2 last_boy_scout
Speaking of frankliness” I strongly doubt that good ole
Zbigniew was too frank and outright honest in that
interview you’ve cited
(http://www.win.ru/en/school/5328.phtml)

Trolling through the tulips?  How ridiculous.  Asking questions does
not a troll make?  Are you a fanatic, Virginia777?

“would take this as a legitimate reporting?”

lets let Chris Tolles answer this one also:

“The idea that it is somehow better for journalists to get to decide what is presented and discussed in public is nauseating.”

“News is a weapon too important to leave to people who can’t even figure out how to run a profitable business.” - Chris Tolle, CEO, Topix.com

Shenonymous:

“what news service that is listened to or watched regularly as mainstream would investigate Topix?”

good question, the bigger and more important question is why?

“Which of the Internet media (reputable, well…ha!)”

Topix is the largest internet media, also a huge news source and the least ethical. This is a huge concern, all other internet media has much better moderation than Topix does.

“would take this as a legitimate reporting?”

of course its legitimate reporting to report on Media, duh

“If you cannot answer, you have answered.”

you sound like a troll here, are you?

****************

The people, us, the masses have unfortunately compromised
objectivity by making the worst of the worse, the american
mainstream media, become the most ‘trusted’ news dispersing
system by making people believe the crap they dole out to that
segment of ‘the people’ which I call the dumbstream and the
size of that segment must surely be over 60% of the american
people populating that wonderfully cultivated msm garden.

Breaking that trust, the msm spell on that many people, can only
happen when a considerable enough event occurs that leaves NO
doubt as to how those people were and are so ill informed. That
kind of mental trauma will have negative effects, much like
finding irrefutable truth that your father and mother are insane
murderers who have been feeding you with the remains of their
victims.

Since no one else has responded to your interrogatives, who, pray tell
us Virginia777, (even though I don’t really pray and your questions say
why, it is just a figure of speech), that is, what news service that is
listened to or watched regularly as mainstream would investigate Topix? 
Which of the Internet media (reputable, well…ha!) would take this as a
legitimate reporting?  If you cannot answer, you have answered.

Please don’t tell me no one is reporting on Topix because it makes so much money.

And their owners, Gannett, Tribune and McClatchy, appear to, by the following link, spread around this profit to buffer up their sagging print media affiliates:

http://paidcontent.org/article/gannett-tribune-and-mcclatchy-to-jointly-sell-online-ads-across-properties/

This article is inaccurate. No, it is not “better for the newspaper industry to have a single effort”, that is compromising their ethics. Topix has none.

Topix is advancing abuse, abusiveness and cruelty, and I mean like wildfire, on purpose.

It is the largest internet community forums connected to newspapers in the country, it is also a news source for millions of people and connected with Google as a powerful search engine.

Its media, internet media, and its huge. So how come the liberal media is not reporting on Topix? It really needs to happen.

MINDLESSLY EXAGGERATED WEALTH

As a corollary to the hegemony of the Free Enterprise System, America has warped democracy by allowing corporations an exaggerated “political voice”. The consequence is that Vested Interests corrupt Congress to obtain their financial ends.

Who’s to blame? Some will say the Supremes, who curiously found that boundless corporate money to fund elections was “freedom of speech”. I doubt our founding fathers would have thought that.

Still, the American people let it happen. We elected Congress, not the Supreme Court. Thus the question devolves to “how do we recapture the power of our vote”.

That would require, I suggest, a better educated American public with a better knowledge of their Civic Duties—who understand the ebb and flow of political power. Anyone who can possibly listen to the Palins, Becks, Rumbaughs and go along has to be an easily manipulated dunce. 

And that task is truly long-haul. Nothing will change the present American mentality overnight, fixated as it is on money and the outward signs of richness. The Pavlovian reinforcement of that message on TV is relentless. “Who wants to be a millionaire?” What a stupid question!

[Who DOESN’T want to be a millionaire? is a more interesting query! Who wouldn’t want to bathe daily in leisure whilst the rest of their fellow citizenry work themselves tirelessly. Who wouldn’t want to be a “lady that lunches” instead of a brown-bagger?]

What have the Tea Party people to tell their constituency? The same mindlessly negative crap—that what we had before was better than what we have now.

Health Care was better? Pissing 3T trillion DoD dollars down the Middle East rat-hole was better? Income Fairness amongst American social classes was better? Our educational system was better? The incentives on Wall Street were better? The sub-prime mess was better? The FEMA response to Katrina was better? Crony Capitalism was better?

Have we forgot the mess we were in ... and the reforms that are fundamentally necessary? Methinks yes.

The mainstream press has more covered Paris Hilton’s run-in with the law than the dire need of Federal Oversight of Free Market excesses. And why? Because Jack ‘n Jill America don’t really care.

What was better was a system that allowed selected individuals (aka The Upper Class), a distinctly small portion of the American population, to manipulate the Free Enterprise System to accord themselves mindlessly exaggerated wealth.

And the rest of America are supposed to settle for the crumbs off the table and be happy?

POST SCRIPTUM: A Life of Leisure

A wee bit more than a third of all Net Worth (Wealth) was possessed by one percent of the total American household population—consisting of about 117 million households.

Which signifies that only about 1.2 million families skim the cream off the top—living a Life of Leisure. And the rest of us (116 million households) simply make do ...

{... it’s important to note that for the rich, most of that income does not come from “working” - in 2008, only 19% of the income reported by the 13,480 individuals or families making over $10 million came from wages and salaries.} 

NB: Data reference here: http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

Watch FOX rather than CNN because FOX appears more honest in its ‘information’ [home produce]than CNN,WP,NYT,LAS,et al…..
.... i, too, am free journalist! And i am a good one, but nobody wants to hire me! Guess why?

*******************

ROFLMAO!!!!!!

First guess: Because you’re dumb enough to think Fox is more honest than the rest?

I guess “Free” is the price of your salary, and over-priced at that.

