limit.

I think we'll get better reporting if we can reverse this runaway trend of income inequality. We can start by bringing back the 70% tax bracket on annual incomes over $1 million. This is one of the most shameful aspects of American society IMHO.

[AuntPatsy]

10. Pride and honor seems sadly to be a thing of the past for

far too many journalists, pride in one's work, and honorable enough to ensure facts be thought of as an ideal attribute for one's work..

[RaleighNCDUer]

30. Re-establish heavy corporate taxes, as well.

There is simply so much money flowing into corporate coffers that they can afford to buy politicians and hire million-dollar "journalist" flacks. Eliminating the myth of corporate personhood would be a great help as well.

[Clark2008]

31. Actually, they still aren't

Only the TV talking heads make the big bucks - or those shills like Judy Miller.

I never made more than $16,000 as a reporter - which is why I had to give up the profession after I divorced and became a single mother.

Edited to add: This is actually part of the problem. Good journalists who don't want to shill - who want to try and report the truth - make no money. They're paid, as a whole, worse than teachers. So, they either end up shilling for one side or the other or they leave the profession to make ends meet.

I miss being a reporter with every bone in my body, but I make more in marketing. *sigh*

[sam sarrha]

9. recomended

:kick:

[tsuki]

11. Problem - Journalists are extinct. Global warming got them all.

[snot]

13. PLS help by taking action on this issue!

Pls write your reps re- the following, which as far as I know is still pending:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=109x21930 :

Democrats Move to Re-Regulate Media

This will be good if it can get some legs in the General Population.

Do not expect the LMSM to report on this

<snip>
Two liberal House members who recently have been critical of what they view as attempts by conservative Republicans to take over America’s mass media and public broadcasting have now introduced a sweeping bill that would re-regulate radio and TV back to the days before the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

The Media Ownership Reform Act of 2005 (MORA) is co-sponsored by Reps. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y. and Diane Watson, D-Calif. In a written announcement, MORA is described as legislation “that seeks to undo the massive consolidation of the media that has been ongoing for nearly 20 years.”

The measure would restore the Fairness doctrine, reinstate a national cap on radio ownership and lower the number of radio stations a company can own in a local market. It also reinstates a 25% national television ownership cap and requires stations to submit regular public interest reports to the Federal Communications Commission.
<end of snip>

link
http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/189

[HuskiesHowls]

15. Its all part of the corporatization of America....

The difference between what's happening in the media, and what John D Rockefeller did with Standard Oil in the late 19th century is that its happening now, and its happening in the media instead of oil.

<snip>
Over the past several decades, America has evolved from a capitalist to a corporatist economy and from a democratic to a corporatist society-we have traded democratic capitalism for corporatism. And in the process, we Americans have lost our independence.
<snip>
Our economy is no longer capitalistic and our government is no longer democratic.

The Corporatization of America
John Ikerd
Professor Emeritus
University of Missouri
http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/OhioCorporatization1.html

Do a search on "corporatization of America". It makes some good reading!!

Read some of the keynote addresses, and some of the speeches. Then make note of the dates these speeches and warnings were given. Not yesterday, or last month....years ago!!
(edited to add final remarks)

[azureblue]

16. And this is what bloggers are now

So called reporters are now just lazy shills, working for propaganda outlets. Blogs, like DU, have become the mouthpiece of the modern day reporter, ferreting out stories & facts, etc., etc. This is what the MM fears the most- unbridled, un centralized reporting- thousands able to find a story and put it on the net, where millions can read it. Reporters? Forget them. they are old hat.

[jfkraus]

22. Blog News

I was listening to an NPR story about declining print news subscriptions. The "expert" said print news was doing this on purpose to focus their readership. Spin, spin, spin. People are starting to get fed up with the schlock they put out, and want the unadulterated/uninfluenced facts. Blogs are a great outlet for this, but sometimes we don't always check our facts either. It's still "buyer beware" when it comes to Blog facts. The point, though, is well taken-- people are abandoning traditional news outlets for the internet. The "expert" never even mentioned this in the NPR story other than to say people are starting to turn to the online version of the traditional news outlets. Some "expert".

