READER COMMENTS ON

"'Watchdog Press Died Under Bush': Journo Prof"

(25 Responses so far...)





COMMENT #1 [Permalink]

... Linda said on 8/9/2008 @ 7:40 pm PT...





I also think there are two distinct media problems. One is the media that doesn't really dig into what they're being told by the status quo. The other is the media that actually propagandizes for the status quo. I think these two problems should be examined separately. It's too convenient for members of the non-digging, complacent media to think they're fine, because they're not lying, like Fox "news" is. Take reporting of McCain, for example. There's a huge difference between the reporting of his campaign that overlooks his gaffes, his misstatements, as not being newsworthy. They're trying to be "nice" to the guy, because they apparently like him. And then there's the outright lying about his positions that we can frequently see on Fox. The media in the first camp believe they're OK, because they're not doing what the second camp is doing. The first group is just not doing their job, while the second is engaging in propaganda. Anyway, I agree with you here. And it's too ingrained, with incompetents judging themselves according to their own poor standards. Informing our citizens about events that are important to us and to the world is too closely linked to maintaining an audience, which is in turn too linked to entertainment instead of informing. And of course the money stream that's supporting the whole sorry mess is coming from the status quo.

COMMENT #2 [Permalink]

... d said on 8/9/2008 @ 8:08 pm PT...





It's time for a rating system for the news --- like the sanitation ratings for restaurants --- if the news is clean, factual, fact-checked, reported by a reporter & agency that have no conflict of interest with the report, if the advertisers have no conflict of interest, then it should be referred to as "A" Rated News. It seems that all of the networks these days would be hovering in the "F" Rated category.

COMMENT #3 [Permalink]

... TomR said on 8/9/2008 @ 8:56 pm PT...





...they'll say thing condescendingly like, well of course we could have done things better, we always want to strive for perfection, but on the whole I think we did a good job. So without that recognition that there's a problem even, which is non-existent, that what explains their lack of self-reflection. Sounds like some corporate media people (are they no longer journalists?) need an intervention. I can picture it now on A&E, and boy I'd watch that reality show! Now, just where would we send them for corporate detox and treatment? Ideas anyone? I guess we'd call them recovering corporate journalists after completing treatment. - Tom

COMMENT #4 [Permalink]

... abacus said on 8/9/2008 @ 9:44 pm PT...





To me a drive for oligarchy is the best fit as a description of the situation and the actions of the msm. Excuse the obvious, but the Constitution is clear:

it was written as a document to guide our national processb...to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the benefits of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity... The regressives in office have tried to divide us on racial and class lines, have made a mockery of justice jailing more of us, proportionally, than any other nation, left one of our greatest cities to die by the inches in a storm, nearly destroyed our defense and given aid and comfort to an armed opposition, allowed polluters to overwhelm our air, water and food systems --- all aimed at recreating us as a subservient population dependent on the whim of a power class for health care, education ... no longer a free people caring for one another working together. The current establishment has violated every provision put in place in the Constitution at the founding - initiation of an illegal and immoral war, abrogation of habeas corpus [so important that the founders wrote it into the Constitution BEFORE the Bill of Rights Amendments were passed], violation of treaties, failure to bring impeachment... For brevity I'll forbear going through the list of their tramplings on the Bill of Rights - though I think we should underline the absolute failure of the press with respect to the First Amendment. The 'lords' of msm failed utterly to exercise their rights, their responsibilities to bring to the citizens a valid account of these matters. In my book this borders on treason.

COMMENT #5 [Permalink]

... Michael said on 8/9/2008 @ 10:09 pm PT...





I think that if Obama is elected president, then the MSM reporters will awaken from their collective coma and report that they have been remiss in not doing their job well enough. They will start investigating again in a big way. Everything that Obama does or says will be analyzed four ways from Sunday. That doesn't mean that they as a group will really look at the rethugs, they will just focus on Obama. If mccain steals the election, the MSM will simply roll over and continue eating the b-b-q.

COMMENT #6 [Permalink]

... ewastud said on 8/9/2008 @ 11:28 pm PT...