Enabling? You mean like this?
You’re not going to guess what our tax dollars are subsidizing. Actually, in this ObamaNation, maybe you will guess it. It turns out that you and I are funding the State Department to purchase and distribute copies of Feisal Abdul Rauf’s book, What’s Right With Islam: A New Vision for Muslims and the West.
Rauf is the imam behind the Ground Zero mosque and is the same imam who won’t condemn Hamas as a terrorist organization; the same imam who said on “60 Minutes” that America was an “accessory” to September 11; and, as we reported at Human Events, the same imam who told a college audience overseas that the United States is worse than al Qaeda.
Yep, that dude. And not only has the State Department anointed him as our ad hoc ambassador to the Muslim world, but now they are acting as his personal Barnes & Noble to boot. Good grief! Buried in a recent New York Times article on Imam Rauf’s global hopscotch, the paper casually referenced that our government buys his tome in an effort “to lecture about tolerance” and pursue “interfaith dialogue” with Islamic nations.
Only in the left’s strange world does it make sense to support Imam Rauf as a goodwill spokesman for the United States while he’s busy trashing the United States. But that aside, did the bureaucrats at the State Department ever take the time to read Rauf’s What’s Right with Islam? If so, they’ll have to justify why they’re promoting a book that faults America for stirring up conflict with Muslims, brags that America is “Sharia compliant,” and makes excuses for suicide bombings.

Enabling? You mean like this?
President Barry Barack Hussein Obama spoke to the graduating class at Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia. The man who made the internet a cornerstone of his campaign, tweeted (or twitted?) constantly to hundreds of thousands, if not millions of young fans, and used Facebook and other social media to great advantage, told the graduates that they were facing a new world in which they would be bombarded by too much unfiltered information. Further, the man who won election on the promise of ‘change’, told them that, unfortunately, the breathtaking change caused by this overload of information couldn’t be stopped. His speech seemed to imply that being exposed to all kinds of arguments is a BAD thing. That it might even threaten democracy. It’s a far cry from the time Americans treasured a ‘multiplicity of voices.’ That expansive variety of thought and expression guaranteed that somehow, some way, the truth would be heard. Apparently, that’s not what the Obama administration has in mind. In fact, in the financial reform bill, they’re seeking to put control of the internet in the hands of the Federal Trade Commission. Think about the almost total control of every aspect of our lives the government has gained through the misapplication of interstate commerce laws! Obama tells graduates that they are facing a new world in which they will be bombarded by too much unfiltered information? Being exposed to all kinds of arguments is a bad thing? The President who promised change wants to control every aspect of your life? This coming from a President who has concealed the following documentation about his life: kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records?

The Media black hole that Truthdig, this article, as well as almost all other media ignores, is Topix.

Topix, the largest internet forums connected to newspapers, has jumped in, with the decline of print media and newspapers, and offered “citizen journalism” without ethics as a profitable replacement. Chris Tolles, CEO of Topix.com openly sneers at journalists and newspapers. Listen to him rant on the Hartford Courant Alumni Association blog:

“Chris Tolles: You and your ilk have dysfunctional ethics around business which only existed during a narrow time when newspapers enjoyed local monopolies. The idea that it is somehow better for journalists to get to decide what is presented and discussed in public is nauseating.”

“News is a weapon too important to leave to people who can’t even figure out how to run a profitable business.”

http://www.courantalumni.org/2010/08/09/topix-more-polish-same-crap/comment-page-1/#comment-3416

Tolles, in typical cocky style, has said he wants newspapers to “die” here in his own Topix post:

“I guess its time for another crop of news products from journalists. Why is it that when these guys all go onto the field of battle “once more into the breach” style, they don’t understand which side of the Agincourt analogy they are on. They face superior weapons and a difference in culture and ethics. They are the French in this battle. They die.” - Chris Tolles, The Bad Guys Win

What Tolles calls a “difference” in ethics, is no ethics at all. Its way past time the media addresses Topix.

Even if not seen at first sight, I’m glad to see so much corroboration
on this forum although snide swaggering remarks are not really of
much practical use and actually can be counterproductive by possibly
causing time wasting internecine food fights.  One can be modest
without being menially humble. Sometimes it is better to wring one’s
hands than to wring one’s own neck, or as a conceited thug, wring
others.

The direct website link ofersince72 thoughtfully provided is here
for your convenience without any further adieu
http://www.bushtruthcommission.com/
It would seem that the more names the Senator can bundle together,
the more forceful his campaign can be.  I’ve sent him 10 names how
about you?

More profitable would be to actually do something as several suggested
either in straightaway action, or to take action as implied in other
commenter’s inimitable way, whether those are appreciated or not.  The
outcome would be utilitarian for this disparate group at any rate. 

Gerard provided a few feasible and deliberate actions one can take and
activities in which to participate rather immediately.

Yes, corporate control of the media is pervasive. And it’s likely to get worse before it gets better. We can give in to nihilism, as some posters here seem to suggest. What can we do, say the hand-wringers? The problem is too big. Corporations are too powerful. Etc., etc.

Nothing in this world changed because idle intellectuals talked an idea to death. Nor has waiting for the government to help us to do anything been very useful since the days of FDR—and Obama is no FDR. But most of the progressive legislation that has actively changed our lives over the course of a century didn’t come about because of government initiative or support. It came about because of mass action. There are many, many organizations out there one can work through. A simple search will likely bring up organizations both religious and secular in almost anyone’s area. Again, just because this is an uphill struggle does not mean it is an impossible struggle or quixotic. But it does require people to quit sighing over their keyboards, get out and participate in the change they want to see.

Senator Patrick Leahy is trying to start a truth
commission

please go to his website and sign the petition or go to

bushtruthcommission.com

he needs our support…..this is our chance….

many good things could happen…..that could help
get our republic back…....please help

Suppose an organized boycott got x number of TV watchers to NOT buy a product widely TV-advertised on news programs like, say, (Downy) products, and at the same time to write letters to Downy Hdqtrs. and to the stations, stating
  We are boycotting ....Products because your news is “perpetually slanted reporting” or “editorializing the news”. We do not think (Downey )should be supporting such presentation of events.etc. etc.  Cite specific examples, and ask both networks and advertisers to watch and judge for themselves. Request change in the interest of fairness to all sides of all issues.

