And very, very depressing.

-- Mal

period.

I do not watch news on t.v. I read it here be it a day or week
or month old.

The good old u.s.a. is a warmonger greedy s.o.b.

And it is my generation!

I am a baby boomer product ... ugh!

As so many reporters do. At least some ask questions.

I quit watching TV news decades ago - and I used to work in it.

by public relations people. We don't watch news, we watch prepackaged spin that we call news.

Definitely depressing.

Amazing how much of a well-crafted release will end up in a hard news story, word-for-word.

Still some good work out there, though. Encouraged to see that Minnesota Public Radio - who broke and stuck with an ongoing investigation of the St. Paul Archdiosee for *years* just spun off it's own investigative group:

https://www.minnpost.com/media/2016/04/mpr-aims-go-big-investigative-unit-no-one-limits

Journalism is dying thanks to the wealthy 1% that wants us to be uninformed and uneducated.

Support the Progressive Wing of our Party, support Sen Sanders and Sen Warren.

because of what we're both inputting on — the immediacy of computers, the internet and social media.

Newspapers used to be able to afford bureaus in foreign countries.

Not anymore, they can't hardly keep their doors open as circulation, which is pegged to advertising dollars, is dropping drastically every year because most people don't get their news from print media anymore as the news in papers is day old news by the time it gets to people.

No one pays for day old news anymore when you can get it for free online from hundreds of sources and platforms.

MSNBC had some progressive programming but slowly phased it out. Sad when we have to turn to the Comedy Channel and RT to find progressive voices. Al Gore gave us some hope but sold out again.

"Kremlin propaganda" ? "progressive" (even if they have their useful idiots among the American left who've made a deal with the devil because they can't get airtime on other networks).

Is RT using American progressives to add legitimacy to what is a propaganda outlet? Yes.

But from the point of view of American commentators on RT, it's a great deal. They get a big outlet with no editorial censoring. They're already doing their part BY being free and independent.

So ignore RT's standard news operations, sure. But don't neglect their commentators. They haven't submitted to Kremlin control.

a particular group or worldview, they are acceptable reading.

Radio Netherlands, Radio Havana Cuba and others. If it wasn't for RT we would not have known much about Occupy. Like I learned about Viet Nam from the over seas Short Wave.

Even DU ;->

In the US, most are slanted to the view of the 1%, who are the owners and advertisers. There's precious little profit in slanting in other directions.

broadcast. Now that's not very democratic. But I can see why some don't like RT. It's so much easier to go by the name than to actually listen and decide. CNN? LOL. Corporate propaganda. But I bet you love Wolf.

If I want the news, I prefer to get it by reading (Guardian/BBC/assorted other places).

many (most) of the same biases as the US mainstream media, you are woefully uninformed.



This site routinely rips the Guardian a new one...

https://off-guardian.org/

You can get more money as a PR flack than you ever would have as a reporter in the hard journalism days. It started with the advent of cable news and the need for speed, which drained off the talent and put the emphasis on fast, not fact (you can correct it in the next segment).

I was in J-school back when that was a viable profession; there are still investigative reporters, but the money and the will isn't there anymore in the major media. And too many of the new media haven't had the training or discipline needed.
Excuse me, I've got to go feel old for a while....

is the problem a loss of a desire in journalists/reporters to dig, explore, find out what is going on, as they used to do, or.. just lack of $$$, or a combination... or....?

I get my info from multiple websites.. here.. Rt,, BBC,, aljazeera(gone), etc etc....

Then try to piece together 'the truth,'.. or as close as I can come.....

Thanks,

There really are still some good investigators, but they have to have brave bosses (yeah, oxymoron!) and an outlet that can get heard (I'm thinking of the story in "Spotlight", the movie on the Boston priest scandal--if the reporters hadn't pushed, if the boss had killed it, if it wasn't a major newspaper...)
Too many news outlets are owned by people who don't want to tell truth to power--they want to BE power. And too many of the public want pre-digested "news" and sound-bites instead of stuff ya gotta think about.
When it first came on, I enjoyed CNN's Headline News; now, I think of it as grabbing a candybar when I really need to sit down and have something nutritious. A lot of people are living on candybars.

short attention spans.. "STAR NAMES" rather than best musicians...

too many Pops concerts... too much candy.... just my taste, of course....

I went to seoul last week to hear a violinist play 2 concerts, for pete's sake...

(literally: don't buy) what they write.

.