[mtnsnake]

17. "And our reporters are lazy."

Yup, they sure are. Any incentive they had has been taken away. Why should they fight to find the truth when they're paid obscene amounts of money for newsbites that are handed to them on a silver platter, many times from the same people who are paying them to be nothing more than parrots?

It's the same thing when you make that age-old mistake of paying someone for a job BEFORE he or she actually does it. The job rarely gets done on time and many times not at all. The incentive has been taken away because they already have the money. But give that job to someone and hold off paying them until it's done, and the end result is astonishingly different...and better.

Taking away the incentive for these corporate journalists has resulted in a sharp decrease in quality, production, and integrity.

Recommended, btw.

[Clark2008]

32. Not most of them.

It's just the really good ones have to leave to earn a living. Only the shills stay - and they're compensated by outside funding (like Jeff Gannon/Guckert).

Most of your local reporters are hard-working people - trying to do their jobs at long hours for little pay. It's horrible. I was in the profession for 12 years. I miss it, but I don't miss the hours and I certianly don't miss the peanuts I was fed for pay.

[nbcouch]

18. re "We have a problem with our journalists"

I have one objection to "We have a problem with our journalists." It's the phrase "too often these controlling media moguls are lap dogs for the Bush Administration agenda." You got this exactly backward, joemurphy. It's the Bush administration that are the lap (or attack) dogs for the corporations. It's high time we recognized who's really in charge of this government.

[glitch]

19. Well said, and welcome to DU! nt

[kentuck]

20. They could make it a lot easier on themselves if...

they decided to simply tell the truth. They should have no other agenda. They have no duty to protect anyone.

[jfkraus]

21. The man responsible is John Rendon

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/_/id/8798997?rnd=1132580260926&has-player=false

[confludemocrat]

23. You are charitable to call them that. They don't fit the definition

you so well lay out based on every decent tradition we know of in that field. Most are contracted operatives working under rules that they make up as they go along covered by a facade of "ethics" that they thwart with "work arounds", are answerable to no one except moneyed interests.

[adrock]

24. You Hit the Nail on the Head

While your overall idea is sound, albeit unimportant, your observation of an overly controlled right-wing media monopoly is far from true. Perhaps you can remember the Presidential elections of last November, when a 'Journalist' named Rather ran a story he swears to this day is valid, besmirching the National Guard service of Pres. Bush. This is an obvious contradiction to your call for more, 'crusading journalists viewed the powerful as adversaries -- potentially corrupt or sinister wielders of control that had to be monitored, challenged, and distrusted at every turn. Reporters ferreted out stories through hard work, poring over documents, piecing strands together -- all in the name of reporting truth and informing the citizenry.'

The overall slant toward running out of Iraq of the media is not trying to REPORT the news, as they are attempting to CREATE the news. Of course if this was indeed the popular opinion of Americans, why did an overwhelming number of Representives go back on the idea of withdrawing from Iraq in Friday night? Even the man who proposed the idea voted against it.

While your writing is somewhat coherent, your whole idea base is faulty. If you wrote from point of fact rather than your skewed view, it might be worthwhile. You should really rethink your position on things, it's not all a vast conspiracy. The news sucks, they don't report the truth and it's not caused by corporations run by rich power-mongering republicans.

[corporatemedia]

25. And please, PLEASE, stop calling it "MSM". Call it what it is ....

CORPORATE MEDIA

There is NOTHING "mainstream" about it.
It ONLY represents the interests of its CORPORATE Masters.

When you talk about the Estate Tax, do you call it the "Death Tax"???

Why do you people who insist on calling it "MSM" not realize that is the same term used by FOX NEWS AND THE RIGHT WING?

You are helping the radical-right-wing frame the issue.

Please stop. Thank you.