Something like this was done in the Nestle boycott some years ago, because Nestle was peddling formula in the third world .  Women were misled to believe it was superior to mother’s milk, and the formula was necessarily mixed with foul water and fed to babies in preference to their own milk. Babies sickened and died by the hundreds. 
  The boycott finally impacted the situation and the Nestle sales in India vastly decreased, causing Nestle significant losses and caused them to rethink their policy of profits at any cost.  Look it up on the net for details which I have forgotten.  It was a during the 50s I think.
  Adaptations of this idea might work in various situations.  We should not feel there is nothing we can do about present TV poplicies.  Truth and Accuracy in Reporting is one of many organizations struggling for funds to impact the lop-sided situation of media domination in general. 
  It’s one thing to take action as an individual and not buy certain products, but it is more effective to organize and multiply the impact to where it forces people to pay attention to what you are doing.

Oops, make that “With a poll margin of error + or – 3.4
percentage points”

With a poll margin of error + or – percentage points, a 2008
Reuters survey reported about 20% of Americans live in rural
areas.  They do tend to be, the survey said, socially and fiscally
conservative, but in October of 2008 Obama captured 1% more
of that vote than McCain in the rural swing states.  So while you
are probably right about the rural vote, Dr. R. Zing, it isn’t a
complete given politics from that quarter would go right or left. 
TV is the main pipeline of news over and above the ‘Net in rural
America, but I think that gap is shrinking exponentially.  But you
are most likely correct about corporate fingers and fists in every
area of the ‘Net as well. 

Even if everyone on Truthdig agreed with you that corporate news
media has to happen, and I would be among them, how can this be
effected?  I think the corporate world is so ubiquitous and financially
powerful that it is simply a Walter Mitty or woolgathering golden dream
that any media shattering incursion could possibly be achieved.

The government broke up Ma Bell when the Justice Dept. filed an
antitrust lawsuit.  The FCC had suspected that AT&T was using
monopoly profits from one of its subsidiaries to subsidize the costs
of its network which the government convinced Judge Harold H. Green
that they had indeed done so.  The chronology of this obituary
of the 1983 AT&T was not begun by the government on behalf of the
American people, it was started when MCI the former Microwave
Corporation wanted a piece of the action 20 years earlier in 1963 and
complained to the FCC.

I don’t have much hope of government doing anything specifically on
behalf of the people.  If the people draws any benefit from these kinds
of federal actions, it is pure serendipity, a bi-product. Seems like we
the people need to find a way to light a fire under the government’s ass
about the pernicious character of the news. Even the word ‘news’ seems
incongruous.  Am I wrong?

”News must be changed. The only way to do that is to break up the
massive corporate conglomerates that gag journalists and promote
entertainers who can bring in the highest ratings.  Otherwise, news
corporations will just take over the Web like they’ve taken over TV.” 

It is one thing to state the obvious, and another to instigate a
movement capable of living beyond mere wishful thinking.  Don’t you
agree?

Ha Ha Ha! Wow! The thought behind the thought, MEDIA has three rules,
1. there are no rules
2. Example- Murdoch Fox news network, check out Murdochs career the last 30 years, it is his brain map.
3. Most recent consciousness is retinal-3D, creates a chemistry, this is addicting, special effects audio combined with retinal experience, and food of choice, Better living through Chemistry, REMEMBER, Dupont! Technical Slavery is the acceptable addiction of the NOW!

p.s.  Don’t forget the lowly letter to the editor of community and city newspapers—particularly the former.  Keep it brief and to the one point you want to make.
  Community papers’ letters are widely read—a way people keep together as communities locally. City papers’ letters are also more widely read than you think.  Cheers!

Hey, REDHORSE,
Thanks for the “ups.” I enjoy your posts very much. Carry on the good fight. Cheers.

Sorry to be long winded and pardon my typo’s!

Good to hear PEETAWONKUS. Your and our simple recognition of the need for the restoral of the check and balance laws you mention begins the process. The political crooks and corporate shills who trashed them are just that. They no longer matter.

      I’m willing to check for local organizations active to the cause and at the least give small financial support. And you’re correct Sir—the fight for the “net” is on!!

      Easy options: (1) I value uncensored “net” access to news and community. I view the Google/Verizon ploy as a threat to free speech and a traitorus assault on the American Constitution.(a) I can be vocal as hell about this to my State and National political reps. I use fax. I’m told this is most effective. (b) Find out who the local staff liason is and call monthly.

                (2) Discuss the issue with 5 friends you think would be willing to discuss it with 5 other friends who likewise would be willing to etc. Include the demand for reinstatement of sane media law. Make it fun. Have a dinner party to discuss it. Say that we deserve better—-because we do!!

                (3) If you have the money, place a two line ad in the personal notice classifieds of your Sunday Newspaper for a month or a year. Like: “Don’t let Google/Verizon destroy Net Neutrality—ACT NOW” or, circulate a broadsheet. And, get ugly and dramatic about it. Play it. The Tea Party does.

                (4) On a personal level get critical and vocal about what you allow into your mind and the minds of your family. You want a little taste of the addictive hook media holds on your life go cold turkey. Want a fight? Start limiting your childs access to crap. And better yet, find a news source you trust and ask them to watch and discuss it with you.

      Look, the riff is the argument Google/Verizon is using that this will bring America up to speed with other modern industrialized nations. In reality it’s a scam that like Health Care Americans can only be allowed limited access to the modern world when they allow a third party corporate hog to gouge and rip them for every thing they can get. It’s my understanding that Europeans have access to the absolute highest net speeds already and without any hogboys attached to their throats.

      This is yet another proof that the fascist corporatists in D.C. have made themselves irrelevant to the American people and the American future. They’re dangerous airballs and they’re set to implode. Bang!!

{Thomas Jefferson, were he alive today, would be living overseas.  He might be in Norway or Finland or Iceland.}

No, Jefferson was an epicurean. He’d be living in France.

