THERE IS NO "LIBERAL MEDIA"
Smart blogger S.W. Anderson of the Oh! Pinion blog at http://ohpblog.ohpinion.com/ alerted me to the following. Thanks, S.W.!
The following comment was made by yours truly at Oh! Pinion:
This is ample illustration of what should be absolutely apparent to anybody who pays attention: there is no “liberal media”.
Corporations control the media, and those who own the presses are the ones with “freedom of the press”. They have the freedom to select the stuff they want us to see and hear, and in many cases, they aren’t going to want us seeing things that go against their interests. Through this kind of manipulation, voters are fooled into thinking views like those of the Tea Party are mainstream, and that those views represent the views of the majority.
In this way, Tea Party and other far-right candidates get elected, and then they wreak havoc (or at least they try to). If they are allowed to have their way, they will decimate things like Social Security, Medicare, then Medicaid, public education… and then the American people will wonder what happened to those things! “Oh… you mean I voted for so-and-so and he helped get rid of that program I liked? How did that happen?”
I like to believe people are generally not stupid, but I do believe they can be manipulated through various means. Distraction is one way. What we are provided with by FOX, CNN, the major networks and most any source of “news” is not only going to NOT tell us the whole story, but it will often provide plenty of distractions so we will look the other way while other things happen… the kind that are going to impact millions of us on a personal level.
So for as many times as those on the right may cry about how Obama is getting all the breaks, there is at least as much time being given to those on the far right end of the political spectrum, and they will usually be allowed to make their point in a way which gives them the last word… and they get enough air time that they are given credence in the eyes and mind of the public.
The “tea party” was not a grass roots movement to start with, nor is it one now. It is a convenient way for certain interest groups who are not patriotic in any sense of the word to prey on the patriotism of average Americans, to use them as marching foot soldiers in advancing a corporate agenda.
So it comes to no surprise at all to me that a rally promoting progressive values would get virtually no press, while the “tea party”, which truly is a media darling because it is confrontational and therefore sensational can hold a rally with less attendance but still be the “news” story of the day.
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Sure, The Nation is a left-leaning publication... but that doesn't mean what they are reporting here is not true.
And people can go ahead and cite as may Bernard Goldberg quotes as they want, and refer to things they see on websites like NewsBusters, and I will cite items such as these:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYlyb1Bx9Ic
http://www.faulkingtruth.com/Articles/OffTheRail/1015.html
http://mydd.com/users/paul-rosenberg/posts/liberal-media-myth-goes-scientific
Anybody out there know of any good sources for news? I have pretty given up on the mainstream media as a watchdog. It's now more like a corporate lapdog. RIP.
2 Comments:
The corporate powerbrokers, and their useful idiots on the Right, seem to have two main methods: ownership of the media, and the creation of one phony "grass roots" organization after another. Teabaggers, Americans For Prosperity, FreedomWorks; it goes on and on.
The newest of these Astroturf groups is the Iowa Energy Forum, an oil industry front group. Wherever there's a Republican rally in Iowa, a few plants from this group will be in the audience, asking folksy "spontaneous" questions designed to put the oil industry's spin on the issues. Drill baby drill, fracking is safe as milk, socialist bureaucrats are bad...
The best way for Americans (whatever their political views are) to weed out the bullshit is to 1) Follow the money, and 2) get as much news as possible from foreign sources: Al-Jazeera, the Guardian, BBC, etc.
Thanks for the mention, Snave.
I think you can still get straight, ethical news reporting from most newspapers. In broadcast/cable media, PBS and the BBC do high-quality, straight news. Of the big-three networks, I find NBC News comes closest to being worthwhile. Unfortunately, though, I remember what it used to be like, when they had lots of reporters and foreign correspondents, and carried more hard news, less fluff and infotainment.
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