Has it occurred to many of us in here that both sides accuse the media...

[Writer]

of colluding with politicians on the OTHER side?

Reference this:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x34272

And what do you think about that?

:popcorn:

[aquart]

1. THEY are lying.

[tjwash]

2. I think that Rupert Murdoch and General Electric are laughing their asses off...

...all the way to the bank.

[jpgray]

3. The media are all over the place on issues--the bias may be the GOP playing them better

Or it may be the influence of changing news divisions' role in a media conglomerate from "expected loss" to "make money or else." That's where you get the format of hiring one hand-holder as chair ballast while two experts argue, since it is very cheap to produce. Of course said experts are like the debating partisans on message boards--naturally any time a negative story comes up, it's fun to argue the media are biased against one view or the other. That doesn't mean, however, that the truth is "somewhere in-between," as is too often implied. Sometimes two sides can disagree and one will be right while the other is wrong. In my opinion, the hands-off approach to this administration and this president as a candidate, the horrible treatment of Gore and Kerry, etc., all indicate a bias to the GOP. For what reason? That's hard to say.

[Bucky]

14. Very thoughtful post. This makes a lot more sense than "The MSM are fascist whores" argument.

[AndyTiedye]

17. The News Division is a Very Large Hammer for the Corporation to Use

If the Corporation wants Repiglickins to win, the news division will do everything they can to make Repiglickins look good.

[blondeatlast]

4. Yes, but the media has set themselves up for such critique. They are lazy,

vain, and easily manipulated and now--far too intimate with the Beltway.

When we truly had an objective press and the "liberal media" meme was coined, we also had a very corrupt RW government.

[LSK]

5. dont really understand your point

:shrug:

[Solly Mack]

6. beats reaping any of the blame yourself

We had a middle sister for that growing up....(I'm the baby)

the media is a tool...it should be a tool for the benefit of the people...instead it's a tool for whatever passes for coin (wealth, power, position, control)

However, none of that changes the fact that (some) members of the media, as well as the companies they work for, have a very deliberate slant

Propaganda can be true...what many don't seem to know or remember...doesn't stop it from being propaganda - but just because it's propaganda doesn't make it a lie.

[AndyTiedye]

8. About 30% of the Population Will Believe ANYTHING They See On TV. ANYTHING!

How are we to blame for that? How do we fight it? There is no way to reach people like that.

Any lie repeated often enough will be believed by most people.

[Solly Mack]

12. That is true

[AndyTiedye]

7. Doesn't Mean The MSM is Being Fair

You have to look at

[Edweird]

9. Yeah, and freepers were saying 10 years ago, almost word for word

what we are saying now. Just substitute Clinton with W and it's so much alike that it's scary. Right down to talk about impeachment, treason, dictatorship, war crimes,our country's standing in the world, new world order, conspiracies, everything.

Except that they, somehow, were able to impeach over a mans private life, and we can't even stop funding an illegal war.

And you can expect that Jan 2009 we will hear a relentless unbearable noise about how our newly elected Democratic President has too much power and SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE! Count on it. They are already warming up for it.

[AndyTiedye]

16. 10 Years Ago The Repiglickin' Media Was Giving Us All Monica All the Time

Kind of a bit different from their coverage of Repiglickin' scandals, isn't it?

[Edweird]

26. The scourge of media consolidation.

They definitely have the upper hand when it comes to propagating their message.

[unpossibles]

10. the other side accuses us of just about everything they do

it's a nice mix of projection and obfuscation propaganda. Like when they accuse GCC scientists and Evolution scientists of being "fundamentalists," and they claim we parrot George Soros because Rupert Murdoch told them so, or when they claim to represent the working class, or say that the left hates America, etc. Pretty much everything they say I try to take with a grain of salt.

[fed-up]

11. my neighbor went w/us to his 1st protest ever-Arnold-"town hall" meeting

Even though he was in great pain from a recent injury he stood with us while we held signs waiting for Arnold to show up to the event. There were about 50 people total outside that were not permitted into the event as it was invitation only. About 35 were there for SB 840, Single payer, universal health care and the other 15 had made a 1-2 hour drive to protest Arnold's cutting of mental health care programs.

He watched the local TV coverage and there was NO mention of the people outside. He read the paper that stated there were a "handful" of people. He is in shock at the lack/distortion of coverage.


He is NO LONGER drinking the Kool-Aid.

[Robbien]

13. Your point being? You like starting straw arguments

and then sit back and eat popcorn?

Sick.

[Bucky]

15. The bitching of people with no power will always follow set patterns

I flatter myself that our bitching about biased news organizations is more fact-based than freeper bitchings about the "liberal media." But honestly, I don't watch the news enough to back that up. Once I saw the TV news is too shallow to be worth my time, I quit watching it.