Whilst living in France he met the French philosophers of the Enlightenment and great appreciated discussing philosophy with them. Some think that his ability to write clearly stems from this period of time.

Philosophy, which is he study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, is taught in secondary school in France. And high school final exams must be passed in the subject to go to the finer French universities.

{What would he have made of the irresponsible, shoddy, pernicious zeal that passes for news today? }

He would have thought that an image was private property and should not be either used or abused without permission.

A couple of well-mediatized perp-walks for transgression of such a law and the pooparazies would take heed. Such a law exists in France and the these vultures are a minor problem. Which is why they go to Hollywood to make a living.

But beyond this subject is a larger question. Which is this: For all individual rights (that we think we have) come responsibilities in the execution of those rights. Rights are not unlimited—where you rights end, mine begin; and vice-versa. In fact, law very often is embroiled in deciding just where the division lies.

How does such a notion translate into actual policy or law?

Google provides the answer. When they sought to ass WLAN info to their street maps (presumably to indicate hot-spots), they hit a legal wall in Europe. They were taken to court for “invasion of privacy”.  See here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/19/technology/19google.html

Bang pow wow wow ZING!! You nailed the psychology of the “beast”. Perhaps it’s my paranoia, but it seems a more sinister force than those you described sometimes appears, most often visible during national elections.

    Sorry if my metaphor was a little “unholy”. I’d love to see MegaMSM with it’s feet to the fire. I’m under the impression the public airways still belong to the people. Aren’t public hearings still required for license renewal? It’s a place to start. Also, if corporate hogs want to manipulate and mine the American Psyche it should pay huge tax for access.

    Further, I remember the original PLAYHOUSE NINETY, HALLMARK HALL OF FAME, and Ed Murrow, in black and white, on an 8” screen. It was live, it had substance, it satisfied, and America was hungry for it.

    For years now, it has been common knowledge that Madison Avenue uses the airbrush to insert subliminal images, most often those of sex and death, into print ads. Likewise modern T.V. and film.
Perhaps I’m wiggin’, but I encounter many young people, hell, many adults, who can no longer separate this manufactured illusive electronic reality from the reality of their own lives. I feel it represents actual organic damage and it infects us all. It is at least an aspect of the national depression that holds us in inaction.

    Thanks again for nailing the “beast”!! I’m sayin’ that the power has shifted. That the D.C. corporate/political hogboys, dangerous to our childrens destiny as they are, have made themselves irrelevant to the American future. Stop being shocked at their baboon antics. Want to take Murdoch apart? Then get on with it!!

Breaking up the corporate media is a great idea—and it is not pissing in the wind. Every right and freedom we have came at the price of struggle. A difficult struggle is not a vain struggle. Women’s right to vote, the 8 hour work day and Civil Rights Legislation didn’t happen because people asked nicely for them. The questions are a)what’s the political strategy for breaking up the mega-media corporations, and b) are the American people up to the task? Let’s remember, once upon a Republic, before we became an Empire, laws and regulations were in place to prevent media corporations from gobbling each other up in a race toward monopoly. But beginning with Reagan those laws were weakened until we have what we have today. Those laws, like many other good laws assassinated by corporate greed, can be restored. It is possible.

The Internet is a wonderful thing and has allowed concerned Americans to bypass the usual media outlets. And the powers-that-be know that. In their view, they can’t leave loose ends lying about. That’s why the next battlefield is about corporate control over the Internet, a battle we are already in. We could easily face a future where a handful of corporations, no less dictatorial than China, decide what we see on the Net. However, at least for now we can use Google to google Google’s involvement in Internet control.

Whether it’s the media industry, the oil industry or the insurance industry, little is going to change as long as industry executives are invited in to write legislation. Corporate media control is a part of the larger issue of corporate dominance in politics. We can’t change anything until we change that.

Hi Shenonymous,

Yes. I agree the Internet and sites on the Web offer a wonderful opportunity for spreading the news. But keep in mind most people in rural areas still get their news from television. And rural areas, because of the our F’d up electoral college system, determine a lot of the politics in this country.

Also, the Web is not the wild frontier it was a decade ago.  Corporations can buy chunks of it just as easily as they can buy the airwaves.

Breaking up the corporate news media has to happen.  Make no mistake: Chris Matthews, Bill O’Reilly, Hannity, Beck, even Olbermann whom I generally like, are not journalists. They may have been journalists at one time, they may have went to school for journalism, but now they are entertainers and actors who pose as journalists.

News must be changed. The only way to do that is to break up the massive corporate conglomerates that gag journalists and promote entertainers who can bring in the highest ratings.  Otherwise, news corporations will just take over the Web like they’ve taken over TV.

Got a cell phone in your pocket?  It would not be there if the government had not broke up Ma Bell.

Break up the corporate media?  Great idea, but pissing in the wind.
The only thing that is promising is Internet News because it can be
so ubiquitous and fast, almost immediate delivery. But computer
delivered news is just not the same as seeing and watching talking
heads on TV.  It is the “human” factor.  Computerized anything is
anti-social even with the blog culture.  Too much hidden, identities,
personalities, reality. 

Finding journalists who have integrity who are not employees of a
corporation, who are independent and respected for their integrity,
who backs up what they report would be a huge challenge.  What or
who can be believed to deliver if not the whole truth how about some
of the truth?  The editorial news media have an even bigger divinity
with their daily menu of pundit pontification and quasi argument with
staged “regulars” who each take a particular partisan posture.  Hell even
the classically wrong weathermen are ascending in self-importance
commandeering station’s broadcast time with their ever more and more
sophisticated dazzling electronic graphics to discuss the most intricate
and often inane details of any slight meterological anomalie.  Not that
we don’t need to know weather conditions, and news of disasters, we
absolutely do, sometimes they are exactly about us and where we live!
But sometimes their obsession gets downright ridiculous.  Edward R.
Morrow is the standard, but he ain’t alive anymo’.  Not for a long time.
And no one has ever equaled his “integrity.” 

