What is with the "Mainstream Media"?

[The Lone Ranger]

In the past few years, I've attended talks by Noam Chomsky, Daniel Schorr (of National Public Radio), and Christiane Amanpour (of CNN). One point that all three made was that the Bush Administration is absolutely unprecedented in the degree to which it attempts to control the Press. Schorr and Amanpour, in particular, explained that the Administration carefully selects the information that it reveals to the Press, and that a great many of the stories you read in the papers and hear on the news are nothing more than [ever so slightly] rewritten Press Releases.

Any reporters or news agencies that refuse to play the game are denied access to Bush and other White House officials, and so most reporters quickly learn to play the game.


Schorr claimed that no administration in history exerts such control over the Press as does the current one. Amanpour claimed that lots of important stories are killed due to pressure -- direct or indirect -- from government officials who threaten to deny access to any reporters or news agencies that report embarrassing things.

One reason for this sort of thing, as both Schorr and Chomsky stressed, was that investigative journalism is all but dead in this day and age -- it just isn't "cost effective." So, more and more, the "investigative pieces" you read in the newspapers and hear on the television or radio are simply rewritten government or corporate press releases. Amanpour stressed the same sort of thing when she pointed out that -- like it or not -- the purpose of most news agencies is to make money. As such, if a story is likely to cost them the business of wealthy advertisers, it gets killed PDQ.

“The fundamental right of Americans, through our free press, to penetrate and criticize the workings of our government is under attack as never before.”

This was written by, of all people, William Safire, in the New York Times (September 2004). As Frank Rich pointed out, when someone who worked for the Nixon White House says something like that, we should pay attention.



Despite the fact that Bush has historically-low approval ratings, despite the debacle of Iraq, the "Mainstream Media" still seem remarkably craven when it comes to this administration. Why is that?


Is it that, after all these years of Conservatives screaming nonsense about the "Liberal-Biased Media," most news outlets are just plain terrified of saying anything unflattering about the kleptocrats who run this country, for fear that any implied criticism of Bush and his allies will spark more outcries of "Liberal bias," which many of the more gullible readers/listeners will accept at face value? Newspapers are losing readers fast; most television and radio news outlets aren't in much better shape. Maybe they're so terrified of losing what patrons they have left, that they don't dare risk saying anything that will get Conservatives screaming about their so-called "Liberal bias," which might cost them a few more precious readers/listeners?


In a similar vein, the pernicious influence of FOX News is surely to blame. Doubtless, it (not to mention people like Rush Limbaugh) has helped to "dumb down" the level of discourse in the media, with its insipid but frequently-repeated (and as Joseph Goebbels noted, "A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth" at least, in the minds of many people) claim that it's "fair and balanced" -- which implies, of course, that other news outlets are not fair or balanced.

And what's with the whole "balanced" thing, anyway? As the late, lamented Molly Ivins once pointed out, the insistence on "balance" is often an excellent way to hide the truth, or at least obscure it. Sometimes, it really is true that one side of a "debate" is simply wrong (or is lying outright). Yet, most media outlets are so desperate to appear "balanced" that, as Ivins once wrote, if someone wrote an article in which it was suggested that Hitler was a bad guy, most newspapers would feel obligated to run a "balancing" commentary from a Nazi sympathizer who insisted that Hitler was a great guy who was completely misunderstood and who loved puppies and kittens and who thought the Jewish people were the best people on Earth.

In this way, important truths can be converted into "debatable positions" and so swept under the table.


I've read suggestions that the Sinclair Broadcast Group may be even more insidious than is FOX. Its ownership is every bit as rabidly right-wing as is FOX's Rupert Murdoch, and it reaches 24% of American households (it owns or operates at least 62 television stations, including affiliates of all 4 major networks), but Sinclair is much more low-key than is FOX, and its partisanship is less obvious. Even so, Sinclair ensures that programs with inconvenient messages don't get aired (for example, its stations were ordered not to air the "Nightline" in which Ted Koppel read out the names of the American soldiers killed in Iraq), and it airs highly-biased "news reports" of dubious authenticity (for instance, Sinclair stations in the swing states of Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania were ordered to air a "news special" trashing John Kerry for four nights in late October, just before the 2004 election).



