When you want to hollar "WELL, DUH!" at the tv:

[annabanana]

Remember that you find it obvious because of the excellent "advance notice" you get here at DU. When the Corpo Media starts talking about how unprepared we were for the "post war" period, remember that this might just be the first time one of your neighbors is hearing it.

If someone you know asks you (as someone they think "keeps up with all that stuff") what you think.... you are well prepared.

Here is where all the hard work pays off.

[mwb970]

1. It's still amazing how long it takes for this stuff to come out.

I don't remember a time before the * administration when I so often read "shocking" exposes in the press of stories I had known about for literally years.

I attended a protest here in Columbus prior to the war in which the speakers claimed that there were no WMD in Iraq, that there was no 911/AQ connection, that we had no plan for "winning the peace", that Bush had decided long before to invade Iraq, etc., etc. All absolutely correct, and yet only now, TWO YEARS LATER, are these points being realized by the public at large.

Sheesh.

[Warpy]

4. I do, but I lived in Boston

and read the alternative press and was part of a group of hard core news junkies and politics watchers in a town where politics is the most popular spectator blood sport.

In fact, I'm still waiting for some of the worst of the Reagan years to hit the mainstream press. We knew about it almost as soon as it happened. Suburban families that relied on their televisions and large ciruculation newspapers are still in the dark.

More and more, the news is only the bare minimum it takes to hold somebody's attention long enough to try to sell him something, from hemorrhoid creams to cruises. Once you understand that the major media are in the sales business, not the news business, you begin to understand the whole of the silly edifice we've had constructed for us to fool us that we'll be informed if something important happens but nothing to see here, folks, just move on, there's a billboard around the corner you need to see, I just bought stock in the company.

[babylonsister]

2. Sadly, if the neighbors had a brain, they too might

have considered the ramifications. When I saw the push into Iraq, my first thoughts were, DUH, look at Israel and the Palestinians. When religion is involved, cooler heads will never prevail; in Iraq there were/are so many different factions involved, I knew they were making a big mistake.

[PATRICK]

3. We are outside the MSM curtain

and there is actually a world going on out here. Good opportunity to mention ALL the underreported and non reported and spun propaganda that is keeping their blinders on when the WHOLE WORLD outside the US done to donkey drivers can get the simple message.

Your President is a crook. But much much worse.

[reverendpatrick]

5. I have a little exercize that I do...

...with people who seem clueless about how the MSM works. Try it, it can be quite instructive:

Hold up a magazine or newspaper. Ask "What is the product and who is the customer?"

I've only had ONE out of about a hundred people I've asked get it right.

"What is the product and who is the customer?"

People always say, "well, duh! the product is the magazine the person who buys it is the customer!"

WRONG!

The customers are the advertisers. They are the ones who pay the bills. The cover price usually only pays for delivery and the newsseller. Maybe a little extra. The advertisers are where the real money comes from.

The product is YOU, the reader! Your eyeballs and thousands or millions like yours. The advertisers are paying to be delivered to a certain demographic. the better the publication does at delivering that certain kind of reader, the better the rates for advertising.

That's all. Nothing more. TV works the same way, of course.

Once you understand this, you can look at the media for what it TRUELY is. An eyeball delivery device...