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Chris Hedges: The Day That TV News Died
from truthdig:
The Day That TV News Died
Posted on Mar 24, 2013
By Chris Hedges
I am not sure exactly when the death of television news took place. The descent was graduala slide into the tawdry, the trivial and the inane, into the charade on cable news channels such as Fox and MSNBC in which hosts hold up corporate political puppets to laud or ridicule, and treat celebrity foibles as legitimate news. But if I had to pick a date when commercial television decided amassing corporate money and providing entertainment were its central mission, when it consciously chose to become a carnival act, it would probably be Feb. 25, 2003, when MSNBC took Phil Donahue off the air because of his opposition to the calls for war in Iraq.
Donahue and Bill Moyers, the last honest men on national television, were the only two major TV news personalities who presented the viewpoints of those of us who challenged the rush to war in Iraq. General Electric and MicrosoftMSNBCs founders and defense contractors that went on to make tremendous profits from the warwere not about to tolerate a dissenting voice. Donahue was fired, and at PBS Moyers was subjected to tremendous pressure. An internal MSNBC memo leaked to the press stated that Donahue was hurting the image of the network. He would be a difficult public face for NBC in a time of war, the memo read. Donahue never returned to the airwaves.
The celebrity trolls who currently reign on commercial television, who bill themselves as liberal or conservative, read from the same corporate script. They spin the same court gossip. They ignore what the corporate state wants ignored. They champion what the corporate state wants championed. They do not challenge or acknowledge the structures of corporate power. Their role is to funnel viewer energy back into our dead political systemto make us believe that Democrats or Republicans are not corporate pawns. The cable shows, whose hyperbolic hosts work to make us afraid self-identified liberals or self-identified conservatives, are part of a rigged political system, one in which it is impossible to vote against the interests of Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, General Electric or ExxonMobil. These corporations, in return for the fear-based propaganda, pay the lavish salaries of celebrity news people, usually in the millions of dollars. They make their shows profitable. And when there is war these news personalities assume their patriotic roles as cheerleaders, as Chris Matthewswho makes an estimated $5 million a yeardid, along with the other MSNBC and Fox hosts.
It does not matter that these celebrities and their guests, usually retired generals or government officials, got the war terribly wrong. Just as it does not matter that Francis Fukuyama and Thomas Friedman were wrong on the wonders of unfettered corporate capitalism and globalization. What mattered then and what matters now is likabilityknown in television and advertising as the Q scorenot honesty and truth. Television news celebrities are in the business of sales, not journalism. They peddle the ideology of the corporate state. And too many of us are buying. .............(more)
The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_day_that_tv_news_died_20130324/
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Chris Hedges: The Day That TV News Died (Original Post)
marmar
Mar 2013
OP
xchrom
(108,903 posts)1. du rec. nt
Richardo
(38,391 posts)2. I've said for many years that they're not telling you the news, they're selling you the news.
Which is why I never watch television coverage of even the most horrific, significant or otherwise newsworthy story... because sooner or later they'll break away from the blood, the atrocity, the human carnage and go to commercial.
And that's obscene in my book.
JayhawkSD
(3,163 posts)3. They are not selling you the news
They are selling you what they and the government want you to hear.
Richardo
(38,391 posts)4. That doesn't fit into a one-line pithy remark like mine
Selling = manipulation. No need for a bunch of footnotes in my opinion.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)5. AS Amy Goodman puts it,
"If we DID have state-run news, what would be different?"