Trump wouldn't have got free airtime

And there would be no alternative facts. There would be GOP lies.

pick a story and follow it! Cable is copying the news model of the past instead of adapting to the demands of the current moment.

Think "Serial" one of the most successful podcast of all time. They took one story and followed it.

Remember when Rachel talked about the water in Flint and we tuned in every day to hear that story develop? She followed Virginia's governor's campaign finance investigations. Later, she delved into Russia.

She took those stories from the investigative reporter all the way to the courtroom. Members of Congress watched her show to learn the topic.

Why don't Cable hosts become experts in one or two of the topics you listed? Trump couldn't manipulate the story by his antics and people would become very educated on these topics. And if you are listening for several hours, you don't hear the same story over and over.

Bush Jr. lied too, of course, regarding Iraq and Afghanistan, and his tax policies. but Trump takes lying to another level.

But I agree with your excellent point about "the news" becoming fixated on one thing to the exclusion of the larger story.

news source. Good stuff!

The dems should work harder on messaging than the GOP, but it's like the dems don't believe in marketing.

No child left behind. Clean skies, healthy forests. Cadillac queens. Tax and spend democrats. The nanny state. The party of family values. Fiscal conservatives. Trickle down economics.

Doesn't matter that these are misleading or outright false. People remember them and associate them with the GOP. How many dem slogans do you remember? Me? None. We didn't even counter with "tax CUT and spend republicans." We let all of the GOP bullshit go unchallenged. No wonder so many people think both parties are the same.

as not being able to compete with the GOP volume of lies. Lies which generally go unreported.

And yes, the GOP does "market" their nonsense in deceptive language.

Owned by Comcast, managed by Phil Griffin, political part run by Chuck Todd.

Pathetic.

for years, they have been coordinating their message, often with the exact same words or phrases, so that they appear on all channels. every republican appearance reinforces each other, and the media has "no choice" but to use their chosen words or phrases, each calculated for maximum republican gain.

if we even tried to do that, you know what would happen. the story would be how democrats are conspiring, or how they don't have original thoughts, rather than whatever we were trying to get attention focused on. that's the advantage they have of effectively owning the media.

I have no expectations of unbiased reporting because, if you call it what it is, that speaks for itself: corporate mass media.

I think that they have an often subtle agenda that issue from the higher echelons of the media groups. One of those is ratings/popularity/ad revenue, and the second is under the umbrella of how corporations want to influence the gestalt for their own benefit and purpose.

As it is said of the extremely wealthy, they play both sides as needed. Another thing to note is what they choose to spotlight and how much they ignore. The addition of endless talking heads with opinions in place of just giving you the facts in order to form you own conclusions is another factor that allows for expressing bias depending on who is talking and the kind of framing going on.

There is no altruism in corporate mass media and we can see that Faux News is an extreme example of that since it acts as a Right-Wing Pravda essentially.

Revenue is the only thing that matters to the rich people who own the media.

And this is one reason that the lunacy of supply side economics was never really explored by the media. Allw e read is how the economy is booming.

Yes, that's a good one to note. Booming? It is more like propaganda for those for whom it booms.

The winners write the script in this case? There is a lot of evidence that the opposite of boom is happening for significant numbers of people in this country. I don't hear "boom" from average folks who have no skin in the "game" and are just getting by.

I know there is often a lot of chicken little speculation about the state of the economy, but it is starting to look very shaky underneath like a gold capstone on a pyramid made of cardboard tubes. The huge and regular fed injections in the repo market is one sign among others.

And income is still stagnant for most workers.

And if the minimum wage had been indexed for inflation, it would be about $21 per hour, which is nearly the media hourly wage.

I know many people who work second jobs to pay their bills.

I see you are abreast of the situation at hand. There are so many factors now that indicate the boom may soon mean BOOM! as in explosion.

I could add the current retail apocalypse to that with a very significant number of store closing by major companies across the country as well.

And yes, in my "class" I only see thing getting worse for we who are not members of the "club". So, they boom, we get doom and that can't last very long before it becomes overwhelmingly apparent, news or not.

the corporate media will say that "our" party is over, and now "we" must tighten "our" belts.

