Important question about the media (please keep kicked!)

[Writer]

Please keep this thread kicked for as along as possible. I am headed to work and would like to see as many responses as possible when I return this evening. Please!!!

I am performing some academic research and wanted to get some general feedback from DU'ers. You are not the subjects of any research. I just want some feedback.

I am going to toss you an open-ended question. Please answer it as candidly as possible.

Many argue today that the media are politicized through "bias" in their reporting and the tense, polarized nature of political talk shows.

My question is: Why are the media so politicized today?

Thanks for helping me out with this.

Writer.

[BlueEyedSon]

1. Money.

[murielm99]

2. Look at who owns the media.

They have a stake in keeping the point of view they favor in front of the public, and downplaying stories that go against that point of view.

The media was not always owned by mega corporations.

[charlyvi]

3. Because the media, especially cable media, is

controlled by a few huge corporations (GE, Time/Warner, etc) who are profit driven. They play to the basest instincts of their audience, who in turn develop baser instincts by watching this politicized media. They feed off each other. Also, the rw has made a concerted effort over the last 25 years to install people in these corporations who will advance their agenda.

[kentuck]

4. The written word needs to challenge the legitimacy of tv news...

Although newspapers have their own problems with corporate ownership, they are nowhere near the extent of the defense contractors, and large corporations that own network and cable news stations. Newspapers should "de-legitimize" these talking heads that pretend to be journalists.

[acmejack]

5. They are mouthpieces promoting the corporate agenda!

By determining topic selection, they define the "middle" and divert attention from truly germane discussion. Worker's rights, health care, lobbying and influence peddling, anything which leads to addressing subjects counter to the best interests of the corporations and it's attendant oligarchy are simply not addressed.

"We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people." Bill Moyers

"Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have." Richard Salant, former President of CBS News

[papau]

6. Taught that only some stories have "legs", they follow the editor

owner bias into RW choice of stories

Then Editor/Owner bias affects how story is written. If a dump on the GOP it is cleaned up to only include what you could present to a grand jury. If a Dem smear by the GOP it is OK to just say the name of the GOP smear makers, and then go ahead with the smear. Over and over again - indeed start referencing the "scandal" and the "dispute" without discussion of the bias of the fellow making the smear and without noting the lack of evidence.

And of course RW reporters have become top dog (see CBS/NBC/MSNBC/CNN and partially ABC) in the effort to rid themselves of the "liberal bias" that never existed (caring about people is defined by the right as liberal bias if it occurs in a reporter).

[AverageJoe]

7. There are a number of reasons

I realize that the reasons I list below overlap each other in several ways, but here's my take on your question:

1. The Reagan Administration.
a. Abolition of the Fairness Doctrine.
b. Reagan's calculated empowerment of the religious right.

2. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 which added the final push in an already mad rush of media mega-mergers. The corporations who own most of our major media push a right wing agenda because it serves their bottom line.

3. The advertising money to be made in feeding people's prejudices via right wing talk radio. Primarily feeding this is the so-called "angry white man" syndrome, a lunatic reaction to the modest gains women and minorities have made in recent decades.

4. The success of FOX News's right wing "news" format has pushed all other cable "news" programming toward the right. (See reason #3, above. It's about the money.)

5. The cheapness and ease with which the enormously popular shouting-head "opinion" shows can be produced on the former news channels, replacing expensive, and intellectually taxing, reporting. A corollary to this is the rise of reality television programing, which has further blurred the distinction between reality and fantasy in our media diet.

6. Christian fundamentalism has steadily infested our schools, politics and media. These people want to see right wing programming. (See reason #1.a)

7. Even most of the few real reporters left in this country at the beginning of the Bush* administration lost the nerve to ask tough questions in the wake of 9/11. (Dan Rather admitted this a few years ago in a BBC interview. I suspect you can find the story with a google search.)

9. The explosion of cable networks, splintering the national conversation. This is true both for news and entertainment programming. Niche programming undoes community and community is the antithesis of the right wing "me first" mentality.

