Are we seeing the beginning of the media control of the election?

Last night on Larry King, he had a panel dubbed "the best political team on TV". The general pattern of this show was that one person would state an opinion and all of the rest would agree with whatever piece of rubbish was thrown out. For example, they throw out the idea that the recent "shakeup" at the White House has all been good for Bush, and each of them talk about what genius that was. I seem to remember the "deck chairs on the Titanic" commentary at the time it happened.

The rest of this week Larry will have Bush-apologist Timmy Russert on Tuesday, John McCain on Wednesday and an hour with Rummy on Thursday. I doubt we're going to see a week of Democrats coming up next.

We see them going after Al Gore. Trying to kill any chance of him running before the idea really gets out to mainstream America.

We see Hillary Clinton's marriage being made an issue, as a way of undercutting her.

We see them touting Mitt Romney and George Allen for the Republicans, as well as McCain and Guilliani. Do we hear any name out there besides Hillary for the Dems?

The media want a fight. They want to create controversy and control the election. They present as fact their opinions, and only cover those things that fit the script they are designing for this fall and into the 2008 election.

From what I'm seeing in the reporting, the corporate media are going to guide the next 2 years with their own agenda, leaving no room for us to get out a true message. We will have to find a way to get them off-script and get our message out front.

This has been going on for a while.

Look at the way the media dealt with Dean. First, Dean got more coverage than most other candidates, and was the only anti-war candidate ever mentioned by the media. That lead to him gaining more volunteers and raising more money. With Dean, the media coverage preceded the sharp rise in support. Plus, AOL Time/Warner employees were his top contributor in the early primary. The corporate media was completely controlling the process.

Starting in December of '03, right before Iowa, the media started to look at Dean more critically. People started to question if he was what they thought he was at that point. After Iowa, the media realized Dean was a loser, and completely turned on him, burying him in an avalanche.

I know Deaniacs love to blame the media for how they reacted to his loss in Iowa, but they have to accept that months of frequent media coverage, far more than what other candidates received, is what made Dean the front runner in the first place.

Democrats need to stop listening to the corporate-owned media. That's one reason the internet is so important. Reporters bash blogs because they covet their position as the keepers of 'conventional wisdom' and their ability to enforce cultural hegemony.

Dean was saying that the media ownership needed to be divided up between more owners.

Kucinich raised that issue at the very first debate months before that and we know how much coverage he got.

work hard to counteract that. While we may have seen through what they are doing and are educated, discerning listeners, there are far more out there who are passive consumers of what they are putting down there.

The MSM is setting its 2006-2008 agenda right now, and the voters will be listening. We have to get out in front of it. I wish I had the answers to how...I just don't know. But I do not have faith in the majority of voters to do much more than be spoon-fed whatever story the media wants to shape.

(Sorry I'm so negative about this, but it just seems like a monumental task to me.)

comeback for Santorum in Pa.

The Dem PARTY needs to RECOGNIZE the problem with the GOP control of most broadcast and print media and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT - MAKE it an issue - EXPOSE the control in every way they can.

so often that now, any time the Dems point out the facts, it's only seen as sour grapes. They have to stop being afraid of taking on this issue and MAKE it an issue.

I think the Larry King lineup is a perfect example of what is in store. Total exposure for the Republicans, with no answering response from the Dems. And as long as it's allowed, it will continue to worsen.

I think DU needs to make a concerted, activist effort to DEMAND the DNC make the corporate media an issue - and DAMN the fear of making them angry - what can they do that would be any worse than what they've done before and are doing to us now?

Altercation Book Club: Lapdogs by Eric Boehlert

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12799378/#060518

Relatively early on in the August coverage of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth story, ABC's Nightline devoted an entire episode to the allegations and reported, "The Kerry campaign calls the charges wrong, offensive and politically motivated. And points to Naval records that seemingly contradict the charges." (Emphasis added.) Seemingly? A more accurate phrasing would have been that Navy records "completely" or "thoroughly" contradicted the Swifty. In late August, CNN's scrawl across the bottom of the screen read, "Several Vietnam veterans are backing Kerry's version of events." Again, a more factual phrasing would have been "Crewmembers have always backed Kerry's version of events." But that would have meant not only having to stand up a well-funded Republican campaign attack machine, but also casting doubt on television news' hottest political story of the summer.

