Whenever I hear people bash TV like it was some kind of Cro-Magnum cow shit throwing entertainment vehicle, I remind them of what AWESOME programming there is on TV, like Frontline on PBS. Frontline creates some awesome news/reporting programming. Much like 60 minutes but devoting a full hour or miniseries to a topic.Frontline is currently running an excellent series called News War. They are currently on the fourth episode but you can watch them online.
In the first two hours of the series, "Secrets, Sources & Spin," Bergman talks to the major players in the debates over the role of media in U.S. society. He examines the relationship between the Bush administration and the press, the use of anonymous sources, and the consequences of the Valerie Plame leak investigation.
In part three of "News War," entitled "What's Happening to the News,"FRONTLINE examines the mounting pressure for profits faced by America's network news divisions and daily newspapers, as well as growing challenges from cable television and the Internet.
The fourth hour of "News War" is called "Stories from a Small Planet" and is produced by FRONTLINE/World. It looks at media around the globe to reveal the international forces that influence journalism and politics in the United States.
What I found fascinating is how the information that we all covet and hear/read/see is beginning to lose it's integrity because most of the news is just merely regurgitated. The population of people that actually read newspapers to get their news/information is quickly dwindling. Most people now get their news/information from the world wide web, not from TV or print media. There are web sites siting web sites that site web sites and on... There is the Blogesphere (myself included) that almost always just regurgitates news stories adding one's own spin. Even blogs are beginning to be cited as sources, both in print media and TV media.
What it is ALWAYS going to come back to, is beat reporters (mostly newsprint reporters) walking the streets to talk to the witnesses, people, visit the paces etc... to truly find out what happened. They are the ones that will ask the tough questions, ensure that sources are valid, ensure that people's stories are true.
The media at one point was the big "Media Watch Dog" that helped keep our government honest. In the last few years, they have failed themselves as well as us. They obviously do not hold all of the blame as the current administration has PLENTY of blood on their shoes . This administration provided a stream of misinformation regarding the "evidence to go to war" to those beat reporters, they pressured these beat reporters when they tried to ask the next question, to investigate the information further, but in the end, the media failed us by not putting their necks on the line for the good of the country.
Welcome to wag the dog people, we need to wake up, the world is not as we see/read/hear it.
"...William Safire, author and former New York Times political columnist, fears that hostilities between the administration and the press could threaten the media's ability to hold government accountable. "The great check and balance that was built into the Constitution is under challenge," he says. "You've got to have a relationship between the government and the press that's adversarial, but not an enemy."
Cross Posted at Rocketstar's Thoughts on Life
5 comments:
I think part of the problem is that with the success of Fox News, all the other stations are trying to copy them. So the focus has become opinion dressed as news, not news itself.
Plus, people are dumber and the current news stations give people simplicities that make them feel as though they understand the world. Which they don't.
I watch the CBC news to get a basic idea of what's going on, but if I want to know an issue more in-depth I turn to the 'net.
A couple books worth reading. One is a classic warning by Ben Bagdikian called "The Media Monopoly." It may be a bit dated unless he's continued revising it for the times, but he raised the warning of concentration of media several decades ago and of corporate influence on reporting. In many respects, Fox Opinions is the logical result of the trends that Bagdikian, a former Washington Post editor, noticed.
The other book is more recent and more directly relevant to the current situation, and that's David Brock's "The Republican Noise Machine." Brock is a former right wing journalist who had an attack of conscience (detailed in an earlier book, "Blinded By the Right") and now runs "Media Matters for America," a web site that tracks lies and spin in the right wing driven media. TRNM is a history of how news coverage has developed such a default right wing spin and how it has become the sexual partner of the GOP. He traces it back to the Goldwater movement and the origins of the myth of the liberal media, and how a steady drumbeat of that myth paved the way for a hard right culture of contemporary media. One of the more interesting observations in TRNM is that contemporary right wing media dominance is inspired by two notable early twentieth century Marxists, V.I. Lenin and Antonio Gramsci. From Lenin they adopted the stance of never acknowledging the validity of opposing viewpoints—there is absolute right and absolute wrong with no grey. All opposing opinions are not worth considering other than to be demonized. From Gramsci, they adopted the strategy of changing the culture rather than solely pursuing political power, believing that the latter strategy leads to only temporary successes, but the former will lead to permanent or long term power. Yet another example of how an extremist is an extremist is an extremist, regardless of what prayerbook he's reading from.
dodos,
I agree, the media has lost thier "objectivity". There is always subjectivity but it is the degree to such, manners if you will to the other side of the arguement.
cletus, tx for the books, it sounds like you would really enjoy the series News War.
Information is power, control the information and control all.
I agree, the media has lost thier "objectivity". There is always subjectivity but it is the degree to such, manners if you will to the other side of the arguement.
I'm not even sure it's a case of losing objectivity. Subjectivity is an acknowledgement that a certain amount of bias is inherent in everything we do, but hopefully we do our best to be honest about the presentation of evidence. I think that the problem in the American media, as exemplified by Fox Opinions, is in the latter half of that sentence. It isn't honest in how it presents evidence: "facts" are distorted or wholly made-up, and are deliberately presented in a manner to tilt the conclusion that a viewer should/would reach. That's about advocacy—in a brutal manner—for a special interest, rather than serving as both an unofficial/quasi-official record of events and an advocacy for the public good. The goals and tactics of the media are wholly reimagined and executed.
Information is power, control the information and control all.
Alas, a perverse reading of Orwell, where The Powers That Be believe that Big Brother is the hero and Winston Smith is the justified target. Orwell was, without a doubt, a prophet.
I watch Global National for news coverage--it's reasonably free of CBC-bias, and I like how Kevin Newman goes where the story is. But for opinion I turn to both sides and synthesize as best I can. I'll read the Star, which is known as the Hammer and Sickle; then I'll read the Sun and Post, which lean way right. I'll read Macleans, which has left-and-right leaning columnists, and Echo weekly, which is so far left it's almost right.
But it scares me how so many people miss blatant bias of all kinds.
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