thinking on MSNBC. I dont disagree just interested in hearing what you think.

But I completely disagree with the "when."

The Fairness Doctrine was repealed in 1987 under Reagan's FCC. This allowed completely one-sided media outlets. Fox sprang up, Rush sprang up, pushing a single ideology. Of course media concentration is a factor. Plus during that period news organizations were folded into entertainment divisions of their stations.

The 1990s, through the early 2000s were a void, as far as liberal concerns. It was hard to find a liberal, and interestingly Phil Donahue changed his format to closer to Jerry Springer type subjects toward the end of his daytime show, somewhere during the 1990s. Then it ended during this period. The liberal media it seemed, was regularly bringing on a chorus of various conservatives, to speak the words "liberal media" so many times, that it appeared they were self-demonizing their own media.

The MSNBC through FOX is the corporate paradigm for what the left/right is allowed to be. It's mostly different on social issues. It rarely mentions economic issues. MSNBC is designed to support the neo-democrats, FOX the republicans. Both push their parties to the right, to the right. Let a host get on MSNBC and talk about how globalization has damaged us, increased unemployment and caused the debt (never will), and see how the other "liberals" will react, will take them down.

If you listen to a call-in show, like Stephanie Miller, or Ed Schultz's radio show, you'll see more closely what the actual human left/right paradigm is. Lately the left is pissed--I've heard a lot of very deservedly angry folks, in particular calling in to Ed.

It isn't unusual for people to get the date wrong--it has to do with experience, how old you are, at what point you started paying attention. Truth is, it has been sliding for decades now, just like our economy.

We have a winner. You hit the nail right on the head.

The down slide started under Ronnie Raygun with the repeal of the fairness doctrine. It has all gone downhill from there.

However, I wonder if the Reich Wing got started with AM talk radio before then? I am thinking of the late 1970's, during Carter's presidency. They were really spewing about the hostage situation. I am thinking they got their foothold in AM radio back then. Does anyone else who remembers that time period want to chime in?

I agree with you.

But it is what it is. A network owned by vast corporate interests, operated to support those interests.

The Faux "news" thing is simple. For that demographic, they can just come right out with it. They are appealing to ignorant morons who easily fall into line with any authoritarian fear-mongering.

The objectives for MSNBC are essentially the same. It just requires a different approach because it is a different demographic -- one that mostly rejects authoritarianism and fear-mongering. So their objective with MSNBC is to make far-right corporate policies seem more or less acceptable. And part of this sleight-of-hand is to concede spectacularly on social issues, which the corporations don't care about anyway. That's why so much of what MSNBC covers is gay issues and abortion stuff. That's practically all Rachael does these days.

When was the last time you heard a true liberal guest on MSNBC? There are some. Michael Moore is on from time to time, but I do not consider him a representative of true liberalism. He is only slightly to the left of America's traditional center. Ed has some union bosses on from time to time, and they certainly voice some of the progressive concerns.

But compare what you hear on MSNBC to, for example, Democracy Now or Thom Hartmann. There is no comparison and anybody who doesn't see the difference really needs to pay more attention.

The best thing I can say about MSNBC is that it is better to have them on the air than to allow the far right networks (CNN, Faux, NBC, ABC, CBS) to have the space all to themselves. But let's not kid ourselves. At the end of the day, MSNBC is just another big corporate network promoting big corporate interests.

Michael Eric Dyson subbed for Ed Schultz last week. On Friday, he interviewed Michael Moore (in studio? I forget) and gave him three segments! It was nice hearing Michael's thoughts for over 15 minutes straight.

I am very suprised these Moore segments did not find their way into DU video posts. He was great, especially about gun-mad America.

Dyson repeatedly mispronounces "Newtown" as "newton".

Hartmann and Goodmann blow the doors off MSNBC, but give MSNBC credit for Rachel's recent coverage of the Iraq war propaganda "Hubris". Watching these vermin lying their asses off before the war is chilling given what we know now. Well, whaddyah know! The entire executive staff of the Bush White House are bona-fide war criminals that would be convicted in about 90% of the Courts on the planet.

