When did the 'liberal' media.....

[serryjw]

become RW propaganda lapdogs? Is there a specific moment in time or has it just been a constant erosion of honest news reporting. Whe did they BECOME the news instead of REPORTING the news?

[catzies]

1. Two things

Operation Mockingbird

Repeal of the Fairness Doctrine

[Viva_La_Revolution]

2. and FCC..

declaring that one company can control so much public information that they can twist the reality out of everything they let us hear...

[OldLeftieLawyer]

4. Yet, remember.........

When Walter Cronkite spoke out against the Vietnam war, and LBJ conceded that if he'd "lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America"? (Or some words to that effect.)

The media caved during Ronald Reagan, when they simply started to slide on things like Iran-Contra, never going into detail or amplifying exactly what those bastards had done.

Then, I remember being on a ski trip to Santa Fe and hearing, over the Christmas holiday, how Bush The First had pardoned all the Iran-Contra heavies like Weinberger, et al.

After that, it was easy for them to slide into feeding on the Clintons, which began with the tabloid quality of their reporting during the campaign, more caught up were they were Bimbo Eruptions than what the candidates were saying. They landed on Clinton's back as he was being sworn in, and didn't let up for one second.

All the Ken Starr bullshit just made the press fat and lazy and soft and intellectually corrupt, content, as they were, to report the crap put out by Starr's office without ever noticing that a worthless and costly witchhunt was taking place in our country for no good reason at all. When the impeachment took place - a travesty of the Constitution to rival the pardon of Richard Nixon - no one in the press ever bothered to take issue with the fact that what a man does in his private life is hardly an impeachable offense, or that the man had been set up by a Richard Mellon Scaife's toadies.

We're now Germany in the early 1930s, as the scholar commented the other day, and our descent will continue unless something drastic and dramatic happens.

Where is the outrage over Iraq? I simply cannot understand this.

[serryjw]

11. Operation Mockingbird

Thanks....Was not ware of this!
quote......
CNN aired "Valley of Death" in June of 1998 and Time magazine (both owned by Time-Warner) ran a story about a secret mission called Operation Tailwind and the activities of SOG, Studies and Observations Group, a secret elite commando unit of the Army's Special Forces that used lethal nerve gas (sarin), on a mission to Laos designed to kill American defectors. Suddenly the network was awash in denials and the story was hushed up, as usual. Acknowledged use of this gas coming at a time when the U.S. government was trying to get Saddam to comply with weapons inspections, was an embarrassment to say the least. What hypocrisy! Having actually used the weapons on our own troops, then complaining and accusing Saddam of potential use of stored similar weapons, of which some were manufactured in and supplied by the U.S. The broadcast was prepared after exhaustive research and rooted in considerable supportive data. To decide for yourself what the truth is read Floyd Abrams' report on the CNN site at www.cnn.com/US/9807/02/tailwind.findings/index.html.

------end quote.....

http://www.prisonplanet.com/analysis_louise_01_03_03_mockingbird.html



quote.....
CFR/Trilateralist Katharine Graham, in a 1988 speech given to senior CIA employees at Agency headquarters said, "We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows." Maybe that's another reason why folks get the impression that a suspicious agenda lurks behind the headlines. "25 Ways to Suppress Truth: Rules of Disinformation" and "8 Traits of the Disinformationalist" at www.proparanoid.com/truth.htm, sums it up very well.
end quote....
http://www.proparanoid.com/truth.htm#1

This is fun!

[serryjw]

13. Repeal of the Fairness Doctrine

In a NUT shell!
quote.......
In l985 the FCC declared, "We no longer believe that the Fairness Doctrine, as a matter of policy, serves the public interests…We believe that the interest of the public in viewpoint diversity is fully served by the multiplicity of voices in the marketplace today…"

The FCC did not immediately abrogate the doctrine. It was concerned that the 1959 amendments to the Communications Act might have made the fairness doctrine a statutory requirement, subject to repeal only by Congress. But in 1986 the court held that the fairness doctrine derived from the FCC's mandate to serve the public interest and was not compelled by statute.<2>

In the spring of 1987, reacting to the Court's decision and fearful of its consequences, Congress passed a bill that incorporated the fairness doctrine into the law. It passed with significant bipartisan support, 3 to 1 in the House and nearly 2 to 1 in the Senate. Newt Gingrich and Jesse Helms were among the law's supporters. President Reagan vetoed the legislation. There were insufficient votes in Congress to override his veto.

In August of 1987 the FCC dissolved the fairness doctrine. It argued that the doctrine was obsolete, no longer served the public interest and imposed substantial burdens on broadcasters without generating countervailing benefits.

In l989 the House of Representatives again easily passed a law incorporating the fairness doctrine into legislation. When President George Bush threatened a veto the bill died in the Senate.
end quote.....
http://www.americanvoice2004.org/askdave/08askdave.html

[48pan]

3. I don't think they are lapdogs.

I think we're just expecting too much. The media is in business to make money and that's what they continue to try to do. The news is not a public service. It hasn't been since Huntley/Brinkley went off the air.

Fortunately, we have plenty of news sources to sort through and we can make up our own minds.

[pdxmom]

5. No, I don't think we all have plenty of news sources

The average family generally is stretched to the limits, time-wise. News, for them, consists of what they hear on the radio while carpooling or whatever is on the tube while fixing breakfast or dinner. They don't have the time and/or the resources to be sorting through various web sources, reading newspapers/magazines, or books.

The media is protected by the Constitution for a reason. And they are not doing the job. We aren't expecting too much. They are delivering too little.

