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if it bleeds it leads, sure...but what bleeds has to be an event of some kind. fukushima---which is really fucked up---has more or less disappeared from the american infotainment/opinion management system in part because the disaster stopped having the characteristics of an event and became a process of deterioration/intensification of bad things. processes don't play well. continuity doesn't play well. vital advertising is at stake, you see, so it's important to maintain a disconnected, factoid oriented approach to infotainment delivery. without that, you might not pay attention to the vital advertising.
this is not to say that there's no opinion management at play. in the main, i think chomsky and herman are right in books like manufacturing consent in that the terms of "legitimate debate" on a given issue are still---to my horror----set by teevee talking heads.
it may not be a coincidence that general electric is a major player in the "free" american corporate media-scape and that stories which damage their interests (which need not be direct) are less likely to get coverage than others---but i don't know that empirically (it's hard to prove a negative).
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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