-90% Jimmy

And yea, usually he's on for ten, and out of there!!

I enjoyed it partly because he actually seemed angry, and didn't try to choose his words so carefully as he does sometimes. We need more of that from liberals, just straight angry talk. One of the media's jobs is to try to moderate this kind of person, as they know it is effective, for someone to actually seem to believe what they are saying to the point of being angry. If you aren't angry about what has gone on, about exporting 35 million jobs, and the tax money they used to pay, and the destruction it has wrought on cities and States, then you're not paying attention, and aren't aware of what has been going on.

Agreed the post above, about Rachel covering mostly gay stuff, social issues.

Add to all of that, Hubris managed to completely ignore the reason for war, the distribution of oil, never mentioned that map in the White House that showed how they intended to distribute the oil. I don't think she mentioned PNAC either.

I feel like Rachel can do better. But then again, maybe not. Maybe a little is better than none, the none we had during the 1990s.

Just look at how bad it is when she is on the Sunday morning fascist-fests. They really put the muzzle on her then. But it is better to have here there than nobody at all. Same can be said for Arianna Huffington, when she had that same role.

Nobody dares speak the unvarnished truth on any of those programs. But Rachael at least puts out a few hints.

he guaranteed us, "all propaganda, all the time." His corporate masters understood the power of propaganda and not being able to hear differing points of view.... to me, that was the end of tee vee news.

Gun control.

The corporate state likes that issue, too.

for challenging *'s military service history.

We haven't had an informative or truthful newscast from CBS since then.

A long, slow decline, precipitated by many events, begun by repeal of fairness doctrine in 1987, predated by opening of many right-wing think-tanks, beginning that "Vast, right-wing conspiracy," Hillary correctly pointed out back in the mid-nineties.

.

of the corporate state. And that's exactly what the last generation of actual news people told us would happen back in the 70s.

http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0215-29.htm

And not one reporter followed-up on it.

Thanks, kpete, for the Hedges article. Solid analysis, based on Truth.

K&R

... allot longer ago than 2003, but I can understand Chris's use of the date for his article. It truly was a defining moment. I think it actually happened around the late '80s or early '90s. Around the time that Bernie Shaw quit CNN right after the first Iraq War (GHWB's).
They bragged about the news changing to a more "tabloid" or "magazine" format.

I was shocked to read after the war that much of what I saw was not even real, but what the US government wanted the world to see.

I lost all respect for that cog in the Corporate Controlled Conservative Press when he hit Dukakis with the Kitty question.

... probably because I was going through something devastatingly emotional when Dukakis was running against GHWB. I did vote for Dukakis, I do remember that. In my reply, I was just trying to nail down a time that the media jumped the track, originally.

Mad as Hell and I'm not going to take it anymore.

+1000

"We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused."

Entire - scarily accurate - speech here:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechnetwork4.html

And another that exactly describes the situation...

Aside from some dated aspects to it (the Chairman Mao Hour put on by a group of radical revolutionaries would be the Ayn Rand Hour put on by a group of Teabaggers today, for example), the overall message of that movie remains painfully relevant today...and was dead on in predicting what was to come of TV.

this actually started earlier with the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 and the invention of "Happy Talk" newscasts in the 1970s. One ended real debate and the other tried to make personality-based news into a profit center. The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine enabled interviewers and editorials to attack people and groups without giving them a chance to respond (or worse - a tepid representative of the other POV).

Happy Talk enabled news to end investigative reporting on corruption, government policy and injustice to focus on topics, such as what Polar Bears do to keep cool in the summer and what "thing" might be dangerous to your health in your house (only during sweeps).

But "if it bleeds, it leads" is still in effect. So, crime, car crashes and cannibalism make he top spot. The undermining of the middle class isn't sexy, but war is - even if the reason for sending in troops makes no sense (but AMERICA, fuckin' A).

So people have not heard another side to any issue. And what events most would consider inhuman and un-American were skimmed over with a veneer of hot-babes and jingoism (Fox and the MSM). It's been this way for nearly 30 years - almost 2 generations.