Edward R. Murrow, where are you now, when we really need you?

[LadyShea]

PBS's Frontline did a piece discussing some of these points...the loss of real investigative journalisms due to unreasonable returns expectations from the shareholders etc. I don't think the news was ever supposed to be a high profit industry

[davidm]

As someone who who works for the media, indeed for the paper that employed Safire as a columnist before he “retired” to write columns about language usage in the Sunday magazine, I’ve no defense for the mainstream media, or for my employer, a paper that stands guilty of having helped cheerlead America into the Iraq debacle. One of the key cheerleaders, btw, was Safire, who evidently can get away with murder (literally, as far as I am concerned) and not be called to account for it; on the contrary, can still blithely write his stupid columns.

Newspapers are on the way out. They are money-losing ventures. The reasons are many, and go back a number of decades. The rise of TV and radio first put newspapers in peril, and the recent rise of the Internet is looking to be the nail in the coffin. Why would people pay for newsprint when they can get news online for free, from a stupendous array of sources?

As for the media as a whole, it is owned by rich corporate interests. What would you expect them to do, but support the status quo (i.e., lie constantly)? In any case, the idea that this country is a democracy, a place with a free flow of information and where “Your vote counts!” is ludicrous, and probably always has been absurd. America is a plutocracy, of, by and for the rich. The rest of the sheeples are herded by the mass media, which is owned by rich people; the educational system — deliberately, in my view — has been created to produce people who think that God created the world in seven days 6,000 years ago, and that the sun orbits the earth. (About half the people in America think the former, if polls, generally reliable, are to be believed; and about 25 percent of Americans think the latter).

The real purpose of education is to produce credulous consumer/production units to keep the capitalist/globalization game going. Alas, the game is destined to come to an end in this century, because of the twin sides of the same coin: climate change and fossil fuel depletion. Note that the mainstream media virtually never talks about the fact that we are going to run out of economically recoverable fossil fuels in this century, and the dire consequences of this deeply disturbing fact. It’s amazing enough that climate change has forced its way into the public discourse.

[Watser?]

I just saw an example this morning: after the media bombardment trying to spread the fabrication that the US/NATO now has 'irrefutable proof' that Iran is supplying the Taliban with weapons (of course we don't get to see this proof, we just keep getting the phrase 'irrefutable proof' thrown at us repeatedly), I saw a link on NewsNow to a story on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that an Afghan minister had said that was untrue. The story was already removed though. I am pretty sure it was removed under pressure by the Bush administration.

[TomJoe]

Originally Posted by Watser?

The story was already removed though. I am pretty sure it was removed under pressure by the Bush administration.

Some proof would be nice.

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by TomJoe

Some proof would be nice.

Well, it's not a science experiment is it?

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is a US government propaganda outlet anyway, I was amazed that the headline even got through. The Bush administration has been pushing bullshit about Iran for months now.

[Watser?]

Is it that, after all these years of Conservatives screaming nonsense about the "Liberal-Biased Media," most news outlets are just plain terrified of saying anything unflattering about the kleptocrats who run this country, for fear that any implied criticism of Bush and his allies will spark more outcries of "Liberal bias," which many of the more gullible readers/listeners will accept at face value?

Sometimes the media do fight back, but the problem is that they are not used to dealing with people that tell the most outrageous lies with a straight face and will even turn the tables and accuse their opponents of lying or playing politics. Check this example by Tony Snow yesterday:

However, when Snow said of Bush to CBS's Harry Smith, "He goes to the G8, leads the way on climate change," Smith broke in to object: "I think that's following on climate change. ... These other countries have set the table for this for years. The president is late to this table."

