Does The Media Know They Are Lying?

[frank frankly]

Is the media self-aware of it's culpability in this war, the BFEE in general, 9/11 coverup, etc?

Before the war, when I emailed the Executive Editor of the Post Gazette here in Pittsburgh and asked him if he knew about PNAC and Halliburton and Depleted Uranium, he smugly replied yes, but that it wasn't newsworthy. So he consciously decided NOT to run this information. I have been in contact with him regularly since and I've sent him a great deal of information and websites, so at least I know he knows what he isn't printing. I've also told him several times he is directly to blame for the deaths over there. And of course he is responsible.

For another example, does Gwen Ifill know that she is a shill? Does she watch NOW with Bill Moyers or Frontline and ignore, or does she watch FAUX NEWS while cooking dinner for Chevron Condi?

I've been wondering about this a lot since the election of the Trojan Horse False Populist Nazi in California.

Thoughts???

On Edit: HOW CAN WE USE THIS AGAINST THEM? IS THE MEDIA SALVAGABLE?

[RichM]

1. Some of them know; some of them don't. It's like, for example, people

who in school or in the workplace are incurable suck-ups to those in positions of power. Some of these types are quite aware that THAT is what they are doing. Some just do it naturally.

[frank frankly]

but does it hurt them to lie so much?

help me understand these people! the media has to somehow be broken up if there are to be fair elections in 2004. this california nightmare is another huge staggering failure for democracy.

[RichM]

5. I doubt it hurts them inside. Most of them look at it like this: "I am

mainly obligated to look out for myself. I am not stupid, & can tell which way the wind is blowing at my office. I know how to slant my stories, to emphasize precisely those aspects that will most please people who are in a position to help my career. I am not going to slit my own throat by ignoring that. After all, I owe it to myself & to my family, to 'succeed' in my chosen field."

Of course, every now & then you get the exceptional person who has too much integrity to do this. This is where the whistleblowers come from. That's the exception, not the rule.

SOME of these media types do it naturally, not consciously. For example, I get the impression that Tom Friedman has no idea whatever that he's a whore. He thinks he's a great man, on an important mission. OTOH, I sense that a 2-bit sleazebag like Alan Colmes is probably very aware that he's a whore. (He's not really a "star," so it's easier for him to be realistic.) Dan Rather seems to understand that he's a whore. Gwen Ifill? My impression is that she concentrates so much on her narcissism that there's no time left over for contemplating such extraneous questions.

[tom_paine]

8. Like any large group of people...statistically speaking

You are going to get all types. It is the Groupthink mentality and the Tectonic Shifts of Mores.

It sort of drags the unwitting with it. It is pulled by the Multi-billion dollar yoke of Faux and the rest of cable.

I akways call it "Trapped Within the Fantasy Bubble". It's quite Orwellian and involves redefinition of words and other Goebbelsian methodology.

[Room101]

3. They are operating within the Propaganda model

Reporting is based on worthy and unworthy victims and the institutional filters in place.
Most of them know it is part of their job. They’re reporting must reflect the interests of the media owners and the advertisers. Not the interests of the general populace.

I would encourage you to read Noam Chomsky's " Manufacturing consent"
Also there is a documentary by its same name, check out your local library. This book and documentary will give you jump-start into understanding the electronic Berlin Wall (Mainstream media) and war reporting.

Here is a great media watch dog.
http://www.fair.org

[frank frankly]

4. Thanks, and I have seen it and it did open my eyes

I guess I am wondering if we can short-circuit any of these media whores. With the internet, it wouldn't take more than a day's surfing to discover the truth. It's just so much more immediate now, and everywhere.

Can't we rub their noses in it? It doesn't seem like we can survive much more democratically without media change. They proved it with Arnold and if Bush wins in 2004 it is OVER.

[Room101]

7. The tool is available

But understand that less than half of Americans are online. I would also venture to say the majority of people online are watching porn and/or are in chat rooms.

We live in a society of apathy soaked minds who have an unquenchable appetite for distractions. Sports events and shows, movies, reality TV and video games serve the purpose of keeping what Walter Lippman called the Bewildered herd out of political and societal situations. (I.E. Out of the hair of the power brokers)

They have grown to love their servitude. :think:

[realFedUp]

2. a good philosophical question...

Do the shills know they are shills and are shills anyway...
Do the shills don't know they are shills but read the teleprompter anyway?
Do the shills just say "stick it...I'm in this for the money"?

To shill consciously or not. That is the question.

[SammyWinstonJack]

13. I vote for

"Do the shills just say 'stick it...I'm in this for the money."

[DUreader]

19. Some could surely be "bought" with cash rewards for reporters of truth

"Buy Back the Media" as it were?

