Letters to the Editor
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Glenn, Glenn, Glenn
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?
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It's all because
It's all because the Main Stream Media is so unabashedly Liberal!
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Haven't they ever heard of a water cooler.....?
I'm pretty well removed from what one might refer to as the American "street" living as I do 1400 miles from the mainland. But at least I have the courtesy to acknowlege the fact. The CNN talking head crew on the other hand doesn't have that excuse. It they wanted to know what the average American thought, they could find one, walk up to him (or her) and ask. I suspect that most people now realize that the refusal to even talk to someone is a sure path to ignorance. Even failing that, they certainly realize that our current dilemma was caused by willful ignorance.
Your Haaretz link is particularly telling. When the US is taking a harder line than Israel then you KNOW that something is being twisted beyond recognition.
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Captain Buzzkill
I love your stuff, Glenn, and you are always correct ... but isn't there ANY encouraging news on the media front? Even some proof that Americans know the Malveauxs and all the rest are completely full of shit? I guess the polls show it but I hope to hell this butt-kissing pack of stenographers doesn't prevail.
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What about WaPo?
For the most part, I agree. However, you can't completely talk fringe as long as the Washington Post's lead editorial takes the tone it did on Thursday. And Malveaux may be headed for the fringe, I certainly hope, but CNN is pretty mainstream too.
Reading the comments following the Post editorial was pretty discouraging. As a minority writer said, it's apparent that AIPAC mailed it out as a rapid response talking point, and America's pro-Israel mafia fell into line.
The response to Conason's column on Salon today is pretty discouraging, too. Do people not get how important, even historic, this is, even ones who might be expected to?
But this Congress's actions are forming a pattern, and it's a pretty positive one. As one action reinforces another, we should be able to use that to force a recognition of change in media like the WaPo, CNN, and even Salon, and push the fringies back to the corner where they spawned.
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Media motivations:
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?
No. I don't think there is one overaching, simple explanation as to why the media behaves as it does ("Corporate capitalist bosses want $$$$$$ -- GOP gives them $$$$$!").
How did you find out the Bush administration was eavesdropping on Americans illegally? How did you learn that it was maintaining secret prisons in Eastern Europe? Or engaging in rendition? Or torturing people? Or neglecting Walter Reed?
This is the front-page headline in today's Washington Post: "Hussein's Prewar Ties To Al-Qaeda Discounted" -- and the first paragraph of the article:
Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.
The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February.
The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.
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.).
But there are multiple explanations for why the press operates as it does and all sorts of motivations that explain every individual journalists' and editor's decisions. That the largest corporations own the largest media outlets is undoubtedly a factor in how they function, but it doesn't explain everything, and even that factor has multiple aspects to it beyond "corporations love the GOP" (e.g., viewing newspapers and news divisions as profit centers places an emphasis on reporting that is cheap, gossipy and easy over substantive investigative work that requires far more resources).
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Travelling Congressmen controversial. Yeeeah.
I wonder if *any* Speaker of the House since about 1950 has stayed inside the United States for the whole time they held the office. Certainly there's been grumbling here and there about "gallivanting Congressmen" since at least the 1970s.