Fitz?

Wow. That was awesome. I’ve never done that before.

darn it!

The 4th branch? Well, the exploited versions of media may be dwindling in ability, but the ability for people – for all people – to engage in debate on the Internet sure has given this 4th branch more breathing room.

The politi-blogs are one of course. This new Myspace thing is certainly more powerful than anything else (hell, 14 year old girls having web pages and blogs? That’s certainly a form of empowerment if I’ve ever seen it). I say blogs and sites like Myspace, which allow for different levels of discourse are steps in the right direction.

Cardinal rule: assume that the corpmedia is hostile to any dem candidate and is mired in its ruts of cocktail weeinieism and junior high school popularity appraisal.

The fourth estate is a fifth column.

The Fourth Estate Sale is over,it sold for a bag of cocktail weenies.

What do we do about it?

I wrote about my thoughts on that here:

http://www.firedoglake.com/200…..is-policy/

Great piece, Christy, and anyone who hasn’t read Pach’s piece from #7 should follow the link and do so. As Digby often says, the media is so in bed (literally) with the Republican establishment that they’ve become one, enabled by a weak Democratic establishment. They ALL need revamping, retooling, replacing. The models that have led us here are quite outdated.

I’ve been saying ofr over a year now that the problem is at the ownership level. My guess is that the fiscal / business management of all the big media control operations management. (I know that Graham and Sulzberger simultaneously head both the business and the operations boards of their respective organizations.

The Republicans promise low taxes, deregulation and various other material benefits, and the financial people put pressure on the news / opinion people. Advertiser pressure and control by diversified corporations may also play a role, as may fear or organized, funded winger pressure groups.

For several years we’ve been blaming a very large number of visible bylined individuals, and begging management to hire more competent, less frivolous, less biased talent. But if management’s the problem, we’re just making fools of ourselves.

People think “conspiracy theory” when I say this, I suppose. But it isn’t paranoid to say that management controls the businesses they manage. There’s been a long string of major stories dominated by basically Republican storylines: the Clinton impeachment, the Gore-Bush election, the runup to the Iraq war, and many other smaller stories. Katrina seemed like it would cause a break, but Katrina has been forgotten.

The conclusion is that we need new media on the model of Air America — a national nespaper and a cable channel at a minimum. It would cost money, but the monbey is out there. (For whatever reason, the big liberal donors don’t put their money in media. Air America was very poorly supported at first. Someone has to kick them in the butt and get them in touch with reality.)

Too cool, Raw story headline links to Daourepot’s
“The Grit” website. Quotes Christy on Bushes Bubble post. Actual Raw Story headline,”Blogs call Post Bush story ‘Bullshit’”.
Priceless.

Link.

http://daoureportgrit.blogspot…..le-bs.html

I sent the following letter to Calame (yeah with misspelled name and all) early this morning rightg after I read the column:

Dear Mr. Calme:

I had been waiting with interest to see how you would handle what I knew, after reading the front page article on the state of the Clinton marriage, would be the almost universal scorn heaped upon the Times, justifiably, in my opinion.

Alas, instead of any type of advocacy to hold the Times to its once-high journalistic standards, we are treated to unsubstantiated and contradictory descriptions of the critics of the article and exclamations of “surprise” at facts that the reporter later admitted, on national television no less, should not be all that surprising. You also profess amazement that a front page article that dredged up a marital infidelity of 10 years ago, drew conclusions from interviews with at least 50 anonymous sources, while quoting none and, in your own words, contained “(o)ne paragraph, containing a year-old anecdote about Mr. Clinton’s social life”, which “should have gone in the trash can;”, “another” that “should have been purged of its zippiness.”, which article “was slightly overplayed at the top of the front page” and which was dissected ad nauseum by the cable news networks, was not criticized more for, “appearing too considerate to the Clintons”.

Unlike you, I will attempt to substantiate my opinions with facts. as to your unsubstantiated and contradictory descriptions of critics of the article, one need only go to your first sentence. You state that, “COMPLAINTS about the May 23 Page 1 article on Hillary and Bill Clinton add up to one of the most uniformly negative and partisan reader reactions to a Times article during the past year.” Mr. Calme, perhaps you can tell the readers for which you supposedly advocate, how a reaction that is uniformly negative can be uniformly partisan as well. Did all of the negative reactions sent to you identify their writers as partisan Democrats? Let us be honest here, Mr. Calme. If a reaction is universally negative, by definition it cannot be partisan. The only words that smell of partisanship, sir, are in your first sentence.

It follows from this that you would not find any “winks and nods” regarding the Clintons’ personal life (and please, do not insult us by saying that you referred to “sex life”, I will bet that , while you used that term, most of the critics did not), even in the paragraph that clearly, “should have gone in the trash can”.

Let’s review it, shall we? it stated that, “Several prominent New York Democrats, in interviews, volunteered that they became concerned last year over a tabloid photograph showing Mr. Clinton leaving B.L.T. Steak in Midtown Manhattan late one night after dining with a group that included Belinda Stronach, a Canadian politician. The two were among roughly a dozen people at a dinner, but it still was enough to fuel coverage in the gossip pages.” Now Mr. Calme, even you have to acknowledge that, while Mr. Healy couches his accusations in the timeworn method of paraphrasing anonymous sources, there is most certainly, a little bit of a wink there.

Or how about, when Mr. Healy, while writing what would normally be an innocuous paragraph, throws in a zinger like this:
“Friends — eager to smooth any rough edges on the relationship — tell old-married-couple stories of them gardening, playing Scrabble, and dining out at Le Cirque, Rasika, and Bayou in Harlem with old pals like the former party leader Terry McAuliffe, the power broker Vernon Jordan and others. On Christmas Eve, they wandered through the near-empty Chappaqua Village Market together, noticed by the occasional fellow shopper.”

Really Mr. Calme? Is that what the friends said? Did they say anonymously that they were looking to “smooth out any rough edges”? Or perhaps was that Mr. Healy’s little, shall we say, wink?

But let us go on to your finding of the percentage of weekends that the Clintons spent together as, “surprising and interesting”. Would it also surprise and interest you that on May 31st, on CNN, this exchange took place between Paula Zahn and Mr. Healy?:

“ZAHN: You did some very interesting analysis of the time they spend together, the time they spend apart. But when you crunch those numbers, are those really any different from members of Congress whose families stay at home in the home district and the — the working member of Congress stays in Washington?
“HEALY: Sure, it’s pretty — it’s pretty similar. And that’s a very fair point to make.”

Gee, Mr. Calme, surprise!!

Finally, Mr. Calme, I am going to make an assumption, based upon the criticisms that I read in the Times letters section, as well as in other places, that one other criticism raised by many readers, was not even addressed by you. That is the question of whether other Presidential candidates’ marital history, some of which contain clear evidence of adultery by the candidate himself and not by his spouse, are also going to get the same type of front page treatment as the Clintons’ did. I cannot believe that you never read any letters regarding this issue, however, if you haven’t, consider the issue raised now.

I await any response you may deign to give with baited breath and, just so that the record is clear, I am registered to vote in Jersey City and am an unaffiliated voter, which can be verified at the Hudson County Board of Elections, although I am tempted to declare myself a Democrat this Tuesday just to show my resentment at the Times’ dive into tabloid journalism and your dishonest defense of same.

Best regards”

Hopefully it will contribute something to the discussion

We were lucky to have the Edward R. Murrows and Fred Friendly’s back then — a different CEO, a different set of sponsors, and even they might have been silenced, as they eventually were.

There is no reason to expect their likes will come again on the highly concentrated corporate media. There is simply too much economic interest that cannot afford to be openly challenged. But there is every reason to hope that it may not matter in the long run.

The 4th estate is changing radically and rapidly — right here. There are already dozens of Murrows and Friendly’s on blogs, and we read many of them every day, here and in the links to here. There is more integrity and courageous reporting/analysis/commentary on blogs than there ever was in the glory years of network news. IMO, we are entering a new golden age — if only the web is left open for all. In five years (or less) your teenage kids will be downloading fdl and who knows what else on their phones, and then coming home to throw things at their TVs if they don’t catch on.

Add to the media narrative Noron’s MSNBC puff piece Friday (thurs?) night on the ageing appearance Bush displays today from the ‘pressures’ of his job. Imagine how aged the fracker would look if he actually did any presidentin’ work.

Personal experience has shown me that when addicts begin to age, deterioration is quite rapid. (Not me, but various alcoholics and addicts I have loved, slept with, been married to and parented by.)

What’s the line in Pink’s song about alcohol and cocaine?

To throw some more fuel on this fire, Ian Welsh also has a post about this subject at BOPnews:

http://www.bopnews.com/archives/006450.html

The graphic pretty much tells the story.

Busted: You’re en fuego today!

The MSM give Whores and Male Prostitutes a bad name

Reposting from tail end of last thread, because this is important and no one else caught it:

Think about this: America is engaged in a great battle of ideas against an enemy that murders children in houses of worship and cuts off the heads of the innocent, and our leaders have failed to win this battle even against an enemy so hideously evil.

-sigh- The Rovian talking points have taken on a life of their own. Now they go unchallenged, even when they show up in ‘liberal’ pieces.

Demonize the camel-jockeys. Makes them easier to kill. Muslims have three eyes and six-inch fangs and they eat babies alive.