One good thing. It seems that some Americans are getting tired of the smoke and mirrors called news. A lot of people seem to be more skeptical (a good thing to be) of what they hear. Not everybody will see through the haze (remember the 1950s, when there was Commie behind every shrub). But, there seem to be a growing number of people who want the truth. Hopefully the corporate powers will see that and realize that there is profit in reporting the truth. MSNBC is a start. Maybe some day CNN, NBC and ABC will offer what people want -- something like the truth.

Yea, most of your point leans toward pointing out perhaps the biggest tactic, just obfuscating what you don't want to discuss. Of course this is done mostly by as you pointed out, putting other sensationalist news in the place of real, usable, news--news that actually helps you make correct decisions, and gives you the truth of the most important things.

If you were to choose one thing, perhaps you'd look at the fact Iraq and to some extent Afghanistan were both about oil, and natural gas availability. It had nothing to do with nukes. It had nothing to do with "helping" anyone, but helping ourselves to their natural resources and putting US based multinationals in position to exploit these smarmy war acquisitions.

The anti-Communist scare in the 1950s, I've always seen as the very first attack on Roosevelt's ideas. Want workers to make more, be safer, work less hours, have more benefits? You must be a communist. FDR's biggest accomplishment was in helping even out wealth, and income. That was the first thing they had to try to blunt. It didn't fully work, but it was the grain of sand that grew into an eventual boulder, led to "Unions wanted too much, and that's why they are screwed."

The worst thing about the fact that the corporate left talks almost exclusively about social issues is, for the most part, these are the issues that fuel the campaigns of right-wingers. Lucky for us, they've gotten nutty, and the current state of their "con" is in disrepair. But they are working on it, and if I credit republicans with one thing it is their never-ending quest toward getting almost everything they want, by any method possible, while Democrats try to be "fair." It's like Democrats bringing knives to gun-fights.

...this actually started earlier with the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987.

And your point about 2 generations living without it is a huge part of why the "news" we see is such bullshit. I'll be willing to bet a lot of posters here are too young to remember the Fairness Doctrine. I remember thinking back then that this was one of Reagan's last "fuck you" to the liberals in the country. In true 1984 fashion, it was decreed that the elimination of this act would expand free speech. All of a sudden, all we heard was right-wing mud slinging, and Rush was huge within what? Two years?

THAT is deeply disturbing.
Add to that the way education is being destroyed and it gets downright frightening.

all the more reason to protect the internet.

>>>Happy Talk enabled news to end investigative reporting on corruption, government policy and injustice to focus on topics, such as what Polar Bears do to keep cool in the summer and what "thing" might be dangerous to your health in your house (only during sweeps). >>>>

Seriously.

I try to write what I know and from my heart. So, I find there are so many people who have more to say and have more knowledge on various topics than I do. But I appreciate your comment.

Chris Matthews et al....be it MSNBC or FOX or CNN personalities....host OPINION and analysis programs.

Opinion and analysis bloated with hidden agendas, and absent real, hard, news. Sad to say.

but he only outlasted Rather by a few months.

In one short year, network news had ceased to be relevant.

Thanks!

There is more money to be made.

than it had wanted to have to chew so many times in the last 60 or so years.

and this lack of news is the reason in my view for the current apathy...

But I do have one question: How was Microsoft a defense contractor, an how did it profit from the Iraq war?
I don't think anything in the military is equipped with Windows...it is not stable enough

Microsoft I have no doubt profited--there is a lot of high-tech stuff, hardware and software in planes, ships, tanks, everything--much of it stems from Microsoft. Microsoft regularly buys various companies, and has many fingers in the various corporate pies.

One great idea would be to pass a law that media outlets have to stand completely on their own, without being owned by corporations that have other business and operations. It is the only way we'd ever get complete objectivity.

These companies also have boards' of directors. It is very usual for the boards of MIC companies to have common members with media companies. This puts "filters" into place, where there are things filtered out of the news that the other corporations (that advertise) do not want. The larger the corporation, the more power it has to damage a network with hundreds of stations, simply by pulling its advertising.

