The Media's Crystal Ball.

[ClassWarrior]

I think this is one of the things that's most wrong with the media these days. Tweety predicts thus-and-such will happen tomorrow in the debate! The national polls say so-and-so will be the winner in November! Our "official network terror experts" say we're all gonna die on or about this-and-this date!...

The press doesn't perform their traditional and rightful function of reporting what HAPPENED anymore. Now they all scramble to conjure up what WILL BE. And you know what? Most of the time they're just plain WRONG. But that doesn't matter, they still insist on playing these infantile Ouija Board parlor games.

We and our fellow travelers in the public eye need to start calling them on this - loudly.

NO CRYSTAL BALLS!!

23.

[ClassWarrior]

1. Wow. Has my sparkling logic left you all speechless?...

23.

[KharmaTrain]

2. LOL...Hardly...Things Move Fast Here

I agree and add this...the media prefers to manufacture news now...they want it to conform to something they can market and manipulate. For a while that meant bashing Democrats...a residual of the Clinton sex frenzy...but maybe we've started to see a swing in that pendulum.

[ClassWarrior]

5. True, but we shouldn't accept that paradigm no matter which way...

...the pendulum swings. It's dangerous.

Remember, the press' only product is their credibility. Think about that. It's all they have to sell. It's the only value they add to their raw material, the news itself.

So if we start calling them out on manufactured news, and we make them look ridiculous by calling them Kreskin and invoking tea leaves and such, they'll realize that their credibility is being threatened. Then see how fast they change their game.

23.

[KharmaTrain]

9. Credibility? That's Manufactured, Too

Calling them out (as some of us have for a long time) hasn't done much...we don't write paychecks or buy huge blocks of advertising or are high paid consultants that say this is what people say or think.

We're just people...the "huddled masses" of uniformed. How dare us to question how they do their job. What do we know? We're just pinheads that wish we could be them...and they wish to be the rich and powerful they cover and are attracted to.

The good thing is most people are smarter than the "smart ones" think. It's this underestimation I've enjoyed all my life and have profited from...may we all.

There's gonna be a day of reckoning for many in the media as they will have to account for words they've said or written that will be proven to have abetted a criminal enterprise.

Cheers!

BTW...has the Feingold debate happened? I hope CSPAN carries it.

[w4rma]

11. They are paid to propagandize us. We are not paying them directly.

They are being paid by the folks who want less regulations on their buisnesses. Less taxes taken out of their profits. No estate tax so they can better keep their family's aristocracy in place for as long as possible. Lower wages and salaries for the rest of us so they can shave a couple of bucks off of their employees' bank accounts into their own.

Big media is paid to pacify us as we are price gouged and stolen from.

[ClassWarrior]

12. True, but we do pay them in attention.

And this profit-making tool doesn't work if people don't believe it and tune out, physically or mentally.

23.

[KharmaTrain]

16. Carlin calls it's "little choices"

We really have no choices in our lives...just little ones...paper & plastic, smoking/non smoking and so on.

The man is a genius!

[Lerkfish]

4. no, your sparkling logic has left us speechless....er...wait...

kidding aside, I just now read this.
I agree the crystal ball thing is annoying, but I also know they all feel they must do that to some extent. Its not going to go away.

[ClassWarrior]

8. In a sense, though, you're doing the same thing...

...by saying it's not going to go away. I'm so tired of hearing "it's going to be this way..." or "it's not going to be that way..."

I'm ready to go out and try to slay me some corporate media giants - and see for myself what happens. Not be paralyzed into inaction because of what someone says MIGHT happen.

Now where's that slingshot??...

23.

[Lerkfish]

13. here's how to make it go away...

end the demand for it.

the media only supplies what they think consumers wish to read. If you prove to them otherwise, they'll stop.

The fact is, as long as people WANT to read projections, they'll do it.

*shrugs* just laying it on the line for you.

[RoyalWickedness]

3. Isn't it pathetic

that "crystal" seems to be the ONLY type of balls the press has any more?

[ClassWarrior]

6. LOL - sweet.

I started to go there, but you beat me to it!

23.

[liberal N proud]

7. It sound so ....

like something you would hear on CBS Sunday Morning. Only they would never talk about these subjects.

[ClassWarrior]

10. ~nudge~

23.

[ClassWarrior]

14. ~bump~

23.

[ClassWarrior]

15. ~whack~

23.

[bringbackfdr]

17. The media has no balls

Crystal or otherwise.