Bullshit, says I. I stopped reading here. This paragraph is so, so wrong I can’t imagine how the rest of the piece could cantain anything of value.

Do we on the left really want to take the position that Big Brother is not showing sufficiant hatred for Emmanuel Goldstein?

I like Stirling Newberry. He tends to take a few steps back from the sitch and survey from a new persepective. Tim Rutten’s good, too, one of the few high points of the New LA Times. If you lived in LA, remember that in the late 70’s and into the 80’s, it was much more liberal and in general better. Tim’s a holdover from them days.

The establishment media know it’s days are numbered. The cynicism of the public towards the heavily filtered news is growing daily. Internet based news, blogs and alternative news sites are the wave of the future. That’s why the mega corps who own “news” outlets and ISP’s want to change the rules before it’s too late.

Faux News a few minutes ago on Busby…

“After being caught on tape encouraging illegals to vote, she now says she misspoke”

Sheesh! That’s NOT what she said of course.

His Girl Friday is one of my favorite movies, ever!

Don’t you just know Hildy Johnson would have a field day writing about the state of the Union today? She wouldn’t be afraid to throw a telephone (or black leather pump!) at the head of Bill Keller, Booby Woodward, Fred Lie-at, or Church Lady Brady if any of them tried to tell her what to write or even what they’d publish.

Imagine when they tried to make her write a story she didn’t want to write:

Hildy Johnson: Did you hear that? That’s the story I just wrote. Yes, yes, I know we had a bargain. I just said I’d write it, I didn’t say I wouldn’t tear it up! It’s all in little pieces now, Walter, and I hope to do the same for you some day! (hangs up emphatically)

The GOP’s fundamental strategy to power is to manipulate and mislead the voting public. This is ongoing and consistent, since at least the 1950s. To this end, the GOP accepts all predjudices under it’s tent: racists, homophobes, women-haters all are welcomed. The GOP fosters bad schools–which create weak voters and apathetic voters and citizens who do care more about Brittany than Bush. And the msm, as mostly a corporate collaborator of the GOP, is happy to go right on along.

How to get from where we are to Murrow…well, that’s Digby’s question.  Any answers?

The only answer I can see is to keep doing what you (and we) are doing. Holding their feet to the fire, screaming loud and long at the numerous transgressions and providing an alternate source for information.

From where I sit it may even be starting to work, although what we are fighting is deeply entrenched and protected. At least they’re not getting away with it scott free anymore.

And it isn’t just a question of misrepresenting Democrats on issues. The power of the corporate media was never more blatantly on display than during the ‘04 Democratic presidential primaries.

Directly after Wes Clark announced his candidacy, and came bursting out of the starting gate by polling ahead of every other candidate, he virtually disappeared from the news. I documented this for Clark’s website along with other bloggers who kept a running log of the various “news” outlets’ mention of Clark; it was quite astonishing to watch the awkward verbal gymnastics necessary for, say, Wolf Blitzer or even Jim Lehrer to mention EVERY single other Democratic running…except Clark. This happened time and again. And continued to happen so that the public never did know how well he fared in the primary voting–which was very good despite the manipulated news blackout. And how many politically active Democrats know how Clark did before he pulled out? Not many, I’d guess.

And since dratty didn’t include the link, here’s his excellent diary based on the same letter: dratty’s daily kos diary

I like this comment in it:

I think what really bothers these panty sniffers
the most is the fact that the Clinton marriage has lasted thirty years and they worked out the problems they have had – and Hillary Clinton has shown a strong commitment to her marriage. This will always work to her advantage should all these divorced morality thumpers get on her case.

And How annoying is this revelation:

“When it comes to deciding whether to report on political figures’ private lives, “few cases are as clear as the Clinton marriage,” Mr. Keller wrote to me in an e-mail last week. “It would be irresponsible NOT to take a hard look at how these two people relate and operat …”

Yeah, right. Lets give the Isikoffs of this world something to get excited about again.

How about a hard look at the Dole marriage? Shouldn’t we all know every single detail of this Washington power couple?

I guess not.

(reformatted for fdl)

dratty – Very impressive letter. I get the impression of someone really angry, trying to keep his/her emotions under control so as not to be rude, so as to be taken seriously, but really, really angry. Well done.

Bionic #24
Thanks. I got held up with server failure and forgot to put the diary link in.

mommybrain #25 – thanks. Yeah, so trying to keep them under control that i misspelled Calame’s name…globally.
Oh well, he’ll probably use that as an example of those illiterate bloggers.

Bionic @24

“How about a hard look at the Dole marriage? Shouldn’t we all know every single detail of this Washington power couple?”

Yeah. Is that Viagra working for you, Bob? What does Liddy say about it?

The wholesale merger of corporate and government power that is the hallmark of our current political epoch includes the wholesale merger of media and government.

Managing the media closely is a vital aspect of our new State. This merger of government and corporate goals and policy and talking points is not driven by accident, or by the reporting personalities, or by any input whatsoever from the public. It is managed from the top of these corporations, and from their boardrooms, and from their government partners.

Since the political process is owned and operated by corporate funding and fiat, both parties toe the line on the corporate agenda in order to be in power at all.

That includes supporting foreign resource wars, domestic dismantling of our Constitutional standards, and the most extreme corporate welfare state imaginable.

Until the people take political funding back from the wealthy and the corporate donors, and all public spending is done out in the sunlight, subject to independent review, we have no democracy. We have no representation, we have no real say. Until we own the politicians, they do not work for us. They work for who pays their campaign bills.

Thus we have piracy as our foreign policy, and police surveillance as our domestic policy.

Thus we have but one party, pretending to be two.

this is OT but I have a question:

I have heard it said and it interests me to no end that the pater neocons (Poderhetz, Kristol, Strauss) were once Trotskyites and/or “far-lefties.

Could someone point me to some articles of analysis regarding this “flip-flop” and it’s underlying threads ?

Sorry for the diversion but I’m sure there are some “big-brains” around who can help me out.

FDL is always my last “blog stop” on my daily “interwebs” !

Egad, looking at ‘Wild’ Bill Kristol over on C&L was noticing that Bill is looking a wee big deranged. I guess the PNAC posterboy for sober thoughtfulness is show-ing his ‘kool-aid’ buzz a bit.

Those PNAC tools really want World War III, with the Middle-East as the theatre of war, and Iran as the next step, the one that gets everyone else involved. Bill’s visible derangement is apropos I suppose.

I hope they get stopped, I hope Libby and the AIPAC spying case get full court press and expose the PNAC, OSP and AIPAC war-mongery. These people are content rabidly eager to plan war that others will fight, and that will make victims of a generation of people.

My father was a WWII vet, and both my parents grew up in the fear-stoked WWII environment. We do not need another 50-100 years of that. ‘Clean Break’ and other ‘New American Century’, evil schemes need some press-time. I hope these criminals are brought to justice.

cross posted comment, from MyDD –

Most House GOPers Bail on Contract with America

http://mydd.com/story/2006/6/3/19341/64164#8

You Can’t Trust Republicans

You Can’t Trust Republicans — with your hard earned tax dollars.

You Can’t Trust Republicans — to balance the budget.

You Can’t Trust Republicans — with your children’s future.

You Can’t Trust Republicans — with America’s Foreign Policy.

You Can’t Trust Republicans — with America’s Energy Security.

You Can’t Trust Republicans — with America’s military.

You Can’t Trust Republicans — with American’s Health Care.

You Can’t Trust Republicans — to tell the truth about anything.

In campaigning mode the repugs play the crap corporate moron media like a violin. Often the bs being sold is labled ‘ libertarian’. Having long experience debating incredibly inane ‘ Austrian’ economists and ‘ Minarchist’ defenders of the Pentagon I’ve found a good resource here. It is part of a much larger site with much entertaining and enlightening reading.
http://world.std.com/~mhuben/leftlib.html

Libertarianism – ‘From each according to their gullibilty – to each according to their need’

John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Charlie Glass, and Seymour Hersh on the failure of the world’s press

Normalizing the Unthinkable

Pach @ 7 Thanks for the link. I was out of town on business during that time period and wasn’t able to catch up with all. Great post.

Three things we must do to change the MSM:

1. Boycott them.

2. Boycott them.

3. Boycott them.

Their complicity must be made to cost them a lot of money.

Busted @ 6

perfect!

– 2 days ago, I was telling a good friend, the M$M hold themselves t/b the incorruptible inhabitants of Hadleyburg – and the sack of gold – is now full of cocktail weenies

‘greed’ , I meant. Means the same to a Repug tho.
Cue the ‘ never get enough’ song from Nashville.

Since the tool I have in my hand is a hammer, please allow me to treat this problem as a nail.

If we view the issue as one of technological displacement – the new, superior technology of the net replacing the old, inferior technology of top-down media – then the question changes a little bit.

This kind of displacement tends to follow an S-curve, and the continued exponential growth of the blogosphere weighed against the circulation/ratings declines of top-down media show that the M$M are on the wrong end of the power curve.

It’s entirely expectable to see phenomena such as M$M journalists’/editors’ outright attacks on bloggers (a delaying action to cover their retreat) and hybrid newsblogs such as C.L. Brady’s awkward attempt to drag his paper onto the web (attempting to co-opt the new technology without quite giving up the old one). These are signals that the rate of displacement has yet to reach its peak.

