Where would we be without our corporately owned news networks?
In a strong recovery? With a functioning Congress? In the dark about how oil companies are really care about the environment, schools and puppies?
One thing that America greatly values is its free press…which is why its been locked up in a safe that’s hidden miles below the Earth’s surface. Filling in for it, we have a corporatized Mainstream Media which looks just like the real thing only less filling. Having a corporately owned media is a bit of a trade off for America, like buying a McDonalds hamburger. One one hand, you get a cheap, non-nutritious product that contains excesses of substances that are bad for you and on the other hand…well…maybe there’s not an other hand but you get the idea.
Due to the 24 hour news cycle, news channels are hungry for news all the time. Unfortunately, they have the digestive systems of cows so they digest the same stories in one show after another throughout one or more days. They are also very particular about what stories they consume, they must be high in conflict and rich in advertising dollars. So many stories, despite how true they may be, simply aren’t on the menu for any of the news channels.
Listed below are ten things you will never hear on a news channel for the above reasons…unless we include a celebrity nip slip in this page…which we are still debating.
TEN THINGS YOU WILL NEVER HEAR ON A NEWS CHANNEL:
1. Crazy things that Republicans say aren’t actually equal to sane things Democrats say in response.
2. The oil company commercials we run constantly are full of lies but even though that’s a conflict of interest for a news channel that’s supposed to present truths, we need the ad revenue.
3. Our hosts aren’t really outraged at everything they say they are, they’re more like performers and it’s just an act to get ratings.
4. We miss Sarah Palin.
5. Most of our coverage about President Obama is negative because he’s been too far ahead of Romney and we make more money from advertisers if the Presidential race is tighter because more people will tune in each day to see who’s up or down. Also, our corporate ownership and shareholders want the tax breaks that Republicans would give us.
6. Polls this far away from an election really don’t mean anything but by treating them as if they do, we can create all kinds of stories based upon them that urge our viewers to be greatly concerned .
7. Our gesture towards balance and fairness is having a token person with overly strident views that are the opposite of our core viewers so that they only confirm our core viewers dislike of them and others with the same views.
8. Faves include any story involving sex, missing white girls and threats to Americans. Dislikes include peace talks, good economic news and substantive conversations about issues.
9. We flip a coin to decide which stories we’ll call “Breaking News”.
10. Nothing truly important happened today, sorry. You could always read a book or get some exercise.
Is this in the category of good news,unchallenged R lies or keeping the horse race close? All three, a conglomerate? 🙂
Obama spending binge never happened
I/we have seen this story multiple times, often with the same or similar graphs, online but never on the MSM and the GOP people are allowed to perpetuate their “Obama’s runaway spending” go unchallenged.
If The President wasn’t saddled with UI (of course the R’s are getting rid of that) and food stamps, all caused by W’s near depression and financial meltdown, his spending would be even less. And last month’s ledger was in the black, first time in a long time.
[img]http://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2012/05/21/Photos/ME/MW-AR658_spendi_20120521163312_ME.jpg?uuid=3666ead6-a384-11e1-827e-002128049ad6[/img]
[img]http://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2012/05/21/Photos/ME/MW-AR657_federa_20120521151828_ME.jpg?uuid=c49a7602-a379-11e1-827e-002128049ad6[/img]
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-spending-binge-never-happened-2012-05-22
Some tweets from Jefferson Obama -Jeff Gauvin that you won’t hear on the MSM–Gotta keep the appearance of the horse race is a real squeaker
Close, yes but as the polls show, Obama is slowly pulling away, yet that goes unreported. Instead Tweety flashes state polls daily like his doing SportsCenter, unable to see or report the trending beyond that day in one state.
One day soon I am going to do another 24 hours of the MSM. I just have to find a day when I am not running here and there. Writing a piece like that helps to put what they do in perspective for me.
Here’s one you probably won’t hear, Sue:
JP Morgan Chase is biggest campaign contributor to the senator who’s chairing the investigation of JP Morgan Chase
Move along people, nothing to see here.
Wow. Bito, remember how corrupt The House became the last time they had the majority? I don’t understand why too many indie voters keep wanting to hand the keys of their car to the guy who’s had multiple drunk driving convictions and carries an open quart of Jack Daniels in his other hand,
I do have to ask if House Dems are protesting this or just letting it happen. How many times have Repubs made a stink about something when they were in the minority and got the Dems to respond. Whay can’t the Dems do the same? Especially in an election year, when charges of corruption would be most powerful?
Adlib
Perhaps they feel demoralized or maybe they are too worried about their re-election. I still do not see how two year elections help the house. Perhaps if it was for a longer term voters would be more careful in their selections.
Sue, you may be right, too many Dems have a mentality of weakness when faced with a bully. I just don’t know though.
They are wrapped up in re-election and they may have fears over triggering millions to be spent in defeating them if they piss off enough Repubs and their donors.
Either way, we need Dems to always act like they have a spine and always stand up to Repub corruption.
In the late 1700’s, elections every two years was a good idea to keep one house of Congress closely representative of the people. In this era, it has created an unending quest for campaign money and the resulting corruption and corporate domination that results from it.
If I had a magic lamp, I’d wish for mandated public financing, campaigns legally limited to three months and no outside financing allowed at all.