Great story about BGH in Florida--pulled basically because the company that they had information on, threatened to pull their advertising. It turned into this huge lawsuit. Investigative journalism has died. This is a huge reason for not allowing monopolies, companies too large to report the news about.

>>>It does not matter that these celebrities and their guests, usually retired generals or government officials, got the war terribly wrong. Just as it does not matter that Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Friedman were wrong on the wonders of unfettered corporate capitalism and globalization. What mattered then and what matters now is likability—known in television and advertising as the Q score—not honesty and truth. Television news celebrities are in the business of sales, not journalism. They peddle the ideology of the corporate state. And too many of us are buying. >>>>

Gotta admire Hedges' use of the language also:

>>>The descent was gradual—a slide into the tawdry, the trivial and the inane.>>>>>

That's our "unholy trinity", all right. Irks me but it's good to know that I'm not the only one thinking these things. Just don't have CH's vocabulary.

is so powerful, the images that come to mind when I read it.

YouTube carries many many of Hedges' talks/speeches, a lot of them are key points in his several books.

When they worried more about how the studio looked then the content of the news....when they started having news people in groups that spent more time looking at each other,showing off new clothes,what they did over the weekend and very little time spent on news or intelligent conversation.
The news was designed to be reported--not shaved to fit in between the sports scores and what's going on in Hollywood. They were being paid to inform the public what was going on around the world and not to "shield" us from what they felt we should not know about. For the most part they did not lean left or right. It was like on the old Dragnet "Just the facts ma'm." Now they seem to be paid by a very obvious leaning agenda,very political sponsors and it's either report the "reformulated" news or look for another job. For many scruples have little to do with a decent job so they suck up the lies and spew them out to sometimes a very unsuspecting public. How often have you heard someone say "It must be the truth. They would not lie on the news." Fox pounded that in many heads for so long that even they believe their own swill at times.

...it exposed the truth about US society which of course the advertisers did not like. IMO this was the start of the corporate influence on what gets air time. It went down hill from this point. I read a lament from Rod Sterling explaining this. Rod was an expert at portraying societies stupidity and hypocrisy. Of course ...people aren't going to like that. Ring a bell?

That is a little longer than this old girl has been alive.

T.V. has probably always been a flawed medium, at least regarding getting the viewpoints of average people out there. How many of us have ever been able to afford to own a t.v. station?

And, yet, the airwaves (used to) belong to the people. Can we turn the corporate monopoly of them around, and if so, how? It seems like restoring the Fairness Doctrine would be a beginning...although, I tend to believe we are best served by turning away from big media like t.v., and just use the internet and social networking to connect with each other. I don't think the fat cat robber barons will ever do the right thing...unless we can take the momentum away from them, just turn our backs on them and work on good grass-roots projects that help the 99%. The only thing the rich seem to respond to is being hit in the wallet.

Rod Serling wrote a teleplay about racism in the Deep South and it was rejected for being too political. He rewrote it as a story about prejudice against robots on Mars and it was accepted. Thus, he found out that you can get away with a lot more if you package it as speculative fiction.

They are designed to reach as many as possible to subtly introduce their corporate message. Obama is the liberal side of the corporate play book. He tells us what we want to hear on most things, but does what he is expected to do for his corporate masters. No prosecutions of Wall Street and the bankers, give BP the U.S. Coast Guard to do their dirty work and push the non-existent 20 billion fund allowing the Gulf of Mexico to be destroyed, drill baby drill.... They give us the illusion that we are represented when in fact, we are not.
These are OUR Public Airwaves!!! Where is the FCC? Why on the corporate payroll of course! I will keep saying this and I hope you do too, we need COMPLETE Campaign Finance Reform! We need OUR voice back!

Not only was talk radio spared the duty of presenting opposing sides of an issue, but news became increasingly more opinionated, and ultimately we were treated to the creation of a "news network"--Fox News--that was run by a political operative and designed as a purely propaganda organization. There is no pretense at all of fairness or impartiality.

but it was definitely the day that the corporate media gave us the middle finger and said whatcha gonna do about it?