The M$M is confronted with a double-whammy: the only way to really compete – given net neutrality – is to provide relevant content, but doing so invalidates their present raison d’etre. What’s a Church Lady to do?

FDL’s a superb example of what to do – and what to do right – on the opinion side. Fully displacing the M$M in its current form will require backward integrating into the reporting function, which would require a level of profitability that I don’t believe blogs will reach for a long time. The next-best strategy might be to reward superior reporting in the M$M where it exists and form alliances with it.

I’m not a media wonk, so I don’t have specifics on how such arrangements might work, but the good news is that there are a lot of tidal forces behind us that might be obscured and underappreciated on a daily basis.

dratty, good letter!

The mainstream media long ago became entertainment media.

In my opinion, . . .

the problem lies with us, not with the “corporate media.”

I don’t deny that the media is a corporate creature.

I believe that the problem has three prongs: (1) the radical right wing, (2) the corporate media, and (3) us. Because the first two are not going to change, railing against them will do no good. The solution – what this post seeks – lies with us. To the extent we do not change, there will be no solution. Ergo, our failure to adapt – up to this point – is the problem.

What do we have to do?

Learn to speak about issues in short, clear sentences that make the issues clear to the listener – both the consumer of corporate media and the corporate media itself.

It’s what the radical right does; why can’t we?

(They do it dishonestly, though; it is imperative that we do it honestly. This is not a handicap – truth is the most powerful weapon in the world.)

Examples:

The radical right uses the theme of “stay the course” and “We’re not gonna cut ‘n run.” This is perfect for them – shorty, pithy, and conveys the message – sub silentio – that if you disagree with the speaker, then you’re not resolute, you have no backbone, you’re a coward.

The response must be – but never has been – something such as, “Fine. So tell me, how many more people do you want to die in Iraq? Five thousand? Ten? Twenty? How many more hundreds of billions of dollars do you want to spend to make sure that we have taken away Saddam’s WMD’s? Another trillion? Two trillion?”

This conveys the messages that staying has costs, costs none of us – save the minority radical right – wants to pay. And that for all of those costs, we are getting nothing – Saddam didn’t even have WMD’s.

The radical right also inserts its message into the corporate media by lying, but does so pithily. For instance, about its illegal data mining, it says, “The NSA program does not invade anyone’s privacy. It merely records information about telephone calls, it does not listen in on the content of those calls.”

The response must be – “Precisely how does it not invade someone’s privacy to follow them everywhere they go, recording where they go, whom they talk to when they get there, how long they talk to those persons, and when they leave?”

This response – by analogy – clearly conveys what the radical right is doing. It brings into focus what is going on. This is necessary, because what they are doing is largely invisible to their victims. Once their victims grasp what their government is doing to them, then they know that they do not want the government following them and recording their comings and goings. It makes it clear that what is going on is largely police state stuff – like Romania in the 1980’s.

Truth is all powerful, but to work, it must be presented effectively. The truth is on our side, but the radical right presents their lies and distortions more effectively than we present our truth.

That is our fault, not the radical right’s fault, and not the corporate media’s fault.

The good news, though, is that because it is our fault, we have the power to correct it. The only question is whether we grasp our opportunity.

Difficult Lawyer #41:

So in your view, the message is the medium?

If the dems win power- they will be respected by the media. For some reason having control of the FCC has a big effect on them. They are under pressure from advertisers, of course, as well as the White House. It’s a smelly sewer- but the good news is- most people only watch american idol anyway- so all that good gooper propoganda mostly goes to waste.

To follow up with one of my pet questions I can’t find a good answer to:

Days after 911, Bush met with media owners and studio heads, probably conference-called not face to face. What did he tell them?

Who watches Fox News? Goopers- that’s who. So Fox News contributes to society by getting Goopers MORE worked up about the bullshit they’re worked up about anyway. Doubt if they have changed many people’s minds about much.

Tim @ #30,

For the full skinny on Neo-Cons and their long, strange trip from far-left to far-right authoritarianism, check out “America Alone” by Jonathon Clarke and Stephan Halper.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ…..p;n=283155

I highly recoomend this book to everyone. What gives it credibility is the author’s backgrounds.

Crystal Cap #40 bingo! the Entertainmentization of the news is how we got here. Bill and Hillary on the front page of the newspaper of record? Entertainment value high.

Two things to do:

1) Break up the monopolies that own the media. We need to return to a time when one person couldn’t own numerous TV channels, newspapers, etc.

2) Get our progressive message out through alternative media with an eye toward getting a mass audience. Podcasting and IPTV are growing technologies that can break through the monopolies. Imagine being able to dial up “FDL TV” through your TiVo. It can happen.

I’d like to second John Emerson’s point. It’s really about media ownership, not the reporters or ombudspeople per se.

TV, radio and print are the way they are because the people who own them want them to be that way. And the right-slanted worldview they push becomes so much a part of the environment that we hardly notice it anymore. Democratic political strategists try to eke out a vote here and there in the marginal states, not bothering to see that the pervasive right-friendly political discourse gives the Republicans a built-in advantage they don’t deserve.

Al Gore was on ABC this morning talking about his adopted issue, climate change. He was saying he feels his job is to get across to people of all political persuasions that this is a worldwide crisis, and he thinks that despite his thirty years of harping on it that his message isn’t being heard. He also notes that the current political system is unable to deal in any honest way with the realities of what is known about the issue, so it’s pointless to try to deal with specifics such as introducing legislation without first shifting the overall political mindset.

Shifting the mindset is a huge problem, and the only way to even start addressing it is by getting a reality-based media. And as long as media ownership patterns continue as they have, we won’t get it.

The bottom line is that the fourth estate has failed the American people; and, in that failure have abrogated their rights under the First Amendment.

an old lefty slogan: there’s freedom of the press for them that own a press…

Oh, and the great “His Girl Friday” airs on TMC two days from now: Jun 06, 04:15PM EST

Also check out the movie it was based on: “The Front Page” (1931)

OR THIS LATEST OUTRAGE, from the AP, shouting ‘Run for your lives! The scary liberals are coming’: (No, liberal isn’t a dirty word. It depends on the context. But it reminds me of the old Strom Thurmond campaign line, delivered to rural audiences, about his opponent having a sister who’s a “well known thespian”.)

…a boatload of democrats…

…a Polish-American lawyer…

…a die-hard liberal…

…a free-spending progressive…

…overwhelmingly liberal…

…the unapologetic liberal…

…an ardent opponent of GOP efforts to clamp down of(sic)domestic agency budgets…

…an unalloyed liberal…

…being led by a San Franciscan…

…so many left-leaning chairmen…

…Congress’ biggest liberals running committees…

…more than an unrelenting string of liberal Democrats are positioned to take over committees…

…Black lawmakers would run major committees…
.

Victor Laszlo @ 16:

Think about this: America is engaged in a great battle of ideas against an enemy that murders children in houses of worship and cuts off the heads of the innocent, and our leaders have failed to win this battle even against an enemy so hideously evil.

‘There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms.’

It is a measure of the pervasiveness of the contradictory messages used to create schisms in perception that allow for the obtaining and misuse of power…Another example, the DPW port issue, and the reflexively negative response seen.
More importantly within that particular issue, the lack of prudent administrational forethought that would, at minimum, have considered that over a half-decade of targeted propaganda laid upon an already xenophobic base would have had visceral blowback when the cognitive dissonance was laid bare.

The strategy is division…Destroying a commonly held reality to superimpose a series of favorably fictive scenarios that can be labelled “reality” for a mass undisposed to critical thinking.
This grim fantasy can be maintained as long as the stroke when the universal ‘frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork ‘ can be held in abeyance by any means necessary, of course.
No time for anything but the most cursory long range planning, for to control the behemoth requires that the architects must always live in the moment, or be thrown before their ‘8 seconds’ come due…

You know, there isn’t much difference between the really radical left and the really radical right. I know folks around here are called “far left” and alot of you are farther left than I’m comfortable with, but the fact is, the views represented here are well short of radically leftist. Same goes for alot of the “far right” sure they’re insane but they could be alot more insane. Like Bush.

And to those who think that blogs and the internet are going to overwhelm TV, radio and print, I’m afraid you are dreaming. There’s a huge mass of people out there who are never going to be motivated to wait on their creaking dialup account (assuming they have that, even) to go surfing through blog commentary. The MSM is where the big action is, and denizens of the blogosphere will never be more than smaller fish. Sorry, but it’s true. Stop imagining that it isn’t.

Just got a call from Laura’s Bush asking me to vote for Brian Bilbray for congress. Wow- I’ve had Ticky Dicky, John McCain, and now Laura’s Bush calling me PERSONALLY to ask me to vote for Brian Dildo- er Bilbray. Kinda makes ya feel important!

And to those who think that blogs and the internet are going to overwhelm TV, radio and print, I’m afraid you are dreaming.

Which is why we need to pay attention to technologies like IPTV that will allow a user to access internet content easily through their TV (and TiVo). This is already happening in countries outside the US, and it is beginning here as well.

Don’t forget to mock seven shades of crap out of them as well Jane’s takedowns of Bob Woodward and of Ms. “I was Fucking Right damnit” help a lot –

Anyway inspired by jane (and some Italians) I just want to say that if anyone here is of Italian extraction you can feel proud of some folks back in the “old country” who rewrote a NYT headline. They in turn inspired me analyse the NYT story.

