Posted on 08/18/2017 4:14:31 PM PDT by KC_Lion
....As journalists, we’re supposed to sort through press releases, talking points and propaganda, using them only to the extent they enlighten us as to what special interests want to believe: Is it true? Is it the whole story? Who wants you to think it and why? Are they trying to deflect attention from other facts or a more important story?
Finding these answers is a basic part of our job.
Instead, we’re willing repositories for all kinds of narratives. We report — as if news — press releases from the government, corporations, special interests or nonprofits (that are often undisclosed fronts for political and business interests). They influence us with help from public relations groups, law firms, super PACs, “big data analysis” companies, think tanks, nonprofits, and LLCs. They pay “journalists” to write their “news stories” and then have them published on partner blogs and quasi-news sites, where they get circulated on social media and picked up in the mainstream. Whether through ignorance or turning a blind eye, we’re not asking the questions we ought to be asking about the forces generating the “news.”.....
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
I think it is correct.
Great piece by Sharyl Attkisson.
When I was in High School, my mother thought I should be a Journalist.
Sometimes I think I should have, I don't know if I could have handled the censorship and the expected self-censorship.
Ping to Sharyl’s List Upchuck.
No reason to trust the Media MSM anymore. They have lied so much that it’s embarrassing.
The MSM is largely the responsibility if Disney, Comcast, Viacom, and AT&T. You’re not obliged to patronize these companies only to have them piss in your shoes.
MSM = inferiors.
Journalism majors....hello!!
Same sort of thing that happened in the Soviet Union and East Bloc by the 1970s and 1980s. Most people there in that underground way knew that agencies like Tass and Pravda were full of it and really no longer trusted them.
The more I watch ABC, and NBC Nightly news, and the more I read the NYT and Washington Post, the more I respect and back president Trump.
5.56mm
As journalists, we’re supposed to sort through press releases, talking points and propaganda, using them only to the extent they enlighten us as to what special interests want to believe: Is it true? Is it the whole story? Who wants you to think it and why? Are they trying to deflect attention from other facts or a more important story?
Finding these answers is a basic part of our job. Instead, we’re willing repositories for all kinds of narratives.
Part of the problem is that media populated 90% by partisan, even enthusiastic, supporters of only one party cannot resist using what amounts to a public trust for personal and party gain. And secondly, a gross over-dependence on the controlled release of restricted or even classified information as primary news sources means that there is no (legal) oppositional data available even if it is sought. If your exclusive story on, say, ISIS, is dependent on a shady State Department leak, you end up parroting their line because there isn't any alternative view, and if there is, the people holding it can't talk about it.
This is corruption, yes, and laziness as well. And an overweening sense of self-importance, of "making a difference" that is not a reporter's job but is the ticket to the stars for a would-be news celebrity. Napoleon once remarked that inside every French soldier's pack is a marshal's baton. Inside every American reporter's briefcase is a Pulitzer prize and a seven-figure contract ready for signature. After all, you do get what you reward, not what you admire.
Can it be fixed? No. The corruption may wither as the actual medium swings more closely toward the Internet, but classical broadcast news is lost forever, and probably has been since Cronkite went over to the other side. It's been a slow rot, but it's sped up of late, and I don't think that it's curable short of rebuilding the entire thing.
“Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the mainstream press is full of fake news, a sentiment that is held by a majority of voters across the ideological spectrum.”
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/334897-poll-majority-says-mainstream-media-publishes-fake-news
A plurality of registered voters say the media is to blame for instigating political violence.
http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/339164-poll-one-third-blame-media-for-political-violence
“The more I watch ABC, and NBC Nightly news, and the more I read the NYT and Washington Post, the more I respect and back president Trump.”
I find that happening to me also.
Who’s side is The Hill on usually?
Sharyl Attkisson Ping!
Now available: Sharyl's latest book Smear.
Watch Sharyl host "Full Measure," a Sunday morning talk show on the Sinclair network. More info.
Want on or off this ping list? Just drop me a FReep mail.
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