When the discussion did occasionally turn to the facts behind the Swift Boat allegations, reporters and pundits seemed too spooked to address the obvious—that the charges made no sense and there was little credible evidence to support them.. Substituting as host of "Meet the Press," Andrea Mitchell on Aug. 15 pressed Boston Globe reporter Anne Kornblut about the facts surrounding Kerry's combat service: "Well, Anne, you've covered him for many years, John Kerry. What is the truth of his record?" Instead of mentioning some of the glaring inconsistencies in the Swifties' allegation, such as George Elliott and Adrian Lonsdale 's embarrassing flip-flops, Kornblut ducked the question, suggesting the truth was "subjective": "The truth of his record, the criticism that's coming from the Swift Boat ads, is that he betrayed his fellow veterans. Well, that's a subjective question, that he came back from the war and then protested it. So, I mean, that is truly something that's subjective." Ten days later Kornblut scored a sit-down interview with O'Neill. In her 1,200-word story she politely declined to press O'Neill about a single factual inconsistency surrounding the Swifties' allegations, thereby keeping her Globe readers in the dark about the Swift Boat farce. (It was not until Bush was safely re-elected that that Kornblut, appearing on MSNBC, conceded the Swift Boast ads were clearly inaccurate.)

Hosting an Aug. 28 discussion on CNBC with Newsweek's Jon Meacham and Time's Jay Carney, NBC's Tim Russert finally, after weeks of overheated Swifty coverage, got around to asking the pertinent question: "Based on everything you have heard, seen, reported, in terms of the actual charges, the content of the book, is there any validity to any of it?" Carney conceded the charges did not have any validity, but did it oh, so gently: "I think it's hard to say that any one of them is by any standard that we measure these things has been substantiated." Apparently Carney forgot to pass the word along to editors at Time magazine, which is read by significantly more news consumers than Russert's weekly cable chat show on CNBC. Because it wasn't until its Sept. 20 2004 issue, well after the Swift Boat controversy had peaked, that the Time news team managed enough courage to tentatively announce the charges levied against Kerry and his combat service were "reckless and unfair." (Better late than never; Time's competitor Newsweek waited until after the election to report the Swift Boat charges were "misleading," but "very effective.") But even then, Time didn't hold the Swifties responsible for their "reckless and unfair" charges. Instead, Time celebrated them. Typing up an election postscript in November, Time toasted the Swift Boat's O'Neill as one of the campaign's "Winners," while remaining dutifully silent about the group's fraudulent charges.

That kind of Beltway media group self-censorship was evident throughout the Swift Boat story, as the perimeters of acceptable reporting were quickly established. Witness the MSM reaction to Wayne Langhofer, Jim Russell and Robert Lambert. All three men served with Kerry in Vietnam and all three men were witnesses to the disputed March 13, 1969 event in which Kerry rescued Green Beret Jim Rassmann, winning a Bronze Star and his third Purple Heart. The Swifties, after 35 years of silence, insisted Kerry did nothing special that day, and that he certainly did not come under enemy fire when he plucked Rassmann out of the drink. Therefore, Kerry did not deserve his honors.

It's true every person on Kerry's boat, along with the thankful Rassmann, insisted they were under fire, and so did the official Navy citation for Kerry's Bronze Star. Still, Swifties held to their unlikely story, and the press pretended to be confused about the stand-off. Then during the last week in August three more eyewitnesses, all backing the Navy's version of events that there had been hostile gun fire, stepped forward. They were Langhofer, Russell and Lambert.

Russell wrote an indignant letter to his local Telluride Daily Planet to dispute the Swifties' claim: "Forever pictured in my mind since that day over 30 years ago John Kerry bending over his boat picking up one of the rangers that we were ferrying from out of the water. All the time we were taking small arms fire from the beach; although because of our fusillade into the jungle, I don't think it was very accurate, thank God. Anyone who doesn't think that we were being fired upon must have been on a different river."

The number of times Russell was subsequently mentioned on CNN: 1. On Fox News: 1. MSNBC: 0. ABC: 1. On CBS: 0. On NBC: 0.

Like Russell, Langhofer also remembered strong enemy gunfire that day. An Aug. 22 article in the Washington Post laid out the details: "Until now, eyewitness evidence supporting Kerry's version had come only from his own crewmen. But yesterday, The Post independently contacted a participant who has not spoken out so far in favor of either camp who remembers coming under enemy fire. “There was a lot of firing going on, and it came from both sides of the river,” said Wayne D. Langhofer, who manned a machine gun aboard PCF-43, the boat that was directly behind Kerry’s. Langhofer said he distinctly remembered the “clack, clack, clack” of enemy AK-47s, as well as muzzle flashes from the riverbanks." (For some strange reason the Post buried its Langhofer scoop in the 50th paragraph of the story.)

The number of times Langhofer was subsequently mentioned on CNN: 0. On Fox News: 0. On MSNBC: 0. On ABC: 0. CBS: 0. NBC: 0.

As for Lambert, The Nation magazine uncovered the official citation for the Bronze Medal he won that same day and it too reported the flotilla of five U.S. boats "came under small-arms and automatic weapons fire from the river banks."

