More than ten years ago, it occured to me that the single biggest problem in this country is . . . .

[Stinky The Clown]

. . . . the media.

They manipulate us. They steer the conversation. They make the news as much as report it. There is no competition. There are no more real journalists. The same story gets told on every news outlet. There is no background. There is only the shaping of American opinion. They have - and have used - the power to elect our leaders. They got george bush elected. They got Barack Obama elected. You have no voice and no say, apart from saying what the media tells you to say.

Barack Obama will, without a shred of a doubt, be reelected. I say this with confidence because of the media's treatment of the repubican candidates.

You know they covered Obama favorably in the run up to 2008.

You know they covered george bush favorably in the run up to 2004.

You know they destroyed Al Gore in the run up to 2000.

You know they cheerled the marches to three wars.

you know they obfuscated the fleecing of the average person's wealth by the powerful.

You know they have, and continue to, failed to report the activities the "shadowy right wing financiers" such as Richard Mellon Sciafe, the Koch brothers, and others whose names are less well known.

You know they have worked to anesthetize the thinking part of the American brain while enhancing that part that adopts and repeats favored points of view.

We talk about how we have to "work to elect progressive candidates" and support those who favor our political points of view. But that is, in so many ways, folly.

The real job is to get an honest media.






And that is a goal that is, for all practical purposes, unachievable in a society constructed as it currently exists.






The only hope is to use the individual media to speak your truth.

Until that gets shut down.

[leveymg]

1. Well said. I like your last point particulary about using the individual media

while we still have it. Live every day of your life that way, and we just might make it. :fistbump:

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Yep...The media is a tool of the corporate "overlords"....even more so than it ever was before.

and sadly, the population seems to be more and more ignorant and gullible.

http://markmaynard.com/?p=7501

<snip>

The best part of the article is the contribution by Thomas Frank, the author of What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. Here’s a highlight:

….Right-wing politics has become a vehicle for channelling this popular anger against intellectual snobs. The result is that many of America’s poorest citizens have a deep emotional attachment to a party that serves the interests of its richest.

Thomas Frank says that whatever disadvantaged Americans think they are voting for, they get something quite different:

“You vote to strike a blow against elitism and you receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our life times, workers have been stripped of power, and CEOs are rewarded in a manner that is beyond imagining… It’s like a French Revolution in reverse in which the workers come pouring down the street screaming more power to the aristocracy.”

As Mr Frank sees it, authenticity has replaced economics as the driving force of modern politics. The authentic politicians are the ones who sound like they are speaking from the gut, not the cerebral cortex. Of course, they might be faking it, but it is no joke to say that in contemporary politics, if you can fake sincerity, you have got it made.

And here, according to the author of the article, is the big takeaway message from all of this… “If people vote against their own interests, it is not because they do not understand what is in their interest or have not yet had it properly explained to them. They do it because they resent having their interests decided for them by politicians who think they know best. There is nothing voters hate more than having things explained to them as though they were idiots. As the saying goes, in politics, when you are explaining, you are losing. And that makes anything as complex or as messy as healthcare reform a very hard sell.”

<snip>

It may appear that what we have here, on the part of the Democrats, is a failure to communicate. Having the media in the hands of the opposition does not help the situation at all.

[rurallib]

3. and the one media we have any equality on - the internet -

is target number 1.

[Ichingcarpenter]

4. That's the billion dollar problem

and I've been saying it for years.

The system is corrupt, from the banks, to the corporate payoffs, the misguided public, to even the political puppets pretending to be different because they are on different hands of the same puppet master.

As CNN's Eric Roberts asked the republican presidential candidates
the important questions

"Coke or Pepsi? Iphone or blackberry? "

[madinmaryland]

5. That also correlates to the Foxification of the news starting in the late 90's.

[Cleita]

6. Control the media and you control the message.

Hitler wrote a lot in "Mein Kampf" about the value of propaganda and controlling the message. He said he got his ideas from how the British and Americans spread their propaganda to the enemy, which was the Germans in WWI. When he rose to power, he did just that, not only take over the media but entertainment as well in radio and movies. He of course put Josef Goebbels in charge. The only news, information and political message that got published were the one he wanted Germans to read, otherwise the publications carried articles about non-political fluff. William Shirer wrote in "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" that the material became so boring, few bothered to read it. Of course it took something this drastic to brainwash a nation into being good Germans.

I notice we are doing the same thing. Of course our movies and entertainment are still free, which is why we can still have a "Daily Show" and TV programs and movies that address the abuses in our society. However, the fact that Fox News is on in almost every public space you go to that has a TV, like the gym for instance and that CNN and MSNBC and the broadcast channels all follow suit is a symptom of how propagandized we are becoming. People like Sarah Palin and the rest of the Tea Party express would have gotten instant scrutiny for just who they are and who is backing them if we had an honest and journalistic media. But instead they are treated as credible and patriotic Americans when in fact they are the opposite.

Yes, we need to change our media back to one that follows journalistic principles and reports the news in a neutral and unbiased manner.

