What's Wrong With The American News Media?

CNSNews.com Commentary from the Free Congress Foundation ^ | November 01, 2002 | Daniel G. Jennings

[mil-vet]

Sounds about right to me!

[Texas_Jarhead]

agreed

[Magnolia]

Jennings is right. Dishonesty, hypocrisy & arrogance abound, but it's not limited solely to the media. Extremist left-wingers, in their quest for power over the mind, have infiltrated every segment of society. The media-types are simply the most obvious.

[Lady Eileen]

Good diagnosis. . . . . I have a moral obligation not to listen to elite, hypocritical liars.

[marktwain]

This is essentially true, but we also need an understanding of how it became this way, and the link to leftist philosophy in general.

[TheExploited]

A fourth problem would be laziness. Most of the time the media has a pack mentality that follows the hot story of the moment. They just bring on expert after expert and ask dumb questions like "did the Sniper nail the note to the tree or did he tape it to the tree?"

[Lady Eileen]

Good diagnosis. . . . . I have a moral obligation not to listen to elite, hypocritical pathological liars.

[polemikos]

The Media is STUPID.
They don't understand much of what they write about. The old canard still applies: "The only requirement for a General Features reporter is General Ignorance of their subject." This forces them to use shortcuts and to stuff subjects into pre-conceived categories. Unfortunately, they are usually wrong.

The Media is LAZY.
They focus on getting it done fast, when they should focus on getting it done right. The "Dealine" rules. This forces them to use shortcuts and to stuff subjects into pre-conceived categories. Unfortunately, they then rely on the conventional wisdom as a safe analytical framework.

The Media is LIBERAL.
Here they are victims of group think. Having lived in the distorted reality of a newsroom, they see problems and life through their own, single lens - not as real people live real lives. This forces them to use shortcuts and to stuff subjects into pre-conceived categories. Unfortunately, they rely on marxist and socialist thought and analyses.

[Congressman Billybob]

Those who appreciate what Free Congress Foundation says here, will also appreciate similar comments in my latest book, "to Restore Trust in America," second link below. We need to use the market place to force dishonest parts of the news media either to reform, or die economically. That process has already begun, with the shift to certain cable news networks and the Internet as the primary source of news.

Congressman Billybob

A Dispatch from the Front, Plus Some Comments on Norwegian Charisma

Click for "to Restore Trust in America"

[Izzy Dunne]

But unless someone comes up with something we citizens can actually do about it, then what's the point of us all getting headaches about something that is totally outside our control?

Well, they ARE capitalists, you know.
That means they are subject to the laws of supply and demand.
If enough people quit demanding their crap, they'll be forced to do a crap-upgrade, or go out of business.
The Internet has helped in that regard, to some extent.

[rochester]

The first part of the solution is for all concerned conservatives to STOP BUYING the newspapers, CANCEL the magazine subscriptions, TURN OFF the offending TV programs, and encourage like-minded others to do the same.

I'll bet that amid all this grumbling, there are still a lot of conservatives who regularly buy the New York Times, watch CNN, subscribe to Time, etc.

[desertcry]

Good article, but it has failed to identify the root cause, and that is the SCHOOL OF JOURNALISM in our LIBERAL UNIVERSITIES, where future journalists are brain washed by professors who are dishonest, arrogant and hypocrites.

[wayoverontheright]

You're certainly right, but I don't understand why the marketplace hasn't caused more of a shift in the media's political reporting than it has. Maybe the right, as consumers of information, represents less in numbers than I've been assuming?

[MissAmericanPie]

These are the typical symptoms of the common criminality of all Liberals.

[Wright is right!]

"as veteran CBS newsman Bruce Goldberg revealed in his excellent book, "Bias."

Lots of you folkses aren't paying attention this morning. This grievous error by the author doesn't help his case, as I'm sure Bernie Goldberg, the author of "Bias" would agree.

The real root of the problem, as Goldberg and this author hint at, is the social elitism the media aspires to. Their model is the old USSR, where the media IS a powerful branch of the government - an entitled class that gets all the perks of office with few of the responsibilities. They get to shop in the Dollar stores. They get the Black Sea dachas. They feel self-righteous and smugly superior, an attitude carefully cultivated by the authoritarians they admire.

Over the last 30 years, the Dems have played the media MUCH better than the GOP, courting them, wining them, getting them virtually anything they could want - in return for their blind allegiance. Now we have an entire generation of newsies who have spent their entire lives in that atmosphere of creeping socialism - which has been crafted as a person benefits package for THEM. Members of the media don't exist in the same economic world the rest of us do. They have their compensation structured by corporate tax attorneys so as to virtually eliminate personal income taxes - which is why high taxes on the public don't bother them - they're NOT members of "the public." (I used to have one of those guys, so I know the drill).

The media has been tacitly promised a democratic socialist Oligarchy, with they themselves as oligarchs. That explains EVERYTHING about their behavior. And dishonest reporting is the easiest way to achieve it.

Michael

[Carry_Okie]

In a democracy, the power to control public opinion is the power to control property. To steal privat property from its owners, all it takes is:

• A simple justification to maximize the applicability of the claim to individual perceptions and desires.
• A majority perception that acquisition comes at minimal personal cost.
• Collective benefits that are difficult to measure or long deferred.
• Powerful beneficiaries with sufficient personal interest and resources to fund and execute the taking.
• Control of communications media to influence majority opinion then becomes the cheapest means to control factors of production and the key to controlling wealth.

This is why we supposedly have a republic and not a democracy.

[wayoverontheright]

I can't bring myself to buy any of that crap, and I'm sure most of us on FR feel the same way. But the monster is more than just the "main stream media". I joined the Barnes and Noble reader's advantage discount program a few months ago, and included in the program is a subscription to Book Magazine. After about three issues I realize that there is no mention of all the conservative best selling authors like Coulter, Goldberg, Larry Elder, Hannity, Limbaugh, etc.,I mean this publication is a full blown propaganda piece for leftist causes, and completely ignores what is happening in the marketplace, that is, the superb successes of conservative non-fiction and correspondingly the failures of liberal authors to sell. What is going on here?