Then our Congress would have to work for us all but 3 months…instead of virtually never, corporate domination of politics would be hobbled and incumbents would have no financial advantage over challengers, they would have to run on their record and make a case for themselves that money couldn’t buy.
Yeah you have some good ideas there Adlib. There are many ways we could fix things it just seems like there is a freeze on people working together. It is really just sickening. I saw a comment the other day about our country and how we handle the poor and it said “what a horrible horrible country” It stunned me because while I may think that, coming from outside was really telling.
And if I had the power to grant your wish, AdLib, I would. The Blov is in your court, totally. Let’s get back to the business of governing, not campaigning.
Sue, that would be great! I really enjoyed your last one and it helped demonstrate with specifics, this con job called “MSM News”.
AdLib, I may be the last person on the Planet to have watched “OutFoxed” only very recently. But it was the perfect documentary to complement your wonderful article.
I hope your article is widely read and that people — at long last — start to realize how shamelessly they’ve been exploited and manipulated.
Thanks Kes!
I think most people here already know all of this but as you say, the more we can propagate this around the web, hopefully, the more people will recognize how rigged the MSM news is.
Dear leader: YES to item #2. Jesus H. – drives me bat shit crazy to see the Exxon Mobil “Let’s solve this” campaign. I have wanted to write/call those people featured on the ads and ask: Did you go to public or private school at the point you were thanking your teacher for inspiring you? And if it was a public school, how the F*CK can you work for and then try and help “humanize” a company that partners with the political party trying to destroy public education??? Can you say hypocrite????
For all I don’t know about religion, I’m pretty sure Jesus H. hated hypocrites. So do I.
Thanks for this article. You making me crazy.
AB
We are on the same wave length here.
OK, Sue. Here’s what we do: let’s look for and write down the names (shown on the ads) of the people profiled in the Let’s Solve This campaign, then do our OWN investigation of where they went to school, then OUT them publicly. ‘Tay??? Next time I see the one about the math teacher or the physics teacher – let’s do it!
I am with you I will pay close attention and follow suit. You are the bomb girl
AB, this does drive me up a wall. It would be like The Health Channel having McDonalds and KFC as its main advertisers.
The oil companies. like the tobacco companies before them, stand for one principle when it comes to truth, burying it so deep in BS that it can’t be seen.
How can a news channel that is supposed to deal in truth have 25% or more of its broadcasting time taken up by propaganda and lies…and still be seen as credible?
And yet, that is the Bizarro world we live in.
The oil companies are predominently run by white men yet what do we see in their ads? Prop people, blacks, women, Asians, all extiolling the Christ-like nature of oil companies. Yes, they love teachers and they show it by using off shore accounting to avoid paying a penny in taxes on the billions they make, so they don’t have to pay for a single teacher’s salary.
And their propaganda “support” for schools and teachers…is tax deductable and just a tiny drop in the bucket for their PR purposes, to get the public to approve their rape of the country for billions.
Cynical and infuriating and one can’t avoid the fact that MSNBC along with the other news netowrks are ready and willing partners in spreading this dangerous propaganda and disempowering of the people.
It is a travesty and I hope more and more people react to it by turning away from the MSM if they want to know the truth of what’s going on around them.
You know one of the essential points about Christianity then – rule number three: don’t be a freaking hypocrite. It’s in Matthew I think…
: )
CL: I’m taking Lamb over to my OWOP (old worn out pastor) who ran the Sunday School class that we dubbed “The Heretics”, where we studied Spong and Borg and debated how we would feel -as Christians – if Jesus had indeed been married. The following week the topic was “What if Jesus had been gay?” In the class were also pretty conservative folks. I think if you are afraid to consider any questions about your messiah, you don’t have faith. You have a belief system, but not faith. – Your pal, AlphaBiff
AdLib
I love this. You’ve started the conversation on one of my most favorite targets. Each of your 10 points illustrating what our news media has become is spont-on. My favorite is number 6 re polls. I cannot describe the impatience I have with the continuing polling and results produced by “experts” who tell us nothing about the demographic group, liberal or conservative, north or south, east or west, all of which factor into the result. Thank you for that.
Yes, Cable news feeds us junk food every day, and we all know how bad that is for us, but we keep consuming it. Are there other choices? Yes, BBC and PBS are pretty good at keep some form of balance.
I’m so worried, AdLib, about the direction the Supreme Court is taking our country. I think even my lifetime we could see the end of the American experience. Perhaps the news as a corporate giant, as you suggest, is merely the training ground for what it be ike to live in the Corporate States of America, with leadership appointed by Citizens United, Freedom Works, and the wonder Karl Rove, the republican’s dream.
thanks for writing this. Maybe we could say a few words about tonight on Vox?
Bourne
Bourne, what I find very troubling is how accepting and matter of fact so many act as the ship they’re on is being hijacked, pillaged and looted. It does not take extraordinary brilliance to simply note that most of what the media hurls at us is not what we NEED to know and is clearly exploiting their position and our unfortunate attraction to hysteria.
On one hand, polls seem to reflect that most Americans do not have a lot of trust in MSM news. On the other hand, they gobble it up, propaganda and all.
It reminds me of the joke Woody Allen retells in Annie Hall, Two older women are eating at a restaurant, one woman says, “The food is so bad here!” and the other says, “And such small portions!”