Is Corporate media changing its tune?

I'm getting that impression from some of the posts here. Are they actually reporting on his sliding poll numbers, and if so, do you have any links? What are the poll numbers exactly, and is it common knowledge that they're sliding? I'm hearing cryptic comments about them on DU, but unless the red staters know, it'll be hard to capitalize on his unpopularity. Are they questioning his postitions on social security or Shiavo or at least letting the viewers know that he's in trouble on these issues?

I'd appreciate any input, since I'm boycotting. I have not watched at all since November, and I don't plan to start now. Thanks.:party:
Do we have something to celebrate?

In the end, we know where their loyalty lie$, don't we?

It's a feature story on their front page, links to lots of articles


news.google.com

Help?

I saw it on Google News not 20 minutes before I posted about it, but you're right, it seems to be gone now. Try this link, just showed 46 articles

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&ncl=http://www.freep.com/news/nw/bush26e_20050326.htm

When I googled Bush poularity, from the site, the only links I found (surprise) were from the European press. They did say that his popularity was sliding. Thanks for the link.

The headline is gone from the front page so I did a search on "Bush approval", many thousands of articles came up. This one linked to the most recent and links to 46 current articles


http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&ncl=http://www.freep.com/news/nw/bush26e_20050326.htm

I enjoyed the articles, all of which said about the same thing. I'm just wondering if the corporate news channels are featuring any of this. According to one poster on this thread, CNN did. I haven't heard about any others.:)

The lying is geting more and more brazen- I have heard more outright false statements of fact in the last week than I have in a long time-

Just heard another on Minnesota public radio re: Children & anti-depressents- Some Pfizer spokesman comes on (with no rebuttal) and says that there's no credible scientific evidence for "blah, blah, bla"

He was followed by a psychiatrist who made another blatantly false statement.

So let me get this straight- all those Peer reviewed articles and the 3 meta-analyses saying otherwise don't exist?

This isn't abscure material, it's been in the news in the last 6 months- and BTW- ANY lexis/nexis or Google search would pick it up in a matter of seconds.

Yet there they go- outright lies- easily disproven- ON PUBLIC RADIO!

With no rebuttal.

And MSM isn't any better- not by a long shot....

It is simply that due to profit motives they have stripped the news divisions of their empire down to the essentials. All that remains are talking heads reading script handed to them in the least costly way possible. Relying on institutions and organizations that are more than willing to offer their point of view. These scipts and talking points become the news that is read to us.

Should some issue come about that is objectionable to the right all that need happen is that they provide a talking head or point that counters whatever may be a threat to them. Given conflicting information and no actual analysis by the news the people are left befuddled.

Scientists claim the earth is heating up? Suddenly there are scientists and self apponted experts claiming the evidence is too sketchy. Smokings bad for you? Well not according to these scientists. Oil running out according to a group of the worlds leading experts? Well thats their opinion and these people over here disagree with them.

And so it goes. Because the media can no longer actually investigage things they have been rendered the messenger in a war of spin. Occaisional real news bubbles up every once in a while and they dutifully read it. But then the next day the talking points are in place and the bubble pops and the people forget it ever existed.

However, I still feel that the corporate media is BLATANTLY biased toward repukes. The corporate owners want the tax breaks and the lack of regulation.

It would not have been enabled if the media had remained an investigative community. Instead we now have celebrity reporters. Individuals climbing the ladder of succes based on whether they appease the CEOs rather than the quality of their service to the public.

Yes some toadieism applies. But it cannot account for the entirety of the problem. Bad news for the right still gets into the news from time to time. If the system was entirely sympathetic and corrupted by the right this would never happen. Instead some bad news creeps in and is countered by the rights institutions and spindoctors. They cannot control the media absolutely but their ability to game it combined with the corporate evisceration of the investigative ability of the news has handed it them nearly as effectively.

Even though it may be true to some extent-

They CHOOSE to place falsehood before the public. Period.

They could have some intern do a little fact checking on their copy and it wouldn't 'em a dime.

The bottom line is that they lack any respect for their viewers or their own integrity- ESPECIALLY where it might run contrary to the interests of their sponsors or the Republican party.

... or at least not so much as to be noticeable. The poll you refer to was a CBS/Gallup poll, so it's probably not representative, since Gallup's distribution is usually skewed. I'm not sure it was reported on CBS's evening news--the poll showed up on their website.

And, between the Schiavo and Jackson cases, there's little time left over for real news.

The fundamental reason I don't think it has changed--or will change--is that this administration has been very good to media corporations. They'll continue to be very good to Bush. They might go after Tom Delay, if they smell blood, but never Bush or his inner circle.

There's the occasional tough question, but never a sustained effort to dig into what this administration is doing.

The most recent exception may be AP. They are, at least, as an organization pressing for the government to become more open--but its collective writing isn't pressing that issue in stories every day.

If one takes the view, based on the known evidence, that this is the most corrupt and dangerous administration in the history of the country (and I do), the press ought to be on them like a bad smell, but they aren't. That's why there's so much cheering here when one or another reporter sometimes lifts just the very edge of the administration's rug to see if there's been any dirt swept under it....

It's not quite business as usual, lately, but there's been no real collective effort on the part of the news media to actually do their jobs, for the likely reason stated above.

Cheers.

Damn. I knew it was too good to be true. But thanks for being honest.

I wish it were the days of Edward R. Murrow again, but they're long gone.

Look at the revelations of, say, Seymour Hersh in The New Yorkerover the last couple of years--they make a brief splash in the mainstream news, and then they're gone. Or, more recently, what should have been news everywhere--the discovery that the government office charged with investigating whistleblower complaints against the government had been discharging hundreds of cases without even looking at them--the situation was so bad that twelve discharged office employees were blowing the whistle on the whistleblowers' office--the media should have sunk its teeth into that one and not let go. Just a quick story and it was gone.