"I hate to tell you," replied Snow. "No Harry, you can't have your own facts. We've got a better record than the rest of the world... What you're arguing is that you regulate your way in. It never works, hasn't. What the president says is, use technology as the way of doing it and, guess what, everybody agreed."

According to a Reuters report on the G8 conference, "President George W. Bush's plan to combat climate change got a cool reception on Friday in Europe, where the European Union's environment chief dismissed it as unambitious and the 'classic' U.S. line."

[The Lone Ranger]

Sadly, davidm, I'm inclined to agree with a lot of your points.

Anyone who thinks this country is (or ever was) run "by the people" or for "the people" should definitely read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, in my opinion.


As a college-level educator, I'm reminded on a daily basis that most graduates of our public high schools seem to have very little capacity for analysis or for critical thought. They've been trained to absorb "facts" without context or analysis, and many of them are quite good at it. But far too few seem to be capable of any sort of analysis -- and more than a few are quite vocal in expressing their displeasure when they're asked to do so. I don't know if the public educational system is deliberately designed to squash any tendencies toward independent thinking, but it sure seems like it at times.


Out of curiosity, do you think there's any way someone like Edward R. Murrow could even exist today? Would it be possible for someone like him to rise to prominence in any major news organization?

I've sometimes heard people like Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart mentioned as successors to people like Morrow, but Colbert and Stewart are entertainers, not investigative reporters.

Admittedly, though, it says a lot about just how far things have fallen that The Daily Show probably provides a better quality of information than do most "real" news shows.

Note that the mainstream media virtually never talks about the fact that we are going to run out of economically recoverable fossil fuels in this century, and the dire consequences of this deeply disturbing fact. It’s amazing enough that climate change has forced its way into the public discourse.

Believe me, this is something that has long appalled me. It's like a giant game of "If I close my eyes and pretend it isn't there, it will go away."


Cheers,

Michael

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by Watser?

Sometimes the media do fight back, but the problem is that they are not used to dealing with people that tell the most outrageous lies with a straight face and will even turn the tables and accuse their opponents of lying or playing politics.

That's a good point. I see the same sort of thing often when it comes to the "debate" regarding biological evolution.

Scientists are trained to think that evidence matters (silly scientists!), and often perform terribly in debates with Creationists, because the scientists simply can't believe the outright contempt which many Creationist "debators" hold for standards of evidence.

I've had the experience myself. I was once suckered into a "debate" with a Creationist. I carefully laid out my argument; I carefully made sure that all of my claims were supported by peer-reviewed studies and I provided careful documentation so that anyone could check that I was honestly representing things.

Then my "opponent" spoke. He lied through his teeth without the least trace of embarrassment. His entire presentation was based on misrepresentation and outright lies. I was so stunned that I probably just stood there with my mouth hanging open -- I just couldn't believe his audacity. And, of course, since he was a "man of God" and all, I knew that if I'd called him a contemptible liar to his face, most of the audience would have thought I was the one behaving badly.

It was a most depressing (though enlightening) experience.

Cheers,

Michael

[davidm]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

Out of curiosity, do you think there's any way someone like Edward R. Murrow could even exist today? Would it be possible for someone like him to rise to prominence in any major news organization?

I think it's possible for somebody like Murrow, or like Woodward and Bernstein of Watergate fame, to exist somewhere in today's media climate, but the odds would be heavily stacked against them. But then again, the odds were heavily stacked against them at the time that they worked, too. At the time of Watergate, the Washington Post was the only paper that pursued this story. It was only after the Post broke the story open that other papers followed like the lemmings they were.

America's "adversarial" press, the so-called "free press," has always been something of a myth. In the 19th century, when newspapers and magazines were pretty much all that there were when it came to mass media, the papers chose sides; they were propaganda units for the parties/ interests that they represented. Each was like its own little "Fox News," allied with a certain side; and that might have had certain benefits, but any pretense to objective reporting in a true, disinterested search for facts, was not even made. Facts were routinely distorted and taken out of context, and lies were propounded, in the pursuit of partisan advantage.

