Pessimist, you outdid yourself here. Good commentary and content. I hope you are right and that the media is once again growing a backbone instead of trying to complete with Fox News on which elite media outlet is the more "fair and balanced" republican boot licker.
Posted by Hank at October 8, 2005 11:42 AMHmmm, trying to follow your rant here but not to clear who/what is the target. Bill Moyer and David Shuster gave critical statements about FNC and the Bush administration. Wow! What’s the next ground breaking statement: “Limbaugh declares he is doesn’t like Clinton?” Think FNC is soft on Bush? Who broke the Drunk driving charges just days before the 2000 election? I think it amusing that your ilk don’t visualize the constant baseless attacks and news slanting that the MSM is conducting. Do Weapons caches, Guard Memos, Kitty Kelly, Abu Gharib, or Katrina Response ring a bell for you? I would add the ongoing Plame investigation but obviously from the other posts and articles you all are in the Alternate Universe with Al Gore on that one. The reason that the MSM is losing customers is that NORMAL people can see past this BS and want the news fair and balanced instead of warped and slanted.
Posted by Cyber Sarge at October 8, 2005 12:15 PMBaseless attacks? Let's recall how many of those were launched at Bill Clinton and Al Gore and John Kerry, and many other Democrats and progressives. Did we hear even one word out of your ilk about that? Do we hear anything about the slanting of the news in Bu$h'$ favor from your blind kind?
No.
The day you can demonstrate to me that you even know what 'fair and balanced' means we might have a civil conversation on the topic.
Until then, your country needs your 20 years of non-com experience in South Asia.
Posted by pessimist at October 8, 2005 01:03 PMGuard Memos, Kitty Kelly, Abu Gharib, or Katrina Response
Have those been proven false? Or is the truth in reporting "liberal"?
Posted by Sharon at October 8, 2005 02:48 PM....and damnit if I didn't leave Kitty Kelly's book at a restaurant and it didn't make it to the lost and found.
Posted by Sharon at October 8, 2005 02:51 PMIf you were to claim that Bill Clinton covered up the fact that the Roswell Incident was really the Second Coming of Christ, and He was being held captive at Area 51, more people would believe that than will believe that George W. Bu$h isn't a lawbreaker and a traitor to his nation.
Christ isn't being held at Area 51?? Then who have I been talking to every Saturday on my shoephone?
Posted by tempus at October 8, 2005 04:55 PMThe Bloomington native encountered a markedly different culture when he jumped to NBC/MSNBC in June 2002. "One of the first things that happens is you're given a 50-page manual of standards and practices ... and you immediately sense this is an organization that cares very deeply about journalistic integrity."
I wonder if they gave copies to the likes of Joe Scarborough, Chris Matthews, and Tucker Carlson, all of whom just make shit up to fit their agenda.
... Think FNC is soft on Bush? Who broke the Drunk driving charges just days before the 2000 election? ...Posted by Cyber Sarge
It was broken by a local affiliate, not the cable network which would have covered up the story.
The reason that the MSM is losing customers is that NORMAL people can see past this BS and want the news fair and balanced instead of warped and slanted.Posted by Cyber Sarge
Warped and slanted is the very definition of the right wing media: talk radio, cable news, the New York Post, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and thousands of local papers. You can spout right wing propaganda into the next millennium, but that won't make it true. Merely because an occasion story becomes too big to coverup doesn't change the basic bias of the right wing media.
Americans who seek "fair and balanced" radio news no longer seek sarge's favorite scorces.
Posted by rlp at October 8, 2005 07:45 PMThe above link is not supposed to require registration. The link below should work.
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/politics/12837587.htm
Sleeping Tiger it was.........
Posted by Richard at October 8, 2005 08:52 PMok, I'm done with this. I can't remember who it was (not Mary and not Marie and not Steve I think) but bashing Texas for fun is not fair. Let me say it once more: None of the Bushes are from this state. Not one of them was born here, except for the twins, but then I can explain that as two who should not have paired ever. I know it is easy to dump on this state for internet accessibility (try another Texas provider, I suggest Surfbest) or to think that Texas is a republican state. It wasn't until Tom DeLay got his heft -- through the House of Representatives. And I think there is enough blame to go around for that.
Do not doubt that I have and will put my money where my mouth is. I gave to DeLay's opponent last fall. This time I will give my time and effort to make sure DeLay is not only not Majority leader, but not even a rep.
The bushes are latter day carpetbaggers. Yes, I use a term from the War. They come in, screw everything up and then ask how you like it. And they convert the idiots along the way. Does anyone think I LIKE it that that family claims my state?
Sam Houston, the name sake of my city, did not want to join the Confederacy. I wish, at times, that we had not even joined the Union. But we are a state, full of freethinking people.
I am one such person, and I take exception to being globbed into a pile w.
Posted by dorita at October 8, 2005 09:11 PM
That last sentence would read better: a pile with w.
not that it matters.
Posted by dorita at October 8, 2005 09:15 PMhahaha damn cry babies you know fox kicks ass is on top has been on top for some time and all the koolaid and whinning is not going to change it. In sted of crying about a good station like fox the rest should try telling the truth like them and maybe their ratings would hit the rooooooooof too.Now as far as gorey goes the worlds better off that loser didn't get in office after all he's needed elseware because after all he did invent the internet. lmmfao loser
Posted by RepublicanTeamLeader at October 9, 2005 06:05 AMhow the changing mood of the country has driven news coverage . . . I don't want to say the media always follow the weather vane of public opinion, but in any administration there is an accumulative effect . . . .
OK, to me this is a puzzling question, which I am perhaps trying too hard to figure out. What "causes" what? Which drives which? "public opinion", "corporate media", "political pressure". I know,I know its interactive and all that. But, does such a thing as "public opinion" exist in the absence, and without the interpretation of the media? Seems like this was all covered in some poli sci course 45 years ago. I think the text was "Public opinion, pressure groups and propaganda", wherein the evil of propaganda was studied through the lens of the Nazis and the Soviets.
I'm continuing to believe increasingly that public opinion does not exist outside the brain of big media. To me the question is important because it relates to another poli sci course, The Legislative Process, and the prominence of the media in rendering our legislators intellectual nullities is at least as discouraging. Which brings us full circle to the presidential apparatus and the sham "independent" media has become.
Posted by DonS at October 9, 2005 07:18 AMPublic opinion is influenced by the many variables comprising the culture of a community. The media is one of those variables. Corporate media must answer to both its stockholders and the public. It seems to me that the easist way to please both is for corporate media to appear to be on the side of the prevailing and most popular public opinion. Now if the stockholders are not of the same opinion there may be a problem. As remedy, a public opinion poll can be devised by a media entity to produce desired results and perhaps then sway the public opinion. A lot of people like to be on the most popular or winning team just because. However, I figure the stockholders can be swayed from their opinion too. This happens when they start losing money.
Posted by OffTheFence at October 9, 2005 08:28 AM