We do have some media who try, like Slate, Politico, Ed Schultz, Dylan
Ratigan (I actually like the latter two) but if you watch closely their
testosterone always rises on the temperature thermometer as they try to
outdo each other’s intellectualism and scoops and I’m-really-better-
than-you attitude and they also assume the role of pontiffs and bring
on a string of “experts” who have inside wikileaky news.  It is crap
since we have no way of knowing whether they are bringers of truth or
not.  Journalists good, corporations owning journalists, bad, yeah.  But
whatchgonnadoaboudit?

Brzezinski himself has changed his standpoint quite a
bit since then. Now he states that President of the
country is to care about the wealth of his own citizens
first of all, and the geopolitical games should go to
the background while there still are problems at home
(sic! — http://www.win.ru/en/school/5328.phtml) He also
said that America has to switch from fighting these
endless wars to solution of its own problems.

Thomas Jefferson, were he alive today, would be living overseas.  He might be in Norway or Finland or Iceland.  He would have moved away on the q.t., then sent The New York Times a copy of The Declaration of Independence and dared them to publish it.

Yeah, in a way this article is kind of lame because it’s focusing on the tired old lettuce that the press is unfair to Obama. BFD. They were pretty harsh on GW, too, so now the jerks can read this and fall back on their hack: If Democrats and Republicans hate us, we must be doing our job right. 

The problem is much bigger than that as many of you have noted. A basic problem is this: Journalists compete with your right to free speech and the law gives journalists more leeway than it gives you.  Journalists—or more accurately their corporate masters—have converted that leeway into a plank and regularly beat you over the head with it. 

Here’s the deal:  You cannot scream “fire” in a crowded theater.  But a journalist can because it’s assumed with professional training and objectivity the journalist will only scream fire if there damn well is a fire.  But now journalists are so bridled, so saddled with a bit in their mouths, that they must first ask a Republican: Do you think there is a fire in the theater?  And then ask a Democrat:  Do you, kind sir, believe the smoke issuing from beneath our asses constitutes fire or merely the perception of fire?  Journalists are being gagged. 

Issue Two:  You have the right to privacy.  Media companies regularly sue to destroy that right to privacy.  If your kid goes out and shoots a bunch of people, if your husband goes out and balls a prostitute, if your dog bites the mailman, if you’re in a spectacular car crash—the media can converge on you and permanently destroy your right to privacy. You have no protection whatsoever. It makes no difference whether it was a relative who did something stupid, you who did something stupid, or just an act of fate, the media will happily sell your soul and destroy your life for a profit. 

Those two things coupled together mean much of the media’s time is spent keeping the little people in their place.  Whether it was endorsing and selling advertising space for slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or making a killing off the drug war in the twentieth century, the media has spent a lot of time and energy gagging journalists when it comes to substantive issues, beating people down and profiting in the process. Torturing Eminem, Paris Hilton and Tiger Woods is just the crack in the door that allows them to get to your ass at any time.

Another huge problem is this:  If you can read, chances are you don’t do it very well.  And even if you do it well, there’s a good chance your analytical skills are shit.  The average American reads at a middle school/high school level.  Beyond that you go to a doctor and meet a guy who spent decades of his life in learning institutions but if he reads Greek mythology he says: That’s myth. If he reads Hebrew mythology or Christian mythology, he says:  That’s the word of God.  Scary stuff, my friends. 

The media caters to this ignorance and superstition.  They dumb it down.  The obliterate nuance.  And they damn sure didn’t use the Fairness Doctrine that Reagan wiped out to host programs featuring literature professors who could refute the maniacal nonsense you hear on Christian television stations. Nope. A preacher can lie all day long and that’s OK. Now, if he goes out and snorts meth and bangs a male prostitute—then they’ll go get him.  That’s objectivity, ya see. 

Paco, I’m with you. Break up the corporate media. mrfreeze, you’re right: NPR is just another shade of gray in a bad weather news day. Tom Joad, it was called the Fairness Doctrine. Richard, hats off with much respect. Shenonymous, you do have a disaffection for the media, but it comes from millions of years of evolution: We know when we step in shit. REDHORSE, please join with the calls to break up the corporate media and try not to fret too much about Sunday School teachers who double as prostitutes.  All the best everyone.

Remember: Journalists good.  Corporations owning journalists, bad.

****************

By prosefights, September 1 at 10:18 pm

“First hand knowledge is rare.”

That is so true. And surely, you know this has its beginnings,
more or less, when religions started up or even before as
deception and informations was quite necessary for survival
especially against opposing sides, tribes, groups and what not,
and all over the world it seems, because esoteric knowledge was
of utmost importance to keep the ‘flocks’ dim and dumb and
ready to believe. If you don’t or can’t believe it just delve into the
origins of religion and how those ‘brotherhoods(read masons for
one) would hold certain truths from the congregations or
followers, in essence secret information that would get people
killed if those priests were found ‘exposing’ the esoteric
information. The other part of control was what was allowed to
be ‘revealed’(read, generally false or not wholly true)doled out to
the followers as fear mongering and terror invoking exoteric(for
general mass consumption) information. Check esoteric and
exoteric out in a dictionary.

So this has been going on for millennium, and is that ever an
extra heavy dose of conditioning for so long.

Read Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’.

“The media” is quite simply the Oligarchy.  Not naming the obvious appears to make Mr. Kutler one of the managers of perception that sells this idea that they’re just an amorphous band of “enablers” who enable for some unknown reason.

They are the Oligarchy.

Name them.

What we know is mostly what we read.

Or what was taught to us by teachers who read and did not do.

First hand knowledge is rare.

So, I think, we must be aware of false information or opinion we have read?