In the 20th century, the idea of an "objective" press, trying disinterestedly to present "both sides" of a subject, arose; but this again is highly problematic. There is no such thing, really, as objectivity in the media; everything about the editorial process, starting with what stories to cover and why, is theory-laden, just like science is, for that matter.

Editors and reporters on newspapers do, to a certain extent, exercise independent news judgment. It's not as if the rich people who own the media outlets, or their representatives, hover over people in the newsroom to make sure they shape and present the news in a way that is favorable to corporate interests. But I suggest that this is what gets done anyway, because the culture and the climate of news operations is subtly shaped to serve the ends of the status quo, and of big business. In the end, reporters and editors just know what is acceptable to print, and what is not.

Moreover, what the mainstream media will never touch, and can never touch by virtue of the fact that they are owned lock stock and barrel by corporate interests, are the systemic defects and discontinuities of American society, which of course trace to the very corporate control of said society.

In any case, all one has to do is take a look at Fox News to see where we are. I watched it yesterday (not because I wanted to; I did it for other reasons.) The dominant story, played over and over, was a fucking YouTube video of two teen-age girls having a cat fight! Believe me, it was played, and discussed, over and over. This was between breaking news bulletins of the latest on Paris Hilton.

We are sunk.

[erimir]

Bleh.

All this talk is depressing.

Surely, we can discuss ducks that have made friends with dogs instead, right?

[Kyuss Apollo]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

Sadly, davidm, I'm inclined to agree with a lot of your points.

Anyone who thinks this country is (or ever was) run "by the people" or for "the people" should definitely read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, in my opinion.

Second!

As a college-level educator, I'm reminded on a daily basis that most graduates of our public high schools seem to have very little capacity for analysis or for critical thought. They've been trained to absorb "facts" without context or analysis, and many of them are quite good at it. But far too few seem to be capable of any sort of analysis -- and more than a few are quite vocal in expressing their displeasure when they're asked to do so. I don't know if the public educational system is deliberately designed to squash any tendencies toward independent thinking, but it sure seems like it at times.

As a secondary school-level educator, I agree with everything you just said 100%. It appears to me (and my colleagues) that that the entire point behind all of the education initiatives of the past 20 years, especially NCLB, have been designed with one purpose in mind--to eliminate the ability of the next generation of Americans to think or to question, by (a) stifling the creativity of both educators and students (b) dumbing-down the curriculum, (c) teaching to the lowest common denominator (d) removing the onus of the responsibility for learning from the students and placing it entirely on teachers and (e) continuously devising more jargon-laden educational bs to make it seem as though innovations are taking place, when in reality at best it merely echoes what is already known or has already been done, far better, before the baby was thrown out with the bathwater and at worst (which is most of the time) only serves to further erode what little integrity the US educational system still has.

And what you see are just the ones that are able "absorb "facts" without context or analysis," i.e. the brightest and best of what US schools are turning out now. Most of the rest can't even do that.

[Watser?]

Here's another nice example today of how the media don't even bother to check facts anymore but just follow the pack:

Since its inception a few short months ago, Politico, the online soul-mate to the Drudge Report, has gotten into the habit of creating news stories through innuendo, omission, outright error, and now today, out of thin air.

Of course the reason this comment was never reported is quite simple: the bloggers on the call don't remember this quote.

...

John McCain has called Reid's alleged remark "highly inappropriate, Wolf Blitzer is breathlessly reporting that Reid "bashed" the military, and this is how Tony Snow began today's White House press briefing:

Nobody apparently called any of the bloggers to check the story. Once it is out there they just quote each other and it is virtually impossible to correct the lies.
And wtf are 'sources familiar with the interview'?

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by davidm

America's "adversarial" press, the so-called "free press," has always been something of a myth. In the 19th century, when newspapers and magazines were pretty much all that there were when it came to mass media, the papers chose sides; they were propaganda units for the parties/ interests that they represented. Each was like its own little "Fox News," allied with a certain side; and that might have had certain benefits, but any pretense to objective reporting in a true, disinterested search for facts, was not even made. Facts were routinely distorted and taken out of context, and lies were propounded, in the pursuit of partisan advantage.