When in fact, "we" were never invited to "their" party at all.

to pose as experts as they appear on all of the media shows.

.

In fact, I’ve seen instances where the media blames Obama for having so many vacancies! I’m sure the self-described Grim Reaper had nothing to do with it!

The US corporate media engages in very little actual analysis. They focused on the vacancies without pointing out that the GOP refused to confirm anyone. Merrick Garland was one of many candidates who were never considered.

about corporate media ad nauseum these days. However, because I am housebound part of the time, I have the TV on when I am awake to have a voice in the house. It is set to MSNBC much of the time. Regardless of my beef with a few of their people, they have many good liberal and progressive contributors and a range of programs to choose from. I have no doubt that the channel is liberal. I have seen reports daily on those topics in varying combinations and depending on what else is in the news, even on their conservative programs.

I don't spend my time looking for podcasts. I read articles to supplement what is reported or scan social media for current topics and articles of interest to explore further. My friends and I exchange articles and discuss them.

Liberal media is limited to a few sources. One reason is that people on the left will not be consistent in using or investing in it. If one of the billionaires set up such a channel, the left as a whole would nitpick it to death as it did Air America.

It is on Satellite and Direct TV and if you own a ROKU device, it is a free channel.

I watch Stephanie Miller daily and sometimes stay around for Thom Hartmann.

If I am up early enough I also watch Democracy Now.

Send them some $$ they are totally viewer funded.

since Watergate

“Two U.S. service members were killed and two others injured when their vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, the U.S. military said Saturday. The victims were not immediately identified in an attack claimed by the Taliban. Qari Yusouf Ahmadi, a Taliban spokesman, said it occurred in the southern Kandahar province. More than 2,400 U.S. service members have been killed in Afghanistan. Last year was one of the deadliest for the United States, with 23 American troops killed, even as Washington engaged in peace talks with the Taliban. The latest attack seemed certain to stall fresh efforts to restart the on-again, off-again talks. An Afghan official said the attack took place in the Dand district of Kandahar province.”

Now this was a little blurb in the paper but why are still there?I seem to remember that Afghanistan has the reputation of being the place that destroys empires. Russia was defeated there years ago and we’re still stuck in that sinkhole. I bet MF45 likes those blood soaked defense company donations just as much.

This should in the top of the news and on the front page every friggin day. This war POS president is responsible now and he can’t blame Obama.

So whoever wrote the Chronicle piece does not know what they are talking about. The four highest years were 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_in_the_War_in_Afghanistan

The myth of Trump was allowed and enabled by the media.

2 words.

The GOP phony stories about Benghazi, and pizza-gate, and, of course, the emails, were treated as legitimate news rather than the lies that they are and were.

Republicans have successfully weaponized this lie for decades.

outlet can't be developed. And I'm sick of it:

'Left media will just fail, like Air America and Current TV'

'We can never compete with the level of right wing media'

'Don't bother, if there was a new left news venue the right would create 5 new competitors'

'The left has 'comedy and late night' media, and that's ample'

'On the left, we READ! and we're superior'

'Radio is a dying industry; the internet is god'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_TV

It costs a huge amount to create and maintain a media outlet that reaches the entire country, or even one major city. We don't have a left-biased media because there has been no investment in such a thing.

There are no free media. None. Even the Internet is not free. Creating a major Internet media outlet still requires a very large investment of money.

The left either does not have the money or doesn't want to use it in that way.

come up with many millions $$ during campaign season; there's money available but the will seems lacking unfortunately. The situation is dire in this country, we are facing the loss of our democracy, our environment, our security and more.

It's no secret that hate radio and Faux News were funded by big money and for years they operated with sizeable losses. Yet they kept on and look at the landscape today. The amount of damage that has been done in 30 years is staggering.

It's really simple. We apparently only want free media, like DU. But that only reaches a tiny percentage of people.

If we don't invest in media, we don't have media, so there's no good coming from complaining about there not being liberal media. There could be, but we'd have to support it financially, and we don't.

We have corporate media, instead. Maybe we should think about that a bit.

