Media analysis - Welcome to the revolution

[burythehatchet]

I believe that just as there is a beltway mentality - losing sight of what real people actually think - there is a sort of media beltway.
Media personalities have essentially become news readers, reading news writtren for them by their corporate handlers. I challenge anyone to identify a major news personality that has actually done reporting and investigating. In a perfect world, a guy like Sy hersh would be the anchor of prime time news.

With their new celebrity status and fat salaries, today's media people have become completely separated from reality (I have discontinued using the term "divorced from reality"). They live in the media beltway.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the world of news investigation, reporting and analysis has changed radically over the past three or four years. The emerging influence of bloggers has essentially superceded the role that the media should have been doing all along. I believe that the mainstream media does not know what to do about it. In fact, there is not anything they can do about it. By hooking themselves on to the corporate teat they have found that there is no going back. Remember the CNN of old? Its gone and its not ever coming back.

The media landscape has changed forever because intelligent people will always find a way to the truth. So what does this mean? It means that the mainstream media is going to try hard to discredit the new media. The know that their future is limited to infotainment. They have ceded the news function to the new media. The challenge for America is in the timing: How long will it take for the masses to realize this reality?

[Demit]

1. I agree that bloggers have altered the landscape, but...

MSM isn't gone yet. They still provide the framework--and much of the legwork.

Most of what bloggers do still piggybacks off of what MSM publishes. They flesh it out, fill in the blanks, cover more fully what MSM glosses over, but MSM still provides the frame of reference. And it has the budgets & the manpower & the access that bloggers don't yet have.

I love what bloggers are doing. They are plugging into what has gone missing from MSM. But I don't think even they would say they have taken over--nor would they want to be in the position of having taken over--the "news function" of media.

[burythehatchet]

5. my point is that the MSM is on a path towards a

much smaller role than they have had. This is not a fast process, it will take years. But it has begun. The real change will come when advertisers begin to recognize the lessening of MS influence.

As far as providing the framework, you are correct. However, that is a function that does not require them to get off their asses.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

22. Well, I don't give them much respect anymore.

:kick:

God Bless The Internet!

[Toots]

16. I agree and let's not forget our local news. It is MSM only small scale

and a lot more accountable. They usually only report the news and not nearly so much opinion. I also notice slight word changes as one goes up the ladder toward National News. Changes so slight as to be hardly noticable but yet throw a slightly different meaning onto their reporting. Fox News is extremely blatant about it but it is in all National News Media. How words are used is extremely important.

[burythehatchet]

21. That's an interesting angle

I don't pay much attention to the local news, but what you say makes sense because its harder to control the message the more local you get.

[cthrumatrix]

2. the difference in treatment for Rather vs Hume, Fox access vs others

and you see that the WH has chosen "propaganda partners" and is trying to get rid of others

this is not "freedom of the press" this is PROPAGANDA

[fasttense]

3. I don't see corporate news going away.

Just like newspapers didn't go away when 24 hour news programming came to cable. Though most pundits would have told you newspapers and magazines were going to disappear. They didn't, but they did change. Corporate media will change also. They will become specialized and fade to the periphery.

[burythehatchet]

6. They will become specialized and fade to the periphery.

Exactly, we have to help them along that path.

[sendero]

17. Newspapers...

... didn't go away, but they have 10% of the influence they did 40 years ago.

American's don't read.

The TV news isn't going away either BUT - soon most of the people watching will understand full well that they are not watching "news" at all, but simply propaganda. That is already happening. People have always distrusted the tv news media, within a few years that will be downright dismissive derision.

I don't think the news media is going to do anything about it - it is really too late already. The savvier among us already know what is going on, and like a virus that point of view is spreading.

The main thing we have to worry about now is the better blogs starting to take a lot of ad money and then.... well, you know.

[burythehatchet]

23. I agree about your risk of unethical bloggers

but the beauty of this medium is that quality is paramount. Each must stand his/her own merits.