And focus on what we know first hand.

http://home.comcast.net/~bpayne37/eprishumard/thecandidate/thecandidate.htm#malloy

I sense that Red Horse is right in his affirming that a change for the better is beginning. It always takes what seems like forever for a positive change to begin because people hate to organize for political changes, especially now in view of all the so-called “security” provisions and abuse of police working to curb citizens’ rights. 
  But ... one thing more is on our side, I think:  The forces of reaction always overplay their hand, whether it’s control of press, of education, of protest movements.  They run their message and their repressions into the ground and play their cards with such a heavy-handed thump that even the dumbest, most passive citizens begin to catch on and notice that they are somehow being used.
  They may not know what to do—nor do we—but the overall mood of the country becomes deeply, mysteriously “I-smell-a-rattish” and even the central powers quake in their boots. They are not likely to show it, but public opinion inches into prominence and, hopefully, the accumulated tension brings about change without bloodshed.
  Good passive organized resistance, explicit in its demands, and backed, if possible, by credible individuals of some distinction helps, but is not vitally necessary.

Jefferson would have said that America is no longer a Republic, since without a free press a Republic is an impossibility .

Or the media, because there is not any “real” news in their corporate
minds, they fixate 24/7 for days on one stupid story, like the guy
who held some DIscover Channel employees hostage because he
got pissed at the Channel’s programming (now that is somewhat
deranged) but we can see how an edgy person can go over the edge
in this ridiculous news and programming environment.  Or for six
months over Michael Jackson, or for weeks over Chelsea Clinton’s
wedding, or or or or , I know, I’m stuttering in print.  Duh. So there
are lots of really deep and in my opinion correct insights spelled out
on this forum, so there is not a dearth of conscious beings out there
even if you all are electronic ghosts, you do transform into blood and
bone humans from time to time.  WHAT SHALL WE DO ABOUT ALL OF
THIS CRAP?  I cannot think of what to do.  Can you?  I mean something
that is not nutso but can really make an f’n difference.  Just mildly
boycotting really doesn’t do much. Although I do boycott anyway on my
own. But it doesn’t even qualify as a drop of piss in a bucket of water. 
So well, and duh again.  I don’t know about you all, but I am getting
pretty full of piss.  I think I hate the news media. I hate to say hate
because I was taught that it isn’t a nice thing to do. But crap.

Decades ago there were 30 major media players, today there are only a handful of the majors, for example, Viacom, GE, Disney, Murdoch News Corporation, Time-Warner. I read somewhere that the difference between the US government and the corporate entity of business is getting harder and harder to
delineate - both Democrats and Republicans are courted by businesses who give lots of $$ in exchanging for having their interests looked after should they get in power - of course the media companies, being large businesses are no different. They will report news that is in their interest and suppress any dissent for fear the American people might think beyond a sheep mentality. It’s best the public get bread and circuses by way of watching dumb shows like American Idol or Entertainment Tonight. There’s no thinking required which is easy for the public - with no thinking there’s no dissent. With no dissent it’s business as usual.

Dr. Lawrence Britt’s 14 Characteristics of Fascism, #6: Controlled Mass Media.

The N.Y. Times gives full credence to this article by publishing an op ed piece by
none other than the war criminal wolfowitz today, too bad he didnt drop dead with
his buddy nixon.

Regarding the Cutler-Luce difference in how US troops were “received” in Germany and Japan. I can only answer for rural Japan, where I lived for a time.  According to first-hand reports, people were told they would all be raped and killed when the Americans arrived.  They huddled behind seawalls where landings were taking place, armed with bamboo sticks, prepared to die defending themselves. They were almost entirely old men, women and children.

When the blue-eyed soldiers landed, with smiles on their faces, handing out Mars Bars, and the milk and other provisions began to get unloaded, they could scarcely believe their eyes. Some suspected poison.  The children were the first to respond with a courage probably based on near-starvation. It took a little time, but—yes, the war was really over!
Hello!  Kon nichi wa!

I have known some of these children—and their children.  War sucks!  And it’s totally unnecessary.

The myth of objectivity is still sold to the rubes. And so we get “He said/She said” sparings that are supposed to bring us “both sides” of an issue. “This just in, the earth is round. Some people, however, argue for a flat earth.” Or, take the evidence for global warming against the raucous denials of those who do not “believe” it, as if data were a religious text. This sets investigative science against nonsense, as if both were equal partners in a debate.

“ultra-left-wing Ed Schultz”

Since when? Where do you get this stuff?

THANKS WORM—For saying what Mr. Kutler didn’t!! Theirs is a conscious assault on American Culture and Consciousness. MSM is not random “weather”. It is manufactured reality intended to cause serious emotional/psychological/cultural disorientation and damage. That is THE discussion Mr.Kutler and his journalistic colleagues should be having and, we know why they aren’t.

      As I tried to say below, I’m convinced that a powerful new American Counsciousness is already formed and growing. Thugs can batter you, but they cannot hide the reality of their motives. I’m saying we are witness to, and participants, in a new dialogue and the birth of a new American Community. The thugs are indeed dangerous, but their own actions have made them irrelevant to the powerful forces that have begun to shape the future. Indeed, they are desperately trying to hold us in the past. They only have the power over us, we allow them to have. True, we may at first only experience this as an “inner” reality, but it is based on the truth manifest in the commonality of American experience. The change is come.

“The newspapers don’t report the news, they shape it.” John Gowan, Libertad, Albuqueruque, NM.

MSM would not report about our stolen $22,036.

Internet allows us to fight the opposition and overcome MSM to get our money back.

http://home.comcast.net/~bpayne37/eprishumard/thecandidate/thecandidate.htm#malloy

And, of course, if you are invisible then the opposition will do what it want regardless of law.

We got visible. 

We know how Vakili Rad got convicted.

Shortly after 5pm on 6 August 1991, Ali Vakili Rad entered Shapour Bakhtiar’s plush home in the Parisian suburb of Suresnes with two other men. They strangled and stabbed the former Iranian Prime Minister and his secretary in a brazen murder that shocked the world, and exposed the dark side of the Islamic Republic’s intelligence network.

Almost 19 years later, Vakili Rad left France for home, carried by plane back to Iran where he is regarded as a hero by many leaders. 

He was extradited to France, where in 1994 he was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders.

Vakili Rad was released from jail in France, after serving 18 years of his sentence on May 19, 2010.