And the laws as they are enforced allow for huge media monopolies.

In fact that should be the goal, in my opinion.

But that goal seems out of reach. When Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine that started the decline of the media.

It's always the reason. The media tailors news to please the advertisers who pay for the media. That's why progressive radio is dead. Nobody listened, so advertisers didn't advertise. No money; no radio.

imposed certain limits.

but it didn't really work as it should have. In any case, that isn't why we don't have well-balanced media. That is purely an economical issue. If there were support for balanced media, it would exist. Of course, balance is in the eye of the observer.

Some thing that only media that agree with their own point of view is balanced. All media in the United States are biased. We have some that leans left and some that leans right, but the most visible are the conservative media, because that's where the money is.

If we supported a left-leaning media with our viewership, subscriptions, and patronage, we'd have more of it. We don't, though. So, we are left with what does have financial support.

We can't just want something; we have to support what we want. If we don't do that, we don't get it.

And there are many fine, local progressive outlets, but they do not have the reach and visibility of those outlets controlled by the rich.

Part of the problem is that the rich are so lightly taxed that they can use their money to create think tanks, so-called research foundations, and media outlets.

However, all media outlets must support themselves through the interest of their consumers. If they cannot do that, why would anyone subsidize them? That's the question that must be answered.

I actually don't read any slanted news outlets. I prefer my news straight up and without analysis. I can analyze it myself. I've found plenty of sources for news of that sort, frankly. Many traditional news outlets try very hard to tell the story without commentary. Newspapers, television news like the major broadcast networks. I don't read the editorial pages or watch new analysis programming. I just want to know the story, with as little slant as possible. I'll figure out the rest on my own.

Agreed.

major college sports and the rest of the time it's Rush and his clones.

Then fire Rush.

Calling Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg.

their reach would be greater. The more exposure, the better.

revolving door!

The media companies will not do or say anything negative about their big advertisers. I saw first hand during the BP oil spill where the producers from all of the networks and most of the cable news companies that my boss would frequently appear on that they could not have him on anymore to discuss the litigation and how deep the impact of the spill was affecting the residents of the Gulf Coast. They said they would lose the oil companies advertising if they did.

In the McDonald's coffee case the media reported the accident as a frivolous lawsuit and runaway jury when in fact the woman almost died and McDonalds knew their hotter coffee was causing severe burns. McDonalds is a huge advertiser and welded their clout!

When we require our candidates to raise money in donations to make a debate stage (legal bribes) we have a built in advantage for those with the money to influence our politicians. When we do not prosecute our war criminals we encourage the powerful to do even worse the next time. Love Obama, but he should not have, "...look forward not back."

And regarding the last, the revolving door, this is what rewards lawmakers who enable the first two points.

Reagan repealed the Fairness Doctrine, which imposed some restrictions on what the media outlets could do.

And the SCOTUS, with decisions in Buckley v Valeo and Citizens United v FEC, essentially created the concept that money equates to free speech. So those with no money have no speech.

If I put some money on the table when speaking with a politician, that would be called bribery. But contribute to a political campaign and that bribery magically transforms into free speech.

Thank you.

We need to attack these deceptive right wing memes. When we allow them to distort the language, and to lie, if we do not attack the distortions and lies they become part of the narrative/history.

that got into journalism and radio. Wealthy people and businessmen didn't encourage their kids to go to school to be a newspaper reporter. There wasn't much money in it. No, you had to not mind starting out working for peanuts and miserable work hours.

That doesn't mean those highly trained people didn't do their jobs and report the news with no bias. What bias you would find was on the part of editorial staff at newspapers. That would be in the form of what stories they chose to run, where in the paper they ran them, and the headlines they went with. Many towns and cities had two daily newspapers, usually one would be conservative and the other liberal. You might find the same AP story in both papers with totally different headlines, otherwise, the readers were all getting the same facts.

Then of course the actual editorial pages were biased as they should be. Those papers didn't have any reason to try and keep that secret. A lot of people these days don't know the difference between straight news and opinion pieces.

Others, notably the GOP leadership, pretend to not understand.

we should expect that the corporate viewpoint will be represented.