Why the media failed Americans

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Registered: 04-16-2003
Why the media failed Americans
10
Thu, 07-15-2004 - 6:36pm
Here is an interesting excerpt from the Asia Times on Line. The full article can be found at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FG16Aa01.html

A universe in which news won't matter

Karl Rove, the president's chief political adviser, bluntly declared to New Yorker writer Ken Auletta that members of the press "don't represent the public any more than other people do. I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function." Auletta concluded that, in the eyes of the Bush administration, the press corps had become little more than another special-interest lobbying group. Indeed, the territory the traditional media once occupied has increasingly been deluged by administration lobbying, publicity, and advertising - cleverly staged "photo-ops", carefully produced propaganda rallies, pre-planned "events", tidal waves of campaign ads, and the like. Afraid of losing further "influence", access, and the lucrative ad revenues that come from such political image-making, major media have found it in their financial interest to yield quietly.

What does this downgrading of the media's role say about how the US government views its citizens, the putative sovereigns of the country? It suggests that "we the people" are seen not as political constituencies conferring legitimacy on our rulers, but as consumers to be sold policy the way advertisers sell products. In the storm of selling, spin, bullying and "discipline" that has been the Bush signature for years, traditional news outlets found themselves increasingly drowned out, ghettoized and cowed. Attacked as "liberal" and "elitist", disesteemed as "troublemakers" and "bashers" (even when making all too little trouble), they were relegated to the sidelines, increasingly uncertain and timid about their shrinking place in the political process.

Add in a further dynamic (which intellectuals from Marxist-Leninist societies would instantly recognize): Groups denied legitimacy and disdained by the state tend to internalize their exclusion as a form of culpability, and often feel an abject, autonomic urge to seek reinstatement at almost any price. Little wonder, then, that "the traditional press" has had a difficult time mustering anything like a convincing counter-narrative as the administration herded a terrified and all-too-trusting nation to war.

Not only did a mutant form of skepticism-free news succeed - at least for a time - in leaving large segments of the populace uninformed, but it corrupted the ability of high officials to function. All too often they simply found themselves looking into a fun-house mirror of their own making and imagined that they were viewing reality. As even the conservative National Review noted, the Bush administration has "a dismaying capacity to believe its own public relations".

In this world of mutant "news", information loops have become one-way highways; and a national security adviser, cabinet secretary, or attorney general, a well-managed and programmed polemicist charged to "stay on message", the better to justify whatever the government has already done, or is about to do. Because these latter-day campaigns to "dominate the media environment", as the Pentagon likes to say, employ all the sophistication and technology developed by communications experts since Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, first wed an understanding of psychology to the marketing of merchandise, they are far more seductive than older-style news. Indeed, on Fox News, we can see the ultimate marriage of news and public relations in a fountainhead of artful propaganda so well packaged that most people can't tell it from the real thing.

For three-plus years we have been governed by people who don't view news, in the traditional sense, as playing any constructive role in our system of governance. At the moment, they are momentarily in retreat, driven back from the front lines of faith-based truth by their own faith-based blunders. But make no mistake, their frightening experiment will continue if Americans allow it. Complete success would mean not just that the press had surrendered its essential watchdog role, but - a far darker thought - that, even were it to refuse to do so, it might be shunted off to a place where it would not matter.

As the war in Iraq descended into a desert quagmire, the press belatedly appeared to awaken and adopt a more skeptical stance toward an already crumbling set of Bush administration policies. But if a bloody, expensive, catastrophic episode like the war in Iraq is necessary to remind us of the important role that the press plays in US democracy, something is gravely amiss in the way America's political system has come to function.

Avatar for merlins_own
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Registered: 09-25-2003
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 7:31am
I've just discovered FoxNews on satellite and I like how they get opposing views of the issues in the news instead of slanting the news like most other news channels do. Refreshing.

Merlins_Own

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW!

