Re: TV journalism and infotainment:

I missed the Imus thread because I just got to the lake. My only comment about Imus: he’s very much part of the smug Beltway nexus of journalists and politicians.

Just look at his cast of regular guests, all usual suspects:

Journalists: Tim Russert; David Gregory; Howard Fineman; Chris Matthews; Andrea Mitchell; Jonathan Fineman (occasionally); Dan Rather (occasionally when he was at CBS but hasn’t been back since he left); Brian Williams (occasionally)

Politicians: Joe Lieberman; John McCain; Harold Ford Jr. (who has yet to come to his defense); Rick Santorum; John Kerry (occasionally: who perhaps hasn’t forgiven Imus his kiss of death in the 2004 elections); Senate-windbag Joe Biden

About the Joshua Bell story – perhaps I’m thinking of it from an artist’s point of view,…

Came back to this thread just now…you know, what I found remarkable, about 39 pages of comments in WaPo. The point, as you say, to be so oblivious to the surroundings…as meditators say, always in the mind, focussed on what is next, always missing what is here.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/10/94045/6601

This notion that network executives are just giving the public what they want doesn’t merely insult the public more than they deserve. More importantly, it conceals the political motivations of the Republicans and neocons in charge.

brendan @ 106

CHS:

This wasn’t “sloppy reporting” on the part of “Stretch” Gregory or any other such factotum. This was orchestrated by the White House. Few know better than people like you the mechanics of how they use their favored journalistic conduits to conduct political operations.

The whole story was so patently phoney (all those Republicans in Syria at the same time), yet focused and ubiquitous, that it could only have been promoted by executive decision at the networks.

Josh Marshall’s analysis of Olmert’s sucker punch to Pelosi seals the deal on such speculation.

As I mentioned earlier, I read somewhere that Eliot Abrams organzied the Pelosi attack. Why don’t Ds organize a counterattack? Pelosi has done a great job in her public statements, but that’s far less than the situation requires.

One of the reasons Dems don’t “organize a counterattack” is that they don’t control the media infrastructure the way Republicans do.

The other is that most are whipped by the Lobby, in the parliamentary sense if not the literal one; they’re not used to anything but echoing the most inanely bellicose things about Syria or Iran. That said, I was, frankly, pleasantly suprised to see a pure neocon like Lantos defend Pelosi. He, at least, still moonlights as a Democrat.

Citizen leftdcin72 and the Firepup Patriots:

“What ought to be happening to Imus is that CBS (the originating publisher)ought to be put under license review by the FCC.”

What you SAY, brother…what you SAY!!! And we hafta put that out there in every open forum we have…that’s what the corporatists are worried about, that us plain folks are gunna wake up and realize that media are licensed and supposed to be held to “public interest” standards. Furthermore, most folks don’t know that corporations are still licensed in each state under similar public interest clauses in the enabling legislation describing the state’s power to charter corporations.

This is war…the corporations are comin’ outta the closet because they see their entire political power structure threatened by the exposure of the Bush crime family and their minions.

Maketheconnectionsmaketheconnectionsmaketheconnections…

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THEY AREN’T GUNNA GIVE UP AND I AIN’T READY TA PLAY NICE!!!