The media meltdown -- in three paragraphs

[lwcon]

In three paragraphs, the essential blogger Glenn Greenwald crystallizes the disastrous state of our news media:

Even six months after this country invaded Iraq, 70% of Americans continued to believe that Saddam helped personally plan the 9/11 attacks. That heinous fact, by itself, should have provoked a major crisis in political journalism -- a desperate effort to find out what went so fundamentally wrong. Yet it did nothing of the sort. Most of the energies of national journalists are devoted instead to defending how they operate and, most of all, condescendingly disparaging their critics as shrill partisans who don't understand the real role of journalists.

I honestly find it unfathomable that any national journalist(s)... can defend their profession, and deny that there are deep-seated and fundamental flaws in it, when this country started a war with the overwhelming majority of citizens -- 70% -- believing an absolute, complete myth, a known falsehood, one which, more than anything else, caused them to support that war. Leaving aside every other issue of gullible, government-propaganda-based reporting, that fact standing alone is a towering indictment of our country's press corps, and the fact that they continue to believe that the way they operate is proper, that they are sufficiently adversarial to the political powers that be, and that it is their critics who are "ideological" and therefore easily dismissed -- all reveals that they have not changed at all.

They may not know it, but the disaster of the Iraq War and the absolute myths which they allowed to take root -- and which they never investigated, exposed or attacked -- is an inescapable indictment of what they do. That is the foundation on which media criticism rests, and there is nothing "partisan" about it. It is the opposite of "partisan." It is instead a demand that the media fulfill their core responsibility -- to serve as an adversarial check on government -- a responsibility which they have profoundly abdicated.

I'm not sure which is worse: that our media have completely failed us when we needed them most, or that hardly anyone seems to care?

___

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[atommom]

1. It's baffling that most people (both in and out of the media) don't seem to notice

what's happening here. That's not a good sign!

[Phredicles]

4. Our media this century have reminded me an awful lot of Pravda;

but no, I haven't seen a lot of comment about that.

[Jackpine Radical]

11. Pravda was less dangerous because

everyone had learned to disbelieve the face value of anything they published. The paper was actually useful because people developed wonderful skills for finding out what was really going on by reading between the li(n)es (I meant to type "lines" but my fingers wrote "lies;" so be it). Americans have not yet learned the nature of their news media, and still believe too much of what they are fed. However, I predict that the existence of the internet(s) will hasten their awakening and the eventual entropic end of conventional news media.

I say "entropic end" with an awareness of Shannon's information theory, its derivatives, and its mathematical connection to entropy theory. When truth and lies become indistinguishably mixed together, the signal has no value, and comes to be disregarded.

[depakid]

18. That's why CNN and the Washington Post are worse than Fox

because people don't yet understand how insidious and deceptive that they are.

However, I agree that it's getting to the point where the gig is up- you can only lie so many times, after which people stop taking anything you say at face value- or worse, begin to ridicule you.

[hunter]

13. We are a centrally managed economy much like the Soviet Union was.

But somebody figured out it was a lot easier and a lot less mess to simply ignore most critics of the regime, rather than to throw them in jail (or worse...)

[blm]

12. It's been like this since mid90s. Corpmedia applied so much teflon to Bush in Texas and post 9-11

that it took the constant pounding from all the Dem candidates in 2002-3-4 just to crack it. And a category 5 hurricane to strip the rest of it down to a manageable amount.

We should have seen how bad it would get after 2000 theft and when Bush actually got away with smearing the Clintons on the trashed WH lie that Rove concocted. If a Dem as powerful and commanding of media attention as Bill Clinton could get smeared successfully on a bullshit story like the trashed WH and AF1 for 8 months, what chance would lesser known Democrats have with this GOP controlled newsmedia?

[tbyg52]

17. You *can't* notice

if all you see is the corporate media. And you can't know you need to see something else if all you see is the corporate media.

Not *completely*, of course, or I wouldn't subscribe to more progressive publications than I can really afford, and I wouldn't be here at DU.

But if you only skim the surface, everything looks fine.

[hobbit709]

2. The percentage of the population

that can think, thinks rationally and makes a decision by looking at the evidence is a minority and getting smaller.