[Mahayani]

26. Subject: Sent to CNN on Journalism

Just heard Jeff Greenfield, the first of any responsible journalist, say for the very first time, that WMD could be compared to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
That thought was in my head, the moment they mentioned WMD as a cause for war since Hans Blix said there was nothing in Iraq.
It is much worse than the Vietnam rational. It is THE BIG LIE, so outrageous that it is difficult to disprove. Hitler used it.
Say goodbye to the Constitution.
The Secret Service did invade my home on January 11, 2005, without a warrant, because some right-winger overheard me say "let's get Carl Rove". Someone idiot told them I said that.
I was born here, I am a patriot.
I held a real Bronze and Silver Star Hero for the last four years of his life. I almost lived in the VFW Hall.
But I also did go to Tufts University and U Mass grad school and have had my name in four medical research journals.
I feel like Abbie Hoffman. God you news journalists are SLOW.

[corporatemedia]

27. Welcome to DU. The way you mention of Abbie....

and knowing his fate, makes me afraid for you. Is there any reason to be?

[jen4clark]

28. Hope on the Horizon!!

Please check out the website for the developing Independent World News (IWT) and consider becoming a donor!

http://www.iwtnews.com/



And read the BUZZFLASH Interview:

Paul Jay, Creator of Independent World Television, Intends To Challenge Corporate Broadcasters at Their Own Game

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/07/int05027.html

Paul Jay (a successful producer of documentaries and also public affairs programming for the CBC in Canada): The heart of the network is an international news show. This is going to be a prime source of international news gathering, investigation and reporting. We're going to start with a sort of minimalist model, in which we will buy footage from the APs and Reuters of the world. And because we're not-for-profit, we can get a pretty good deal. We're going to get the raw footage, and then we're going to re-cut it the way we choose. But we're not going to be using or relying at all on Reuters' and AP reporting. We're making alliances with some of the best print reporters and radio reporters around the world.


For example, we have an alliance with the Mail and Guardian newspaper in Johannesburg. The editor of that paper is on our advisory committee. When a story breaks in Africa, we'll be able to get raw footage from AP or from Africa sources, but we will already have in place reporters whom we trust and think are courageous and skilled and have a sense of history. We'll be able to get them on the phone or reporting for us on camera. We're building these alliances around the world with the best journalists we can find.

The next stage is to start establishing bureaus where we hire some of these journalists full time. We'll start with two or three bureaus, possibly one in Africa or Latin America, one in the Middle East, and one in the United States. We'll start growing the bureaus later...


- much more at BUZZFLASH -

http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/07/int05027.html


_________________________________

From IWT Website:

http://www.iwtnews.com/


OUR MISSION


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Serious news and diversity of opinion - on which democracy depends - are disappearing from television. Across the globe, news media ownership is concentrated in the hands of a few conglomerates whose economic needs dictate news coverage. They promote superficial "infotainment" and one-sided reporting over tough investigation, context and holding authority accountable. Public broadcasters face shrinking budgets and growing political and commercial pressures.

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We have a right to know. Join us.




Hat tip to Blackie at CCN

[mwooldri]

29. We need Jeremy Paxman to open up a School of Journalism here.

Jeremy Paxman IMO is probably one of the best news journalists that exist. Some of his memorable moments are:

Greeting the winner of a parliamentary seat, George Galloway, with this question: "Mr Galloway, are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament?"

Asking the then Home Secretary Michael Howard this question 12 times: "Did you threaten to overrule him?" (referring to the Head of the Prison's Service's decision not to dismiss the head of Pankhurst prison after a well publicised jail-break) - Michael Howard gave 12 evasive answers.

Jeremy Paxman, along with John Humphries, are the two most respected journalists in the UK - a lot like them because they are simply not soft on the politicians; they feel their colleagues are too soft. In the recent General Election, Tony Blair chose to be interviewed by Jeremy Paxman because he knows that Paxo will literally roast him. Same for John Humphries; Tony Blair is considered scared of him and will not be interviewed by him if he can get away with it.