MSM "journalists" ARE doing their job as well as they can

[KurtNYC]

I think many of us keep expecting the MSM to be forced to cover the real news at some point. I hear people I like asking things like "When is the news media going to do their job?'

They work for the RW interests that either own, or are clients of, the MSM. Their job is to shape public opinion for the benefit of RW interests. Part of their job is to pretend that:
- they are not parroting extremist and/or corporate positions and arguments
- the range of valid choices goes from the extreme Right to the middle (and that left center positions are "looney" and impractical
- they are reporting news

Newspapers are dying nationwide because they have answered only to their advertisers and the bottom line. When we stop treating the MSM "news" like it is even a remotely accurate national scoreboard of what is important, relevant and true then the MSM will wither as a former tool of propagandists.

Propaganda works best when opposing viewpoints are ignored or mis-stated. They are doing their jobs.

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Yes, but a functioning democracy depends on journalists doing the job we THINK they do

Your analysis is right.

But we're fucked if we can't change it.

An uninformed or misinformed public can't make any decent collective decisions.

[SteppingRazor]

2. "Newspapers are dying nationwide because they have answered only to their advertisers"

That's actually not true at all. Newspapers are dying nationwide because the medium of ink on dead trees as a way of disseminating information is dying, and there is no viable professional platform to replace it. Advertising rates are down drastically across the country as classified ads are wholly supplanted by Craigslist. Editorial itself has done its best to transfer from print to online, but ad rates for online advertising are so low that revenues generated from them simply cannot pay to staff a full newsroom as print ad sales can.

The idea that your average local paper, which engages in any sort of political coverage fairly rarely outside campaign years, is a tool for "RW interests" is so nonsensical as to hardly be worth considering. I mean, seriously, what's pandering to the "RW interests" in high-school sports coverage, or reporting on school-board meetings?

[Echo In Light]

3. I suspect it's largely the over 40 % of the politically indoctrinated classes using M$M anyhow

... and once many of that large pool passes on, the younger ones, due to growing up w/the internet, and being far more savvy in knowing to read between the lines of ANY official doctrine, won't bother with official empire propaganda of any sort. The manipulators of the public mind will really have their work cut out at that point ... hell, they already do. Suck it up, chumps :hi:

"Propaganda is to democracy what violence is to the totalitarian state." ~ Chomsky