There are times when you’ve got to love the Italians. Truly there are times when you just have to say:

“mio cuore, mia anima, mia vita%u2026″

to each and every Italian you happen to bump into on the street. Why? Well there’s this matchless piece of reporting from the New York Times’ very own Sabrina Tavernise and Qais Mizher (with a bit help from two brown people living in Iraq.)

You can click my page link or click this: “Italians – Gotta Love ‘Em”

NB: be aware that just under that article I have a very upsetting sequence of images so don’t scroll past the “Italian” story if you’re the sensitive type.

D Mason @ #55,

I was peripherally involved in the trades union movement in England in the early 1980’s. THAT was far left.

There is no “far left” in the US that I’ve been able to see in eleven years of living here.

Saturday- in a renewed attempt to control what americans do with their private parts- Presdident Clusterfuck renewed his call for the Gay Marriage Amendment- saying that it was necessary because of what activist courts had done to destroy the foundation of goodness and decency in america.

The president didn’t explain why Gay Marriage was only a threat in election years.

jimBOB #56:

“Stop imagining that it isn’t.”

Is that a direct order?

We used to have a “far left” in this country- and then- in the words of my once marxist friend- “capitalism won”.

You can probably still find some “far left” people- but they’re in nursing homes- talkin about the good ol days.

Weeeel you had the “wobblies” RWC but that was quite a while ago. I’m considered a conservative over here and I’m waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to the left of the “average” American.

We do have some splinter groups of all types- those opposed to eating animals. Those opposed to building new power plants. Those opposed to fur coats- etc. They are, however, neither right nor left in any consistent way- and they are mostly milked for entertainment value by the media.

OT – For anyone here within earshot of KPFK, (90.7FM, Los Angeles), Ian Masters will be interviewing Phil Angelides (He’s a no-show so far), Debra Bowen and Marcy Winograd from now till 1 PM.

His Girl Friday is my all-time favorite movie.
I got the remastered DVD at Maxwell Street (market in Chicago) last week and was thrilled.
A rare instance where the remake of a great movie surpasses the original.
They don’t make movies or newspapers like they used to.
As for the media – if it worked, we wouldn’t need blogs.

The right and the left in this country are mostly determined by their position on taxes. If you are in favor of progressive taxation- you are a leftist. If you think that the wealthy carry an unjust tax burden- you are a righty. That’s about the size of it.

Just back from the cabin, so I’ve some catch-up reading to do on comments, but I wanted to share a couple thoughts.

Watching the cable nets yesterday and talking heads this morning I’ve realized they are all absolutely incapable of setting aside the script. Oh maybe a quick breaking news–but the changes that Katrina was supposed to inject in news reporting instead of going back to the canned, scripted programming have been sorely lacking. They truly are old media, unable to react to such events as the Toronto arrests except with tedious talking heads who have nothing of value to say. Where is the 21st Century’s Ted Turner? [on the blogs!]

And Christy, your question in the previous thread “Who is Bush’s conscience?” absolutely nails it!

Everything changed on Bush’s Inauguration Day…thus 9/11, deficits, narcissistic war, blithering incompetence in natural and national disasters….

I guess that those who want to control the private parts of americans are righties. Hard to see how a classic leftist could become outraged about what his neighbor does with his dick- but maybe it’s possible.

rwcole: in 1972, the Communist Party USA ran on the slogan: People Before Profits. Yesterday at the Indiana Democratic Party State Convention, a candidate for Congress, Barry Walsh, used “People Before Profits” on his T-shirts. He is up against Mike Pence (R-hyperwinger)

jimBOB @ 56:

In light of such statistics as this, One might find a refresher in the ‘Faberge Organic shampoo’ paradigm useful.

;>)

There was a (I’m sure apocryphal) group of far left political activists in the UK Labour party round about the time Maggy Thatcher was busy bollixing Britain called:

“masochistic vegetarian bikers against the Nazis”

That the sort of splinter group you mean RW? All part of life’s rich tapestry I suppose their equivalent in the republican party would be:

“Gay masochistic vegetarian closet queens for Pat. Robertson against the Liberals and brown people (except in magazines that we can longer read because the pages are stuck together)”

There is no “far left” in the US that I’ve been able to see in eleven years of living here.

Well I’ve been here my whole life and never seen anything resembling a truly far left or far right politician. That doesn’t stop the terms being thrown around because it’s all relative. Compare Rick Santorum and Russ Fiengold, neither one are truly extremists but when you put their rhetoric side by side it almost seems that way. Add that relativism to the grossly mis-applied labels and you have a very confusing political climate. Take Bush’s compassionate conservatism for example. The man is neither compassionate or conservative but there it is.

I see proof of the damage linguistic ignorance can do in a political context everytime someone says we’re losing our democracy. We never had a democracy to lose. We pledge allegeance to the flag and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands, but most Americans wouldn’t know the difference if it shat on their front porch.

“people before profits”

Well that does have a little bit of classic lefy zing to it- but it’s probably more in the “populist” tradition of George Wallace than in the tradition of Karl Marx.

Marx would be saying “Kill the capitalists- bring on the revolution”

“people before profits” is pretty tame.

In the end, the public yearns for the truth. Once you break thru the bread-and-circus, they want to be engaged.

Until the ‘net, corporations had the megaphone.

We have rudely snatched it from them, and they are certainly going to push back. Just as soon as they need to, they’ll smear Jane or Markos or Christy. Make that ‘and’.

What we are going to do is stand steadfast, and keep telling the truth. Drip by drip, the truth will erode the corporate pile of lies, and then one day, the whole thing will cave in.

And the small celebrations we had along the way will pale in comparision to that day.

Don’t want to hijack the thread or anything, you’ll be sorry if you miss out on the future of all media.

(TRex, this is especially for you.)

Rob Zuber at 48 is exactly right. This isn’t about cocktail wienies, it’s about concentrated ownership of media by oligarchs. As as the wild west of the internet threatens their stranglehold on the information we receive, they move to take control of that also. So the fight for net neutrality is crucial; if we lose that fight we are well and truly fucked. As Ron says, we also need to return to limits on media concentration. A comeback of the Fairness Doctrine also seems to be required.

The whores on the cocktail wienie circuit and their editors are just following their marching orders from their oligarch masters. Weeping and wailing about individual whores in front of the cameras or at the keyboards is a waste of time and energy, we have to get the corporate concentration fixed.

al-Scooter @ 41:

Maybe that we must MAKE the message the medium.

In the end, it is the ONLY thing we control, so we most certainly must make OUR message the SOLUTION. There is no alternative, as I see it.

Bitching about those we don’t control won’t work, as I see it.

Reaching and persuading the radical right is impossible, and reaching and persuading ourselves is unnecessary. We have to reach those not as active as us, with little time to receive and digest information, but with an appropriate sense of right and wrong. The swing group.

To do this, we should, I think, recognize the corporate media for what they are – stenographers, largely (although some are certainly ill-intentioned). Then, instead of attempting to convert them from their stenography, we accept them as they are, and work to use them in a way that is most effective for our causes. This means crafting messages that pass successfully through the stenography filter to the swing group of Americans. It seems that such messages must be short, common sensical, even superficial, and appeal instantly to TRUE American values)(I actually think some re-education as to what TRUE American values are is necessary, but again, this must be done through the message, too).

The radical right has done just this, and very successfully.

I think that now it should be our turn.

The Press serves the interests of the wealthy, who, after all, own it. It is naive to think that all of the subtle and not-so-subtle anti-Liberal media narratives are there because the right is pushing them. Those narratives reflect the views of the publisher and his editors, i.e., the oligarchy that runs the country. Liberals can push back, and they will have an effect, but it won’t be enough in the long run because the entire system is predicated on protecting the property rights of the rich. For example, should the prospect of universal health care coverage ever become likely, you would see editorial after editorial inveighing against it.

I think those who are saying that we need different ownership are correct. The folks who own the news organizations are the ones who set policy, and they’re quite clearly going to promote their own political agendas with those organizations even to the detriment of the companies that own them.

It would be a shame if we end up with a system like the U.K.’s, where each party has news organizations that explicitly support it, but that would be preferable to the state we’re in at the moment.

For broadcast news, I mostly listen to PBS and NPR. Those are probably the other things that should be promoted more. User-financed news may be the key. It’s not quite as beholden to advertisers, and if it’s run as a non-profit, there are no stockholders to satisfy. A similar organization for online and/or print journalism is another possibility.

Christy,
Briefly off topic, what are your thoughts on Bush being investigated by the Board of Governors of the ABA? Does this have potential of being a pretty big slap at the White House?
http://www.boston.com/news/nat…..hallenges/

*ilson – whaddya think about Barry Welsh – aside from his being doomed against Pence?

If he’s who I think he is (a guy I played some ball with and against in H.S.) he’s a pretty good guy.

American politics is plagued more with benign indifference than by radical partisanship. The Partisanship that appears nightly on Fox News is like the build up to a boring lightweight title match in the boxing world. Making up in hyperbole for what the match actually portends in substance.

PeteCO thanks for the tip on the book. That’s exactly what I wanted. Don’t suppose you were one of the union lads that “stopped” building my beloved Triumph motorcycles ?

“And the question truly is, what do we do about it”?