In the 20th century, the idea of an "objective" press, trying disinterestedly to present "both sides" of a subject, arose; but this again is highly problematic. There is no such thing, really, as objectivity in the media; everything about the editorial process, starting with what stories to cover and why, is theory-laden, just like science is, for that matter.

This touches on another issue that's perhaps closely related. There used to be a much wider range of political debate than there is today. 100 years ago, the U.S. had strong and quite politically-active Communist and Socialist parties, for instance. But nowadays, the entire gamut of political discourse in this country ranges from the moderately right-leaning party of Big Business (the Democrats) to the far right-leaning party of Big Business (the Republicans). Though the Democrats and even the Republicans may make occasional noises in that direction, there's virtually no one who represents the interests of the average, working-class American citizen in any level of government.

When did we go from a nation with many different political parties to a nation of just 2 parties, both of them nearly entirely beholden to corporate interests?


Long gone are the days when someone like Teddy Roosevelt could run for office as a genuine populist -- promising to rein in the excess power of corporations over the political process and actually meaning it -- and get elected. Given how anyone who wants to gain high political office has to pretty-much sell his or her soul to the interests of those who fund his or her campaign, I'm not sure how it'd even be possible for anyone who wasn't owned lock, stock and barrel by corporate interests to gain high political office in this country.

Unless, of course, you should happen to be fabulously wealthy and can afford to pay for the campaign yourself. But anyone who'd lay out that much of his or her own money in order to gain political office almost certainly wouldn't be someone you could trust to use that kind of power wisely or well, I would guess.

Cheers,

Michael

[BDS]

I agree with much of what Lone Ranger, David and Kyuss say, but, unfortunately, I’m not sure, since my education has left me incapable of thinking for myself. I’m only able to parrot facts.

I wonder, though, how Lone Ranger, David, and Kyuss escaped my educational fate. Were they educated abroad?

I do have one question: why is it that those who criticize the media for failing to inform, the education system for failing to educate, and the public for failing to think critically, inevitably believe that THEY are informed, educated, critical thinkers? How are they exempt?

Perhaps we ALL think WE (and those with whom we agree) are somehow members of the elite, enlightened group – whether we are trying to maintain the status quo, or trying to change it. Whatever OUR mode of thinking, those who think differently are pitiable, deluded creatures, doomed to either a literal or figurative damnation (depending on whether we believe in Hell).

[The Lone Ranger]

No one suggested that just because you're a product of public education that you couldn't rise above it.

The odds may not be in your favor, however.


I was fortunate in that I had well-read, learned people around who strongly encouraged me to read, to question, and to think for myself. I've always said that the best thing about public school, from my perspective, was graduation. The public schools taught me to read, and from then on, I was self-educated until I got to college.



Incidentally, you'll notice that I asked a lot of questions -- precisely because I don't think I'm any sort of an expert on this issue.

Cheers,

Michael

[Watser?]

Also: I know I am probably getting fooled a lot too by the media, but I know they are talking a lot of bullshit about the areas that I know more about than your average reader. And I am sure others have the same feeling about their areas of expertise.

[The Lone Ranger]

Originally Posted by Watser?

Also: I know I am probably getting fooled a lot too by the media, but I know they are talking a lot of bullshit about the areas that I know more about than your average reader. And I am sure others have the same feeling about their areas of expertise.

Exactly.

I'm simply horrified by the poor quality of what passes for "science news" in the media. I can only assume that their coverage of things like history and sociology are just as bad.

Cheers,

Michael

[BDS]

We can all do no better than our educations and abilities allow us to do. Also, it’s sometimes easy to see other people’s blind spots (as Watser points out), but difficult (if not impossible) to see our own.

[The Lone Ranger]

Whoever suggested anything to the contrary?