[Eric J in MN]

4. It's all well and good that bloggers found out who "Jeff Gannon" is, but

how many big stories are out there which bloggers aren't uncovering nor the mainstream media?

We still need full-time journalists like Woodward-and-Bernsteain in the Nixon era.

We don't seem to have investigations like they did into Watergate anymore.

[burythehatchet]

7. Well I do regard Sy Hersh highly

but there aren't enough of his kind.

Regarding your first statement, do you notice the tension? The most reliable news show, The Daily Show, had an interesting and very telling clip last night, they showed a CNN bimbo "reporting" what was on the blogs. Juxtapose that with their top notch reporter leslie blitzer, who had an interview with GuckGannon. Bizarre, no?

[Eric J in MN]

9. What blog-stories was she shown talking about? nt

nt

[burythehatchet]

10. GuckGannon

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

8. The greatest risk to MSM is becoming irrelevant

I used to be the biggest news junkie in the world. New York Times, Washington Post, my local rag, Sunday Morning talking heads, Crossfire, Hardball, Newsweek, etc,etc.,etc. Then I started reading this board and I became aware of many many things that I did not know about even though I should have been "well-informed". Slowly it dawns on me, news junkie that I am, that my usual sources are not giving me my daily fix of real information. (It's like when you read articles about fake baby formula in 3rd world countries - you're eating, but you're still starving to death)

So, now I don't really care about Hardball anymore and I don't rush to read my paper because I know that nothing of import exists within. If I watch cable news I will know everything in the world about the celebrity scandel du jour but that's about it.

Now here is my major point. "Corporate Media" IS corporate and they do have a product to push - "news". Guess what - people who buy newspapers want NEWS. Corporate Media has to have readers and viewers so that they can sell advertising and MAKE MONEY. They need to wake up and smell the coffee and understand that they are committing group suicide by not fullfilling their function. Since nature abhors a vacuum, the bloggosphere has rushed in to fill that void.

[burythehatchet]

11. Welcome to a fellow news junkie...

welcome to DU
:hi:
Great first post!!

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

13. ...they do have a product to push - "news".

If nothing "news"worthy happened today...tomorrow's paper would still be full.

[sendero]

18. Well said..

... and welcome to DU :)

[newyawker99]

19. Hi Phoebe Loosinhouse!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

24. Hi back and thanks to all for a warm welcome! nt

[burythehatchet]

12. btw, anyone interested in this topic MUST read Plaid Adder's

post from a couple days ago...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=3110490

[Skidmore]

14. The political beltway and the media beltway have also

merged. Witness people like Scarborough, Matthews, Kasich, Stephanopolous, Begala, Carville--to name a few--who all used to be/still are political figures or operatives and have crossed into media. Then there are people from the media who have gone into politics.

[burythehatchet]

15. That's a good point skidmnore

add to that dimension the fact that ex-military people are being paid for their analysis, not to mention the think tank wingnuts. A new revolving door.

[Pithy Cherub]

20. Before bloggers the revolution has been building - slowly.

Pew Research and other organizations measured the trustworthiness of the press and they usually bring up the bottom or hold pride of place right above the bottom.(politicians)

News, especially the remnants of broadcast journalism, have branding strategies in place. Additionally, only stories that have pictures and not complexity are increasingly the 'product'.

Additionally, most of bloggers (our)ire is directed at the news presenter more markedly than the producers and editors who control content. That group is a very small, select group with a bad case of group think. The validation is that the broadcast channels and stories are presented in much the same way and in the same formulatic way both nationally and locally. The print press would be interesting because of what is above the fold in a collection of papers.

Bloggers fill a void that the media cartels are not up to handling. The media is in a great state of denial and classically turn their outrage outward rather than examining internal operations. A revolution will succeed in this climate by directing traffic to sources of information that are not edited for time or would seem not grand enough to generate advertising revenue. The money is the factor in corporate news not information. The media cartels are under siege for many reasons and rightly so!