with the cooperative and game loving corporate media.

Who thought it a good idea to blow the emergency all get on board propaganda whistle of the RW to fight a propaganda spear with military?

For far to long there has been a gravity toward news for profit. Actual news seems to given way to of all places Comedy Central. This is of course precisely where the right wants it to be. That way they can giggle and snort about the contents even if proven true.

Rachel Maddow brings information and commentary nightly in researched, reasoned, and revealing segments that tend to lean to the liberal side of things. Some say her show is not well received. Those of us that watch her are frequently shown otherwise ignored tidbits of meaningful footage.

Remember, just because its liberal doesn't mean its not true.

In the words of Stephen Colbert, "truth has a liberal bias."

I have never seen Rachel Maddow as anything but a liberal. I have no idea where you are coming from with that.

I don't think you're understanding. It says that she is liberal but not from bias, but because of the facts. Facts, reality, are the basis of her liberalism.

Rachel is perhaps one of the most prepared journalists I have seen in my 63 years. If she blows it, you can count on an on the air retraction, apology, and statement of fact. When she finishes an introduction with facts, she always checks with her guests to make sure she got it right. That is integrity, something sorely lacking in the media.

Wonderful to have you join us! I'm extremely - and continually - impressed with Rachel Maddow. That woman connects the dots better than ANYBODY ELSE on the air. I feel like every time I watch her show, I'm not watching a TV news show, I'm going to a master class on broadcast journalism. You get perspective, LONG-RANGE perspective, and interconnectivity with her. You can really understand a story and what causes it, what's behind it, what's led up to it and fed into it, who's involved, and who else they're involved with. You gain a wealth of knowledge, background AND current, on a story with her.

I've seen criticism, even here, of her standard first question to any guest after a long intro - in which she attempts to verify that she got all of that straight, and presented it accurately. I think that's totally fair! It's not some ego massage attempt on her part. It's a GREAT opening question - to seek confirmation that what she'd just presented or stated or depicted was totally on the level. And she freely allows whoever the guest is to correct the record if needed. She INVITES it. ASKS FOR IT. And I appreciate that. Do they EVER do that on Pox Noise? EVER?? Do they even do that on "This Week"? Or "Face the Nation"? Or candy crowley's show? Or, heaven forbid, the once credible and highly-respected "Meet the Press"? NEVER.

I liked how - when she landed an interview with the Kentucky Pipsqueak (His Highly-In-Love-With-Himself-Lordship rand paul) and basically threw out all her questions. She got as far as one of the openers - about racism and whether businesses should be compelled to treat all customers equally, even the black ones - and when he mealy-mouthed it, she just kept pursuing it trying to get a straight answer. The entire rest of the interview was her trying to dig into that and get some sort reasonable answer. I've seen too many infuriating interviews with most of her peers where they just do NOT veer off their list of questions. NO MATTER what's said. NO MATTER what the subject may say that might need further examination. They've just got to get to the rest of their questions (that are usually meaningless compared to what could have resulted if they'd just asked ONE follow-up)!

It just absolutely burns me up!!! It's absolute MALPRACTICE. GROSS negligence and malpractice and utter dereliction of duty. Walter Cronkite sure wouldn't have put up with shit like that!

Most of the news practitioners and such back in his day came out of print journalism. Cronkite and company, and the guy who originally hired a lot of 'em to build first-rate journalistic teams at CBS - Edward R. Murrow - came from print. And most important of all, their boss, CBS owner William Paley, believed the news division should do news, and be independent. It wasn't expected to be a profit center. It wasn't supposed to be. Making a profit was NOT part of the equation back then. It didn't matter if the News Division went over budget because of some big story like a presidential assassination or a landing on the moon or an atom bomb drop or an Axis surrender during wartime. Didn't matter. That wasn't the point. Paley didn't care if it was a loss-leader. That just wasn't the point! The NEWS was the point. Covering the news was the point. Informing America properly and objectively and without agenda or political slant was the point. Prime time programming made up for the shortfall anyway - THAT was where the profit center was. The news was separate. Not anymore! When Paley finally retired and Tisch bought CBS and turned it all into profit-only, that's where the beginning of the end began.