You took the words right out of my mouth, Michael. The corrupt and seemingly incompetent mainstream news media are all owned by large corporations whose heads and major shareholders undoubtedly have major investments in our country's military industrial complex as well. They all have a decided right-wing and corporate-interest bias and have subtle and sometimes not so subtle ways of communicating that to the subordinate journalists who work for them and are dependent on their big bosses to pay the rent or mortgage and put food on the table. They can't rock the boat and be independent and truthful in their reportage or they risk becoming suddenly homeless and begging on the streets. A major daily newspaper in Honolulu has already demonstrated its willingness to be ruthless by laying off a large number of staff recently after failing to come to terms on a new labor contract. It is a common pattern everywhere. I hope that one of the first things that a presumed Obama presidency will do is set about taking apart these big media monopolies in selected markets of our country and open up the competition for smaller and more locally owned and controlled companies. Howard Dean explicitly talked about doing that four years ago - a big shake-up to the "powers that be." We citizens need to agitate aggressively to take back both our government and the media from the hands of the few privileged and powerful people in this country, presently the Big Oil and defense corporate interests.

COMMENT #7 [Permalink]

... gene haynes said on 8/9/2008 @ 11:44 pm PT...





I agree watchdog media has ceased. But here's a possible reason. Yesterday on the internet was a report about Hershey chocolate. It seems that lesser ingredients now make up Hershey products. I think such a story is national news, yet the mainstream media never utter a word about degraded hershey products. Why? Because if the national news reported the truth, Hershey chocolate would stop selling and the company would suffer. I guess the media today prefers our companies over the bare truth. And i guess our vaunted companies are slowly strangling their products until nobody much perfers the crap.

COMMENT #8 [Permalink]

... TEDEGER said on 8/10/2008 @ 4:55 am PT...





lso, one John McCain, who had a sick wife and the ethics of a Gingrich, took a mistress who was really cute - and also the daughter of an important mob figure, who was given the Budweiser distributorship by Kemper Marley, the CAPO of Phoenix, as a reward for taking the fall for him in some crooked dealings. Later on, he divorced the sick wife, and Ronald Reagan was so disgusted that he broke off a long-term friendsip, but McCain married a hundred million dollars anyway. So, one of the candidates for President is definitely influenced by the Syndicate - but who is to say BOTH of them are not? Obama's kowtowing to AIPAC made me wonder - I don't KNOW that AIPAC and ADL are mob-controlled, but Lansky had a lot of influence in Israel. HOWEVER; the influence of organized crime on American Politics is a lot bigger than anyone knows or is willing to say. Remember Frank Fitzsimmons in the Nixon circle? The case of Don Bolles indicates just why investigative reporting is dead and rotting in this Nation; frankly, the reporters who could expose what's happening like to stay alive. So the FACT that we are in danger of turning the Country over to Organized Crime in January is not even mentioned! There is some light at the end of the tunnel - if you Google "McCain + Organized Crime" you'll get a lot of interesting reading - but it's not investigative journalism - it's jus History! (And no-one pays much attention - if they did, McCain could not even be a candidate!

COMMENT #9 [Permalink]

... TEDEGER said on 8/10/2008 @ 4:59 am PT...





Damn. Lost the first half. Basically, what it said was that AZ politics is totally controlled by the Lansky-Bronfman arm of the Syndicate - the rest is from Google

COMMENT #10 [Permalink]

... Smithy said on 8/10/2008 @ 5:07 am PT...





I couldnt agree more. Instead of cover things fairly, the last 7 1/2 years have been an effort to make The president look as bad as possible with no regard for anything else. No regard for the soldiers fighting the war. No regard for anyting but their blind hatred for a sitting president. The liberal press consistently ignored stories that did not fit their narative. Take the BradBlog for example. A canididate that The readers loved and wrote fondly of has been caught cheating on his wife while she was fighting cancer. Any story about that here? Of course not, it doesnt fit the impeach Bush narative.

COMMENT #11 [Permalink]

... Nunyabiz said on 8/10/2008 @ 6:48 am PT...





