When did the media start changing?

[IsItJustMe]

I can no longer tell who's a honest to god reporter and a reporter with an agenda anymore.

I know that years ago you always had a few people that offered news opinions (ie. George Will, William F. Buckley) but now it seems like all of these reporters have an agenda.

I quit watching Fox a few years ago because I finally woke up and realized the whole damn network had an agenda.

Then I started watching MSNBC. But then they started hiring all of these agenda driven reporters (Joe Scarborough, Pat Buchanan, Carl Tuckerson). I thought to myself, damn, I don't like brain washing so I quit watching that channel.

Now I wonder about every reporter and can hardly stand any of them.
Now I have to do some serious searching to get any type of objectivity?

To me the change was subtle.

When or why did this happen?

[neuvocat]

1. The Reagan Era.

Basically the reporters were trying to out-do one another on the love fest and its all gone to shit since.

[RagingInMiami]

2. Started in the late 1990s, but probably even before then

But in the late 90s was when major news companies started buying up smaller companies and merging with each other.

[liveoaktx]

3. Have you seen the DVD "Orwell Rolls in his Grave"?

It's one of the best explanations for why the media sucks now.

One other thing-there used to be a distinction in people's minds between broadcast and cable/sat-broadcast MUST comply with the FCC and include public interest programming because they are using the airwaves for free-but cable/sat can do what it wants because it's pay and it's paying for the infrastructure.

[FloridaPat]

4. Look what it took for Woodward & Burnstien to get their investigations

into the paper. The MSM has always given the gov't the benefit of the doubt. It started getting obvious during Reagans years. During Clinton's term, they went into trying to get anything on the Clintons. And now ignoring everything on the *. I had to stop watching in 1981 when I found out the gov't lies and the media just repeats the lies. And as Greg Palast says, the job of investigative reporting is dead. It died with Woodward and Burnstien.

[gunsaximbo]

5. As soon as Reagan deregulated it.

and allowed a foreign company and non us citizen (murdoch) to own and broadcast on American owned airwaves. Up to that point it was illegal.

[annabanana]

15. Bingo!

This is where the laws changed, This is where the corruption began to pour in...

[MADem]

6. Those clowns are not reporters though

They are opinion columnists. Reporters are everyone from David Gregory to Brian Williams to Candy (she has an agenda) Crowley and Wolf (he has one too) Blitzer.

But if they are spouting their opinion, as Buchanan, Buckley, Will, Scarborough (former GOP congressman) and Tucker the twit are doing, they are NOT reporters.

[Mind_your_head]

7. Since discontinuance of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987

<snip>
The Fairness Doctrine from 1949 until 1987, when it was discontinued by the Federal Communications Commission, required broadcasters, as a condition of getting their licenses from the FCC, to cover controversial issues in their community, and to do so by offering some balancing views. It did not require equal time for opposing views. It merely prevented a station from day after day presenting a single view without airing opposing views.

The fairness doctrine's constitutionality was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark 1969 case, Red Lion Broadcasting v. FCC (395 U.S. 367). The Court ruled that it did not violate a broadcaster's First Amendment rights. Five years later, however, in Miami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo (418 U.S. 241), without ruling the doctrine unconstitutional, the Court concluded that the doctrine "inescapably dampens the vigor and limits the variety of public debate". In 1984, the Court concluded that the scarcity rationale underlying the doctrine was flawed and that the doctrine was limiting the breadth of public debate (FCC v. League of Women Voters, 468 U.S. 364).

The Court's decision led to the FCC reevaluation and discontinuance of the Fairness Doctrine. The FCC stated: "We no longer believe that the Fairness Doctrine, as a matter of policy, serves the public interests. In making this determination, we do not question the interest of the listening and viewing public in obtaining access to diverse and antagonistic sources of information. Rather, we conclude that the Fairness Doctrine is no longer a necessary or appropriate means by which to effectuate this interest. We believe that the interest of the public in viewpoint diversity is fully served by the multiplicity of voices in the marketplace today and that the intrusion by government into the content of programming occasioned by the enforcement of the doctrine unnecessarily restricts the journalistic freedom of broadcasters. Furthermore, we find that the Fairness Doctrine, in operation actually inhibits the presentation of controversial issues of public importance to the detriment of the public and in degradation of the editorial prerogative of broadcast journalists."
<snip>
http://www.twf.org/News/Y1997/Fairness.html

---------------

Multiplicity of voices in the marketplace today? Is that what we hear today...now that we can see how this has 'all turned out'? It seems to me that it's all Orwell-speak for "everybody shops at WalMart"? No choices, no voices, no variety.....mass production, mass demand has run amok!

[dorkulon]

11. That's it, plus

the deregulations on market share.

[AndyTiedye]

8. It All Changed When The Media Was Bought

[WCGreen]

9. Don't trust anyone on TV or the radio.....

Those people are not, I repeat, not journalists... They rip and read... That's all they do... They point at something and say look at that....

Watch Broadcast News....

[Berry Cool]

10. Completely and entirely untrue. Olbermann still writes his own stuff.

And anyone who has "given up on the media" should start watching him and see if you have the same opinion afterward.

He's one of the few real journalists left.

[clyro]

12. in all fairness...

the media has ALWAYS been like this, save for notable exceptions of course. In recent years with the shrinking number of giant corporations controlling news on an ever-wider scale, it has intensified.

A big part of the difference today IMO is the increased abundance and accessibility of alternative sources, especially online, such that people potentially have a larger frame of information within which to judge the credibility of mainstream news content. i.e. if you're not aware of an alternative frame of referene, your ability to criticise is going to be more limited.

[lectrobyte]

13. but in all fairness, the media has not always been like this...

If you are old enough to remember coverage of Chicago '68, Vietnam, Watergate etc. The media was much different. Reporters were investigating instead of embedding. After Watergate, there seemed to be a group of idealistic crusading reporters. Remember CNN before Time Warner bought it? To me it seems to have really deteriorated in the last 15 years, maybe longer.

[annabanana]

17. wrong.. the increase in online sources is the RESULT

of shrinking options in traditional sources...
Not the cause. This was also used as an EXCUSE for deregulation... and a disingenuous one at that.

[mwb970]

16. I agree. KO is the real deal. (n/t)

[WCGreen]

18. He still relies on other people to get his stuff....

[rucky]

14. Monica n/t

[leftofthedial]

19. immediately after Watergate, which was a neocon

coup within the repuke party and a takeover of party power

they then executed a plan to seize control of the US media (part of their plan--as silly as this sounds--for global domination)

Reagan complicated matters by turning the CIA loose on the US domestic media and using the media as a propaganda machine to influence domestic opinion, much like Radio Free Europe and other propaganda efforts had influenced foreign opinion. the message, of course, is the most reactionary RW bullshit.

Then, when Clinton defied their schemes and won election--twice--the "VRWC" coopted even more of the media as outlets for their anti-Clinton lies.

So now, we have corporate ownership (5 companies) of virtually all US media, news staff heavily infiltrated by the CIA and RW thinktanks and essentially nothing but either corporate or administration propaganda 24X7.