Posted on 08/27/2004 4:53:14 PM PDT by Huntress
Criticism of the media often hijacks the Diversity Coalition meetings at the Minority Museum.
David Shapiro brings people together to discuss ways that people in this multicultural community can better get along. But the news media have drawn a lot of fire since the Sept. 11, 2001, tragedy.
People's disappointment in the fourth estate escalated this month when one person played her copy of “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism.” We'll watch the rest of it when the group reconvenes at 7 p.m. Sept. 7 at 89th Street and Wornall Road.
The film adds to the mea culpa in May by The New York Times and one this month by The Washington Post. Stories shamelessly promoting President Bush's charges that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and would use them on America made the front pages of those newspapers and others nationwide.
So did articles linking the terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Stories that challenged that information ran on the back pages of newspapers, if at all.
Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. said in the Aug. 12 Post article that nationwide, “the voices raising questions about the war were lonely ones. We didn't pay enough attention to the minority.”
No joke. A media feeding frenzy built around the big story of war. The public is eating the bill in billions of dollars and in lives lost.
The “Outfoxed” film shows how that shady news network that calls itself “fair and balanced” also manipulates the information to herd the public. That's not good in a country that depends on the free press to give people news so they can make the best choices for the nation's well-being.
“The media is the nervous system of the democracy,” said Jeff Cohen, former MSNBC/Fox News contributor. “If it's not functioning well, the democracy can't function.”
“Outfoxed” quotes media watchdog groups and former staffers to show how the nation's most watched cable news network manipulates the news to get viewers to buy the conservatives' agenda. The film also shows the enormous reach of Murdoch's media holdings in newspapers, television stations, cable and satellite TV companies, and magazines.
It told how journalists at those stations regularly receive corporate directives to boost the appeal of conservative Republicans like Bush and downplay and even smear Democrats. Fox News purposefully trashes the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Sen. Ted Kennedy, the film reported. It also makes liberals look ineffectual, unappealing and wimpy.
To compete with Fox as the ratings leader, other news media are using similar “tricks” and becoming more conservative, too.
“Outfoxed” showed Bill O'Reilly, Fox News' biggest star, to be a bully. The talk show host berates guests, telling them to “shut up.” The film also pointed out how Fox “journalists” use the manipulative phrase “some say” to inject opinions into the news. “Outfoxed” showed how the network's staff must comply with corporate edicts to slant the news or face termination as well as being blackballed from the TV news industry.
All of this threatens our democracy, especially when 83 percent of Americans get most of their news from television, according to The State of the News Media 2004.
It said: “Reliance on television increases even more, according to the surveys, in times of crisis such as the war in Iraq or immediately after Sept. 11. Television use goes up and everything else seems to drop, particularly print, though the shifts are temporary.”
But like Fox, the control of the news media increasingly is concentrated in the hands of a few owners. That gives the 10 biggest companies owning 30 percent of all TV stations the ability to reach 85 percent of all television households in America, the report said.
Also, 22 newspaper companies have 70 percent of the daily circulation, 73 percent on Sundays, the report said. That diminishes the diversity in coverage, opinions and voices that the media offer in our democracy.
But people aren't stupid. Many today have less trust in the media.
“Public attitudes about the press have been declining for nearly 20 years,” the report said. “Americans think journalists are sloppier, less professional, less moral, less caring, more biased, less honest about their mistakes and generally more harmful to democracy than they did in the 1980s.”
That credibility abyss is not good for the news industry, our government or our democracy.
Lewis W. Diuguid is a member of The Star's Editorial Board. To reach him, call (816) 234-4723 or send e-mail to Ldiuguid@kcstar.com.
One thing that I believe would greatly help the United States better focus its efforts and resources at solving real problems, is for the Television netowrks to experience a total electrical power failure for five years!
Actually, Diuguid's in the Red Star twice a week now. He's a car wreck in print--he's terrible, but I can't stop looking. Morbid fascination, I guess, that anyone could be so clueless.
Yeah, just turning the camera on them and letting them talk does that.
Read me tagline
First he says that the public doesn't trust the media. Then, he pulls a switch and says that it's the fault of Fox News Channel, when all the while it's been the alphabet nets, their counterparts at the NYT, WashPost, and the rest of the print media that have been spinning like mad for the liberal "cause" (or "scam", if you like) for decades now.
Pinning the blame for their own loss of credibility on someone else is not just standard operating procedure for them - far from it. It is actually rooted in the very conceptual framework of liberalism!
The motivation for this type of behavior is a deep, broad portion of the entire liberal mindset. It is the idea that they are in no way responsible for their fates as individuals. To the liberal mind, their successes are the result of impersonal "historical inevitibility", and any failures are the result of a vast, shadowy conspiracy.
This explains the perpetual claim of victim status by liberal individuals and groups.
Even when failure is the result of bad decisions, bad choices, bad luck, sloth, dishonesty, or any combination thereof, the liberal MUST place blame on something other than their own person or group, or the whole conceptual house of cards comes crashing down in a tidal wave of cognitive dissonance.
I could go on and on and on deconstructing the foolish, childish, and yet dangerous liberal mindset, but I would end up getting WAY off-topic.
Aha! I get it! It's not that the distrust is well founded. It's that there is distrust!!!!!
"Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper."
-Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1819
Ol' Tom J. didn't seem to hold them in high esteem back then. Why should we have changed our opinions in the intervening time... the "media" certainly haven't provided any reason for us to change them.
In fact, more recently, one who should obviously know how the leftist media works said:
"Far from performing a watchdog role, the ‘free press’ serves the needs of those in power."
--Noam Chomsky, MIT professor
And then there's the opinion of one of their own guys, who just happens to have some prize named after him:
"An able, disinterested, public-spirited press, with trained intelligence to know the right and courage to do it' can preserve that public virtue without which popular government is a sham and a mockery. A cynical, mercenary, demagogic press will produce in time a people as base as itself." --Joseph Pulitzer, American newspaper publisher
I guess if he didn't get it right, nobody is gonna.
Unfortunately, Lewis Diuguid (is that French for "do good" or "doo-doo guide"?)- aka Missouri's Maureen Dowd- wouldn't know "journalism" if it came and crapped a pile on his desk while he was "agonizing" over another "steaming pile" of his writing. "Red Star" indeed! This kinda krap would make Stalin and Goebbels blush.
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