Generally speaking, the caliber of Digby’s writings merit recognition by the major dailies. The NY and LA times, the Washington Post, all would do themselves proud were they to invite him into their tent as an occasonal contributor to their op-ed pages. How things like that are arranged is something I don’t understand. But if it boils down to knowing someone who knows someone, surely it can be arranged.

Of course, the same holds true of other bloggers, including FDL. The time and effort all you people put into publishing your various sites is remarkable.

But the biggest impediment to the type of counterattack your question raises essentially rests with congressional democrats. Unless and until they find the common sense courage to challenge what can only be described as the corrupted journalistic conventions of the past quarter century, this era’s status quo cannot be overturned.

When bloggers mouth off, that’s all it is. Were democrats to level the same accusations, that would be news. Jeezuz, the GOP acted on that rude truth when they ordered Spiro Agnew and Safire to “war” in 1970. And its paid huge dividends ever since.

Regretably, I don’t think that party has it in them. In a fight that calls for the tactical dexterity of a squadron of PT boats, a battleship is all but worthless.

Let me clarify: Although there are plenty of professional journalists who are appalled at what has happened to their profession, there is precious little they can do about it. It is the publishers who hire the editors who assign the stories to reporters who can be relied on to see things their way. Thus, there is not going to be any way to sneak something past them. You are facing the iron grasp of the country’s oligarchy here. The New York Times, owned and controlled by the Sulzbergers, for example, is not going to allow any kind of populist movement to garner either attention or respect in its pages. In other words, the anti-Liberal messages/narratives are there, not because of Bill O’Lielly or AnnHole, but because the Ownership of the country wants them there, and the Ownership is right wing.

rwcole 57: Can you press *69 on your phone and see if Laura’s calling you from The Mayflower Hotel? *g*

compare and contrast

am currently re-reading Ida Tarbell’s History of Standard Oil and an old Harper’s lengthy tribute to McClure’s Magazine as a nice companion piece – oy

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmcclureM.htm

Barry Welsh for Congress was in the running as one of the ten finalists for Russ Feingold’s leadership PAC contribution of $5000. I like his politics – I was wearing a Julia Carson Tshirt — his supporters oohed and aahed about her.

Difficult Lawyer #82:

What you’re suggesting certainly would help, I just want to draw a distinction between the content and the pipes that deliver it.

If we’re looking for media we can influence right now, conversations with your persuadable friends probably carry more weight than any talking head because you’re a bigger influence and you’re better prepared. E-mails also are good, and I certainly get plenty of them from my GOoPer friends that obviously are Mehlman & Co. plants.

Looks like where we’re headed is to do both message and media ourselves. Breaking up media conglomerates IMO is the right thing to do, but the election-winning chicken has to come before the re-regulatory egg. So I agree, it’s much more empowering to do something than merely to complain about it.

To me, the most heartening thing is the set of polling data that clearly indicates the public is tuning out a lot of the M$M propaganda. The disheartening thing is how many Dem pols and voters apparently are still stuck in 2003.

from another thread per rwcole

It’s VERY interesting that Rove figures he can use Condi to save this administration’s sorry ass- and yes- there is zero objective discussion about ANYTHING positive this woman has done for the country- NOTHING- that’s what!

—

well she shops at fancy 5th Avenue shoe stores. while it’s true that she’s probably buy Italian shoes there, her business helps keep the stores open and they employ real live citizens (probably…ok, possibly)…so never let it be said that Condi Rice has NEVER done anything for her country

Tim @ 86
there’s a link for usa sales at the site

http://www.triumph.co.uk/

Teddy- I tried it- Laura was calling from India.

TeddySF @ 89 – you’re killin’ me !

OT to cmask, re your 114 and 166 of the last thread:

As to your brother and your office-mate, lord knows what their thought processes could possibly be — probably not “thought” at all, but something working on them near the reptilian level of their brains, where the fear and greed live.

Our attempting to advise you on how best to struggle with what THEIR problems are doing to you might lead us into some unlicensed practice of psychotherapy (and our “treatment” might be about as effective as that of the “gay-curing” loon who cracked us all up a couple of days ago). So as part of your safe cyber-family, sis lotuslander here suggests that you treat yourself to some face-to-face, Florida-licensed advice and support instead. It can be stunningly helpful.

As to your 166: Bravo!

“His Girl Friday” holds up well? In my ever-rotating mental top ten movies, HGF is a permanent resident. Thanks for the picture, but still. . . holds up??

What to do? Implement some media/advertiser version of the general strike to shut down the enemy’s economic activity. I can’t believe people WATCH these assholes but many seem to, even among the FDL puppies. How can that help?

There’s lots we don’t know, for instance, how many pointed letters of protest to advertisers will it take to (1) get a talking head cautioned, (2) effect a change in the news editor’s attitude, (3)pull a host/program.

For decades the general strike has been the one labor threat which had the chance of shaking the tree. How can we construct a netroots equivalent?

ralphinlex

test

oh cbl I know all about ‘em. I’m a ‘66 BSA Spitfire rider myself. I was joking about the union walk-out at the old Triumph factory “back in the day”.

Oh and as Dane Cook says: “back in the day” was actually a Wednesday.

Thanks,
Tim

Sorry for another OT, but this one’s good. Via Atrios, an excellent smackdown of Holy Joe in The Hartford Courant.

rwc & cbl (93 & 94) — Teddy? Where? I just scrolled up&down this whole thread and didn’t spot him anywhere. Am I de-hallucinating?

If it ever becomes PROFITABLE to have either a reputable and objective news cable network- (like CNN started out to be) or a left biased news network- it will happen.

We have three of the damned things now- one of em dedicated to sponsoring fascism- and ALL of em dedicated to pandering to the lowest common denominator with missing white women and falsely accused lacrosse player stories.

One can blame the corporations- but the truth is- americans are too stupid and uninterested to support television that actually presents the news in it’s objective and complex reality.

lotus- number 89.

Weird. The 89 showing here says:

cbl says

June 4th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
compare and contrast

am currently re-reading Ida Tarbell’s History of Standard Oil and an old Harper’s lengthy tribute to McClure’s Magazine as a nice companion piece – oy

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAmcclureM.htm

Funny! The Young Turks take on Rita Cosby ; )

http://www.theyoungturks.com/s…..12416/2738

Rwcole re: Laura call above – doesn’t it make you happy that they need need to spend all this time/money to defend a “safe” seat?

No doubt worried about the ripples. Still nice to know they need to defend many, many more races that usual.

C’mon Busby!

Let’s imagine a daily news show- two hours long- with two of the best minds in the world speaking at length on the ins and outs of fiscal and monetary policy- the most recent statistics on economic growth- the ideological underpinnings of foreign policy- an in depth look at the history and current affairs of the continent of Africa- etc.

How much viewership would such a show have? No more than 2% I should think.

JimBOB #56 – “stop imagining that it isn’t”

???

Sorry, hon, but those without imagination never accomplish anything. Thanks for sharing.

Okay, I just went back Home, refreshed there and came back here — and NOW I’ve got Teddy at 89.

Can anybody splain to me (a near-total computer dumkopf) what to do about this glitch that’s glitching me?

rwcole — I just got an e-mail saying that Busby needs another 100 or so volunteers in the next coupla days. She’s filled 300 slots for election day GOTV, but hasn’t filled them all. If you know anyone who could help out and is interested (and this goes for anyone else in CA-50) please contact the Busby campaign folks: “Volunteer AT busbyforcongress DOT org” or call 760-479-0114. Thanks in advance to anyone who can pitch in!

lotuslander #111 -

neosporin?

Jes’ as long as it ain’t neoCONsporin.

On topic, the thing I don’t get is why there is no prohibition/accountability for all the propaganda.

Similiar to trotting out the troops for political purposes, spending tax dollars on propaganda is/should be a clear violation.

Examples appear constantly; e.g. the president/vp etc, spending half their time campaigning. Who pays for all the apologists?

We are paying for these junkets. We are paying for the fake news. We are paying for the disinformation campaigns. Not them, us!

If that’s not patently illegal, why isn’t it?

I am very much in the “It’s the ownership, stupid” camp. The major media all have very Republican-friendly corporate ownership, and there is a top-down directive to advance the Republican cause as much as they can get away with. In other words, they have to stop short of absolute blatant propaganda because they must retain a thin veneer of credibility. Once the majority of Americans *realize* that the media is propaganda, it loses much of its effectiveness.

In terms of the bigger picture and why this is so vitally important, the media is one of the two biggest mechanisms of accountability in this country, with elections the other. Both are badly compromised, and the party on the short end, alarmingly, does not appear very interested in fixing either of them. Accountability is the foundation of a democratic government, and its opposite is impunity and dictatorship. We’re not there yet, thankfully, but we seem to be picking up speed as we toboggan merrily down the slippery slope.

and remember: you don’t need your citizenship papers to volunteer on the campaign!

FWIW, my letter to Mr. Calame:

I am writing to request a correction, concerning your title. The newspaper identifies you as “the readers’ representative,” but you obviously are not: your response to the overwhelming negative response of readers to the tabloid-like piece on the Clinton marriage was to argue with the readers and tell them that their perceptions were incorrect, partisan, etc.

An actual readers’ representative, as I understand it, would have represented to the paper’s management and reporters the views of the readers. Instead, you seem to be the representative of the paper’s management.