[Greyhound]

3. To the greatest with thee

:kick:

[solara]

5. NBC's Today Show headline: Speaker Pelosi defies the President!

There was not one mention of the Republicons who are also in Syria. Not one. If I didn't have access to the net, how in the hell would I know ANYTHING beyond the RepubliCon spin?

I watched network news this morning, something I haven't done in about a year. They showed a clip of Junior at his press conference yesterday and all I got from their report was that the Democrats are refusing to fund the troops! Thats it. So since there are probably millions of Americans who do NOT read the blogs and whose ONLY source of news is the "mainstream media" How in the world can the Dems expect to have their support.? How can anything change? How can we even hope to take back our country?

It is painfully obvious that our so called "mainstream media" is absolutely nothing but a shill for the RW neocon Bush administration. Shame on them all for selling out America.


INVESTIGATE IMPEACH INDICT INCARCERATE :patriot:

[Tellurian]

21. nbcnews is a joke.. they have 7 min of news...

from 6:58 am to 7:05 am...the rest is tabloid fluff.

If you yawn first thing in the morning and close your eyes, it's over.

[Greyhound]

6. We no longer have journalists nor news agencies. We are subjected to

nothing more than corporate public relations pieces. Thanks Bill, I'm so glad that you protected America from information.

[spooky3]

7. Greenwald's columns are great, thought-provoking and insightful.

He is right on target with this one too, especially in correctly seeing how unwilling many journalists are to accept valid, important criticism and change what they do.

[lwcon]

8. Salon was wicked smart to hire him

It's mind-boggling to me the high quality commentary that he and Digby, my other favorite longform blogger, produce every single day. I don't know if Digby wants to "go commercial," but I don't want to live in a world where he and his fellow blogger Tristero aren't getting lucrative offers on a regular basis.

As for Glenn, it's been interesting to watch his evolution. He is a mature, measured person, but faced with so much GOP chicanery, he's starting to show hints of a snarky edge. In his book, http://www.amazon.com/Patriot-Defending-American-Values-President/dp/097794400X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-0070257-3472051?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1175698133&sr=8-1">"How Would a Patriot Act," he describes how he went from being generally comfortable with American politics to being ever-more horrified by the un-ethical, un-Constitutional, and un-American behavior of the worst. administration. ever.

___

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[EVDebs]

9. The 'Journalists' dinner where * gave his 'Nope, no WMDs here' joke

is a stunning indictment. They ALL sat there and laughed...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0TnqUlB4Gg

[ProfessorPlum]

10. They are all part of the Royal Court. Of course they laughed at

their sovereign.

[KoKo]

14. They have assumed the role of the Court Jester from past centuries or maybe the Court Fool from

from 1400's. They are tools and fools in the hands of Corporations. They sing and dance for their supper. Eric Boehlert's book "Lap Dog Press" was a perfect title too...and a great read.

[Uncle Joe]

15. Regarding your last question, I believe, the people do care, however

if it's not reported by the predominant medium of today, which is still television, they are as the tree falling in the forest, nobody hears their concerns.

Many other people are living in the mass corporate media's created *Matrix and for them, that IS their reality. They will not be aware of a problem until the media tell them otherwise or we have another Katrina type event which will blow the curtains back revealing the mass corporate media for what they are, just as the curtains concealing Bush have been removed, to some degree at least.

The mass corporate media spends far more time criticizing and attacking the internet for this very reason. They would happily do to us, as Bush has done to our nation's scientists, stifle debate or curtail it.

* See movie for details.

[grannylib]

16. I've always thought it was a three--parter: Congress let us down, the media

let us down, and we let them let us down, to a certain extent (those of us who were at least paying attention).
If we, the People, of, by and for whom this Government is supposed to exist, don't MAKE our representatives in Congress REPRESENT US, or MAKE the media INFORM US (not feed us Orwellian propaganda from the Reich-wing) then we have failed too.

[GeorgeGist]

19. I would be curious to know ...

how many MSM journalists actually have degrees in Journalism.

[pat_k]

20. The apathy of the people and the failure of the press are symptoms . .

of the same "disease."