Should we refuse to point out villainy because we know we're imperfect beings ourselves?

[davidm]

Originally Posted by BDS

I agree with much of what Lone Ranger, David and Kyuss say, but, unfortunately, I’m not sure, since my education has left me incapable of thinking for myself. I’m only able to parrot facts.

I wonder, though, how Lone Ranger, David, and Kyuss escaped my educational fate. Were they educated abroad?

No one said, of course, that all people educated by the public schools end up incapable of critical/creative thinking. But I've seen enough of the educational system to know that it indeed encourages people to memorize facts for the purposes of testing; all the more so today as a result of educational "reforms" designed to produce "results" on standardized tests. "Success" on these "tests" is supposed to be metric of educational attainment, yet the presupposition that memorizing facts out of context and then usually forgetting those facts afterward is a good way to learn may be a bad presupposition. The deeper problem, though, in my view, is that schools educate people, not to become creative or critical thinkers, but to become producers and consumers, essentially bots in corporate/technical culture. I think that's a bad thing, but that's my opinion.

I do have one question: why is it that those who criticize the media for failing to inform, the education system for failing to educate, and the public for failing to think critically, inevitably believe that THEY are informed, educated, critical thinkers? How are they exempt?

Who said he/she was exempt?

In any case, FWIW, almost everything I "know" (however capacious or minuscule my knowledge might be) came from my own reading, investigation and initiative, and never from the schools I attended. (Literally, never.) Each of us, of course, will have different ideas of what a mode of thinking should be, or what the media should do, or what schools should. I don't think the media serves the public by cheerleading it into war, as it did in Iraq, and failing to investigate and expose the systemic deficiencies of the system we live under, and failing specifically to deconstruct the lies of the Bush administration. I don't think the media serves the public well by running YouTube clips of girls fighting and updates every 20 minutes on how Paris Hilton is faring in jail. And I think it's pretty self evident that the schools aren't turning out many critical or creative thinkers, and so does not serve the public well. Of course, my presuppositions on what the media and the schools should be doing are always open to question from those who have other presuppositions.

EDITED TO ADD: "Literally never" is probably overstating things a bit, but my experierence with the educational system was not a good one. It consisted almost entirely of constant boredom, ennui and disgust.

[BDS]

Originally Posted by The Lone Ranger

Whoever suggested anything to the contrary?

Should we refuse to point out villainy because we know we're imperfect beings ourselves?

Nobody, and not at all.

I'm just stirring things up a little. I never seem to hear anyone say, "I'm not a critical thinker.... and I blame the schools." Everyone seems to think the way he himself thinks is just fine.

Yours was a good response, too, David.

ETA: By the way, I hated school, too (until I got to college). And I didn’t learn much in school until I was in grad school. However, my son learned a lot in school (I think). It depends on the student, as much as on the teachers or the system. (That’s not to say we can’t improve our education system, and our newspapers. I’m sure we can.)

[The Lone Ranger]

Well, for what it's worth, I'm forever wishing I'd had better educational opportunities, and wondering what I'd have made of myself if I had.

Should I ever have children, I'll do my very best to ensure that they have better educations than I did -- and I'll envy them for that.

Cheers,

Michael

[Watser?]

Originally Posted by davidm

I don't think the media serves the public by cheerleading it into war, as it did in Iraq, and failing to investigate and expose the systemic deficiencies of the system we live under, and failing specifically to deconstruct the lies of the Bush administration.

And did when Israel was viciously attacking Lebanon (and not just Hezbollah) last summer. And is doing again on Iran and again on Lebanon. There will be more wars like these in the near future, there is no doubt about that in my mind and the media will be and already are cheerleading it again, even to the point of preparing us for nuclear strikes on Iran.

[livius drusus]

I learned a lot in high school. Of course, it was neither public nor in the US. The IB is where it's at, as far as I'm concerned. If you can find a school that offers the IB diploma, it doesn't matter where it is or how its funded: your kids will get a stellar education.