Oh, but you get the privilege of having your content restricted to only your blog and theirs.

It's a "Help Wanted" cattle call, with bloggers freely contributing their works, the new model of not paying!


And people wonder why the writing industry is imploding--because sites expect to pay nothing, like so many today!

You can die of exposure...

Pay for nothing...except promise..

Just

Last edited Sat May 7, 2016, 11:30 AM - Edit history (1)

I see it all the time. Unless there's a hot zone like Kabul or Baghdad, the media doesn't have people locally; they just rely on government press attaches (like me) or on the ancho spokespeople back in DC.

Makes my job easier, but as a citizen it's depressing to see coverage of international affairs reduced to taking dictation from the very officials they should be questioning.

Me, I don't blame government or media. Government is pursuing its interests (by handling the media) and media is conrained by their bottom line. The real issue lies with an American public that has never cared about international affairs, and will tune out foreign policy discussions but tune in for the most non-newsworthy if-it-bleeds-it-leads "news."

I blame Reagan and his goons for damn near everything that they started in motion in 1976 and then kicked into hyperdrive in 1981.
The world is so much worse off because of his presidency that it is nearly non-quantifiable.

Between "VooDoo Economics" and the earlier "Southern Strategy" from Nixon's goons, the actions of the Republican Party have been nothing but destructive and divisive for at least the last 4 generations - Gen X, Gen Y, Millenials and now the newest generation being born today.

Corporatizing everything, promoting mega-mergers and consolidations of media companies was all part and parcel of their ideal world...which is turning out super-great for the top 0.1% in the short-run and is literally killing everyone in the long game. Without a complete political revolution, a complete rewiring of the basic assumptions - such as "foreign correspondents" with a less stamped passport than your average Spring Break in Cancun attendee - is not just a good idea. It is an absolute mandate if we want to have a human society as far as the Tricentennial in 2076.

I know that I am highly unlikely to live that long, but I still want to see society survive beyond my children and possible grandchildren. The dumbing down and corporate rape of America - led by ideologues and their hateful, greed-based "ideas" - is imperilling that...and for THAT, I do place blame.

J'accuse!

express interest in international politics compared to big media and government? Virtually none. On the other hand if media and government were unable to find willing functionaries for their self serving and mediocre methods that might cause change to occur. Blaming the average person is a huge, giant cop out.

Or at least they are supposed to be. The problem is that "government" no longer believes it exists to serve "the American public" and the media can be used to promote whatever end "government" seeks.

And I underscore "Republic"; in the US, thanks to our planter-class elite Founders, the isolation of the government from the people is a feature, not a bug. Not that it should be, mind you; but it is. So, sure, we can talk about what should be if we like. But I was talking about what is.

I was a government employee for 35 years. I was a department head for over 20. Nominally I worked for a board of locally elected officials, but I believed I worked for the citizens, and my recommendations to my board were always based on this belief. Sometimes they didn't like what they heard and more than once they tried to get rid of me. Once they actually succeeded, but I got hired back after some board members got booted out in a subsequent election.

Sorry, but if you are an employee of any governmental agency, at any level, and you don't believe that you ultimately work for the people, you are taking your paycheck under false pretenses.

Because the proximity to the citizenry is closer. But I can tell you, as a federal employee, I have seen numerous agencies including my own place their own interests (i.e., budget, public image, fear of Congressional inquiry or White House interference) first; I have never seen the will of the American people considered at all, except (thankfully) in those cases where American lives or physical safety were at stake. So, yeah, I'm cynical, but I've earned it.

If there was an issue I felt strongly about, the local service clubs were always looking for speakers and I knew I would have an opportunity to pitch my proposal to people who had some influence over my bosses. Of course, sometimes my bosses resented my doing that, but I had been around longer than most of them and I knew where the bodies were buried, so to speak. And they knew I knew, so normally I was able to push things through. Once or twice I got cocky, as I said, and pushed too hard and I got rewarded for my carelessness with a few months of unemployment .

I guess my point is, as a public employee in local government, you have a better opportunity to influence public policy, but you have to become somewhat of a politician yourself.

I don't see how you guys at the federal level could deal with it. I would have gone nuts from the lack of autonomy.

Outrageous to some of us but of no concern to too many

27 yrs old and no experience other than political campaigns. Sounds exactly like most of the recent White House Press Secretaries

I miss Peter Lisagore the most.

What needs to occur for journalism to be of more utility for people?

