"Slueths of Spin" .... MS Media "PR Operatives?"

The Dynamic Duo of Howie Kurtz (Washington Post/CNN) and his wife Shari Annis, a Republican PR Firm Employee and frequent guest on the Talk Show Circuit,come to mind.

..............

Sleuths of Spin

By Bill Berkowitz, AlterNet. Posted February 22, 2005.

By harnessing the investigative power of hundreds of citizen journalists, media activists John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton aim to reinvent journalism

What can reporters do to break through the sound bite/talking points media culture?

Reporters need to understand the business of propaganda and to view the public relations industry and the culture of spin as anathema to journalism and to democracy. Today PR flacks outnumber real working journalists, and many of the flacks are former reporters who know exactly how best to manage, cajole and manipulate the media because they are from the media. J-schools have combined journalism and public relations and told students that it's all the same, it requires the same skills, and there is little fundamental difference. This is like combining accounting and embezzling as a field of study.

Today in the corporate mainstream media reporters are overworked, underpaid and pressured to avoid topics that offend advertisers. Reporters need to dedicate themselves to real journalism and find ways to practice it. Journalism is a sacred trust in a democracy, and if you don't believe that you should probably go into PR.

Your books have generally focused on the way the American people are getting hoodwinked by PR companies that set and then explain the agenda of powerful corporations and politicians. Is there any way to render them less powerful?

Simply stated, PR firms are corporations that help other corporations and government agencies to manage public information, perceptions and policy. Many people think that propaganda doesn't exist in democratic societies, that it is a problem of dictatorships. Alex Carey, the Australian academic, and others have pointed out that it is precisely in democracies where sophisticated, hidden propaganda is most prevalent, and the news media has become the major disseminator of propaganda, rather than a force for exposing it.

...they have COMPLETELY given up any responsiblity for what they report.

They'll report that day is night and black is white, but without a PR release from someone *else* (or not enough time to report it because of the time taken by the human interest story at the end of the show), they won't refute it, rather, assume that our brain dead soggy potato chip* public will somehow be able to figure it out for themselves.

The sad part is that, unlike the days when news wasn't part of the entertainment business, today's news reporters don't seem to CARE.

* people prefer crisp potato chips, but if given the choice between soggy chips or none at all, they'll eat soggy potato chips.

There are more mediawhores currently working in the media than there are real journalists. The problem is to now get the masses to understand that. Currently, most still don't have a clue. Until they do, we are slaves to media manipulation.

I am spreading the word thu my conversation with "just plain folks". Hope everyone else is, too.

... Sheldon Rampton in this interview: "J-schools have combined journalism and public relations and told students that it's all the same, it requires the same skills, and there is little fundamental difference. This is like combining accounting and embezzling as a field of study." :thumbsup:


Edit typo.

(How much of our Media now works for Republican PR Firms? It goes beyond Gannon, and Miller adds some more on this. The "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" (Hillary noted) has pretty much taken over our Media)


Mark Crispin Miller Examines Mainstream Media's Blind Eye Towards the Gannongate Sex Scandal
with Communications professor and expert Mark Crispin Miller:

The media's bizarre avoidance of this very juicy story makes a few things very clear--or I should say, very clear again. First of all, it's further proof that there is no "liberal bias" in the US corporate press--none whatsoever. It also reconfirms the fact that this media system is not simply "sensationalistic," and therefore apt to print whatever lurid stories its employees can dig up. There is a tabloid element, of course, but it works according to a double standard that is more ideological than commercial. Simply put, the US media reports sex scandals only when they seem to tar "the left," i.e., the Democratic party. As long as they involve the Democrats, the press is clearly willing to report such scandals even when they're fabricated. On the other hand, the press goes deaf and blind to "moral" scandals that involve Republicans, no matter how egregious and well-documented....

Now Bush's White House is embroiled in a sex scandal that is both more sordid and more serious than anything involving Clinton's infamous libido. This involves not just a huge security lapse, but what appears to be yet one more case of the Bush White House illegally deploying propaganda tactics through the institutions of the Fourth Estate.

Moreover, Gannon/Guckert seems to have been given classified information. He evidently knew of "shock and awe" before it was announced, for instance. The story's busting out all over, and getting uglier and weirder by the day--but not on the networks, not on cable, and, in print, primarily in opinion pieces. If this had happened in a Democratic White House, there would be no escaping it, and the rightists would be shrieking that the President of the United States had taught our precious children all about gay sex for hire. (According to the right, remember, it was Clinton--not his enemies, and not the press-- who went public with the news about those blow jobs.)....










http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/05/02/int05009.html