AWFUL. What's happened is AWFUL. It's THE reason why too much of America is so stupid, gullible, and ill-informed. Because of the shit they're being served - that passes for "journalism" in some bizarro world. It's just AWFUL. SHAMEFUL. A NATIONAL DISGRACE.

Look at issues like Climate change and its fairly obvious if you examine the debate carefully that liberals generally use a fact based approach while many conservatives will say anything whether it is based on fact or not to try and make their point. Now extend that general approach to other government policy decisions and you will indeed see that Liberals base their decisions more often on fact while conservatives tend to base policy on authority figures. Its essentially science versus authority figures. The same debate we have been having for 300 years since Galileo looked through his telescope and turned the power structure based on Authority figures upside down with the Facts. Thus "Liberal bias" is closer to the truth.

Glad you're here! For far too long there just really HASN'T been any "investigative" news. Not even on the once-venerable "60 Minutes" anymore (THANK YOU lara logan!!!)!!! Especially with the prevailing attitude among the freakin' LAZY excuses for "journalists" ("I work too hard already! Takes too long. They need to hire me some assistants for THAT! And besides, it's not my job to dig for facts or unearth any real truths! My job is simply to 'reflect what's out there, and just make sure people's positions are put out there on the record - you know, impartially and all that! Besides, nobody cares." Right, chuck todd?) AND the freakin' CHEAPSKATE programming policy of not bothering with in-depth probes. ("It costs too much!!! WHAT? We'd have to hire more people! We're supposed to be cutting back some more! What will our investors say? Besides, nobody cares.&quot

As a retired broadcast journalist, I CRINGE whenever I think of that damn chuck todd. HOW DARE HE cop that attitude?!?!?!!?!?!!!!!! It's people like him who have thoroughly shat all over what used to be a highly-respectable business. That and the bush/cheney cabal - who made damn sure news was thoroughly compromised - to reprogram America's thinking. Used to be, in the Walter Cronkite and Huntley-Brinkley era, serious network news was considered unimpeachable. "60 Minutes" under Don Hewitt and people like Mike Wallace and Morley Safer was the PLATINUM standard. Absolutely unimpeachable credibility. You could take it to the freakin' BANK. EVERY Sunday without fail. But now, even "60 Minutes" has been perverted for ulterior motives and not-so-subtle political agendas.

You had phony-ass plants like that asshole "jeff gannon" (REAL name james guckert, "jeff Gannon" wasn't his real name) from "Talon News" ("TALON NEWS"??? WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT??? "Talon 'NEWS'" my ASS!!! Some partisan GOP do-it-yourself blogger made it up - with help from high-level friends!) Asshole was planted IN THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS ROOM and credentialed, given free run of the place and Secret Service did not even bother logging when he arrived OR left for the day, or who he went to see! But snotty scotty mcclellan and ari fleischer could be comfortably certain he'd ask all the questions THEY wanted to make sure were asked. And sometimes he didn't even ask a question. Sometimes he'd just sit there and make statements that they'd conveniently be able to "react" to on the record in front of ALL those cameras and mics! Neat, huh?

You had phony-ass plants that were entire "news stories" manufactured by that alleged administration - with pretty-looking female reporters doing stand-ups in front of government buildings and giving generic lockouts at the end of their alleged "reports" ("Fanny Fake, in Washington&quot that would be fed, for free, to TV stations from coast-to-coast so it looked like they had some stringer in Washington DC or that this was from some unidentified "network news feed", and they'd plant memes and framings and stories THAT way.

And of course, let's not forget the flourishing of an entire cable network designed to be "fair and balanced" to one side ONLY, that would push the party line from morning til night and all the way around the clock to the next morning. "To kinda catapult the propaganda" - is the phrase dubya himself used to describe the deliberate, calculated hose job that was being perpetrated here!!!

