My word. I'm with Tangerine. You didn't REALLY mean that shrill nonsense, did you, Victoria L.?

You must be a very difficult person to deal with, is all I can say. Did it ever occur to you that Pelosi is engaged in DIPLOMACY??? When you're engaged in DIPLOMACY you do as the romans do, within limits.

Tangerine. You're right. That was a very stupid post with Victoria L.'s name on it.

C'mon Vicky. You can do better than that.

Because of media consolidation in the 1990s, a result of GOP deregulation of the market, MSM is now largely in the hands of right-wing corporate CEOs, who find that having their media outlets parrot the GOP party-line is good for business.

The moment that parroting is NOT good for business is the moment it will change..although it may change slowly, because if profits and ideology come into conflict, it'll take some for that conflict to resolve.

Right now, there's a lot of money in MSM parroting the right. It's good for business, and it's good for corporate executives' relationships with the GOP, to which most of them, if not all of them, belong.

Let's keep things straight here. Money talks. And the corporate control of MSM means that MSM is going to say whatever the suits want it to say.

I appreciate the way in which you call these traitors out with nearly every post lately. I do. You are doing the country a service. But it might also be interesting to examine just WHY the MSM is doing this. It's partly the reporters themselves maintaining their cozy relationships with those still in power, yes, but don't you think if those reporters *bosses* told them to go at the job another way, they would?

Glenn wrote, way back there...

Why did the corporate bosses allow such stories out? Everyone who has an Overaching Unifying Theory about how things work can always take contrary evidence and use it to support their theory (they do that to create the illusion of a working press, etc. etc.).

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I should have been a little more thoughtful in my initial post. I am not a conspiracy theorist by any means. I don't think anyone meets with anyone to plan much of anything...unless you're talking about the mutants in Cheney's office.. {g}

Rather, I know that reporters have supervisors--editors--and those editors have supervisors. In short, in general, MSM runs like any other business. *If* those supervisors thought that their reporters' work was substandard (that, for instance, it parroted GOP talking points..or White House talking points without any analysis at all), those supervisors--those editors--would make some changes.

The fact that these reporters editors do nothing, begs the question: why? If it's so obvious to us that much (not all, but much) of MSM's work in reporting the news is arrogant, lazy, and simply wrong, howcome it's not obvious to the editors? That's not a political issue either: that's a technical issue. An issue of basic craft.

So, my question remains, or, rather, my question is this: who benefits when reporters parrot GOP talking points? Who benefits when reporters in MSM treat the right-wing fringe as mainstream? What reasons do professional reporters have for doing lousy work? I'm sure those reasons are overdetermined...as the shrinks say...but, in the end, someone is evaluating the work of these reporters on a daily basis. As a matter of business. Why are the editors falling down on the job so badly? Just askin'.

I had not read Rosenberg's essay before. It certainly lays out the problem with a welcome exactitude.

Seems to me you can't have an argument with people like this. They won't listen to you. And if you do have an argument with them (or discussion, or debate), they will never be convinced that their views are nonsensical...or fascist.

So, if there's nothing to be done about people like this...I guess it's necessary to sway those who are not yet RWAs, yes?

shooter wrote, more or less:

"unless you have something better to offer, authoritarianism is the only game in town."

First, where's your objective evidence for a sick, twisted apologia like that? Did you just pull that one out of your backside? Sounds like it.

Second, I commend to you this bit of wisdom, if you have the wit to understand it:

First They Came for the Jews

First they came for the Jews

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists

and I did not speak out

because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists

and I did not speak out

because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left

to speak out for me.

Pastor Martin Niemöller

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and who are the "they" exactly? The authoritarians. When they come for you, by-and-by, if things work out as you seem to wish, you might give a thought to Niemoller's observation..