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Throughout most of the 1980s, CBS news was number one. In the late 1980s the neocons launched a political style smear campaign against Dan Rather. The campaign even involved bumper stickers and t-shirts. It wasn’t because Dan Rather was especially liberal, because he isn’t. The attack was meant to take out the number one journalist and send a message to the rest. CBS went from number one to number three. Since that time there have been other boycotts and tons of hate mail has been sent to news organizations that are declared too liberal. It has worked. The news media today exercises a lot of self-censorship. Everyone is afraid to anger the far right.
The neocons were able to gain this influence over the media by constantly complaining that the media is controlled by liberals. This claim mobilizes the Republican base to take part in the boycotts and send in their hate mail. Now, with the corporate take over of the newsrooms, these organizations are slowly being filled with many who support the far right, but mostly the newsrooms are being filled with those who care only about sensationalism (Scott Peterson), and not about investigating and informing the public of the vital issues of the day.
Here’s the problem. Our elections are rigged, but with the news media under the thumb of the neocons, nothing is going to be done about it. We can forget about 2008, 2012, or any other election. The only way we can stop fascism in the US is widespread protest and other efforts to demand the election process be fixed.
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