8. The CIA's Project Mockingbird.

Well, that's my two cents. Good luck with your research!

[jane_pippin]

8. Money. Deep pockets contributing to pols who support

policies that media owners like. You scratch my back, yadda yadda yadda.

[brainshrub]

9. News gathering is an inherently political act.

News gathering is an inherently political act; to pretend otherwise creates a climate where reporters are required to believe in a myth. Faith in myths are fine for a church, but not for an organization charged with ensuring that Americans get the information they need to maintain a Democracy.

News with an agenda has served our Republic well. 18th and 19th century newspapers were openly bias. News and editorial were often closely entwined. Different Newspapers with tens of thousands of readers provided multiple perspectives on the same event, often filtered through the partisan lens of a particular publisher's social or political agenda. For example, William Randolph Hearst's chain of newspapers were a mixture of investigative reporting and sensationalist spin.

Reporters were not expected to be objective either. Ida Tarbell and William Cowper Brann were both well-respected reporters in their time on opposite sides of the political spectrum. Neither of them ever pretended to put their politics aside in order to report a story.

News gathering did not attempt to be objective until large corporations started demanding nation-wide audiences in order to sell their products. The drive to appeal to the most number of people is why media organizations preach the myth of journalistic objectivism.

A more honest, and healthier, approach would be for news organizations to be up-front about their agendas. If FOX News would simply admit they are an arm of the Republican party, Americans would be better able to put the information they get from them into proper context.

By admitting that news-reporting is inherently political, you transform the recipient of the information from a media consumer into a media citizen. Media consumers are passive because they buy into an absolutist worldview that discourages social reform. After all, if the news is accpepted as fair-and-balanced, how can anyone question objective reality?

A media citizen accepts the political nature of reporting the news, so they are forced to ask themselves critical questions about why the world is organized the way it is. That which can be questioned can be changed.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a reporter or a news organization with an agenda. It's when these entities monopolize the main discourse, while pretending to be non-partisan, that problems start to surface.

The rise of blogs as respectable news-sources is not happening because they are objective or apolitical. By being upfront with their partisanship, bloggers have a level of integrity that the bulk of media outlets lost years ago. A conservative blogger blindly accepting the lies of the Bush Administration about motivations for war in Iraq is more believable than pretending NBC is objective when its parent corporation, the defense contractor General Electric, stands to make billions of dollars of profit from the same conflict.

My own site, Brainshrub.com, attempts to help visitors become more media-literate by posting counterpoints alongside progressive commentary. By not hiding behind the pretense of objectivity, readers are better able to discern for themselves what they should think. By stating political opinions alongside the headlines, people are encouraged to ask themselves: "Do I agree with this commentary? If not, why?"

Thanks for your question. It was fun answering it.

[4 t 4]

10. I Think it

has everything to do with the Fairness Doctrine no longer being in place and the fact that the media is owned by only a few big corporations

[undergroundpanther]

11. Kick and

I think it is because people who are true believer types are in control.
And the people profiting off the true believers are still using them.

I think American left and right are consolidating into a new world order globalism semi racist communitarian style ideology unless the coming peak oil and other disastrous scenarios come to pass and when they do the extremists will be cut loose to act out their nightmare fantasies on the population and wait for jesus,distracting a starving angry shafted population invaded on all sides while the uberwealthy sociopaths and their friends take all the technological information,of hundreds of years we know about and don't know,fancying themselves noble preservers of secret knowledge and arts,just sneak away amongst the chaos and hide underground in lavish bunkers or in space or somewhere else until civilization has crashed and there are less people who are traumatized and pisseed off to oppose their iron fisted rule and we return to a kind of feudalism these pigs prefer..

[zbdent]

12. They're pissed off because

the push for a monopoly got exposed and shot down . . . so they attack the ones who fight against a monopoly - usually the left . . .

[Writer]

13. Hey, everyone. Thanks very much for your responses!

Some were expected given the political nature of DU, but I also read some new, interesting takes.

Thanks again!