All you need to know: Britney Spears is pregnant!

Here's is what I believe should be one of the major battlecries of the Democratic Party ... most of us understand that information and an informed electorate are the lifeblood of a democracy ... the US MSM are motivated by profit and greed ... with this as the ultimate goal, the truth doesn't stand a chance and our democracy is put at risk ...

It is time for the Democratic Party to make "corporate control of the MSM" a major plank in the Party's platform ... the Party often seems willing to talk about corporate corruption (a few bad apples?) and corporate accountability but they never extend the argument to show how corporate greed and corporate power is corrupting the news and information we receive ... and hiding many things we never learn about ...

to be fair, the Democratic Party platform does have the following phrase tucked away somewhere in its 43 pages:

Because our democracy thrives on public access to diverse sources of information from multiple sources, we support measures to ensure diversity, competition, and localism in media ownership.

but this falls far short of what is needed for a problem that threatens the very core of our democracy ...

Here is an excerpt from remarks made today by Congressman Bernie Sanders on Democracy Now ... in fairness to Bernie, he had very little time on the show and limited his focus to highlighting the problem ... i'm looking forward to hearing how he proposes to fix the problem ...

source: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/12/1426211

REP. BERNIE SANDERS: If you are concerned about the environment, if you are concerned about women's rights, health care, foreign policy, Iraq, the economy, if you are concerned about any of those issues, you must be concerned about the media. And what people like Bob and John Nichols and others have been saying for years, which I fully agree with, is we have got to make corporate control over the media a political issue in the same way that health care and education and Iraq is a political issue. And that means that when somebody runs for office and comes before you and they talk about the issues, you raise your hand and say, what are you going to do about corporate control over the media? And after the candidate recovers after his fall on the ground, he or she will start responding, but we have got to make it a political issue, because it is as important or more important than any other issue that we talk about.<skip>

Now, let me tell you why the perspective that I can bring in with a very distinguished panel is that of a politician, an elected official, who tries to use his office to educate and organize, as well as to pass legislation and do the things the members of Congress do. And let me tell you some of the concerns that I have with what's going on in the media today. Am I concerned that when I am asked to speak about an issue like Iraq, I get six seconds to respond? Yep. I'm concerned. Because I can't, and you can’t, and our panelists can't, and nobody can discuss an issue intelligently in a six-second sound bite, which is what dominates television, which is the most important medium in our country. Am I concerned that, by definition, corporately-owned media is pro-corporate? Yeah, I am very concerned about that. We see the manifestations of that all over the place. We saw the difference between how the corporate media treated a moderate Democrat like Bill Clinton, as opposed to a conservative Republican like George Bush. We saw how they covered the lead up and the war in Iraq so that millions of Americans, in order to get unbiased news, had to go to the CBC in Canada or the BBC. Am I concerned about that? I sure am. Am I concerned that the media seems to think that one of the major issues facing civilization today is the Michael Jackson case? Or maybe -- break it to you: Britney Spears is pregnant! It's true. And we'll have many months of discussion about that or the local trials or the horrible crimes. Am I concerned about that? I sure am.

But of all those concerns and many more, let me tell you what my deeper concern is. My concern is not just what the media reports or discusses and the slants that it has on the issues -- that's important -- but the deeper concern is what the media does not talk about.

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...they're talking about Brittany Spears.


That echoes the Colorado Dems who said "We're talking about the budget. They're talking about bestiality."

So how do we fix it? (The media, I mean, not the sex.)

didn't i just say that on the other side of the record ???

well, i can't tell you how "we" fix it but i can tell you how i would try to fix it ... for starters, i think Democrats have some decisions to make ... either the Party buys into "free market (i.e. virtually no restrictions) capitalism" OR we stop defending the corporate state and start making and argument that free enterprise sometimes needs to take a back seat for doing what is best for the country ... right now, I'm afraid the Democratic Party is totally in bed with the corporatists ...

i don't care whether we label these restrictions as "Socialism" or not ... the bottom line here is that the problem exists because we as a society, and a Party, refuse to call for greater constraints on free enterprise ...

i suppose the first step in "fixing" the problem would be for the Democratic Party to acknowledge that corporate-controlled media is a problem ... frankly, i don't see that happening anytime soon ... i hope i'm wrong about this ...

step two would be a parade of new laws to safeguard the integrity of the fourth estate ... we cannot continue to view sources of news and information solely as a commercial venture ... clearer lines must be drawn between the gathering and dessimination of information (e.g. the news department) and the commercial interests of media-based corporations ... advertisers must not be given any say whatsoever in what is dessiminated as news ... doing so should be a felony ...

i would also try to force news deliverers to get away from the use of sound-bite reporting ... and i would also try to force some type of fair and balanced coverage ... the exact mechanisms for achieving these goals would require much more study ... but the goals are what's important ... i'm sure we could implement many things that would push the news in the correct direction if we would value the citizens right to know more than we value the stockholders right to make a buck ...

(Frame correctly please)
:thumbsup:

i was trying to make the point that many consider any constraints on business to be "socialistic" ... it doesn't really matter (to me) what label anyone wants to put on it as long as we're willing to address the problem ...

... they're all speaking Chinese."

So, that's really, really, ambitious. Not impossible, mind you. I can see making the case for the public's right to the truth, and I can see giving that legal precedence over corporate rights. How do we square it with freedom of speech? Meaning, who has to follow these rules, and who has free rein to say whatever they want?

Legally, can we only regulate the things that are public, like the airwaves? Are cable and newspapers and magazines therefore excluded from this regulation, because they own their own means of transmission? (Cable, I'll grant you, is hybrid, because of the state sanctioned monopoly thingie.)