Could you please correct your title?

In the meantime, I expect a similar article on the marriages of other presidential candidates–otherwise, this article will be clearly revealed to be yet another installment in the on-going vendetta of the NY Times against the Clintons. Or perhaps you’re unfamiliar with the notorious Whitewater coverage, since it antedates your role at the Times as management representative.

Thank you for listening.

Oooh. Billy Kristol wants to promote The Decider to The Dictator.

At least they are coming out in the open with their fascism.

Can’t wait for the Olde Time Christian Gay Bashing Roadshow that The Decider is headlining tomorrow.

I wonder if they are going to give Condi, Josh Bolten, Mary Cheney and Ken Mehlman the day off out of respect for their sensibilities?

-GSD

Did you forget this current article???

http://www.informationclearing…..e13492.htm

Normalizing the Unthinkable

John Pilger, Robert Fisk, Charlie Glass, and Seymour Hersh on the failure of the world’s press

By Sophie McNeill

*ilson 119, you stinker, you, lol.

Redd- thanks for spreading the word. I’m tied up with business (even as we speak). Hope others will respond.

If it ever becomes PROFITABLE to have either a reputable and objective news cable network- (like CNN started out to be) or a left biased news network- it will happen.

No, it’s not about profit. Profit is nice, and the media will do whatever they can to make money provided that it does not hurt the Republican cause. I used to believe that the media was simply distracted by sensationalism and ratings, but when they collectively shrugged off the Jeff Gannon story, the scales fell from my eyes and I saw them for what they are.

The shrug over Hookergate just drives it home, but the fact is, there have been countless stories that would have been huge, spectacular news if all the media cared about was profit. Finding out that the war was a lie; Plamegate; outing an al Qaeda mole; al QaQaa; Bush and Laura yukking it up about the night of 9/11 (in a 2003 interview that I only just found out about that a couple of days ago). And I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface.

DAMN! op99’s got *ilson at 119, where I’ve got GSD. Look out, y’all, I’m fixin’ to throw me a rill big WATB!!!

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Coz 109 at 1:11 pm: that was hilarious. I especially liked the very end where the guy on the left said “I wouldn’t f*ck Rita Cosby with Ann Coulter’s dick.” BWAHAHA.

lotuslander, guess we gotta go back to the time stamp method. (Sounds like birth control.)

“I wouldn’t f*ck Rita Cosby with Ann Coulter’s dick.” BWAHAHA.

I should have included a warning about that!? Naaaaahhhhh lol

Jack Welch made no bones about squashing “news” that hurt the repugs and therefore NBC share value.

Bush/Cheney has been very upfront about punishing/cutting off those who are unfriendly or unflattering.

The “think tanks” etc, have been very clear in their willingness to fight/fund the war on ideas.

Bushco. have always made it apparent that they intend the control the message at every possible point.

They tell us every day. Yet it’s still unbelievable.

Brings me back to Digby’s/Redd’s question. What do we do? Feel so damn powerless.

I swear, this is NOT the America I grew up in.

lotuslander – I’m out of sync, too. Must be the software acting up again. Just refresh the page instead of Refresh Comments.

I don’t have answers. The press seems to be -alas- an organ of the oligarchy (and Bush’s regime is nothing if not the triumph of the oligarachy.)

That said, I think a concerted strategy regarding MSM is one of the primary issue facing the progressive movement currently. It’s difficult because of the ownership…but stragetic boycott, concerted letter writing, appearances like Kos and Jerome on Russert last night? I don’t know how to fight the propaganda machine but I do know that it has to be fought.

(sniff) (snort) WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I know that Jane and Redd have been inundated with “site problems” but I haven’t heard this one mentioned before. For the last week or two- when I come onto the site- I am not taken to the most recent post- nor is a link to the most recent post shown. I must click on the comments of the old post to get started in locating the newest. Not a major problem- but just thought I’d bring it up.

I tell you, I just don’t trust them NSA boys on our gummint’s teat.

rwcole 135 at 1:35 pm: I have that same problem but didn’t report it because I am not smart enough to know what kind of browser I have and suchlike.

al-Scooter @ 92:

Don’t get me wrong – I would have no problem if the WaPo was dismantled today. I just don’t see that happening in my lifetime, though. There is that little impediment called the First Amendment, which I wholeheartedly support. Maybe you could dismantle things like the Clear Channel monster with the FCC, but how long will that take? (Besides, I’m not certain technology won’t do that for us, much like cable TV is diminishing the networks.)

E-mails and conversations? Hell, most of the people I communicate with are already good, correct-thinking Americans, just like me! :-)
No opportunity for persuasion there.

What we have to aim for, I think, is MASS communication through MASS media, in order to change a country this size.

If the wealthy acting through corporations control editing, assignments, and so forth, then we can’t just go out and get new editors, corporations, and the like.

One solution of the radical right, when it couldn’t write the stories it wanted in the WaPo, was to have the Right Reverend Sun Mynung Moon start the Washington Times. If anyone wants to do the equivalent from our group, I’m all for it. I just don’t think that is realistic NOW.

Why I posted is because Redd asked what WE can do NOW to change things. With those restrictions imposed, I think all we can do is assess the cards in our hand and then play them the best that we can.

Blogs are fine, great in fact. But there’s a large element of preaching to the converted in them. We need to reach large amounts of other Americans, I think.

What is our opportunity, if we can’t NOW change large mass media structure, ownership, and operations? It seems to me that we can only use the mass media that currently exists. We can’t compel them to write the truth, to report courageously, but we can wait for them to ask us onto the talking head shows, or call us for comment on the stories they choose to write. And when they do, we have to be prepared to use that tiny little window to sneak through the truth. To say something so powerful, so clearly correct, that it overwhelms whatever is written in the article or said on the talking head show To do that, we have to know the truth, and then express it directly, concisely, and unmistakably. Augmented by devices like humor and ridicule.

What alternative is there? Wait for another hand to be dealt? I don’t have time to wait. Complain? How much will that change things?

I’m not arguing that we have a lot of opportunity. I’m just arguing that necessity REQUIRES that we recognize what little opportunity we have, and then MAXIMIZE our use of that opportunity EVERY chance we get. And that we have failed miserably to do so in the past decade, at least.

lotuslander, just skimming, but I think what you are experiencing is that the troll software holds comments that “require moderation.” When someone, Jane, Christy, Pach, …., release the comment, it gets inserted on the thread where it would have originally hit. The problem is the thread has moved, while the comment was “awaiting moderation.”
Handle plus comment number will almost always get you at least within one # of the comment you are referencing. Handle plus timestamp, provides a greater degree of accuracy.
If something else is going on, I’ll gladly defer to someone else.

OT _ if you haven’t seen this, it’s a riot. MMalkin is an “anchor baby”

http://www.spittleandink.com/s…..amp;id=338

Yes, John C, and thanks. What I can’t figure out is why a comment carries one number for some (at least one) of us and and a different number for others … which also has to mean that some (most?) are actually getting more comments than others.

Boycott the print news, while we figure out what to do with tv land.

The FCC is reportedly gearing up for the final gutting of regulations to allow tv, radio and newspaper ownership in the same media markets….

Heckuva job Goebbels.

-GSD

lotus- one explanation may be that those who have a comment “awaiting moderation” see the comment and it’s assigned number on the screen. The rest of us do not- so the numbering for those awaiting moderation must be different for every subsequent comment.

before the book salon – just a note – I’m about to post a diary at dKos about media and YearlyKos from the YKOS media team – I’ll come back and post the link as soon as it’s live but folks may want to take a look after this discussion.

lotuslander — John Caspar is correct. There may be different numbers because people are refreshing the comments at different times. Because our spam filter requires that we go in and individually approve the comments caught in there, they get approved bit by bit — hence if one person refreshes five minutes before another person, but we’ve approved 2 comments in the first five minutes and 5 within the next five minutes, you would get different numbering. (And sorry that sounded so much like an SAT question…)

What to do about the MSM?

1. Boycott them, deny the MSM its oxygen and cause financial pain.

Is this working? As teevee news viewers and print subscribers drop out, the MSM seems to be getting even dumber.

2. Boycott the money behind the MSM – Punish MSM advertisers for supporting our corrupt 4th estate.

Is this working? Can MSM advertisers force journalistic ethics?

3. Shame the media whores.

FDL raised this tactic to the level of art form and the whores have been embarrassed, for sure.
Can the whores be flipped over to the bright side, driven out of the industry or encouraged to blow the whistle? Yes!

4. Attack MSM institutional ethics and credibility.

Is this working? Yes!

5. Destroy the evil memes and paradigms.

This tactic (more a strategy) could be decisive for election 2006.

And I think libertarianism is at the evil core of Fascism in America.
A careful look at libertarianism will reveal the memes used to construct the Fascism in America paradigm.

professorrat@33 – thanks for the great link on libertarianism: http://world.std.com/~mhuben/leftlib.html

Libertarianism makes you stupid!

Blimey, Christy. But thanks to you/all for the soothing.

This is probably something I shouldn’t say out loud, but I’ve never been told I’m immoderate — at least not HERE — so don’t quite know what we’re talking about. (Again.)

new thread – El Salon Norteamericano is open!

