I figured I'd create this instead of the plethora of "Liberal Media" threads to address the pan-partisan problems with the current state of what is considered to be the "Mass Media."


I'll kick it off with an article from Naked Capitalism:

Quote :

"MSM Reporting as Propaganda (No One Minds Our New Financial Masters Edition) I’m of two minds about taking up this theme, since stating what ought to be obvious but is nevertheless unpleasant and inconvenient is apt to get one branded as lunatic fringe. Access journalism has created what is in many respects a controlled press. And that matters because people are far more suggestible than most of us wants to admit to ourselves. Let us start with the cheerleading in the media over Wall Street, and in particular, Goldman earnings. Matt Taibbi, in “Good News on Wall Street Means… What Exactly?,” tells us why this is so distorted: It’s literally amazing to me that our press corps hasn’t yet managed to draw a distinction between good news on Wall Street for companies like Goldman, and good news in reality. I watched carefully the reporting of the Dow breaking 10,000 the other day and not anywhere did I see a major news organization include a paragraph of the “On the other hand, so fucking what?” sort, one that might point out that unemployment is still at a staggering high, foreclosures are racing along at a terrifying clip, and real people are struggling more than ever. In fact the dichotomy between the economic health of ordinary people and the traditional “market indicators” is not merely a non-story, it is a sort of taboo — unmentionable in major news coverage. The press has been on a downslope for at least a decade, as a result of strained budgets and vastly more effective government and business spin control (and it was already pretty good at that, see the BBC series, The Century of the Self, via Google video, for a real eye-opener). I met a reporter who had been overseas for six years, opening an important foreign office for the Wall Street Journal. He was stunned when he came back in 1999 to see how much reporting had changed in his absence. He said it was impossible to get to the bottom of most stories in a normal news cycle because companies had become very sophisticated in controlling their message and access. "

http://tinyurl.com/ylxtdog

10/17/2009 1:06:58 PM

It cannot be considered propaganda when others are free to say otherwise without fear of reprisal. That said, we are under threat of propaganda, because all broadcasters currently serve at the pleasure of the FCC.

10/17/2009 4:31:57 PM

I don't know that propaganda, by definition, prohibits an opposing view, I think it just needs to be an overwhelming view.

But in a sense there are reprisals, as the article mentions, such as being cut off from access. I'm not saying it is a government conspiracy or that corporations don't have a right to present themselves in the best possible light, they do, but I think we're looking at a shift away from the old media as it becomes increasingly ineffective.

10/17/2009 4:43:10 PM

Quote :

"Yes TSB, I occasionally watch Glenn Beck. What?"

The fuck, dude. The FUCK?!

10/18/2009 1:30:46 AM

Remember when media was objective?

Actually, shouldn't a libertarian welcome a wide-open media market? Shouldn't Rational Self-Interest drive the media?

10/19/2009 12:35:25 PM

actually yeah. I've been arguing for biased media for quite some time. My only problem comes with people representing themselves as somehow above partisanship.

10/19/2009 1:18:58 PM

Quote :

"The Obama campaign's press strategy leading up to his election last November focused on "making" the media cover what the campaign wanted and on exercising absolute "control" over coverage, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn told an overseas crowd early this year. In a video of the event, Dunn is seen describing in detail the media strategy used by then-Sen. Barack Obama's highly disciplined presidential campaign. The video is footage from a Jan. 12 forum hosted by the Global Foundation for Democracy and Development in the Dominican Republic. "Very rarely did we communicate through the press anything that we didn't absolutely control," Dunn said, admitting that the strategy "did not always make us popular in the press." "

Not really a knock at the Obama administration in particular, Bush attempted to do it (though not nearly as successfully).

Again, the relationship between the press and the stories is controlled by "access journalism". It has interesting applications for the concept of mass media.

10/19/2009 7:32:30 PM

no idea where to post this, but lol

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/118/story/1012759.html

10/21/2009 8:25:33 PM

10/22/2009 4:24:17 AM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CKHFn8mULE

CNN appears to think "they" all look alike.

10/23/2009 4:34:45 AM

Lou Dobbs leaving CNN:

Quote :

"Dobbs said CNN president Jon Klein is letting him out of his contract, and he's currently weighing his options. Since recently meeting with Fox chief Roger Ailes, it's been rumored that Dobbs may be headed to Fox Business. (A Fox spokesperson tells the Times there haven't been discussions). Also, Media Matters, and other groups, have targeted Dobbs for his immigration views. Recently, there's been a "Drop Dobbs" campaign aimed at getting the CNN host off the air. Going forward, the major issues to tackle, Dobbs said, are “growth of our middle class, the creation of more jobs, health care, immigration policy, the environment, climate change, and our military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq.”"

http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/1109/Dobbs_leaves_CNN.html

11/11/2009 9:03:18 PM

^ YAYYYYYYYYY

he and Wolf Blitzer are the worst of CNN, imho

11/11/2009 9:30:28 PM

Quote :

"Remember when media was objective?"

I do not.

11/11/2009 10:39:01 PM

Quote :

"he and Wolf Blitzer are the worst of CNN, imho"

agree...

that vanderbilt guy...now there is a man of the people

and that one women who is competing with Red Eye for ratings...

winners the both of them

11/13/2009 3:12:54 AM

Interesting article by Robert Kaplan:

Quote :

"Has anyone watched the English-language version of Al Jazeera lately? The Qatar-based Arab TV channel’s eclectic internationalism—a feast of vivid, pathbreaking coverage from all continents—is a rebuke to the dire predictions about the end of foreign news as we know it. Indeed, if Al Jazeera were more widely available in the United States—on nationwide cable, for example, instead of only on the Web and several satellite stations and local cable channels—it would eat steadily into the viewership of The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer. Al Jazeera—not Lehrer—is what the internationally minded elite class really yearns for: a visually stunning, deeply reported description of developments in dozens upon dozens of countries simultaneously."

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200910/al-jazeera

Does a pretty good job of pointing out the flaws in US and British media from Fox to CNN to BBC.

12/30/2009 7:16:12 PM