When people are told to leave it to the "professionals"; when they are incessantly told they are powerless in the face of money and power; when they are shoved out of the "game" that was once theirs, why would they "care"? If you don't believe you can do anything to help or change a situation, why would you be motivated to do anything but look away?

When politics (i.e., the processes through which we make our will known and give our consent to our government officials) becomes a professional's "game" where people are but game pieces; when perception trumps reality; when "strategery" trumps duty, you have entered a world of illusion in which there can be no professional journalism.

There is a single cure and we are it: People who know they are the REAL power brokers. People like Cindy Sheehan who show others how powerful ordinary citizens can be. People who, because they believe they CAN "do something" are "doing something."

[lwcon]

22. You said a mouthful

Somehow the "grownups" who cheerled this thing are still considered the serious professionals who must still be listened to, when they've been wrong about absolutely everything. They're the pundits, the experts. Attention must be paid. Shrill, whiny hippies that don't love the glorious war are to be marginalized. Fuck them if they were right about everything. No one likes an "I-told-you-soer."

___

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[emmadoggy]

23. Exactly.

I agree. I was completely ignorant of what was going on politically in this country for the first few years of the Bush administration. I was busy being a first-time mom to twins and just trying to keep my head above water with that. Plus, I absolutely LOATHED Bush even before he was "selected". I couldn't stand to see or hear him - literally. I had little time or inclination to watch the news and so I just tuned out to it all.
A little over a year ago it all started to just be too much to keep out and I decided I needed to find out what was going on. I found DU and holy crap! I got more than I bargained for!! But I have learned SO much and have become so much more aware!

Most of the time my family avoids political discussions - I come from a mixed family, some Dems, some Repubs, some moderates/Independents. My mom has always been a Democrat (though sometimes her positions on things that have come up in discussion, really make me go, "huh?" sometimes). Anyway, a few months ago, I bit the bullet and brought up politics with my mom (being she is a Dem-safer territory). I started talking about many of the things that I had learned about this administration and what they have done. I talked about the media and how they cover for the administration and how they keep HUGE stories suppressed. My mom's attitude was one of great scepticism. Most of it, she was completely unaware of. And her whole basic response was one of, "Even if all of that is true, so what? What can you or I do about it?? It's all just politics. All politicians lie, they're all corrupt. We can't do anything about it."

And I think that is a very common response or attitude in America these days. Most people pay little or no attention to politics or world news and what little bit they do hear, they tend to just shrug off and move on to dealing with living their daily lives - it's all so removed and distant from them. Many people feel that what goes on in D.C. has no direct impact on their daily life, so who cares? Or if it does impact their life, they feel there is nothing they can do about it. And I have heard it from more than my Mom that "all politicians are crooks/corrupt" and that it's just the way it is, status quo.

But as we all know, when the Clinton/Lewinsky debacle was going on, it was HUGE - on the news non-stop. Everyone knew every little sordid detail and people chattered about it on the street corner and around the watercooler all over America. Everyone sat up and took notice. Of course, part of that was because of the naughty sexual nature of the issue, but the bigger thing was that it was because the media MADE it a huge story. It was everywhere. You couldn't NOT hear about it. Now, for the last 6 years, stories about scandals or abuses or failures of this administration are maybe mentioned once, a quick gloss-over and then never heard about again, or they are twisted and spun to sound like it's not a big deal or was a simple error by one person or some other such trivialization. It stinks to high heaven. And so people don't hear any warning bells. There is no tone to the stories that says, "Listen up! This is a BIG deal!". And so people go, "hmm" and go on with their life. Sometimes we have to be clobbered over the head to realize the impact of something and it's the media's job to break stuff down so that folks can get a real grasp of the issue. And that is the part that has been lacking and suppressed. No warning bells, no breaking down and explaining just what happened and why it is bad/wrong/illegal etc. - and then FOLLOWING UP on the story to keep it in viewers minds and show that it didn't just fade away or disappear.

Some people are starting to wake up and some voices are starting to break through. The dark tinted glass through which the public has been seeing things is starting to fade, but there is a LONG way to go to get back to the sort of journalism this country had 20, 30 or 40 years ago. And I don't think it will be possible at all unless there are huge media reforms - breaking up the corporate ownership, bringing back the fairness doctrine and so on.