The cause happened decades earlier. And it happened when the then 3 major networks all declared that the news divisions from that day forward would be profit centers. That is the day hard news died and was replaced by tailoring the "news" to maintaining a permanent horserace aspect to politics and divided government. Controversy drives up ratings as long as it doesn't step on the toes of the sponsors. And so does fear and that is when the door was opened to the likes of Fox News.

Good point ...

Since the world did not start when this happened,
declaring that anything must compete in the market
merely places whatever it is in the realm of the
"capitalists" that is, those who have stockpiled money,
honestly or dishonestly previous to whenever the market
came about.

That meant that since news had to be profitable it
was essentially given to the monied interests to play
around with until they can engineer a way to control
people, society and the government with it.

but radio as clearchannel proved by sending a memo out to its stations just after 9-11. The memo listed 165 songs, mostly anti war, love thy neighbor type of songs, that would be inappropriate to play during the build up to war.

This type of thing has been going on since the Spanish American war when William Randolph Hearst spread war propaganda through his news papers.

I agree with Hedges, it's been dead as a source of news for a long time.

Posters here attacked a recent study that showed the MSMedia is mostly opinion and not news, they just can't wrap their minds around how brainwashed they are by propaganda.

Propaganda in America is much more effective then it ever was in the Soviet Union or under any dictatorship, in that the Russian people KNEW and expected that their "official" news source, Pravda, was lying to them. You could almost lay money that whatever the headline story was, the truth was the exact opposite.

..it' fills me with hope that once recognized, maybe, just maybe, something can be done by "we the People".

Liz Warren for President

"I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANY MORE"

Last edited Mon Mar 25, 2013, 05:15 PM - Edit history (2)

NEVER MIND. I JUST WATCHED THE ENTIRE EPISODE AND IT'S CONFRONTED IN ANOTHER EPISODE. HOWEVER, JAMES L BROOKS DID PRODUCE AN EPISODE THAT EXPOSED THAT ENTERTAINMENT WAS REPLACING LOCAL NEWS COVERAGE. PLUS HE ALSO PRODUCED AND DIRECTED "BROADCAST NEWS" IN 1987 WHICH REALLY TORE INTO THE MAJOR NETWORK NEWS OUTLETS WITH THE WILLIAM HURT CHARACTER.

"WJM Tries Harder" "When Mary begins dating the anchorman from the top-rated television station, she soon finds herself developing an inferiority complex about her own show."

Lou Grant makes a brilliant case for how tv news is becoming entertainment - and gets higher ratings - and no longer a news broadcast. That's in 1974! That's during the Vietnam "War".

We got the message a few ys. earlier when the aggressive CBS affiliate, channel 4 in Jax, Florida stopped its investigative reporting of corruption in the state's 3rd largest city and its county. They had top ratings and.had won an Emmy. But the station was threatened nevertheless with a challenge to its FCC license... All the way from the top of the Nixon Administration.

Then we saw the homogenization from then on.

No doubt about it. Once it was exposed as being so easy to do, they never stopped.

our "favorite" station. I remarked to my Dad: "It's the same thing in Texas."

I no longer have a favorite station.

—to make us believe that Democrats or Republicans are not corporate pawns.

All of a sudden, Al Jazeera, BBC, and CNN World looks pretty good...

That holier than thou prick talks a good game but when it's time to put his balls on the line he disappears. Or worse yet takes the wrong side. It's criminal that Matthews gets that money and gets to play the hero while Phil is still banished. And don't even get me started on Luke Russert.

Maher may not be news and on only once a week, but the sheer lack of political correctness is refreshing after hearing "news" programs tiptoe around the stories. He's more hawk-ish than some Libs are, but at least he speaks his mind. He's not afraid to call anybody out for their BS...plus he somehow got The Donald to sue him for a joke, anybody who pisses off The Donald enough to get him into court is all right by me. It helps that I agree with Maher's disdain for religion though.

