Do 'THE MEDIA' work in unison?

[Writer]

Do the media, comprised of many mediums, work in unison in order to promote a particular viewpoint?

If yes, please explain how all members of the media decide on the viewpoints that they wish to air.

If no, then please explain why they don't.

If other, please explain your alternative reasoning.


~Writer~

[bunkerbuster1]

1. No, not in unison, it's not quite that simple...

I think the DC-based media definitely indulges in groupthink, and that there is a serious reining-in of left-wing thought, in general, in corporate owned media.

But I also think there are too many gadflies, too many independent thinkers out there reporting for print and blogging, to keep it uniform. It doesn't work at all perfectly, I'd like to see a lot more independence (and a fully funded public TV/radio broadcasting network), and I want to throw things at my TeeVee quite often.

But no, it's not lockstep fascism. Yet.

[dmallind]

3. what s/he said. NT

lkj

[frazzled]

6. Good explanlation

It seems like it works a lot like it does here in the so-called netroots: a story gets posted/written and it generates a lot of commentary and suddenly, that is the story ... despite the fact that there are many other stories out there. And in the same way, certain types of thinking gets "reined in" in such discussions.

I think it's human nature for people to herd themselves into groupthink. One expects something more out of professional journalism, however.

[TahitiNut]

12. The very reference to "gadflies" and "independent thinkers" proves the rule.

The phrase "exception that proves the rule" is an exercise in inductive reasoning. After all, how can we even identify something as 'exceptional' unless it's in the context of some uniform or conventional behavior?

[Ravy]

25. The way they *balance* is the problem.

Think of a simple scale that is simply a board balanced on a center point... like a see-saw.

They always try to balance with two things set at opposite extremes. You can also have balance by putting two things on opposite sides but each close to the center, or by having one thing placed exactly in the middle.

[Orangepeel]

26. Mostly, I agree with you. With "legitimate media" it is more of a herd mentality

it is news because everyone is talking about it and everyone is talking about it because it is news.

but it is harder to differentiate between legitimate media and propoganda. Are certain talking heads on Fox News "media"? Some of them certainly work of the same talking points as do right wing talk radio hosts and bloggers.

[bryant69]

2. I think that the Media are made up of individuals - lazy herdlike individuals

They don't really get together and say "Let's trash Gore." Rather they individually say "Nobody I know takes Gore seriously, so let's write an article trashing him."

Bryant
check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. Yes. But, it's only to make as much money as possible.

As for their political ideology, it's driven by what the consumers will buy.

[madokie]

5. do to the fact that they were/are pretty much on the same page for a while now

I find it hard to believe that they are not in collusion with each other and the re:puke: party

[BenDavid]

7. Yes, and here is the example:

On November 18th and 19th most msm were rolling out their latest polling in Iowa and the nation. CNN had hrc ahead. fox had hrc ahead.msnbc had hrc ahead nbc had hrc ahead. cbs had hrc ahead. Now comes the evening of the 19th of november abc shows their latest poll and obama is ahead by 4%. Okay nothing here,except 1 poll out of 12 showing obama with a lead....... but on the 20th cbs, nbc abc cnn fox msnbc all had stories of this one abc poll in iowa showing obama ahead. Even disreguared their own polls which the day before had HRC leading. From the 20th on until new polling results showing hrc retaining her iowa lead did the story stop.

Again for two days beginning the evening of the 2nd of december did the msm report on the des moines registar poll of 500 showing Obama ahead by 3. From the 2nd to the 3rd did news organization report another ONE poll. But on the afternoon of the 3rd it stopped because msm had new polling data and it disputed the latest register polling finding hrc was ahead in iowa, sc, nevada, michigan, fla, pa, sc, nh....

So you see news organizations do collude.....and finally from the 30th of October until December 4th, HRC was given only 4 days of positive press and received negative press stories 29 days...

Ben David

[Tesha]

8. No, but they're all subject to frequent attacks of "The Conventional Wisdom". (NT)

[Brian Fearn]

9. That's a good way of summing it up

There are three tendencies that I can see:

1. "If it bleeds, it leads."

2. Sound-bites rather than in depth coverage.

3. Marginalizing some viewpoints simply by silence (lack of coverage). The presupposition that some ideas are just "too crazy" to consider.

[Tesha]

13. Thanks, and I agree on all three of your points.

I might also add:

4. A tendency to report on unimportant but pruriently-interesting
pabulum over more-boring matters of real consequnce.

Tesha

[Brian Fearn]

15. Ah, yes, who could forget the tabloids...

...and their many more sophisticated cousins at the major news agencies.

[Echo In Light]

10. Yes. And the number of "no" votes speaks directly to the system's efficacy

The so called "liberal" media is a strategic myth:

http://www.webpan.com/dsinclair/myths.html

http://www.buzzflash.com/perspectives/2002/Media_Bias.html

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20030224/alterman2

http://makethemaccountable.com/myth/LiberalMedia.htm

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/L-liberalmedia.htm ...