What I do know for a fact is that when liberals gripe about media bias, we have evidence of things like the 50% of the country that still thinks Iraq was tied to 9/11. Knowing that that many people in the country have been misled, news organizations continue doing nothing to dispel this dangerous ignorance. When the freeps were bitching about the last Democratic scandal nine years ago, everyone in the country more or less understood the facts: the president fooled around with a hoochie and then lied about it.

What we care about is different from what they care about. I reject any strict parallelisms.

[ItNerd4life]

18. Don't give me the facts, my minds made up.

That is how most people live there lives. It's why people don't talk religion and politics to each other, they take it personally and don't want to hear opposing view.

People love spouting facts, but are they true? A friend of mine used to say "that is a true fact, as opposed to any other type of fact". It's very true, it's all in peoples perceptions, no matter what the facts are, and no matter if the facts are 'true facts' vs. just a fact.

[baldguy]

19. When both sides are given equal time & balanced treatment, the RW whiners cry "THAT'S *SO* UNFAIR!!"

Just like little Billy O'Reilly

[spanone]

20. The media is in the entertainment business, not the news business.

[dogday]

21. Ah shucks, everyone knows it is the "Libral Media"

:sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm::sarcasm:

[mod mom]

22. It's just like the rovian talking points of crying voter fraud when they are stealing

elections.

[ComerPerro]

23. Well, if you look at a lot of complaints by conservatives, most of the time

they say things like "and the liberal media won't tell you things like this, because they don't want you to know".

But usually those things are complete and utter lies, pulled out of thin air and comprised of total bullshit.

Of course the media won't report that Clinton has murdered 500 people who would have otherwise stood in his way! Its not true! Why would they?

But conservatives use the media's reluctance to report complete lies as evidence of the media trying to "cover up"

[Cleita]

24. Well the Democrats are telling the truth. Most of the media is

biased in favor of conservative politics and politicians. The Republicans are projecting and accusing the media of being liberal, which they know they are not, so therefore the Republicans are lying. Ann Coulter's rise to infamy was on accusations that the "liberal" media wasn't telling them the truth so therefore they should read her drivel to get it instead. If I were the media, I would resent the accusation of being liberal from the very party that they are enabling with lies, distortions, ommissions and disinformation.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

25. The media is concerned with selling beer and tostitos. Not politiics.

So, whatever the consumers will watch is what they put on the air.

[Rosemary2205]

32. that's not entirely true

For most news outlets yes, it's true, but at the very least FOXnews and the radio stations that carry a full day of Boortz, Hannity, Rush, Savage etc non stop have an agenda.

[yella_dawg]

27. This issue, like most in the political theater,

is managed. Sort of like the "win by 50% + 1 vote" strategy. The important thing is dissension within the electorate. As long as we constantly fight each other, we can't gang up on them: Politics 101.


I overheard a Fox radio news report a week or so ago. Thirty seconds of "We all gonna die!!!" tens of thousands of potential dead, a horror beyond imagining, then immediately they cut to their "expert" soundbite where some engineer explained that blowing up the JFK fuel pipeline would result in a small spill, then the safeties would stop the flow. There might be a fire.

Thus any statement can carry any message, if only it is properly framed.

[KansDem]

28. I've thought about this many times...Here's my take (for what its worth)

The neo-cons have been bitching for years, even decades, about how the media is "liberal." Even today, with the media so entrenched in neo-con fascist policies, news shows and reporters are labeled "liberal." I believe this was a deliberate attempt to put an end to the kind of investigative reporting and "no holds barred" kind of journalism that brought down corrupt Republicans like Nixon, Reagan/Bush, Bush/Cheney, and their illegal cons like Iran/Contra and now all the crap coming down the pike today.

Their plan was simple: demonize "liberalism" (Reagan made "liberal" a dirty word), then accuse the media of being "liberal." As they were achieving this, the media was being bought up and consolidated under just a few neo-cons. This helped to put the kibosh on serious journalism and investigative reporting. Then the neo-cons, through their pals in the media, could control the message throughly: play up "mother, apple pie, and the girl next door," while suppressing any truth about the crimes being committed by those who hold the reigns of power. This gave the corporatists (Bush Family, Halliburton, etc) a free hand to practice their malfeasance.

Typically, when I hear "liberal media" I think journalists digging up dirt on the neo-cons; when I hear "media whores" I think journalists doing their jobs hiding the dirt of neo-cons.

[MadBadger]

29. I've brought this up before, and it is no use

People like Chris Matthews are treated as a RW shill hear, but in other circles is considered a LW jackass. So which is he?

[JeffR]

30. "Shill" and "jackass" work for me

No need to qualify those descriptors with RW or LW at all, really.

[ProfessorGAC]

31. Self-Promoting Buffoon, Works Too!

GAC