[gkhouston]

20. I'm hoping that Olbermann on Current TV will be an important first step. n/t

[Art_from_Ark]

22. Did you ever watch Max Headroom?

It was a short-lived TV series that aired back in 1985 or so about a dystopic society "20 minutes into the future"

"However, the fact that Fox News is on in almost every public space you go to that has a TV, like the gym for instance and that CNN and MSNBC and the broadcast channels all follow suit is a symptom of how propagandized we are becoming."

That sums up a lot of the message of Max Headroom-- TVs were on everywhere, spewing bland garbage to keep the increasingly destitute population pacified. I think that's why the show was cancelled so early-- it was too close to the truth.

[Scuba]

7. What Dorothy Sayers said is still true....

“The heaviest restriction upon the freedom of public opinion is not the official censorship of a press, but the unofficial censorship by a press which exists not so much to express opinion as to manufacture it.”

Dorothy L. Sayers
1893-1957

British writer, essayist, playwright and translator.


<img src="" title="Hosted by imgur.com" />

[Stinky The Clown]

8. Thanks for that quote. Its perfect.

[felix_numinous]

9. Agreed-

the only thing left to us is to talk amongst ourselves, it has been made clear our voices do not matter.

We should never forget the power of numbers. There are like 50,000 members of DU, for example. I don't know what this means right now, but we should never forget our numbers.

I like your posts Stinky.

[BrklynLiberal]

10. "Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media." -- Noam Chomsky

[LiberalEsto]

13. That's why I left journalism

The last editor I worked under (who now works for the Heritage Foundation) imposed all kinds of restrictions and rules in order to have excuses purge the left-leaning reporters from the paper. He used to watch what was on my computer screen from inside his glass cubicle, and call me in to explain why I didn't have what was expected to be on the monitor. He was so awful to work for that 13 people on that small staff left within a year. He brought in little trained GOP-bots to replace us. The paper was dead within a couple of years.

There was no way I was going to be bullied into being an obedient drone writing things from his political slant.

[BrklynLiberal]

16. Too bad there are not more like you....

[LiberalEsto]

17. I can't prove anything

but I suspect repukes had a hand in killing quite a few newspapers around the country in this way or with other tactics. The reporters who are still working at most of the remaining papers are obedient little bots who will do anything just to stay in journalism. This is why I can't and won't go back, despite a 25-year newspaper career.

Unfortunately, after years of doing marketing case studies for a small PR firm, I have been unemployed for close to three years, and probably unemployable at age 59.

[Stinky The Clown]

19. It defies logic that scenario is anything but true.

Same with teevee newsrooms

[sabrina 1]

23. You should start your own news blog.

That is the future anyhow. And if you have that kind of experience it is a shame to waste it imo. Maybe there are others who would like to have that kind of independent venue to use their journalistic skills also.

Maybe that's what WE should be doing. Trying to build an online news media. I know it wouldn't pay very well in the beginning. But it doesn't have to be a full time job to start with.

Something to think about! :-)

[LiberalEsto]

11. Maybe it's time to fire up the copiers

and start printing little leaflets in the manner of Thomas Paine.

[WeekendWarrior]

12. Here's some news for you -- THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN TRUE

The news media has been controlled by big interests since the beginning of time. The term yellow journalism is not a new one, and newspapers have long carried water and slant their stories for the candidate or party of their choice. Just ask Hearst. Or ask Richard Nixon, when he had the California media in his pocket.

This doesn't make it right. But it isn't new and it isn't surprising.

All I can say is, thank god for the Internet. But I have a feeling they'll take that over as well...

[Stinky The Clown]

14. That is true, but . . . .

. . . . the media was independent and not consolidated.

Early in our history, some cities enjoyed fifty newspapers. Yes, they slanted the story, but there was always a counterbalancing voice. That's what gone today, that counterbalance.

You allude to it without even knowing it. You cite "the California Media" in your remarks about Nixon. There is no substantial "California Media" or any other media apart from the corporate media. The independent newspaper of substance is long dead. Even the little neighborhood papers we get for free and which "report" on the local high school chess team's prowess is owned by someone from someplace else.

[WeekendWarrior]

15. The consolidation doesn't change much -- we have the Internet to

take up the slack, and more and more people are turning to the Internet for their news.

There may have been fifty newspapers in the old days, but there would always be one or two dominant news organizations and they ruled the day. Those smaller voices were equivalent to what we have with the Internet now.

So nothing has really changed. The rich rule the world. Write the history. Tell us what to think.

Nothing new.

[Boojatta]

18. The end of change should have been a major historical event. When did it happen?

In 1970, R. E. Turner, then head of a successful Atlanta-based outdoor advertising firm, purchased WJRJ-Atlanta, Channel 17, a small, struggling UHF station, and renamed it WTCG, for parent company Turner Communications Group.

Source:
http://www.turner.com/about/corporate_history.html

[Doctor_J]

21. Duh

It's actually 20 years. It took you 10 to catch on. When hate radio outlets and hosts start mysteriously disappearing from the airwaves, it won't be that hard to take the country back.

Unrec'ing vanity thread.

[tomp]

24. i think it is wrong to single out one cause among many.

if it's going to be only one then it is corporatism, which is behind all the evils we are seeing.

agree that mainstream media is useless to progressives.