OMFG, it always amazes me when I see such blind ignorance as "Smithy" here.

First off I could absolutely not care less about what affair Edwards had, only a complete idiot would put something so trivial and totally meaningless above what is happening to this country right now.

So what, he lied about something that is none of my damn business and is something he actually SHOULD be lying about. Meanwhile we have a TREASONOUS WAR CRIMINAL that blatantly stole 2 elections and has lied continuously to take the country into a occupation of aggression against a country that did nothing to us what so ever costing us all trillions of taxpayer $$.

Bush has lied to take the country into a WAR killing over 1 MILLION innocent Iraqi's, well over 4000 US soldiers, wounding 10's of 1000's many for life, and infecting many 10's of 1000s with Depleted Uranium that is going to slowly kill them the next 5-10 years.

Attacked this country in a false flag attack murdering over 3000 American citizens in order to use it for political advantage against the many simple minded that sadly inhabit this country. and that is just the tip of the Bushberg. To Reich wing delusional idiots THAT is less important than a meaningless affair from a one time candidate.

Well at least the Democrats have affairs with WOMEN!

COMMENT #12 [Permalink]

... Nunyabiz said on 8/10/2008 @ 7:32 am PT...





Also BTW the so called "liberal media" which clearly does not exist has completely covered up virtually all the crimes committed by these criminals in the last 8 years.

They are clearly complicit in the crimes. They haven't investigated ANYTHING!

The so called media needs to be held accountable for the crimes THEY have committed the past 8 years. Anyone capable of comprehending what they read & hear should watch this video. http://video.google.com/...55342219448521&hl=en

COMMENT #13 [Permalink]

... Bruce Sims said on 8/10/2008 @ 9:41 am PT...





The Wrecking Crew' by Thomas Franks;

http://www.democracynow....ing_crew_thomas_frank_on http://rawstory.com/news...curity_program_0808.html

COMMENT #14 [Permalink]

... plunger said on 8/10/2008 @ 10:54 am PT...





Brokaw was attacked by "THEM" with Anthrax. Dan Rather's career was ended by "THEM" when his story was confirmed to be accurate by the White House. They set him up. Reporters have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war. Killed by who? The media is totally controlled on the one hand by those who favor the Creation of Eretz Israel - while those who appear on camera are frightened that their jobs or their lives may be taken from them if they say the wrong thing. Media ownership study ordered destroyed

Sept 14, 2006 'Every last piece' destroyed Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, said senior managers at the agency ordered that "every last piece" of the report be destroyed. "The whole project was just stopped - end of discussion," he said. Candeub was a lawyer in the FCC's Media Bureau at the time the report was written and communicated frequently with its authors, he said. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14836500/ "You can't tell any more the difference between what's propaganda and what's news." FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein

15 August, 2006

COMMENT #15 [Permalink]

... Anthony Look said on 8/10/2008 @ 1:16 pm PT...





There is no personal blame for all this. These job security concerned media employed citizenry are merely individuals going through a phase. An era if you will. Every employee (even reporters...) believes, "this isn't my fault, I didn't do this; I just work here". The "don't pointlessly confront the wind" fearfully driven survival mode is in full gear. Job requirements, be lazy enough to go with the flow; lack integrity or be a zealot or at least right wing friendly (in a complicit, guilt justifying kinda way).

What ever happened to personal responsibility?

COMMENT #16 [Permalink]

... Agent 99 said on 8/10/2008 @ 2:05 pm PT...





"Personal responsibility"... pfeh! No, no, that's something you say, not do, silly. Just how naïve can you get? Why, if people went around actually taking responsibility for their responsibilities, paychecks might be missed, health coverage might evaporate, your standard of living might go down... or... even worse... you might have to work really hard. Are you nuts? Turn around three times and spit!

COMMENT #17 [Permalink]

... Joan said on 8/10/2008 @ 8:10 pm PT...





I would love to see THIS on the front pages of our pretend media...I think it's the best comparison of mccain & Obama I've seen yet: "...it's an amazing country where an Arizona multimillionaire can attack a Chicago South Sider as an elitist and hope to make it stick. The Chicagoan was brought up by a single mom...got scholarshipped into Harvard Law and was made president of the law review... ...the Arizonan is the son of an admiral and was ushered into Annapolis though an indifferent student, much like the Current Occupant, both of them men who are very lucky that their fathers were born before they were..."

--from Garrison Keillor's "It's an amazing country"

COMMENT #18 [Permalink]

... michelle l. said on 8/10/2008 @ 8:44 pm PT...





MSM is suffering from cost-effective, obsessive-compulsive disorder - a medical excuse for not hiring more reporters, or sensationalizing more interesting, or earth-shaking news. Like all other corporations, their business is making money first, delivering "product" second. The truth is, tired, boring people wearing rose-colored-glasses watch MSM news anymore. Intelligent people forced to watch MSM's monotony: OJ, Anna Marie, Stacey, and power-driven talking TV heads: over and over and over and over and over....would be banging their heads against the wall in a day. For every O.J. Simpson and Stacey Peterson, there were hundreds of similar incidents that nobody heard about, because reporting some of those stories would have jeopardized the high salaries for execs. And they left everybody hanging with the Chandra Levy case and the answer's still "out there," but it will be "just another one of those mysteries" (a famous Porter Goss line) thirty years from now, like JFK. The blogosphere is where committed, honest, daring people do things for love and not corporate greed. Besides uncovering atrocities the MSM refuses to recognize, can't repair or keep hidden, these bloggers have earned the right to be paranoid. So what's wrong with that? Wouldn't it be interesting to do a "blogger study" on MSM, and their structuring, to understand how much manpower it employs to report inferior news and how much advertisers pay for it?

COMMENT #19 [Permalink]

... Phil said on 8/11/2008 @ 12:52 am PT...





(Another wonderful super rant by Phil)

I got a slightly different take. There's Republicans and Democrats and many folks have said they are the same. I agree with em.

It's ONE party. The FASCIST party. Republican's might be oath breaking by not following the US Constitution, yet the Democrats oath break by not holding them accountable, and enabling them. Why would this be any different in the media?

It's CORPORATE media, both push fascist agenda. Now the only way your going to fix this is by going through the FCC and getting their license renewal denied. That's going to take citizens hitting their public file and whining (cough I mean complaining) all the time. But citizens rarely do that except to ask stupid ass questions like, "hey where can I get a copy of Reverend Bla Bla's show on the date and time of bla bla bla." These networks are so powerful with so much money and resources, and yet they refuse to put their public file online. They don't want that shit, cause it ain't in their profit interest. Remember: Fascism, wants to make a profit, not help people. Corporate media is fascist media, there's no right-wing or left-wing. For how it got like this, I'd look at what controls the FCC. So we're back to square one, in turning this situation around. We must have journalistic reporting on election fraud, so we can get people in office that will fix the integrity of elections, the US Constitution, and all the other crap, and we can't do that cause the elections are rigged and no journalist is allowed to report it on corporate (re: fascist) media. All I know about bills is that they start from Congress, since the Congress ain't taking our calls, I don't see how that's going to happen. The web alone won't fix this. Why the hell do you think the telcos are incrementally screwing everything up, spying, reading our shit, data basing everything, and attacking everything from data caps (some people like to call this bandwidth, though data is the proper term.) to packet manipulation (p2p snafu, anybody watch p2p tv? there goes that..) to service port removal, to TOS/AUP that is pure bullshit. Every once in awhile the fascists slip us a sugar pill, we think, "oh great that is so cool that you finally get it." Then when our backs are turned they trip over their fucking shoelaces and pass Patriot Act, Fisa and other fucked up shit. There's more tripping and excuses for fucking up their oath of office when it's most important. So we really need someone well connected to the Congress, that can get a fucking bill in that forces the fcc and the corporate fascists to change. An online publicly accessible public file would be a good start, in my opinion. Then somehow we must make it so the fcc holds the lil fascists accountable when their public file looks like dogshit. I am going out on a limb here, and this may be shocking to you but, I am telling you right now... The corporate fascist media is a "dangerous cult." You probably wonder how the fuck does idiot Phil come up with that fucking horseshit--Jesus tits? I'll tell you how, it's something I learned way back in the 80's there was a document I came across called the "cult evaluation chart" by Bonewits. It's now become the The Advanced Bonewits' Cult Danger Evaluation Frame and you can go read the whole fucking thing right there, and stick your favorite fascist network channel into each of the fucking fields and give it a score, then add it all up. But I will save you the trouble and repeat, echo and reiterate, "The Corporate Media is a Dangerous Fucking Cult." Okay, have a nice day now... ~phil