They were knowledgeable professionals who took the time to explain the hows and whys things happened, and outline the consequences or detail who might be impacted. They also pointed out inaccuracies and obvious falsehoods, often right in a face to face presser.

The viewers learned a little bit just by watching the evening news. The electorate was informed by reports who explained the candidate's official platform and if their policies were even feasible or practical, and what it would mean to people if that politician was elected. Today, we get straight camera broadcasts of political stump speeches as cheap entertainment fillers in a 24/7 news cycle. There's not so much as a journalistic comment or even a voice over question that would pretend to be useful to an informed electorate.

You see an eye-catching headline, click bait, so you fall for it and click on it but when you get to the story there's no date or where the incident happened.

It could be a major catastrophe but you don't get such a basic thing as to where something happened.

Even on links that take you to the site of a local TV channel. You have to resort to looking at the logo of the "News 7" to see if they might have included the name of their city or town there.

No one seems to know the 5 Ws anymore.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]No date, no location, just a "story." I always go to the "About" link on a site I'm not altogether familiar with, and half the time there isn't even one of those anymore. Google the site name and all I can find out about it, if anything, is what it might say about itself.

Anybody can write a story (however poorly written) or make a video about anything now, post it on some blog made up to look like a "news" site or on YouTube, and a great many people just swallow it whole.

Without corroboration from at least three reputable sources, I trash these "stories." Finding actual facts, if there even are any, can be a daunting task.

Where you click a link to go to another "news" site where you have to click a link to get to another "news" site, on and on down the chain, all reporting the exact same story that came from an associated press scroll.

[font color="navy" face="Verdana"]The writing itself is unbelievably bad in many places, as well. It makes me think they might be using high school interns for writing copy to save on payroll. It's all just about the profit margin these days, after all.

What we seem to have now is one central nest of nonprofessional (and sometimes seemingly semi-literate) "writers" hired to flesh out a scant few "facts" for each story line handed down from Corporate, with the copy distributed and regurgitated verbatim just about everywhere as "news."

The exceptions to this decline have become rare jewels.

This sin't just about the 1%. Ordinary Americans are unwilling to pay for quality news covereage. If they read news at all, they want it for free online. The great foreign bureaus were paid for by big newspapers and wire services. As subscriptions continue to decline, those bureaus cannot be maintained. The news industry hasn't figured out how to get people to pay for good news coverage when they are content for mediocre coverage for free.

we dont want to pay for newspapers, more expensive products, shop at local stores.

we want the glory but none of the struggle.

the rich alone cannot subsidize the newspaper industry, the middle and upper middle classes need to want the nytimes more than buzzfeed

This is why in part we need a well funded public media. The UKs BBC, Germany's ARD/ZDF, Australia's ABC, Japan's NHK.... even Qatar's Al Jazeera... examples of well run, reasonably well funded public media. They can fund worldwide bureaus, they recognize they can't do it all alone so team up often, and they do the investigative journalism the newspapers aren't doing anymore.

... I doubt that they would have editorial independence in this country. The GOP can;t even stand NPR which was something akin to that, but is now dominated by corporate interests. They still do some good work there, but it isn;t what it used to be.

I deeply admire BBCNews. I'd love something like that here.

It really went south when they turned the news offices into profit centers.

Now guess the mentality of the media moguls.
Fox proved you can make money without even an effort to tell the truth.
"The Fox Model"

I still have the last episode cued up on A prime.
Can't bring myself to watch it end.
Maybe tonight.

The corporate fourth estate is now one grand plantation with the hacks (house slaves) parading as experts, the producers being paid to push the corporate agenda, the financial folks prepared to encourage anything that makes money and all of them guarding their salaries, lifestyles and double-speak while protecting their owners and ensuring that we know they are superior to us (the field hands).

Fuck all of M$Greedia~

You`re right, it IS "one grand plantation" with a couple of "news" stories recycled over and over and over while being commented on by the same "experts" over and over and over and anchored by the same network rising stars over and over and over.

It`s difficult to find in depth international news...in depth any kind of news.

mobile flesh megaphones whose job is just to bumble around and repeat government propaganda.

Like Judith Miller, they just take dictation.

This sure makes war and more war easy-peasy.

Richard Engle

He speaks the language and gets intimately involved in all his assignments.

... for his real job in some three-letter-agency.

