The blatant corruption of the mainstream media in the US

[Vympel]

Link

The "military analyst" scandal that was broken by the NYT a few weeks ago (i.e. - surprise surprise, all those "independent military analysts" paraded before audiences both before and during the Iraq War telling everyone how fantastic things were in cahoots with the Pentagon as part of a deliberate propaganda program - breaking numerous domestic propaganda laws) has been virtually ignored by the networks that paraded them before the public as "independent" experts.

Glenn Greenwald looks over the roughly 8,000 pages and audio tapes it was forced to provide to the NYT regarding its "military analyst" program.

Excerpts:-

Beyond the networks' keeping this scandal completely concealed from their viewers, The Politico story noted that only two network executives -- CNN's President Jim Walton and ABC's President David Westin (.pdf) -- even bothered to respond to the letters sent by Rep. Rosa DeLauro to all networks demanding answers with regard to their complicity in this program. When responding, the two executives -- exactly as Brian Williams was when he was finally forced by blog-inspired commenters to respond (on his blog, but not on NBC) -- were casually dismissive of the entire matter, insisting that they had done nothing wrong (other than CNN's acknowledgment that they failed to detect a conflict of interest with regard to a single military analyst they had used).

In a "trip report" he filed with his Pentagon handlers, CNN's Gen. Shepperd explicitly acknowledged both the blatantly propagandistic purpose of the trip, as well as the extremely limited and controlled scope of information to which he had access in a single-day trip (7434). Shepperd stated:

"Did we drink the 'Government Kool-Aid?' -- of course, and that was the purpose of the trip."

Shepperd's statement as to the purpose of the GITMO trip -- to have the pro-government analysts "drink the government Kool-Aid" -- was unquestionably accurate, as multiple Pentagon documents reflect. As but one example, a planning email from Pentagon official Dallas Lawrence, dated June 21, 2005, highlighted the importance of scheduling the Gitmo trip to ensure that The American Spectator's Jed Babbin could participate, noting (7486):

He is hosting a number of radio shows this summer. I would have to think he would have every member of Congress on to talk about their trip together -- a definite plus for us looking to expand the echo chamber.

And so on.

[Elfdart]

I love the way these network douchebags pretend they had no idea that all these plainclothes colonels they put on the air were shills for the war. As this video shows, they knew, did it anyway -and dismissed anyone who pointed it out:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=AchezOZsFiU

[Warsie]

This is old-but yeah the mainstream media basically swallowed the Bush Regime's propaganda.

[Darth Wong]

The MSM is obviously not going to make an effort to publicize stories about its own misdeeds. But frankly, the whole goddamned country had been reduced to a pack of drooling idiots in 2002-2003, not just the media. There was a hunger for "expert" justification for the things everyone wanted to believe, just as there is a hunger among Christians for credentialed authors who tell them they're not full of shit.

I lost track of the number of stupid-ass things I saw being said by people that seemed intelligent two years earlier or two years later. Of course, they were not as stupid as the things being said by the die-hard Republitards, but it was quite frankly rare in 2002-2003 to find an American who hadn't drunk the Bush Kool-Aid.

[Flagg]

The MSM is obviously not going to make an effort to publicize stories about its own misdeeds. But frankly, the whole goddamned country had been reduced to a pack of drooling idiots in 2002-2003, not just the media. There was a hunger for "expert" justification for the things everyone wanted to believe, just as there is a hunger among Christians for credentialed authors who tell them they're not full of shit.

I lost track of the number of stupid-ass things I saw being said by people that seemed intelligent two years earlier or two years later. Of course, they were not as stupid as the things being said by the die-hard Republitards, but it was quite frankly rare in 2002-2003 to find an American who hadn't drunk the Bush Kool-Aid.

It was like living in the twilight zone. I remember right after 9/11 deciding to give Bush a "chance" as I figured that was only fair since if he could rise to the challenge then maybe some good would come out of this and he would be forced to recognize what needed to be done and put away all the stupidassed bullshit he was peddling before. I was over it about 3 weeks later when he was trying to peddle his stupid bullshit using the corpses of those who died.