Myth: The U.S. has a liberal media.

Fact: The media are being increasingly monopolized by parent corporations with pro-corporate or conservative agendas.

Summary

"The U.S. media are rapidly being monopolized by a dwindling number of parent corporations, all of whom have conservative economic agendas. The media are also critically dependent upon corporations for advertising. As a result, the news almost completely ignores corporate crime, as well as pro-labor and pro-consumer issues. Surveys of journalists show that the majority were personally liberal in the 1980s, but today they are centrists, with more conservatives than liberals on economic issues. However, no study has proven that they give their personal bias to the news. On the other hand, the political spectrum of pundits -- who do engage in noisy editorializing -- leans heavily to the right. The most extreme example of this is talk radio, where liberals are almost nonexistent. The Fairness Doctrine was designed to prevent one-sided bias in the media by requiring broadcasters to air opposing views. It once enjoyed the broad support of both liberals and conservatives. But now that the media have become increasingly owned and controlled by corporations, conservatives defiantly oppose the Fairness Doctrine. This is probably the best proof that the media's bias is conservative, not liberal."

If the liberal media existed, and had done their job in 2000, we wouldn't have the Bush/Cheney regime. Period.

[DemGa]

11. Same stories; same "facts"; same omissions

Story fades from view at exactly same time. Of course they work in unison. Tim Matthews admitted Cheney's thugs pressured his bosses; of course he never followed up on it. The word goes out from top--and they fall in line.

[Tesha]

14. Much of this can be blamed on the laziness of depending on the AP.

It's a story while the AP is reporting it and because many
of the media outlets have no (significant) reportorial staff
of their own, it must, by definition, disappear when the
AP quits talking about it.

Tesha

[redqueen]

24. Thank you.

I find it disturbing that so many see what's happening as accidental... or as a by-product of some other situation or condition.

[deutsey]

16. Considering that our media are owned by a handful of conglomerates

you have to figure that some kind of corporate uniformity permeates the various subsidiaries.

Does that mean I believe there's someone or a group of someones engineering this every day? No. I just know how corporate groupthink works (I'm in the thick of such thing right now). You don't have to have someone enforcing a certain viewpoint among employees when you know that if you go against the grain you might find yourself unemployed or at least "out of the loop."

[EFerrari]

18. Yes and add to that, when you're working a political beat, your sources

will be a limited pool of people and you will have to go back to them over and over. It's not hard to see how a person's vigilance would suffer from attrition over time.

[flashl]

17. The Sago Mine disaster comes to mind. n/t

[Writer]

19. Kick

for the evening crowd.

~Writer~

[Selatius]

20. Yes and no.

Many of the business interests that run the biggest news networks do share overlapping goals, and that, from time to time, comes across almost as collaboration, yet if people are operating upon a basic set of agreed principles, then they can operate independently from each other yet end up at the same goals at the end of the day.

It's not conspiracy or anything like that. It's plain truth.

[Echo In Light]

21. That's giving the system a lot of leeway when "manufacturing consent" most...

Definitely does rely on deliberate, cohesive obfuscation/omission/deception. Criminal conspiracies do exist ... I mean, I know what you're getting at re economic interests, and how elites can end up on the same page, so to speak, without specific daily planning per se ... but there have been countless examples in the past several yrs alone of blatantly deliberate conspiracies by the corporate press to hide certain facts from the free world and humanity in general.

[Milo_Bloom]

22. No, they are just lazy and scared.

News directors live in constant fear of losing their job because they missed "The story" "The angle" and as a result they tend to copy one another to make sure that their coverage is similar in scope to the coverage of a competing entity. They also live in fear of being proven wrong, so it is always safer to go with the heard.

In practice, when one news agency runs a story "Hilary Clinton in trouble because new poll shows her behind..." Another news agency becomes fearful to attack that story in any way because then it puts the credibility of that news agency up for scrutiny and ultimately one will be right and one will be wrong, so the safe route is to have the same take on the story.


So, no, there is no concerted effort to speak in unison on a particular point. It happens in most cases because those in control are too lazy and scared to "rock the boat".

[Echo In Light]

27. The abundance of documented facts show otherwise

I'll recommend several books/web info if you'd like. Just curious though, do you consider yourself a "moderate?" I find that self proclaimed mods usually choose not to {or are unable to/indoctrinated} acknowledge certain conspiratorial aspects of American political reality.

[redqueen]

23. How do they decide? They don't.

They get orders.

Operation Mockingbird... they say they stopped. Dunno about others, but I sure don't buy that line.

[blondeatlast]

28. It isn't quite that simple, but they sure aren't wholly independent: A good read on this: