The Right Dictates MSNBC's Programing Decisions: by Glenn Greenwald

[EV_Ares]

MSNBC's announcement that it is replacing Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews with David Gregory as anchors for its main political events (the upcoming presidential debates and election) vividly illustrates several long-obvious facts. First, nothing changes the behavior of our media corporations more easily than vocal demands and complaints from the Right, which petrify media executives and cause them to snap into line. From today's New York Times article identifying some of the causes for MSNBC's decision. In response to media criticism that the press is insufficiently substantive and adversarial to political power, the claim is frequently made that media outlets are simply driven by the profit motive, and that their programming choices are nothing more than a by-product of ratings. But in MSNBC's case, that is plainly untrue. Back in 2003, they actually canceled their highest-rated program, Phil Donahue's show, for purely ideological reasons -- because, at a time when the establishment "liberal media" were systematically amplifying the Government's pro-war views and excluding anti-war views, that short-lived MSNBC show was one of the only venues in America where one could hear anti-war viewpoints, and NBC's fear of angering the Government and the Right clearly caused them, first, to impose extreme and unusual restrictions on the show's content, and then to cancel it altogether.

Rest of this article by Greenwald @ the link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/08/msnbc/index.html

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Anyone who thinks the media is not in the pocket of the repukes must be living in a parallel

universE!!!!!!!!! :mad: :mad: :puke: :puke: :wtf: :wtf: :grr: :grr: :nuke: :nuke: :banghead: :banghead:

[democraticmajority]

2. The Media takes its orders from Hannity, Limbaugh & Rove.

Most of the media is republican and highly sympathetic to Bush/ Cheney/ Rove / McCain. The mainstream media refuses to hold Bush/ McCain and Palin to account for their numerous lies, distortions, exaggerations and their collective acts of hypocrisy and cynical posturing. McCain and Palin have lied repeatedly about Obama wanting to raise taxes (the truth being that most Americans would receive a tax cut under President Obama and the Democrats).
McCain in 2008 is the not the same guy who ran against Bush in 2000 and who nearly left the GOP after Bush's dubious victory.
Not a mention of the differences in the MSM. Instead, we get the likes of Dana Bash and Ed Henry parroting every talking point the Republican press office instructs them to broadcast.
McCain makes dozens of flip-flops and the media lets him away with it.

McCain has had four incidents of the deadly Melanoma skin cancer and could easily die within the next two years. What would this mean for the Country ?
We would then be left with a far-right fundamentalist redneck in Sarah Palin as President whose policies are far more extreme than Bush and Cheney combined.

When is the Media going to wake up and start asking some proper questions to the Republicans ? The MSM misled the people into believing Bush's case for war in Iraq, aided Karl Rove's smears and continually lets the Republicans get away with falsehoods.