"An Eye on Power" a Bill Moyers Must Read! He Rips Media Apart!

[KoKo]

An Eye On Power/ Bill Moyers
May 24, 2004

(SNIP)

The report by Pew includes a 1999 survey that showed a massive retreat in coverage of key departments and agencies in Washington, including the Supreme Court and the State Department. At the Social Security Administration, whose activities literally affect every American, only The New York Times was maintaining a full-time reporter. At the Interior Department, which controls five to six hundred million acres of public land and looks after everything from the National Park Service to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, there were no full-time reporters around.

That's right here in Washington. Out across the country there is simultaneously a near blackout of local politics by broadcasters. The public interest group Alliance for Better Campaigns studied 45 stations in six cities in one week in October. Out of 7,560 hours of programming analyzed, only 13 were devote to local public affairs—less than one-half of one percent of local programming nationwide.

Meanwhile, as secrecy grows, and media conglomerates put more and more power in fewer and fewer hands, we have witnessed the rise of a new phenomenon—a quasi-official partisan press ideologically linked to an authoritarian administration that is in turn the ally and agent of powerful financial and economic interests that consider transparencies a threat to their hegemony over public opinion. This convergence dominates the marketplace of political ideas in a phenomenon unique in our history. Stretching from the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch's empire to the nattering nabobs of know-nothing radio to a legion of think tanks bought and paid for by corporations circling the honey pots of government, a vast echo chamber resounds with a conformity of opinions, serving a partisan worldview cannot be proven wrong because it admits no evidence to the contrary. When you challenge them with evidence to the contrary—when you try to hold their propaganda to scrutiny—you're likely to wind up in the modern equivalent of a medieval iron maiden, between the covers, that is, of an Ann Coulter tirade, or wake up in an underground cell at FOX News, force fed leftovers from a Roger Ailes snack, and required for 24 hours a day to stare at photographs of Rupert Murdoch on the walls of the cell while listening to a piped-in Bill O'Reilly singing the Hallelujah Chorus in praise of himself.

So what's happening here tonight is important. Your recognition of journalism is more than ritual, ceremony or even celebration. You are confirming what journalism can do. I don't want to claim too much for this craft, but I don't want to claim too little either. I believe journalism and democracy are deeply linked in whatever chances we Americans have to redress our grievances, retake our politics, and reclaim our commitment to equality and justice.

And one last thing. The character in Tom Stoppard's play Night And Day summed it up when he said: "people do terrible things to each other, but it's worse in places where everything is kept in the dark."

More...........
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/an_eye_on_power.php

[drthais]

1. ..about that 'Interior Department'

when will we hear from the media
that the 'contractors' (i.e. mercenearies)
were tabled under the Interior Department
specifically so that they would noe be held legally responsible
for any of their actions in Iraq? hm"?

So, in other words, Gayle Norton is in charge of these thugs

how odd

[shraby]

2. Something we all knew

but it's so hard to yell loud enough. I notice the date on the article and it rather coincides with the media starting to break away from the Bush litany.

[struggle4progress]

3. We really need another I.F. Stone.

[Fridays Child]

4. Kick

:kick:

[rfkrocks]

5. Great POST!!!!!

Moyers is a national treasure-but is anybody listening? We hope and pray they are but time is running out-people are still being fed on the junk food of the Bush plan-it really is getting to be Orwell's 1984. Corporations even bought the largest state in the republic to its knees on a manipulated energy market-outside of CBS do people care?-that caused the recall of a govenor in a classic "do over" GOP election.Wow the country is on the brink of disaster-the media works for the government-how sad

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. I'm old enough to remember when local TV stations

in Minneapolis and St. Paul actually reported what was happening at city council and school board meetings.

Does public apathy about local elections and local politics date from the beginnings of "happy talk" news, which turned local newscasts into a recital of the day's shootings, fires, kitten-in-a-tree stories, and commercials about new products or network tie-ins thinly disguised as "news"?

[Love Bug]

7. I agree with you about public apathy

A long, long, time ago the news departments of the big three (CBS, ABC, NBC) were not profit centers. I think in the early 80s, in an effort to keep costs downs, the major networks folded their news departments into their entertainment divisions. Hence the decline of news ever since.

Here's a quote from an article about Tom Brokaw's retirement:

Of all the changes in network TV news since the early '80s, perhaps none is more significant than the blurring -- if not the obliteration -- of the line between the news and entertainment divisions at the networks.

Jeff Zucker -- who rose from producer of the "Today" show to President of NBC Entertainment -- expanded his command at the network last December to include its news and cable operations, including CNBC and MSNBC. Zucker's consolidation of authority, like the similar consolidation executed by the late Roone Arledge at ABC, stands out as another vivid reminder that network news -- which formerly independent networks once considered immune from commercial pressure -- is now, first and foremost, a profit center for the conglomerates that dominate U.S. media.

Link: http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040420-040845-2721r.htm

Here's another quote:

In the early 1980s news was still a serious factor in television programming. Broadcast executives at diversified TV networks remembered and occasionally quoted William Paley's legendary memo in which he said news was a public service that, if done right, was very difficult to make a profit on. No problem, said Paley (unchallenged at the time by corporate bean counters); the network would make back, through its entertainment division, any losses incurred by the news division.

But one by one, the three original networks were acquired by corporate owners with little if any interest in reliable news or public service. Entertainment was where the money was. By the mid-1980s broadcast executives were taking notice of minute-by-minute ratings and the large, seductive eyes of new "talent." Network news divisions were designated as profit centers and news itself became a product, sold like everything else to Madison Avenue. Even so, news was still serious, most of it broadcast without background music, ubiquitous logos or crisis slogans.

When attention ("attracting eyeballs") became the primary goal of programming in the early 1990s, however, professional attention-grabbers like John McLaughlin, Howard Stern, Bill O'Reilly, Don Imus and Chris Matthews became free-market winners. By cleverly blending blue-collar social values with Wall Street economic values, they got rich. And a handsome young Princeton graduate (John Stossel -- my note), confused about his politics but certain of his ambition, followed their lead. He dropped the Naderite stories, became a hero of the libertarian right and got rich.

Link: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=20020107&s=dowie

[BlueEyedSon]

8. *kick*