That's not when it started- that's when I became convinced that commercial television had leaped off the cliff.

From the Wikipedia article: "All Big Three television networks and CNN as well as local news outlets interrupted regular programming, with 95 million viewers nationwide. While NBC continued coverage of Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and the Houston Rockets at Madison Square Garden, the game appeared in a small box in the corner while Tom Brokaw as anchorman covered the chase."

OJ's Bronco chase was elevated- by consensus- to national importance. What astonished me was the simultaneity and the unanimity. The television industry was suddenly acting as if it was a single entity and not a conglomeration of separate interests. I would have understood and accepted the unified response if the event was something like Pearl Harbor- but not OJ's Bronco chase. Clearly, tv news coverage was now motivated by factors unrelated to the need to maintain an informed citizenry and entertaining was an acceptable substitute for informing. And if everybody could report the same story, everybody could also ignore the same story...

Anybody else notice that? He was driving the white Bronco while OJ was threatening to kill himself, as I recall.

He was a big time football player, so he was above the law.

And that's exactly why Keith Olbermann made waves & was labeled as "hard to get along with" -- he saw it for what it was & tried to buck the system. I totally got it.

when commercial television decided amassing corporate money and providing entertainment were its central mission, when it consciously chose to become a carnival act"


The celebrity trolls who currently reign on commercial television, who bill themselves as liberal or conservative, read from the same corporate script. They spin the same court gossip. They ignore what the corporate state wants ignored. They champion what the corporate state wants championed."

This is exactly it. This is why I don't watch television. I did not buy an HD t.v. when the great switch-over came about. I see no reason to pay to have corporate propaganda and right wing lies channeled into my house. I would just as soon as have the city start pumping the effluent from the sewage main into my home. NO...just say no to letting the corporations program your mind.

No HD?? How's one supposed to correctly watch the ultimate reality television? Sports!

This computer takes up too much of my time...

And, I need exercise, so would not be likely to sit around watching (overpaid primadonnas) have all the fun.

Nonetheless, to each their own. To paraphrase Aldo Leopold...it is no use trying to prescribe how someone else should waste their weekend...might as well try to prescribe a wife...with about as much likelihood of getting good results.

I would rather spend my scarce spare time reading books, surfing the net, napping with my cat, going for walks, etc. than watching t.v.

yep.

http://ffbsccn.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/news-as-profit-center-news-as-amusement-%E2%80%93-not-good-news-for-an-informed-citizenry-insight-from-ted-koppel-and-neil-postman/

Why the loss of a more honest journalism?

To Postman, it was news as entertainment. It was inevitable with the arrival of the technology. Television would, ultimately give preference to the most “amusing” (“entertaining”) presentation. (Think new theme songs written to introduce the current crisis/war. Why does a war need its own theme song? For entertainment value).

To Koppel, it is news as profit maker. It is the inevitable consequence of news as “profit center.” Here is more from the Koppel article:

To the degree that broadcast news was a more virtuous operation 40 years ago, it was a function of both fear and innocence. Network executives were afraid that a failure to work in the “public interest, convenience and necessity,” as set forth in the Radio Act of 1927, might cause the Federal Communications Commission to suspend or even revoke their licenses. The three major broadcast networks pointed to their news divisions (which operated at a loss or barely broke even) as evidence that they were fulfilling the FCC’s mandate. News was, in a manner of speaking, the loss leader that permitted NBC, CBS and ABC to justify the enormous profits made by their entertainment divisions.

On the innocence side of the ledger, meanwhile, it never occurred to the network brass that news programming could be profitable.

Until, that is, CBS News unveiled its “60 Minutes” news magazine in 1968. When, after three years or so, “60 Minutes” turned a profit (something no television news program had previously achieved), a light went on, and the news divisions of all three networks came to be seen as profit centers, with all the expectations that entailed.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/02/01/30_news.html


When News Isn't
January 30, 2002
by SoCalDem

Those of us of a "certain age" remember the days of Huntley & Brinkley, and Walter Cronkite. In those days, our news was delivered to us in a straightforward manner, with little, if any, commentary. As Walter used to say at the end of every newscast, "That's the way it was on ...(fill in any date)."