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Registered: 03-18-2000
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 12:04pm

I'm adding

 


Photobucket&nbs

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Registered: 06-16-2004
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 1:11pm
Yeah, I watched them a few times while on business trips to the US. They are downright hilarious in how extreme they put a spin on the news ;)

Some of the hosts are downright hostile, insulting, and I have watched as they use language that essentially incited PHYSICAL violence and murder against some people with opposing views. Do they really represent America? I don't think so! Those americans I have met in all my trips were courteous, pleasant, and seemed to have open minds. Are they a minority? I sure hope not!

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-01-2004
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 2:47pm
"I've just discovered FoxNews on satellite and I like how they get opposing views of the issues in the news instead of slanting the news like most other news channels do. Refreshing."

Well, though I know some people around here wouldn't agree with me, I too like Fox News (have heard it berated here before...even called Faux News once). Generally I dislike all news, newspapers, magazines and the like because any way you look at it, there's spin. Especially political spin....

But I do on occassion turn on Fox News...usually to see what pot Bill O'Reilly is stirring up that day. For as much as he frustrates me at times, he sure does get a good chuckle out of me at others.

Avatar for merlins_own
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Registered: 09-25-2003
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 7:16pm
The more I watch, I have to say, I'm seeing some bullying and rudeness when interrupting some of the interviewees, but sometimes it doesn't happen. Maybe some of the reporters are like that and some aren't. Sometimes their reporting seems less biased, but they aren't without biase, either. Guess I like their willingness NOT to play the camouflaging PC games and allow some fur to fly, LOL! I still cruise other networks/stations because I know none are spinless. Somewhere in between them all, I feel I can glean a semblance of what's really going on...

Merlins_Own

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW!

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Registered: 09-25-2003
Wed, 07-21-2004 - 7:28pm
I haven't gotten all the personnel sorted out yet, but I like that things get shaken up. Sometimes spin becomes more obvious when the camouflaging gloves of being PC and oh-so-proper are nudged off and people say more what they really think. LOL! I don't trust any media source per se and by cruising maybe I can be a more intelligent and discerning news "consumer."

Merlins_Own

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW!

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Thu, 07-22-2004 - 9:53am
News shows have become market-based entertainment. They play to what market surveys say the people want to watch, and the people want to be entertained not informed. A search for the "news" is best done in the print media. IMO The internet may save us all from being amused to death.

BTW people of color make the news when there famous and accused of something, eg Kobe Bryand and Michael Jackson, when the war in Iraq gets boring although soldiers are dying daily, these stars are a perfect distraction. Can you imagine what would happen if we really got emotionally involved in the war, economy or environment. Then we might care what the government is doing for/to us?

Avatar for merlins_own
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Registered: 09-25-2003
Thu, 07-22-2004 - 4:19pm
TV is really beginning to echo those scifi representations, where the big screen is part of/embedded in the wall, on all day, always hype, always "entertainment" and "mind control" monotony, LOL! :P We've already got the flat wall-mounted TVs... Actually ACTIVATE us to DO something?! Nah -- just keep us fixated and powerless...


Edited 7/22/2004 4:20 pm ET ET by merlins_own

Merlins_Own

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW!

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-16-2003
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 11:26am
It is easy to turn the TV off. However, the freedom granted to the media in the constitution was to keep the populace informed not entertained. IMO, they expect the rights and reject the responsibilities. All in accordance with the greedy nature of the owners who BTW are consolidating their power. We need an administration who cares more for the people and less about the concerns of powerful corporations.
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Registered: 05-18-2004
Fri, 07-23-2004 - 12:33pm
"We need an administration who cares more for the people and less about the concerns of powerful corporations."

And you think Kerry is better than Bush? Or is that just a general comment?

Reagan would be the last president who did what you suggested.

I believe Bush does the same...just doesn't sell it as well as Reagan.


Edited 7/23/2004 12:34 pm ET ET by vader716