And what you'd end up with - was news coverage that was soon regarded as severely compromised and not really to be trusted anymore. So - mission accomplished! America basically doesn't trust the information brokers anymore. So WE can dish out whatever shit we want you to eat and if anybody in the legitimate news world tries to investigate, America has already been well programmed not to trust it. And of course the corporate media owners only want America to know certain things anyway, so it serves their interests well. That's how you get much of red-state America to fall for whatever shit is served up by the pretty blondes with the long legs and short skirts and bare arms and four-inch stiletto heels sitting behind clear lucite desks, and an occasional male curmudgeon or slick-looking 30something dude in a suit and tie.

When I was working, when I was still in college and dreaming of working in the news biz, hell - when I was in grade school and high school and watching the news with my mom and dad during dinner and dreaming about doing that - news was highly credible and respectable, beyond ANY doubt. You never doubted what you saw. The leading anchorman on network television, Walter Cronkite, was known as much for his nickname "the most trusted man in America" as for his name. HIS PERSONAL coverage and anchoring of Vietnam War coverage, and the moment HE himself had seen, for himself, that the war was for shit - is widely credited with turning much of America against the war, leading to Johnson's refusal to run for reelection, leading to nixon taking over, leading to all sorts of things.

Cronkite anchored the news when a news anchor knew the NASA program like the back of his hand, was a science nut, and had science correspondents who knew their stuff backwards and forwards. I worked at NBC with the great and venerable Roy Neal, who covered the NASA program since the time of the Mercury astronauts, and whose coverage was so well-done, well-researched, and brilliantly thorough that he was considered by many to be an honorary astronaut in his own right. He'd even covered Nevada nuclear testing during the dawn of that age! Jules Bergman was another one for ABC News. IMPECCABLE credibility. Soon that tattered with the arrival of john stossel who was nothing but a walking political agenda, and of course, HE winds up where he belongs - on Pox Noise.

Now you have entire "scholastic" set-ups like "the Collegiate Network" aimed at finding adn grooming partisans like jonathan karl to get the big jobs at the big networks and then spew the party line, report according to the party line, interview according to the party line, ask questions according to the party line, and do commentary and talking-head crap on the Sunday shows according to the party line.

NO WONDER America isn't that interested in real news anymore and that the so-called "market" won't support such things. THESE BASTARDS HAVE PERVERTED IT, POISONED IT, AND DUMBED IT DOWN. And as a retired journalist, it makes me BURN with anger!!!! My profession - the one I looked up to and dreamed of being part of, with personal idols like Cronkite, Rather, Cassie Mackin, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, Peter Jennings, and Barbara Walters - was once renowned, respected, regarded as pure gold. There was this sanctity about covering the news. It wasn't just a job. It was a calling! It was a vocation! You were bearing witness, and chronicling the truth for those who couldn't be there on the front lines and needed you to keep them informed because you had the front row seat. There's a HUGE responsibility that comes with that!!! Americans admired people in the news business, trusted them, counted on them to help them be fully and credibly and honestly informed, and believed in them for good reason. You could afford to believe in them because their credibility and trustworthiness was beyond reproach. Beyond question. And they proved it night after night and twice on Sundays. And it's all been shat upon.

It's ALL been shat upon.

Highly worthy of it's own thread

Thanks for that Mary

Good to have you with us! Yeah, isn't that rich? He'd rather skip a detailed briefing to which he was personally invited, so he could go on Pox Noise and complain about not being briefed. WHAT AN ASSHOLE. mccain, HOW far have you fallen? Do you even realize it???

Pretty soon we will have to hold open season, to cull the herd of jerks.

They used to use wars for that....

collective face.

He was at a press conference telling the media he couldn't get information while the briefing went on elsewhere at the same time. I think, first term.

It's actually talked about in the original post here, not just the article it links to.

Do they have no idea at all how they are driving their own voters away?