I recall something one of the guys who started Disinfopedia said recently--that the journalism schools teach public relations side-by-side with journalism and treat them as if they're two sides of the same coin, treating them as if they're the same thing, using similar tools and skills. Then he said that's like teaching accounting and embezzling as part of the same course. :)

There needs to be at least one national paper in the country on the model of the Guardian/Observer in the UK--a non-profit newspaper. But, so far, none of the big money guys have stepped up to the plate and proposed something like that.

Cheers.

JUDY WOODRUFF'S INSIDE POLITICS
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0503/24/ip.01.html

~snip~

WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST (voice-over): President Bush's job rating over the weekend, before he and Congress acted in the Terri Schiavo case, 52 percent. President Bush's job rating in a poll taken this week, after the bill to turn the case over to the federal courts was passed into law, 45 percent. A CBS News poll shows a similar decline in the president's ratings from 49 percent last month to 43 percent now.

Are we seeing evidence of political backlash from the Schiavo case? We have to be careful. Gas prices are up. And so are negative views about the economy. Just in the past two weeks, the number of Americans who say the economy is getting worse has jumped nine points to nearly 60 percent. But there are also reasons to suspect a Schiavo backlash. Congress has been in the spotlight on the Schiavo case, and approval of Congress has been dropping as well, down seven points since last month.

Public opinion about the Schiavo case is very one-sided. Particularly on this question: Should Congress and the president be involved in deciding what happens to Terri Schiavo? Only 13 percent of Americans say yes. An overwhelming 82 percent say no, including large majorities of conservatives, Republicans, church-goers and even two-thirds of white evangelicals. The public does not want a case like this contaminated by politics.

Among the minority of Americans who believe Congress and the president should be involved in the Schiavo case, Bush's job approval is 67 percent. The president's approval drops to less than 40 percent among the huge majority who think politicians should stay out of it. Which may explain why the president is sounding more cautious.

~~

Yes, they have talked about it on all three networks, also. CNN ran this snip of Bill Schneider several times & each time, they commented on whether it was rising gas prices or the Florida intervention.

I do appreciate it, and a belated welcome to DU!!! I know you're not a newbie exactly, but I haven't seen your posts before. Thanks again.

They are not getting better. Terrimania did not work in the manner they anticipated.

the media will continue to try to force the issue to "play better." With months of slanted coverage, the media can change the publics' opinion. It happened during the run up to the invasion. :scared:

There was a miscalculation. The story sold, but not as intended. They will now attempt to refine the message. This does not end when that poor lady's body dies.

It is also worth mentioning that there is some evidence that it "worked" in a strange sense: it has enraged a relatively small but very unstable minority in our society -- the extreme right-wing religious groups. It has created an impression among them that they are truly marginalized in our society, and they will likely be far more inclined to resort to more extreme measures to reach their promised land. The right-wing has skillfully and shamelessly used a family's tragic loss to unlease a dangerous trend.

You're getting a misimpression. Someone sees ten seconds of non-rightwing propaganda on the wire and suddenly "the tide has turned" or some such shit. No, nothing has changed. The same companies are still buying audience share from the networks. It is then the networks' job to provide said audience to their paying customers. If the big spender tells the network to prop up a particular candidate or issue, the news networks will only ask "how high"? Seen any of the corpos protesting the administration's insertion of 300-odd slant stories and infomercials into the daily broadcasts? No? What a surprise.

The TV circus surrounding Terri Schiavo has been slanted from the start, and the media saturation is only evidence that the GOP patrons thought the issue would play differently. Delay's own recent statements are evidence enough of that. The fact that the poll numbers are poor for this issue shows that they miscalculated, but it will have little impact in the long run. In two weeks, it'll be back to some other ass-kissing story about how Bush and Tom Delay and Bill Frist are Godly Men oppposing decades of decadence by Democratic whiners. By 2006, this matter will be long-forgotten in the Grand Scheme of things.

and I appreciate that.

I know this to be the case because they were taking polls on whether or not it would be appropriate to do so. But those deals are getting old and the public is popping their heads our of the terror fox holes.

Additionally, the propaganda deals may not apply to things like Social Security and right to die, so the CM have more leeway when it comes to reporting that stuff.

And, of course, Bush can't run again.

God, I am so out of the loop. Fill me in, please.

there was an ongoing discussion about how TV and Hollywood could help to defeat the "sleeper terrorists" who were in every city in America, waiting for orders to kill.

One of the discussions centered on whether it was appropriate for TV and Hollywood to work with the government in producing propaganda favorable to the administration's strategies. The CM, in their silly polls (at least in one), asked whether or not this would be appropriate. As I recall, Americans were all for it.

But, as you may have gathered, by the time the public gets around to discussing these kinds of issues, it's usually because they're a done deal. (Torture, imprisonment without charges, wiretaps, library monitoring, profiling, etc.)

They're reporting every hour that his numbers are tumbling.

Coalition of the dwindling.

Um, it's because he's stupid, and, no matter how many news stories come up, eventually, people get sick of being embarrassed by their president.

Are they actually asking why his numbers are tumbling, as though they don't know?

"Coalition of the dwindling." Somehow that sounds so hopeful and refreshing.

When the "news" networks put in eight years of questioning every move bu$h makes, reporting every rumor as a scandal,--the way they did for Bill Clinton--we will know that their tune has changed.

Next question, please.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

No.

Fear not though... I'm not laughing at you
I'm laughing with you.

:)

:shrug: