'How the US Press Lost Its Way' by Robert Parry at Consortiumnews.com

[applegrove]

How the US Press Lost Its Way
at Consortiumnews.com
May 15, 2012

http://consortiumnews.com/2012/05/15/how-the-us-press-lost-its-way/


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Exclusive: People often wonder what happened to the American press after it distinguished itself in the 1970s by exposing the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. How did the U.S. news media lose its way over the past four decades, a question addressed by Robert Parry at a conference on information and secrecy.

By Robert Parry


Think how the CIA would target a country with the goal of shoring up a wealthy oligarchy. The Agency might begin by taking over influential media outlets or starting its own. It would identify useful friends and isolate troublesome enemies.

It would organize pro-oligarchy political groups. It would finance agit-prop specialists skilled at undermining and discrediting perceived enemies. If the project were successful, you would expect the oligarchy to consolidate its power, to get laws written in its favor. And eventually the winners would take a larger share of the nation’s wealth.

And what we saw in the late 1970s and early 1980s in the United States was something like the behavior of an embattled oligarchy. Nixon’s embittered allies and the Right behaved as if they were following a CIA script. They built fronts; they took over and opened new media outlets; they spread propaganda; they discredited people who got in the way; ultimately, they consolidated power; they changed laws in their favor; and – over the course of several decades – they made themselves even richer, indeed a lot richer, and that, in turn, has translated into even more power.

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[Mnemosyne]

1. K&R

[goclark]

3. K and R

[Blue_Tires]

2. How? For the love of God how do you write that much about the decline of the 4th Estate

Without even a mention of that shitty TeleCom Act of 1996? Heavy deregulation and only nominal ownership restrictions greased the skids for a full corporate takeover in every city (Before it, a certain bastard named Murdoch NEVER would have become as big in this country as he is now -- He was one of the big pimps of this on Capitol Hill as well)...One by one, news guys in charge were gradually replaced by MBA managers, lawyers or other corporate lackeys, and the quality of news coverage immediately took a backseat to bottom-line profits and quarterly earnings reports for the stockholders...A glaring omission, imo