COMMENT #20 [Permalink]

... plunger said on 8/11/2008 @ 3:43 am PT...





Georgia burns down church full of civilians Georgia Commits Genocide in S. Osettia – directed by US and Israeli advisors and aided by Blackwater Mercenaries: Supervovatube – REAL “NEWS” – Not the disinformation provided by the US Propagandist Media: http://www.supernovatube...key=4231a9962e3914f4f1f8 Fighters in black uniforms with American Flags on their arms were spotted in S. Osettia attacking civilians along side the Georgian forces. Two bodies discovered at the scene were of black soldiers, assumed to be American. Russia is kicking Georgia’s ass in response to this unprovoked attack. This Georgia fiasco is reminiscent of the Lebanon fiasco that Israel blundered into. This was all staged and planned by the USA and their Israeli partners in crime, timed precisely to coincide with the opening of the Olympic Games. This may have been an attempt to test the will of Russia to respond to another planned US/Israeli aggression, that of the pending attack against Iran. Putin said in Tehran months ago: "Any attack on Iran will be considered by Russia to be an attack on the national interests of Russia."

COMMENT #21 [Permalink]

... Phil said on 8/11/2008 @ 4:21 am PT...





Plunger, TVUPlayer get's the RT channel.

http://pages.tvunetworks.../downloads/download.html

COMMENT #22 [Permalink]

... michelle l. said on 8/11/2008 @ 4:16 pm PT...





Mankind will always enslave mankind. As long as there is government there will be, by the governing, a quest for more power and stricter control of the masses, incorporated with a greater greed for increased personal wages. As long as there is a quest for greater power, there will be growing armies and mafias sowing hate and discord. As long as there is money and a contest to acquire it, there will be murder and madness. Fascists control all of it because Fascists are all of it, with a hobby of making money by creating more of it! In my next cartoon the "Big Boys" stand urinating comparitively huge missiles and artillary from their lower, most prized extremities, which, when it comes down to it,.... is really what it's all about........ How else can a man feel more like a man than to shower his enemies with fear, dread, hell, hate, fire, and horror; or to prove his most prized "lower extremity" as being superior to all others? It's no wonder theoretical and philosophical minds create religions, heaven, hell and dreams of virgins with promise of angels and rulership of planets. Religions offer hope of an imaginary future existence in a perfect world, when the harsh unending reality in this one is, and will always be - man's constant, historic, and consistent inhumanity to man. In the meantime, if all the world hates a bully, why do we tolerate so many of them?

COMMENT #23 [Permalink]

... NoOneYouKnow said on 8/12/2008 @ 10:02 pm PT...





Personally, I think the MSM is pushing itself out of the MS. Sentient people looking for something like the truth know now not to go to American TV news, and the demographics suggest that the vaunted broadsheets are going the same way. They've peddled BS too many times and their credibility is shot. The new media is overseas or online, which is why net neutrality is such a fundamental freedom now. The fascist organizations may control the old media, but they haven't yet figured out how to stifle the new medium. There's still hope.

COMMENT #24 [Permalink]

... ProlefeedTV said on 8/12/2008 @ 10:23 pm PT...





Celebrity journalists want to remain celebrities, and none of them want the fate of Helen Thomas. If they ask hard questions or dig into the dark underbelly, they will be blacklisted. Can anyone imagine David Gregory jeopardizing his ability to dance with Karl Rove by asking hard questions?

COMMENT #25 [Permalink]

... michelle l. said on 8/13/2008 @ 10:53 am PT...

