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Insane
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Originally Posted by irateplatypus
i doubt that. also, if that can be proven... why would you base the political orientation of the media based solely off the guests lists and think tank sourcing?
how about including the reporters who frame the argument and the editors who pick which stories run and which do not? guest lists really only pertain to cable news shows. how about newspapers? magazines? network news? guest lists are an easily quantifiable method, but cannot represent the media as it is experienced by citizens in totality.
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Guest lists show what view points get heard in a debate. When you consistently have moderates on one side and conservatives on the other, the whole spectrum of debate is limited. Same thing happens when think tanks are used from mostly one side of the political spectrum.
Reporters may have an affect, but I don't think it's as large as you think. They have to please their generally conservative editors and media owners who pay them their salary. Owners in tern have to worry about pleasing advertisers. I once again will quote Chomsky because he always says it best:
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The media, after all, are corporations integrated into some of the major corporations in the country. The people who own and manage them belong to the same narrow elite of owners and managers who control the private economy and who control the state, so it's a very narrow nexus of corporate media and state managers and owners. They share the same perceptions, the same understanding, and so on. That's one major point. So, naturally, they're going to perceive issues, suppress, control and shape in the interest of the groups that they represent: ultimately the interests of private ownership of the economy -- that's where it's really based. Furthermore, the media also have a market: advertisers, not the public. People have to buy newspapers, but the newspapers are designed to get the public to buy them so that they can raise their advertising rates. The newspapers are essentially being sold to advertisers via the public. Since the corporation is selling it and its market is businesses, that's another respect in which the corporate system or the business system generally is going to be able to control the contents of the media. In other words, if by some unimaginable accident they began to get out of line, advertising would fall off, and that's a constraint.
State power has the same effect. The media want to maintain their intimate relation to state power. They want to get leaks, they want to get invited to the press conferences. They want to rub shoulders with the Secretary of State, all that kind of business. To do that, you've got to play the game, and playing the game means telling their lies, serving as their disinformation apparatus. Quite apart from the fact that they're going to do it anyway out of their own interest and their own status in the society, there are these kinds of pressures that force them into it. It's a very narrow system of control, ultimately.
Then comes the question of the individual journalist, you know, the young kid who decides to become an honest journalist. Well, you try. Pretty soon you are informed by your editor that you're a little off base, you're a little too emotional, you're too involved in the story, you've got to be more objective. There's a whole pile of code words for this, and what those code words mean is "Get in line, buddy, or you're out." Get in line means follow the party line. One thing that happens then is that people drop out. But those who decide to conform usually just begin to believe what they're saying. In order to progress you have to say certain things; what the copy editor wants, what the top editor is giving back to you. You can try saying it and not believing it, but that's not going to work, people just aren't that dishonest, you can't live with that, it's a very rare person who can do that. So you start saying it and pretty soon you're believing it because you're saying it, and pretty soon you're inside the system. Furthermore, there are plenty of rewards if you stay inside. For people who play the game by the rules in a rich society like this, there are ample rewards. You're well off, you're privileged, you're rich, you have prestige, you have a share of power if you want, if you like this kind of stuff you can go off and become the State Department spokesman on something or other, you're right near the center of at least privilege, sometimes power, in the richest, most powerful country in the world. You can go far, as long as you're very obedient and subservient and disciplined. So there are many factors, and people who are more independent are just going to drop off or be kicked out. In this case there are very few exceptions.
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/intervie...-excerpts.html
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Originally Posted by Stompy
Hm.. examples examples... ah, I have one. Remember the fall of the Saddam statue? CNN and EVERY news broadcast showed it in all its glory and made it look like a HUGE event despire the fact that it took place in a VERY small area with only a handful of people. They twisted the event to make it look like everyone in Baghdad was supporting that event. If the media was liberal and wanted to hurt the Bush administration or make them look stupid, they could've done so by showing the WHOLE area and the fact that no one else was there.
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Funny you should mention that. It turned out later that whole scene was stage-managed by an Army psychological operations team. I think the Los Angeles Times was like the only mainstream news organization to report it.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0703-02.htm |