Most cities of any size, had at least two newspapers, a morning and an afternoon paper. People read the morning paper with breakfast, the afternoon paper after work, and settled down for the evening news on television. Back in those days, some broadcasts were only 15 minutes long. The amazing thing was that in that short amount of a time the newsmen actually conveyed a sense of what was going on around the world.

When did the news stop being the news? Why does a slice of our demographic pie actually think what we get today is NEWS?

The format of a news broadcast has a lot to do with it. A look back at those archived, grainy old black and white images tells the story. A man, a desk, a microphone, a clock, and a serious demeanor... That's about what it took in those days to convince most people that they had better pay attention, because what they were about to see was important, and worthy of their attention.

The format has changed little over the decades. There are women now, but most of them are window dressing. The men of broadcasting age, but the women are replaced as their on-camera persona becomes less Barbie-like. Advertisers have burned the image of a desk, a man, a microphone, and a clock, into the collective psyche of America. That image conjures up NEWS.

It's no wonder that over time, the forces out there who would try to control the American Mind would adopt the very same format to get their message across. It comes to us wrapped up like a news broadcast, but like the Bizarro World of Superman, it isn't what it pretends to be. People out there in viewer-land see the desk, and the trappings of a newscast, and they think that is what they are getting..

As the Fairness Doctrine faded away into the sunset, we were besieged by endless "faux" news programs. Corporate moguls hungrily devoured smaller broadcast venues as they built their vast communication holdings. Most of these moguls have very different worldviews than the average citizen does. It became easier and easier to insinuate their own political and ideological leanings into every aspect of their burgeoning empires.

In past times, when a news anchor wanted to change jobs, he would mail tapes of representative reportage to various media outlets across the country and wait to see if he got any offers. If they were a bigger outlet or offered a higher salary, there was little impediment to the newsman's acceptance of that offer.

This was the way it was then, but now with all the consolidation, that movement is dictated by the men at the top. When they control media all over the country, the individual broadcasters are not free to look around. They are more like indentured servants to their master. If they get on the wrong side of the message they are supposed to convey, their trip up the ladder is over. That they are well paid cannot be of much consolation, because their mobility and their very jobs are always in jeopardy, if they say the wrong thing.

The "Screaming Head" shows of today are an offshoot of the media consolidation too. When cable hurled itself into the "News Game," they gave birth to a beast that needed constant feeding. The OJ phenomenon showed that masses of people would velcro themselves to a couch and watch one single story over and over for months on end. Advertisers had to be wearing drool bibs when they realized that. But all "good" things must end, and eventually, we had no more OJ to kick around.

Enter... Politics.

Granted, the niche market for politics may be a narrow one, but political junkies are loyal, and they are interactive. The fact that most of the owners of the media are corporations who feast at the teat of the government, is not incidental. The message gets very important when it comes to the rules and regulations that the ones at the top need to go their way.

They know which party will acquiesce, and they know the drill. In order to get favorable legislation, the media must constantly sell the message that will urge the public to the polls and keep the "right" people in office.

If a non-compliant congress acts in the best interest of the public, the corporations will take a hit in the bank account. This must be avoided at all costs. It's a kabuki dance of dangerous proportions. Access is divvied up like the spoils of war between fewer and fewer rich men, and the spillover is that they control cable, satellite, mainstream broadcast and even the old fallback, newspapers.

The old maxim "If you can't beat them, join them" no longer applies. The modern version is, "If you can't beat them... EAT them."

More and more news outlets are being controlled by fewer and fewer ideologues. Strangely enough, there are still many people who see the desk, the man and the clock and their mind says... NEWS...

When people like Keith Olbermann, Cenk Uygar, Dylan Ratigan stray from the propaganda they get canned.
This is the analogy, corporations control the narrative, e.g. If the narrative is, has Obama stopped beating his wife yet, it matters not what the answer is.
MSNBC will answer yes, CNN will answer no, and Fox will have edited video.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.