Most people still didn't see through it, though. With each dumbass thing he did there was some support falloff, but his main devotees (the media) never stopped shilling for him at all until Katrina, which was just too big to ignore. They still refuse to admit that they were suckered in as much, if not more than every other idiot who sang 'god bless america' for the next 3 years as if it were the goddamned national anthem.

I still remember those fuckers and they're "We were all wrong" headlines after it became undeniable that Iraq had no WMD and my indignation at their assuming that I was as full of shit as they were. I wrote a few LTTE all along the lines of "No, you were all wrong. People like me, who wrote to this very publication and said as much before this idiotic war and were laughed at or called unpatriotic were 100% correct. Try not to forget that the next time you want to go fight The Next Great Patriotic War".

[Rye]

There's an interesting thing on the discrepancies between the London Times and New York Times in a Chomsky documentary called "Manufacturing Consent". It covers an example of East Timor vs Cambodia and how the media covered the Cambodian conflict with "American Interests" attached a fuckton more than the ethically comparable situation that was going on in East Timor with no interests.

[Master of Ossus]

There's an interesting thing on the discrepancies between the London Times and New York Times in a Chomsky documentary called "Manufacturing Consent". It covers an example of East Timor vs Cambodia and how the media covered the Cambodian conflict with "American Interests" attached a fuckton more than the ethically comparable situation that was going on in East Timor with no interests.

I haven't watched the documentary, but from your description it sounds as if the media covers events that affect its consumers more than events that don't affect its consumers. What a devastating critique.

[Keevan_Colton]

There's an interesting thing on the discrepancies between the London Times and New York Times in a Chomsky documentary called "Manufacturing Consent". It covers an example of East Timor vs Cambodia and how the media covered the Cambodian conflict with "American Interests" attached a fuckton more than the ethically comparable situation that was going on in East Timor with no interests.

I haven't watched the documentary, but from your description it sounds as if the media covers events that affect its consumers more than events that don't affect its consumers. What a devastating critique.

I'm not a fan of Chomsky, but the distinction is more of a divide along the lines of the principles of a citizen vs. a consumer model of information. Whether you tell people what they ought to know, or only what they want to know.

The consumer model leans towards just what they want.
The citizen model leans towards what they need. The press is, on both sides of the Atlantic, regarded as the fourth pillar of government. It's main task is to help ensure a well informed electorate to make democracy work. However, without some sort of Reithian commitment to public service you just get a pure consumer model.

[Rye]

I haven't watched the documentary, but from your description it sounds as if the media covers events that affect its consumers more than events that don't affect its consumers. What a devastating critique.

I would really suggest watching it.

[TheKwas]

There's an interesting thing on the discrepancies between the London Times and New York Times in a Chomsky documentary called "Manufacturing Consent". It covers an example of East Timor vs Cambodia and how the media covered the Cambodian conflict with "American Interests" attached a fuckton more than the ethically comparable situation that was going on in East Timor with no interests.

I haven't watched the documentary, but from your description it sounds as if the media covers events that affect its consumers more than events that don't affect its consumers. What a devastating critique.

The chomsky model of Propaganda:

First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the propaganda model views the private media as businesses selling a product — readers and audiences (rather than news) — to other businesses (advertisers). Describing the media's "societal purpose", Chomsky writes, "... the study of institutions and how they function must be scrupulously ignored, apart from fringe elements or a relatively obscure scholarly literature"[1]. The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five are:

1. Ownership of the medium
2. Medium's funding sources
3. Sourcing
4. Flak
5. Anti-communist ideology

The first three are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important.

Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country[2] that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles which the model postulates as the cause of media biases.[3]

Read more at Wiki
Laugh at it as simplistic (what on earth would you expect from a summary from a message board), but it's actually a pretty contested model in academia.