The number of times Lambert was mentioned on. On Fox News: 1. On CNN: 0. On MSNBC: 0. ABC: 1 On CBS: 0. On NBC: 0.

Additionally, the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs, who served as the paper's point person on the Swifty scandal, was asked during an Aug. 30, 2004, online chat with readers why the paper hadn't reported more aggressively on the public statements of Langhofer, Russell and Lambert. Dobbs insisted, "I hope to return to this subject at some point to update readers." But he never did. Post readers, who were deluged with Swifty reporting, received just the sketchiest of facts about Langhofer, Russell and Lambert.

If that doesn't represent a concerted effort by the press to look the other way, than what does?

and we can expect this to continue through Election Day, after which
they will be putting out the stories explaining away the inexplicable
Republican "comeback".

They have already indicated their intent to use some combination of anti-gay sentiment
and horror at the thought that the Democrats might impeach Dear Leader.



The May sweeps are over, and so is any semblence of fairness in the media.

-- for quite a while already.

They never stopped. It's completely controlled, and once in a while, when public outcry becomes overwhelming, they let a little drip or drop in so that the public will see that, yes, the media is responding to reality, and will go back to sleep.

we have no prayer of ever winning another election until and unless we have some of our own media outlets that they cannot take away from us. Because only then will we be able to stop the e-machines. And only then will we be able to have honest elections again.

We have to wake a lot of sleepy people up, and to do that we need some uncontrolled media. That means not corporate-owned.

They're about to take over the internet. What then?

since the last election. They're gearing back up again, and it seems to me to be even more blatant than before. I think the media knows that it will be difficult to overcome some of the problems that BushCo have created for them to guide the populace. It needs to be identified by the Dems right now for what it is and it has to be counteracted.

I think we're much worse off than that, and may not have any hope at all left with our current media.

I think we need to make some new media. I'm thinking of that right now. I know nothing about this, but I do know quite a few journalists, through my work, and some of them have become really under-employed with all the consolidation.

Maybe we could start one of those free newspapers in NYC, call it something like The Free Voice, and then hope to expand it. But we'd have to find funding, of course.

I just don't know enough about business in general, and how one could do that and keep it privately owned. If you take money from a foundation, then it would not be privately owned, is that right? And could be bought? Would there be a way to make a cooperative? Maybe I should start a thread, when I have thought this out more thoroughly.

News gathering is awfully expensive. But I know that there's lots of news journalists have been sitting on for years and years and years, that their editors and publishers won't print.

We have to create a new voice that they cannot buy. I think that's one thing we CAN do that they cannot take over. I just don't know how to do it.

They are simply doing the bidding of their corporate masters, you know, the same ones who control our government after the elections. No, the media is shaping the message or the political landscape, they're just publicizing it.

You are so right about this, but the sheeple have wised up a bit in the past five years or so. The Bushonomics have hit them hard and they will work to get him out of office by voting Dem this time, but after Bush is tossed out on his fanny expect them to go right back to the Repub side. They always do.

the 2000 election and aftermath.

Remember? * showed gravitas during the debates with Gore, as he held his own and "won" and Gore was into earthtones, etc.

This isn't new. They are following the same script.

The corporate media wants to maintain a veneer of credibility, but they will push the republican agenda HARD. The robber barons are feeling the heat as their boy chimpy is not doing a good acting job as President. They are desperate to maintain control of the executive, so expect MASSIVE propaganda (remember he veneer of credibility). The robber barons are bilking us for billions and they will not give up their golden goose easily. Never forget who owns the media.

but with a twist. The twist being that they ignore results of the past eight years and whose been in charge all that time.

I'd like to see it, though.

L. KING: When the situation is like this and the country is so divided, is it difficult, from a reporting standpoint, to cover?

CROWLEY: Oh, no. It's the best. I mean, you know, just...

L. KING: You like...

CROWLEY: ... strictly from a -- you know, frankly, from a reporting standpoint, you love an election that holds a promise of something big happening.

You know, like, OK, this is -- all the incumbents are going to get reelected and we're all going to go back to status quo, that's no fun, frankly.

They agree with me.

You know, when you have...

(CROSSTALK)

L. KING: So, you media folk want bad?

CROWLEY: Well, we always a good -- I mean, we always want a good struggle.

(LAUGHTER)

ROBERTS: We don't want bad, Larry. But, if it comes along, well, that's fine.

(LAUGHTER)

J. KING: We want interesting.

CROWLEY: You know, we want interesting.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0605/22/lkl.01.html

What they can't do is control who counts the votes. Diebold, ES&S, etc. are far more influential in determining elections than the MSM.

I don't think they try to. I think it's become so much easier, since the news and opinion have now become a giant blur, for people to just have their thoughts poured into their brains.

Wish I was more positive about the bulk of the people in this country, but unfortunately, it hasn't been my experience in talking to people.