[unblock]

6. irrelevant red herring

yes they're in the business to make money.

they used to make money by telling the truth, now they make money by selling lies. so the question is, when and how did telling right wing lies become so profitable while telling the truth (or left wing lies, for that matter) is not? and why didn't any of this happen, say, in the '70's?

[48pan]

8. I disagree

"they used to make money by telling the truth"

They used to lose money (at least the TV newsrooms did). And... I don't believe they ever told the truth. There just weren't very many sources to dispute them.

We can now read the news from sources worldwide. We now see how point-of-view colors the news from every source. I try to read/watch/listen to at least two liberal sources and two conservative sources on a regular basis.

What is reported and how it is reported depends on the source. I now have hundred (thousands?) of sources.

[serryjw]

7. Sorry that is not correct

It was always the deal we made with TV networks when we gave them the right to broadcast over the public airwaves was to report news. It was NEVER a 'profit center' for the networks and the entertainment division covered the cost of 'reporting' the news.

Great article from ted Turner
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.turner.html
We've alllowed this to happen over the last 20 years and now any voice that is NOT a corporate voice can not getthrough the noise. Until we take back the news outlets we will never again have a President from the left. They simply can't get their message out in a fair an unbias way.

[48pan]

9. It is now.

"It was NEVER a 'profit center'"

It has been for quite a while. That's why our news has turned into entertainment.

And... The print media has always been about profit.

[DaedelusNemo]

16. too broad to be accurate

Lots of print media is about more than profit, whether you're talking about individuals driven by a sense of mission or the many politically-subsidized media outlets (& commentators) that consistently run at a loss.

TV takes a lot more money so the profit-motive obviously plays a larger role. I do think, however, that the problem is not just that they're competing for money but the ways in which they've chosen to compete for it - mainly, by imitating each other. They all seem to want to jostle for the same 'mainstream' point without seeming to realize that getting 50% of 50% might be better than being one of five going after 100%.

There's a market for serious news, there's just not much in the way of supply to tap into it. CNN has 24 hours a day to give news - and they repeat the same couple of hours 12 times. I think a channel that left out all the murder cases and other entertainment stories, kept a fairly short 'update' reel, and used the rest of the time to go in depth on the important stories would find that there's a pretty good niche market out there for it. Certainly a lot of reporters claim that's the kind of work they want to do. Let them guest, show their documentaries... Have a very strong internet complement including links to all sources for people who like to check things for themselves, a way for people to challenge things, a forum to chew on it and a commitment to correcting errors once proven. Anyway.

[catzies]

15. But if the "plenty of news sources" are all owned by the same few

companies, and those companies are cross-marketing the same stories through different outlets (both broadcast and print) are you really well served?

[rman]

19. the media is the nervous system of democracy

democracy can not function without an informed citizenry, the only way for the people to be informed is via the media.
So "the news" should be a public service, not yet another means to make as much profit as possible.

With the mainstream media owned by a few big corporations, and "equal time" no longer being a requirement, the diversity of "news" is limited by the economic interests of those corporations.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. I first noticed it during the Reagan administration

The media are terrible to Carter, and all of a sudden, we get this amiable actor in the White House, and the press is all buddy-buddy with him.

During the Reagan-Mondale contest in 1984, a cartoonist contrasted the "Teflon candidate" (with scandal after scandal just bouncing off him) with Mondale, the "Velcro candidate" (with labels like "wimp" and "tax and spend liberal" sticking to him).

For me, though, the defining event was when the U.S. invaded Grenada and the Pentagon told the press that no reporters would be allowed along. This was the first time in U.S. history that reporters had been utterly banned from reporting on site. To their everlasting shame, the U.S. media, including NPR, just sat back and reported only the canned press releases that the Pentagon gave out, most of which were later proven to be lies. Even NPR's coverage was all, "Well, there's fighting in Grenada, but we don't know anything else."

Meanwhile, the reporters from CBC's As It Happens, also banned from the island, simply picked up the phone and called people who lived on Grenada to get on-the-scenes reports. What they reported--that the medical students were in no danger, that there were only 500 unarmed Cuban construction workers, and that the airstrip under construction was meant for tourism, not military purposes--was confirmed years later.

That was the point at which I began to feel that the media had sold out.

[LetsGoMurphys]

12. when...

it came to the point where there are only 4 corporations running all of the media, who all have republican interests ie General Electric who makes bombs and owns NBC.

[housewolf]

14. When "news" was turned into a profit center

I think this happened in the 1980's. The news gathering process is always an expense (and an expensive on at that) but it used to be that it was covered by advertising revenues from over-all or general sources. Then accounting methods changed and were refined and everyone wanted each individual piece to pay its own way so news was forced to become its own profit center. That turned the focus from investigative reporting to info-tainment that generated more dollars.

The elimination of the Fairness Doctrine had a mighty influence also.

As does media consolidation.

You can see how these are all conservative ideas - the "self-sufficiency" of news departments paying their own way, and an example of the "free-market" at work. As always, these policies work for the "haves" at the expense of the public.

[Skittles]

17. there never was a liberal media

there was a media, then there was rightwing corporate propaganda

[Steely_Dan]

18. "Network" and "Braodcast News"

One of the things I took away from these two movies was that news departments are not expected to make money...they run in a deficit. That is no longer true. Networks slowly found a way to make the news pay for itself. It's the 'ol "infotainment" concept. Make the news entertaining...blur the lines between entertainment and news and it will pay or itself.

The first casualty of this phenomenon is "truth."

-Paige

[Bampa]

20. Bush wanted to control the media

Shortly after we went into Iraq, bush stated that he wanted the media to (paraphrased) "show a more positive light on the war" which really meant "I will control you!"