Jim Geraghty notes ABC deliberately taking Arnold Schwarzenegger out of context. Evan Thomas was right, the media is determined to deliver John Kerry the presidency on a silver platter, and they’re perfectly willing to distort, confuse, and outright lie to do it.
The media claims that a free press is crucial to a free society. They’re correct, which is why it’s unacceptable that the majority of the mainstream media may as well be a propaganda outlet for the left.
You are right, there is no free press. It has become the corporate press, beholden to the small minority of wealthy men who run our country and own our politicians through huge campaign donations (i.e., bribes for favors). Yes, I’m sure most of them are left-wingers because they want higher taxes. Please. Your assertion of left wing “propaganda” is a joke, a sad and misinformed commentary by someone obviously blinded (by the right?) by the propaganda being put out by millionaires and billionaires who are only interested in their stock portfolios and simply try to molify the masses they couldn’t care less about via CNN and the New York Times. The definitive book on the subject is “Manufacturing Consent”, but of course people as idealogical as those who I suspect frequent this webpage would rather tag that book with a label than actually read it. Free press? Wake up, pal.
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts addressed the issue of media bias today in an excellent column. Here is some of what he said:
Bush’s supporters demand lockstep consensus that Bush is right. They regard truthful reports that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was not involved in the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. – truths now firmly established by the Bush administration’s own reports – as treasonous America-bashing.
Bush’s conservative supporters want no debate. They want no facts, no analysis. They want to denounce and demonize the enemies that the Hannitys, Limbaughs, and Savages of talk radio assure them are everywhere at work destroying their great and noble country.
I remember when conservatives favored restraint in foreign policy and wished to limit government power in order to protect civil liberties. Today’s young conservatives are Jacobins determined to use government power to impose their will at home and abroad.
…today’s conservatives are driven by ideology, not by fact. (David Brock) argues that their stock in trade is denunciation, not debate. Conservatives don’t assess opponents’ arguments, they demonize opponents. Truth and falsity are out of the picture; the criteria are: who’s good, who’s evil, who’s patriotic, who’s unpatriotic.
These are the traits of brownshirts. Brownshirts know they are right. They know their opponents are wrong and regard them as enemies who must be silenced if not exterminated.
Some of Brock’s quotes from prominent conservative commentators will curl your toes. His description of the right wing’s destruction of an independent media and the “Fairness Doctrine” explain why a recent CNN/Gallup poll found that 42% of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. and 32% believe that Saddam Hussein personally planned the attack.
A country in which 42% of the population is totally misinformed is not a country where democracy is safe.
Today there is no one to correct a lie once it is told. The media, thanks to Republicans, has been concentrated in few hands, and they are not the hands of newsmen. Corporate values rule. If lies sell, sell them. If listeners, viewers, and readers want confirmation of their resentments and beliefs, give it to them. Objectivity turns listeners off and is a money loser.
In his book, Cruel and Unusual, Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University, explains how right-wing influence has moved the media away from reporting news to designing our consciousness. “The Age of Information,” Miller writes, “has turned out to be an Age of Ignorance.”
Miller makes a strong case. His description of how CNN and Fox News destroyed the credibility of Scott Ritter, the leading expert on Iraq’s weapons, reveals a media completely given over to propaganda. Ritter stood in the way of the neocons’ invasion of Iraq.
CNN’s Miles O’Brien, Eason Jordan, Catherine Callaway, Paula Zahn, Kyra Phillips, Arthel Neville, and Fox News’ David Asman and John Gibson portrayed Ritter as a disloyal American, a Ba’athist stooge on the take from Saddam Hussein, and compared him to Jane Fonda in North Vietnam.
With this, the right-wing talk radio crazies were off and running. Anyone with the slightest bit of real information about the state of weapons development in Iraq was dismissed as a foreign agent who should be shot for treason.
By substituting fiction for reality, the U.S. media took the country to war. The CNN and Fox News “journalists” are as responsible for America’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq as Cheney and Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle.
With a sizable percentage of the U.S. population now addicted to daily confirmations of their resentments and hatreds, U.S. policy will be increasingly driven by tightly made-up minds in pursuit of unrealistic agendas.
American troops are in Iraq on false pretenses. No one knows all the fateful consequences of this mistaken adventure. Bush’s reelection would be seen as a vindication of aggression, and more aggression would likely follow. A continuing expenditure of blood, money, alliances, good will, and civil liberties is not a future to which to look forward.
wait scott ritter, the same scott ritter who said “Iraq should be subjected to a major campaign that seeks to destroy the regime of Saddam Hussein.” because he was kicked out in 1998? Oh and then turned around and said that “The truth of the matter is that Iraq today is not a threat to its neighbours and is not acting in a manner which threatens anyone outside of its own borders” (source http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2247600.stm not a conservative site by the way)
You mean that guy? The one who supposedly knew better then anyone, and yet changed his mind, during a period of time in which he was not in Iraq?
That guy?
You may be right about how the right wing ideologues have definetly made discussion difficult, but alot of blame can alsobe laid at the feet of the left, who are still reeling from having to face a real challenge to their power and control over the forum of ideas. The left, in my opinion is just as crazy as the right, and just as less interested in talking. And while rich people control the media, keep in mind they don’t care which side wins, they just want a battle, because battles mean ratings. They gave the war a pass, because they knew that a war is a major media event. If liberals could find a way to make their enws get ratings, I bet you fox would follow suit.