In connection with the killing of the former Prime Minister under the monarchy, Shahpour Bakhtiar, and his personal secretary, Katibeh Fallouch, the Special Representative was informed that on 6 December 1994 the Paris Special Criminal Court sentenced an Iranian citizen, Ali Vakili Rad, aged 35, to life imprisonment, without any possibility of conditional release for a period of 18 years. It also sentenced an Iranian citizen, Massoud Hendi, aged 47, a former chief of Iranian Radio and Television, to 10 years’ imprisonment, without any possibility of conditional release for a period equivalent to two thirds of the sentence, for helping the killers to enter the country.

Our visibility ploy.

[7] U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, William H. Payne, Arthur R. Morales, Plaintiffs, v. Lieutenant General Kenneth A. Minihan, USAF, Director of National Security Agency, National Security Agency, Defendant, CIV NO 97 0266 SC/DJS.

We filed criminal complaint affivit against Brzezinski in 97 0266 in 2007 in void judgment filings

Our $22,036 was stolen shortly thereafter

And it is LIKELY why we get

From: Iran Defence Forum [mailto:support@irandefence.net]
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 11:01 PM
To: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Subject: Happy Birthday from Iran Defence Forum

Hello billp37,

We at Iran Defence Forum would like to wish you a happy birthday today!

for the past three years - our crimial complaint affidavit was filed and stamped FILED by clerk of court in 2007.

Great to hear voices from other places!  Maybe they can throw light on how other places work better for their people—and why. And how we could bring about profound changes here.
  Judging from these comments over time, it appears that the country still has a number of literate and informed people who see what has gone, and is going, wrong.  What is lacking is the vision to see possibilities for change and the confidence in ourselves and others.  Vision and confidence.
  What vision?  Specifically, passive or aggressive, or both.  Passive?  Don’t watch TV. Don’t buy advertised goods.  Don’t believe big media. Look for more reliable sources abroad. Respond, even in the lowly “letters to the editor” or phone calls, or boycotts.
  What confidence?  Confidence does not spring forth full blown; it is earned and learned.  Confidence builds as actions succeed and new friends are made and new ideas are generated by a faith in honesty and truth.
  Don’t look for change out there.  It’s in here.

dizior – how observant you are and gave voice to what I have
thought for sometime now.  Has anyone noticed how long it takes
for a TD page to load because of all the insidious ads being
huckstered?  And ones that invite you to buy into really obnoxiously
narrow ultra-right-wing conservative views?  I extol the virtues of
free speech, but I’d like to see some left-wing counteractive ads as
well.  For instance, on MSNBC when ultra-left-wing Ed Schultz gives
his daily diatribe there is a commercial played at least six times during
his show by the Republicans using very sentimental middle age and old
people talking about how bad it would be to increase taxes when the
plan is to increase taxes by letting the Bush Tax Cuts run out, but never
do I ever see an add that says how beneficial to the American public it
would be to let those f’n economy eating tax cuts expire!  Can you
explain that?

REDHORSE – ”Is this anything we don’t already know?...” 

Yes, indubitably.  But maybe it needs to be repeated for the slow
witted?  If so many are somnambulant and are not cognizant enough
for their emotions to move them into antithetical action, then maybe
they need reminded over and over and over until it does sink in how
they are being manipulated in all the ways you noted.  Then be able
to think of ways to counteract the hogboys.  As a teacher, I learned a
very long time ago that ideas need to be repeated at least 7 or 8 times
before a learning mind will commit them to memory to be embedded
such that they are able to dredge it up when appropriately needed.

The Republicans learned long ago that TV is country’s reality .

“Reality TV”: Reality is TV and TV is reality.

They play it and play it well.

Corporately owned TV is not going to call them out in lies &
National Inane Radio and TV are certainly not going to peek.

So, the Republican mantra:

Dont use the law to change the culture;
change the culture, then you can change the laws easily.

TV is the most powerful weapon in the “Culture War” and
it is totally and completely owned by the corporate state,
and controlled virtually entirely by the Republicans, either
through out-right ownership or through control of the
regulatory establishment.

The media may have failed in terms of its ‘responsibility’
to inform the electorate. But the media has accomplished
exactly what the Republicans wanted and in those terms
has and continues to be a huge success for them. Spread-
ing the voices of psuedo-ThinkTanks, ‘teaching the contro-
versy’ (and, of course, manufacturing it), selling ‘state’s rights’
to stop Health Care and selling the Power of the Supreme Court
to settle Florida’s (their still a State, right?) voting irregularities,
etc etc etc

When one Party owns an media outlet and the other media outlets
simply ‘report on the controversy’, the battle is lost
and
the ‘Culture Wars’ have been lost. 
The laws will establish the ‘new reality’ : bye bye Social Security,
bye bye education, bye bye upward mobility , bye bye .....

“It’s the law, you know.”

****************

Surely, 3 of the most important things to correct in this country
is to FIRST break up the monopolies of the 3 or 4 conservative
owners of the mainstream media giving access to those ‘coveted’
venues to more and diverse minds to dispense the information
to the people.

SECOND, enforce the laws on influence peddling which is
criminal bribery of elected people and government employees by
prosecuting those paying the bribe and those taking the bribe all
under the charade of ‘LOBBYING’ as a way of doing business.

THIRD, bring our military back home.

Is this anything we don’t already know? Aren’t we all a little beyond shock and surprise? It’s like finding out your Sunday School teacher works Friday and Saturday nights as a prostitute. At first you don’t believe it. Then you become aware of the smeared lipstick and the cheap perfume that masks an unholy smell. Finally, you accept her as the pitiable creature she is, and recognize that the reality of your own spiritual journey, no matter what her good intentions, has no relationship to your own. None. Period. This is also applicable to the hogboys in D.C.

    The author seemed to paint the MSM as manipulatable dupes surfing the waves of sensationalism to hawk papers. In reality, the vast majority, are subversive complicit propagandist. With American lives and destiny in the balance, in a time claimed to be the “new age of communication”, communication is denied, and the intellectual line between political/financial reality and personality cult entertainment, is unrecognizable. (Think Salem.)