OT–My apologies if this has been noted before, have not been around much:

ON AMERICAN POLITICS
Feingold & Warner in N.H.
Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) and former Virginia Governor Mark Warner (D) address the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s annual covention. It takes place at St. Anselm’s College in Goffstown, New Hampshire. New Hampshire is expected to hold the nation’s first presidential primary in 2008.
SUN., C-SPAN, 6:30/9:30PM ET

DL #136:

I think we’re mostly in agreement, albeit with different points of emphasis. I tend to view the permeability of the M$M as being a sometimes thing, but you’re right to argue that we need to leverage it as much as we can.

I was delighted to see Dana Milbank’s swipe at bloggers the other day just as an example of the M$M’s need to react to us. Let’s not underestimate the influence of blogs, as the ideas that get expressed and refined here also are beginning to permeate the M$M, however indirectly.

Where I think both you and I are headed is a jiu jitsu strategy to turn the M$M and the very right-wing noise machine against itself. Some of this already is happening just by making the M$M defend ever more ridiculous positions (e.g., the economy’s great, except that real wages actually are declining and job creation sucks – or we’re winning in Iraq except for all the chaos and the fact that our reporters keep getting killed). If they won’t give us some reasonable time for our messages, the irrelevancy of their own will have to do.

Link for YearlyKos Media team diary:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…..7755/18560

Bingo, Eli!

The Media is the principal means by which the few control the many, to paraphrase Gore Vidal. Open the business section of any paper and see the incredible distortions about the unemployment figures, for example, or the insistent tripe about globalization being inevitable. It is relentless. Unless and until middle-class Americans understand that the country is not run for their benefit, we will all be sucking wind. What is needed is a structural analysis that goes beyond the surface of observing how the GOP does it, and looks at how the ultra wealthy call the real shots.

al-Scooter @ 149:

I don’t think you and I are in that much, if any, disagreement, either.

I agree about the utility of the blogs in permeating mass media.

And I agree about responding to ridiculous statements – like about the economy. I think it needs to be aimed at our audience, in terms they understand immediately and recognize as true, based on their life experiences and those of their immediate community. “Interest rates are up and going up further. Foreclosures are skyrocketing – families are losing their homes at the rate of ______ per day in this country. Inflation is up, and given gas prices, it will keep going up – people can’t afford what they’ve worked hard to enjoy. Drug prices keep exploding, Sick people – not just retired sick people on fixed incomes – can’t afford to get healthy. People who work for a living don’t know how long it will be before their job is gone – “downsized” or “outsourced.”" And on and on.

And sometimes, you just have to make your own opportunity, by ignoring what is asked and raising your own issue. Like, “George Bush found fourteen billion taxpayer dollars to give away to big oil companies, like they need more money, but every year he has been in office, he’s cut cancer research tens of millions of dollars, because we don’t have enough money.” Anyone in their right mind knows oil companies don’t need a single taxpayer dollar, and knows that cancer will eventually visit them, sooner or later, directly or indirectly.

My frustration is that, with so few opportunities to reach and to persuade those we must reach and persuade, I see so many of us with the best opportunities – those called for comment, elected officials, party officials – make so very little of those opportunities.

If that doesn’t change, I don’t see the hope. And hope is what I must have. So I just want the wasting of what opportunities we have to stop, and right now.

Talk about being EPU’d! I just about posted the following comment to the first-rate May 6 post by Pachacutec you linked to:

The real issue is that anyone who favors the _common good_ these days is called a liberal, whatever their political beliefs may be. Analyzing the circus buffoonery propaganda by shill reporters might shame some of them into acting with honor. But it may well take real muscle to change this, like it did here in the 1930’s. And at need we may be called to water our parched Tree of Liberty…

Redd, great work as always.

“It is difficult to make a man understand something, when his job depends on his not understanding it.” –Upton Sinclair

The first step is to diagnose the disease, before we attack the symptoms.

Karl Rove was quoted a while back in WaPo:

“I’m not sure I’ve talked about the liberal media,” Rove said when a student inquired — a decision he said he made “consciously.” The press is generally liberal, he argued, but “I think it’s less liberal than it is oppositional.”

The argument — similar to the one that former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer made in his recent book — is nuanced, nonpartisan and, to the ears of many journalists, right on target. “Reporters now see their role less as discovering facts and fair-mindedly reporting the truth and more as being put on the earth to afflict the comfortable, to be a constant thorn of those in power, whether they are Republican or Democrat,” Rove said.

His indictment of the media — delivered as part of Washington College’s Harwood Lecture Series, named for the late Washington Post editor and writer Richard Harwood — had four parts: that there’s been an explosion in the number of media outlets; that these outlets have an insatiable demand for content; that these changes create enormous competitive pressure; and that journalists have increasingly adopted an antagonistic attitude toward public officials. Beyond that, Rove argued that the press pays too much attention to polls and “horse-race” politics, and covers governing as if it were a campaign.

The press is oppositional, but perhaps not in the way he or the press thinks.
In Morrow’s day, journalists liked to think that journalism had reached a new level of professionalism, where the goal was to recount a fairly provable set of facts. But then and now, the first editorial cut editors make is “is this a good story?” And that’s the crux of the problem right there — how story itself is defined. IMHO news reporting has adopted the storytelling principles of fiction to structure its reports.
Morrow and his colleagues defined it around those aforementioned facts. But over time it has slipped, until today’s editors have come to interpret story in terms of narrative. Narrative storytelling, as we all know, is built on expositon, rising action, climax, denouement, and the foundation underneath it all is conflict.
And so it seems to me that the adoption of narrative storytelling techniques has created the underlying bias of the media–not left, not right, but towards conflict between both sides. Crossfire anyone? Unfortunately, the interests of the American people are diametrically opposed–for good governance to even be possible, we need compromise. Not so the media.
This is what journalism has become today–narrative storytelling techniques applied to a loose set of facts, which become less relevant as the need to heighten the conflict (and ratings, dare I say) of a story becomes more important. And that brings in a whole ‘nother can of worms — the corporate interests that see ratings as the end goal, rather than proving or presenting the facts.
Of course the problem with (1) being the medium by which both sides communicate with the American people and each other, and (2) having a business model based on heightening conflict, leads (3) to where we are today. Where is that exactly? To extremism.
As evidence I present your own lying eyes–you too have witnessed that over the past 30 years with the rise of cable outlets, those most willing to heighten conflict have been given the mike more often. The Ann Coulter cover of Time is not an aberration, it’s an inevitability.
The way to counter this tendency in the near term is to drag the media middle man or woman into the argument. The right has done this with devastating effectiveness, to the point where journalists today seem to be more afraid of being called liberal than of being wrong.
The left can play this game too, but with a difference. The right thrives on the relativism of he said/he said. The left however needs to step out of the contrived argument and force the reporter to report whatever facts they’ve found. The goal is too nullify the fake conflict, rather than participate in it.

I long for the day when a smart pol turns around and pointedly asks Wolf Blitzer or Tim Russert et al if they’ve done any reporting on the matter at hand. Not the debate, but the issues being debated.

If the talking head says yes, then the followup question is to have said head tell the viewers what that reporting tells them.

If they hem and haw, they become the story — “You mean you have us here talking about this issues, and you’ve done no research or journalism on it? So this program is meant to highlight the conflict between your guests, not inform the public?” Etc.

Print requires a different set of tools applied to the same goal — step out of the fake conflict, attack the reporting in a way that calls into question the reporter’s competence as such. TPM’s recent takedown of Solomon at AP is the model there.

So let’s try this again, because I know I hit the send key.
We have a king. If the Rethugs don’t win 2006, they will stage another 9/11. The Democrats are in on it, so basically, I’d like to know how we’re not screwed?

Christy Hardin Smith s@ 1:55 pm (#144) – Something I noticed last night is that comments that go into moderation and are released from jail later don’t always show up when you hit the “Refresh Comments” button. You have to use your browser’s reload button.

And, of course, once you do this your article numbers will be different from everyone else’s from that point on, unless everyone reloads the page.

And by the way, who says that Bush will ever leave the White House. National Emergency. President for life. No elections.

cynic –

Bush is dying to leave office, so he can spend some quality time with his good friends Jim and Jack and Jeff — Beam, Daniels, and Gannon.

Of course, handing off to Jebby would sure make his life easier.

Hey, I love blogs as much as anybody, spend a lot of time reading them. But it’s delusional to imagine they are on the same scale as mass media.

Darkblack. All your chart shows is that one sort of mass media (network TV) is morphing into another (cable). Blogs aren’t mass media. Cable isn’t going to morph into them.

As to Faberge, that is referring to new consumer product introductions. Democrats and Republicans aren’t new consumer products and they aren’t new. Almost everybody who cares about them already has an opinion about them. You won’t move large amounts of political opinion through a word of mouth campaign.

You might move opinion about an individual candidate through a word of mouth campaign, but that’s not what we are talking about here. We’re talking about dislodging an entrenched set of naratives about “liberals” vs. “conservatives” that are constantly being reinforced by combined electronic media.

I’d love to be wrong. I’d love to see blogs totally displace Timmeh and Wolf and Hannity and all the rest of that dismal crew. I don’t believe it’ll happen.

siun 150, wow, that’s really impressive what your media team has accomplished. Kudos! And I agree that you shouldn’t discriminate on credentials based on ideology.