He seems to cross borders with ease.

by concentrating solely on advertising revenue rather than luring subscribers with content. The old muckraking columnists and investigative journalists (a thin line between them) retired and weren't replaced. The news rooms became filled with j-school grads who sat and waited for press releases to fall into their laps and editors who took all the out of town news right off the AP wire.

Not much there to disagree with.

Given the massive interconnectedness and unprecedented access to information of the Internet era, those reporters could do a reasonable job of reporting, even without leaving DC. You can find out almost anything if you research it, contact people, and do all the other reporting grunt work.

Whether it's because the modern reporter simply doesn't have the basic necessary skills to be competent, or whether the deadlines are too rushed to allow for proper reporting, or because corporate media outlets discourage independence, or any other reason, due diligence is simply not happening. The corporate media is simply a stenography practice at the service of an aristocracy.

I say, if the DNC, DWS run it, it could be worse.

Propaganda for the corporate left, though that should be an oxymoron.

made this pretty bad suggestion.

because young ones were cheaper to hire. The young ones also didn't get pensions or good benefits like my generation of journalists.

When the older ones left, they took with them vast amounts of institutional knowledge and history.

Now it's all corporate "journalism" lite.

for the last 20 years. K&R

Ladies and gentlemen, hobo's and tramps ...
the replies are fantastic, Thank you very
much,

I would like to send you all a card. I
just want to say to each and every one.

thank you!

That is not an acceptable situation.

Read the foreign press to make sure that you're getting other perspectives. We have the internet now so it's not difficult to read foreign news sources. You can even have them auto-translated for you.

Yeah, I watch Faux News (I'm a Shep Smith fan) and yeah, I'm astonished at the huge amount of insanity they spew out (who else thinks Bill Ayres and Saul Alinsky are threats to the United States?) but they are little less vapid (and more entertaining) than MSM as a rule.

When the companies got away with making the "bottom line" apply to news the role of the mass media started to disappear. Its not like this wasn't obvious but so was the public's indifference.

There is no credible source for news in this nation which is why I regret the loss of AJ.

Reporters in places like Pakistan and Honduras keep getting killed a la Daniel Pearl and they are finding it hard to get someone to go there for what they want to pay.

In the end, you cannot have well educated and financially stable citizens. They like war less and peace more.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

at this point in my life, family & politics is a full time job
cooking, babysitting, still working on my day job http://artcorpssd.org/ArtLessons/, reading, blogging, pulling hair out.....
& my daughter is expecting another bundle of joy in a few weeks.

not complaining, just explaining
why I don't often get to comment on or even enjoy reading comments on my own posts.

maybe, i should relax a little more


NOT!


peace to you and yours Uncle Joe,
kpete

it's good to have a full life but don't pull all your hair out.

Peace to you and yours and have a Happy Mother's Day.

Uncle Joe

reign of terror.


On edit: I hit 20,000 posts.

From 2003, scroll down to #4:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x195733

Omg. That is sad.

wtf?

not very good

... can't add anything to that ...

What do people think of what OP article says about the Iran deal?

eom

I'm not sure if that is an improvement, but it's good to hear about events from multiple sources.

to prepare the future generations of reporters? If I watch Fox News, it appears to be the latter.

on air, who cannot use the English language properly

How did they get where they're at?

yes indeed

when people drop their subscriptions due to newspapers' nurturing the narrative of corrupt presidents (i.e., GWBush).

People don't like to be lied to.

We can go directly to other countries' media

are more willing to work insane hours and not have much of a life outside the job. The same thing is happening in programming: a lot of small start-ups hire anyone who claims they can write code, which they can do ok, but don't seem to have any concept of design, or planning for new features, or maintenance. (Yeah, had a bad experience with a poorly designed and implemented website recently: the nice lady I ended up talking to said essentially the same thing: they hired someone who talked a good talk, but failed to design in some key features, so they ended up shunting other staffers away from their regular jobs to deal with disgruntled customers.)

I travel around the world and even in such nations as Thailand, Vietnam, and Indonesia, the people know more about our news and situation and that of the rest of the world than most Americans do. News needs to go back to being news and not entertainment--bread and circuses.

but, hardly surprising in this era of do more and more with less and less.

Has he led men in battle? Built a pipeline? Run a city?

Of course not. All he knows is writing partisan political pieces.

Fuck the degenerates who talk about politics on television.

When Cronkite was anchor, Rather, Bradley, Wallace, etc were always some place outside of D.C.
Not sitting on their ass waiting for something to happen and then pleading for information or waiting around for the WH to tell them