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Edited on Wed Jan-19-05 10:40 AM by HamdenRice
I'm not sure how old you are, but the emergence of the MSM as a force for corporate and republican propaganda is pretty recent and dramatic, but you have to be about 35 to remember the media before it became the MSM.
Before the 1980s, most media companies were of modest size and independent. The Federal Communications Commission had stringent rules against "cross ownership" in the media. That meant that newspaper chains were only allowed to own a few papers, and not more than one in any market. CBS, NBC and ABC were all independent corporations. CBS was basically a family owned company, owned by the Paley family, for example. CNN was owned basically by one guy, the so called "mouth fro the south" Ted Turner. Even the networks were not allowed to own more than 5 TV stations -- the remainder were independent companies that "affiliated" with the networks by buying programs from them, but retained independent news departments and ownership structures. Most radio stations were independently owned, with local DJs programming the music at the station. Moreover, the FCC enforced the "fairness doctrine" that required TV stations when they presented one partisan view of a topic to give the opposing view. The entire federal regulatory structure of communciations was designed to keep media independent, competitive and fair.
Journalists tended to be skeptical, rather badly paid, working class, highly unionized, empirical, outsiders -- and generally just because of their circumstances a bit liberal. That's why they generally were on the progressive side of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and the Nixon impeachment. This is why they also got the reputation for being "liberal media" -- but that was years ago.
In the 1980s, the Reagan administration deregulated communications. The TV networks were purchased by bigger corporations. Gigantic corporations purchased the networks, newspaper chains and radio stations. Media cross ownership was now hailed as "synergy". For example, over time, Time magazines purchased Warner Brothers pictures, and merged with Turners CNN and then was purchased by AOL. NBC was purchased by General Electric, and became very conservative and pro military -- perhaps because GE was one of the biggest military contractors in the world. ABC was came to be owned by Capital Cities (founded by CIA director Bill Casey) and Disney which depends on Florida Governor Jeb Bush for favorable tax and environmental regulation.
Top journalists became highly paid millionaires themselves, with interests aligned with their business bosses.
Oddly enough, the first person to really go after these changes in public was David Letterman, who had the Late Night show on NBC. When NBC was purchased by General Electric, he would night after night make fun of GE, daring them to intervene with editorial content. Eventually they did, and he had to beg forgiveness. But up until then, corporate interference with the media seemed unthinkable.
Today media are owned by large chains of corporations. It is not that they have a secret meeting. It's that they have very serious economic interests -- not so much with the Republicans of Democrats, specifically, but with government contracts, and therefore staying on the side of whoever is in power and promoting corporate economic interests in general.
The exception is Fox, which is actually tightly linked to the Republican Party. The News division was founded and is run by Ronald Reagan's and Bush I's chief political advisor, Roger Ailes. As has been amply demonstrated by other sources, the White House's Karl Rove literally faxes talking points to Fox each morning, which are promoted as propaganda each day.
So that is what MSM is.
Some outlets remain a bit independent. Oddly enough, the NY Times remains essentially a family owned paper, which is why it has not succombed to the same extent to corporatized propaganda.
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