“This Week” has beat “Meet the Press” the last two weeks running in the 25-54 age group demographic. Although an impressive claim we’re talking about 1,080,000 vs 1,020,000 viewers. “Face the Nation” runs in at 950,000, while FoxNews runs in at the high 500,00 I’d say its safe to say many of those are watching both programs when not in the same time slots. That said I wouldn’t be surprised at all if there weren’t many times that number of bloggers logged in to political blogs on any given Sunday.The logical conclusion would be to safely assume there is a lot more power and influence hiding behind those keyboards and that is what is scaring the hell out of the MSM.

One small thing we can do as individuals is simply keep caling the MSM on their errors of fact, their bias and lies. Just keep it up. Numbers count. Every one counts as 10,000 people when you respond
because corporations know that for every one who wrote with an opinion, at least 10,000 other people didn’t who also agree with that one person.

Your “His Girl Friday” (1939) photo got me to thinking. Maybe we’re bucking a long journalistic tradition. At least, the reporters in HGF would not be shocked to see how things are done in 2006.
HGF is screwball comedy, of course, but thought-provoking. In HGF, a pathetic and desperate little white guy had shot and killed a black policeman, I forget why, and was sentenced to hang. The corrupt city machine scheduled the hanging a few days before the election, so they could remind the black voters that justice had been done. Although the crime reporters all agree that the man was really not guilty (insanity), they’re all so cynical that they treat the whole story as just one more opportunity to take their cuts on behalf of their papers and especially of their papers’ politics. There’s a jailbreak, a suicide attempt, and a scatterbrained courier carrying the Governor’s pardon, which the Mayor pretends he didn’t receive.
Here’s the thing, though. The reporters all generally agree and get along, but when the chips are down they all fabricate — complete fiction — different sets of details to embellish their meager facts. They do attend to some facts, but those facts are trimmed and cherry-picked to suit the political position of their newspapers. One paper apparently never stops crusading against nepotism; its reporter repeatedly identifies any city employee in the story by his family relation to the Mayor or the Sheriff. Another emphasizes the Communist menace in any event, whether it’s there or not.
Then, when the stories are phoned in and the excitement dies down, they all amicably return to their never-ending poker game.
The deference to peers and the political parameters from on high, the overall laziness, the willingness to make stuff up and not even pretend otherwise — they’d be right at home in the White House Press Corps.

Stuart — you win the visual reference prize o’ the day, my friend. I absolutely adore this movie, for that reason — the snark is ever delicious, and when you apply it to the current participants in the cocktail weenie cotillian…well, you’ve described perfectly why the picture is worth a thousand words. :) Bravo, movie buff.

Here’s a bit from a blog entry I wrote a while back, “How to Fix a Broken Media”:

Reporters do what editors/bosses want because they want to keep their jobs/careers on track. And access is the wellspring of news, at least to these powerful people. TPM and others show this is false, but it’s CW for now. Let me add one further point.

If we want the long view answer about what will correct these weaknesses in the press, the answer is ultimately education. We cannot expect reform to come by revisiting the ethical codes of journalists, nor from the scoldings of the Ben Bagdikians and Arianna Huffingtons and Robert McChesneys of the world. They all help, but who has the ears to hear them? And what code can stand up to exigencies of keeping one’s job? The public must recognize that what makes news “news” is an Information-Action connection. If information is irrelevant to action, it is entertainment; if information is obfuscatory of action, it is propaganda. And education (of history, politics, logic) is what it takes to form and apply the criterion that divides news from propaganda or entertainment. Only education can provide that, and the people must demand it at the local level.

Critical thinking can be offered at a blog, but ultimately it is a habit. And habits require training, and training requires a guiding philosophy, both for its own guidance and for those who will repeatedly need to justify its funding.

Education, education, education.

My blog at: http://blog.davidhildebrand.org/

Not too long ago the press held some power over government, because they decided who received positive or negative exposure. It also was the funnel through which government officials could receive public recognition for their accomplishments.

When the Fourth Estate became corrupt and the priority changed to who was first with a story, and being first with the “proper” perspective meant access to developing stories, the power changed hands.

The news media weakened their ability to do investigative reporting when they changed their priorities to writing from the establishment perspective rather than the insightfulness of the writing; in so doing, they converted their journalists to reporters who seek to please by promoting the right wing perspective.

This mistake is based on the false notion that the right wing has better answers toward today’s problems than the left. If the right’s arguments held water it would not be necessary to be deceitful and secretive about everything from the economy to the environment, to the descriptions of personal actions.

One day it may be recognized that it is ignorant to further unsound arguments to support a corrupt government, because of the effect it has over “our” survival as a nation. Currently, the only concern held by some journalists is their careers. They claim that they are only being “realistic” or “pragmatic”. Before the “neocons” the synonym for both words would be “cowardly”.

One runs with the ideas of those in power regardless of the efficacy of their concepts. Ultimately, this is extremely harmful to our nation, because from such a perspective democracy and freedom are the first victims.

My suggestion: The Blog Action Center for Progressive Causes (or BAC Progressive Causes)

This blog would coordinate with all the progressive blogs in (at least) these areas:

1. Community Action – Set up local progressive/Democratic “Help Desk” for the community with food bank, job training, medical care assistance, job placement, etc. The center would also register people to vote, keep track of local initiatives, and organize community protests. Bloggers could help staff and fund these enterprises by promoting them on their blogs, listing events and seeking contributions as needed. The community action section of BAC would be organized by community, and each community could have a local blogger as moderator.

2. Media Action – Bloggers would keep a running list of stories where a response or criticism is needed. The list could be kept in the same general spot on each of the blogs. By clicking on the link to respond to the story, the BAC website would automatically give you a summary of the problem, and the addresses and phone numbers of who to contact. The bloggers would all contribute to this list. Democratic Underground keeps a very extensive list of media addresses and phone numbers that could be used to set up this part of the blog.

3. Political Action – this part of the blog would be separated into two categories, federal and state. It would list important pending legislation, appointments, and who to contact regarding these. It would also list protests planned, and other group political actions and meetings. All of the various political action committees would be asked to contribute. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m on the list for so many political action committees, I get so many emails on so many topics, I can’t keep up. Perhaps organizing this way would sharpen the focus and limit the scatter somewhat.

4. Topical listings – This would be a list of various important topics that are of interest to the progressive community, and the important articles and blog entries on each. For example, racism would be a topic, with David Neiwert’s brilliant writings from Orcinus. The Valerie Plame story’s best blog entries are found here at Firedoglake from Christy Hardin Smith. Again, Democratic Underground has already developed a really good listing of topics, used in a different manner (for current news, as opposed to generalized topical reading). This would allow someone looking for a full understanding of a particular topic to go and read all of the important progressive entries on that topic.

5. Talking Points – a list of good talking points compiled by bloggers regarding various topics of interest. This would give progressives a quick reference guide for winning the water cooler wars, and also could serve politicians looking for good ways to address significant points. Things like “Democrats believe in guarding our gates, not goading our enemies” are short, sweet ways to convey the difference between us and them. Bloggers are uniformily excellent at putting together such talking points, and if the rest of us had a quick reference guide, it would surely help a lot.

6. Blog lists – A full list of progressive blogs, and their specialties.

This concept would only work if the bloggers all got together to coordinate it. They would need to agree on the media stories to attack, the most important actions to take, etc.

WE have gone past the point where the media could be described as soft on Republicans. The evidence suggests that both the New York Times and the Washington Post have become deliberate arms of the Republican party. Just like Fox News, everything they carry is slanted to harm democrats and protect Republicians. There sseems no other explanation for the Time’s Clinton article or the Post insistance that the Abramoff scandel was a bi-partisan one.

How can we recourse this conservative slant? By refusing to ever buy or link to those newspapers ever again. Their Republicanism comes from their ownership so :working the refs” won’t do anything. They simply have to die….I’m sorry,go out of business.

As I posted chez Digby, it’s curious why the US (or at least DC) hasn’t got a cheap, cheerful publication that’s comparable to Private Eye in the UK or Le Canard Enchan in France. Both combine satire, cartoons, gossip, muckraking and genuine investigative journalism.

What is so marketable about the professional liars, and propagandists, such as Hannity, Blitzer, Cavuto, O’Donnell, Malkin, Colter, Krauthammer, Klein, Hitchens, O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Woodward, Savage, Miller, Medvid, Carlson etc?

It seems as if their appeals to racism, intolerance, narrow-mindedness, bitterness, hypocrisy, belligerence and other traits of our lower-selves would weary their audiences after a short while, but they have been selling this garbage for years and continue to have a following. What is the big attraction?

His Girl Friday is a remake of The Front Page which in turn is a rip-off of Chicago — a play by one Maurine Dallas Watkins.

Watkins was a reporter for the Chicago tribune who gained fame by confecting “human interest” stories about “Chicago’s most fashionable murderesses.” She went to the Cook County jail, interviewed women, dressed them up and told their storeis.

Or rather created their stories — and thus the play and thus the great Bob Fosse musical with songs by Kander and Ebb.

THIS IS THE TEMPLATE FOR ALL OF “MAINSTREAM” JOURNALISM !!!!

You can read Watkins’ play, and the pieces she created (complete with photos) in a volume published a few years ago by The Southern Illinois University Press.

and all that jazz.

We can do something about the dreadful media.
http://makethemaccountable.com…..ervice.pdf

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com