      I present the idea, that the current attempt by the Google/Verizon raiders to seize control of the “net”, and by extension, access to content, is motivated by their fear of a new American Consciousness, that has begun to organize itself on a grassroots level. Like our Sunday School teacher, despite holy platitude, moral corruption has so compromised both our political leadership and the corporate propagandist press, they have broken all connection to actual American reality. Beyond the common sense caution necessary when dealing with any paranoid psychopath, they deserve no consideration at all.

    Mr. Kutlers lament only tells us what we already know. In a nation founded upon the greatest human idealst of truth and freedom, our “free” press wallows with swine. It is imperative that we stop all attempts to destroy our ever stronger, ever growing networks of community and political dialogue. Dialogue and action based upon the truth and reality of real American life. Theirs is a dark and manufactured illusion of lies that can longer cover their corruption and greed. It is not ours. We are not them.

Don’t disagree with the direction of this article…but I have to admit, glimpsing at “truthdig” ad space gives me cause for pause. How does truthdig feel given that it’s obviously involved in hocking the same crap that fuels the misdirected media it rightfully critiques?

balkas - good day

” I do not think that media IS OURS—-media IS THEIRS.?  This
simplicity, or saying it with economy of words, cannot be further
elucidated; thus, is never ever stated and perhaps not even noted by
most americans.” 

Nor noted by most Europeans, and hardly any in the East and none
in the Middle East.  So?  That is only to say how deceptive THEIR
MEDIA is and how they arrogantly expect the public to believe their
partisan fabrications.  Watch FOX…because they appear more honest? 
How fallacious (one of my big rocks, balkas).  First of all this is seen
as blatantly specious advice by the word “appear.”  Yes appearance is
everything.  Right?  ‘Honest’ to present their own bigoted and
prejudiced illusions of reality.  5 Yups for that one. 

In Jefferson’s original idealistic view of the virtues of a free press, he
soon saw with the corrected lenses of reality as a delusion.

Free media, in name only has been with humanity hardly for 10,000
years, but for however long it has been has not done humanity any
good service.  Well that is a hyperbolic exaggeration (which is a
redundant phrase). I feel sure some exposes have achieved a modicum
of help to society.  However it is “freer” in some places than others,
i.e., some would have million dollar fatwahs put on their heads for
writing critical descriptions of certain religious dogma.  And in the
Spanish Inqusition, nonChristians were also tortured and murdered in
the name of God. 

Truth is elusive enough and to have masters of the word prostitute the
language for their own nefarious purposes is probably one of the big
social evils that needs to be strenuously resisted with all of those who
are liberated their might!

I do not think that media IS OURS—-media IS THEIRS.
This simplicity, or saying it with economy of words, cannot be further elucidated; thus, is never ever stated and perhaps not even noted by most americans.

Watch FOX rather than CNN because FOX appears more honest in its ‘information’ [home produce]than CNN,WP,NYT,LAS,et al.

And yes, that’s what jefferson had in mind, i educe, when he stated that free [yes, free] media is essential for smoothly running plutocracy.

In addition, free media had been with us for at least 10 k yrs. tnx,
Caveat! don’t throw rocks at me; i, too, am free journalist! And i am a good one, but nobody wants to hire me! Guess why?

Well I am in America, now for my whole life.  TJ was wrong in his
first assessment to think there ever was a “free press.”  Though they
kick and scream and have untoward fits when they sniff an aroma of
anyone trying to suppress their reports draping and clinging to the
1st Amendment for dear life, it is my view the press is in as much
bondage to their corporate massas and pompous own opinions as
slaves ever were in history.  Jefferson was right on the money in his
revised view once he achieved the Presidency.  The first Jefferson was
idealistic and still had the fire of revolution rummaging around in his
veins.  The later Jefferson faced reality squarely and describes with
sharp observation the way the press works today.  They are a bunch
of self-centered thugs of the word, who abuse words, written or
spoken, to satisfy their own artificial pathos, who soon as they saw all
the gods of the world went AWOL, thought they could step right in and
claim divinity in their vanity and conceits as omnipotent, omniscience,
omnipercipience, omnipresence but more and more in their
omninarration of the omnimedia sound perpetually omninonsensical
and omniprevaricational.  Yeah, in my zeal, I know, I made up some
of those words, but not as many as you might think. 

Kutler’s article is a brave admission of the absolute reality and hubris
that reflects the state of the broadcast business.  Hmmm… do I have a
disaffection of the news media of today?

I have been told by people who lived in countries more well known for their state sponsored repressions, that when they listened to the news, they always listened with dubious suspicion, that always considered the possibility of ulterior motives, for what was being reported.
Here in the United States, the land of “the most trusted name in news”, nearly all the continuous babble is accepted as gospel. Which reminds me, have you heard the story about Islamic extremist bed bugs? Details at Eleven…

I like this piece.. but feel I was tricked into clicking on, much less reading through ANYTHING about or pertaining to or including.. the Beckster and Sarah.

Adios!

I’m in Europe too, Ukraine to be exact and I must admit that the way western Europe goes about their politics makes a lot more sense that USA style crap.  They actually seem to want to solve problems ... what a refreshing approach.  There is partisan bickering, of course, but in the end they seem to want their countries to work and their constituents to survive (and thrive).  The American way of doing things is stupid and destructive.  What country (other than us) goes about business by destroying the very foundations of the country?  While Europe rebuilds after the meltdown (which we engineered), America continues swirling around the drain while our political class fights over who should have control of the flusher.  It is sheer stupidity.

I am in Europe right now for an incredibly refreshing break from “everything America.”
when I have checked in to see what’s up on NPR or the HP even these bastions of
liberal, progressive ideas have become nothing more than billboards for Palin, Beck
and a massive cast of wing nut propagandists. From a distance it is clear that our
media is not a Corp of professionals any longer and it’s audience…..that’s us….has
become nothing more than a stupid mass of spoiled children. Even my Italian relatives
see us for what we are…...and it’s not a nice assessment.