[AP]

6. Hell yeah! Do you think that, with the billions in profits at stake, they

don't know what they're doing.

I'll forget that I crumpled up a dollar and left it in my pants pocket. I'd be surprised if I ever did that with a fiver. I keep a close eye on my 20s. Do you think big business isn't paying attention to their millions and billions?

(And what they're doing is making sure that their employees toe the corporate line.)

[frank frankly]

9. yes yes

can this be improved somehow, is I guess what I'm asking...

[AP]

11. Yeah, with progressive taxation.

You can't let these huge companies have a competitive advantage over small companies due only to their much lower tax burden.

Once you take that away, then they actually have to try to provide a service people want in a marketplace in which they have to compete with other small and medium sized businesses which aren't held back by tax disadvantages.

[grasswire]

10. look at it this way...

....the right wing has been blistering them for a couple of decades about being "liberal" -- even a recent Gallup poll showed that most Americans consider the press to be liberal.

So this provides them no incentive to be fair or even truthful. The editor of the LA Times just last week sent around a memo advising staff that some stories were too liberal.

Another problem for us is our lack of an echo chamber with which to advance news or make news. The VRWC bounces stories around from newsmax to faux to radio to drudge to cable punditry and pretty soon it's picked up in the mainstream press. We don't have that structure in place.

[grasswire]

12. one untried way to apply pressure...

...would be to start communicating our thoughts to professional organizations. Society for Professional Journalists, Editor & Publisher magazine, National Press Club, American Society of Newspaper Editors, Columbia Journalism Review, etc. etc. etc.

But getting Democrats (and even DUers) organized to write letters is not likely.

[frank frankly]

14. I like that idea

I'm going to remember that...

[DUreader]

18. How about a "rewards for reporters" ,who get fired, for trying truth

?

[lostnfound]

15. Mostly, the answer is "no, they do not know".

It takes a lot of TIME to re-organize one's knowledge of world affairs and political history into a "mental construct" which is substantially different than the one you were raised with.

Nearly everything in their environment reinforces a status-quo way of thinking. Questioning whether or not the Pentagon is telling you the truth is right up there with wondering whether UFOs exist. Those who are deeply motivated by the craft of writing can still focus on clarity and lead-ins and sentence structure and accurately conveying emotions, without radically re-thinking underlying premises. Those who are deeply motivated by getting to the broader truths may be discouraged and sidelined into fluffier stories by editors who do not have similar views.

So mostly you have a lot of unconscious self-censorship going on, I think, by people who know that it would take too much work to overturn the applecart and that it would gain them nothing; further, unless they have spent hundreds of hours devoted to political study, they won't be sure enough of their suspicions to WANT to go out on that limb.

Rarely, though, some reporters run into overt censorship of particular stories, which may end up shutting down their careers. 'Into the Buzzsaw' is an interesting book of essays of 15-20 high-profile journalists to whom that happened. It's a good read if you are interested in the subject.

[DUreader]

20. What if they were offered $20 billion Euros?

?

[tom_paine]

24. Nicely said

:toast:

[snippy]

16. I think PNAC and the BFEE are too complex for the mainstream media.

And probably too complex for mainstream Americans. I think a simpler story for the media is the Bush administration campaign of lies to market, support and defend the invasion of Iraq. I also think this story would reveal a criminal conspiracy in the administration that would include nearly everyone except the household and groundskeeping crews at the White House.

Someone in the media should try to find the answers to these three questions:

1. Who made the decision to use a campaign of lies to market, support and defend the invasion of Iraq? (Was it Turd Blossom Rove? Whistle Ass? Cheney? Andy Card? Roger Ailes? Rush Limbaugh? Someone else?)

2. When was that decision made? (Before or after January 20, 2001? or September 11, 2001? or March, 2002 when Bush told three Senators in Rice's office: "Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out."? or September 2002 when Andrew Card said about trying to sell the American people on the invasion of Iraq: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."? Or when Card formed the White House Iraq Group?)

3. Why was that decision made? (Political reasons? Financial reasons? Personal reasons? Relgious reasons? Other reasons?)

[maggrwaggr]

17. listen, if our government paid fake Mullahs in the ME to be "moderate"

then you can bet your sweet ass they're paying "newspeople" here to tell us what they say.

It's as simple as THAT.

I nominate Lou Dobbs as the most obvious paid schill.

[beanball]

21. The media

the lying lackeys lie to please the boss(murdock,moon and other conserative media masters)they sold their souls to the company masters.I think that Murdock and Moon and other foreign born hatemongers should be recalled to their countries of origin we have enough native hatemongers in the homeland.

[mandyky]

22. If they don't know, they are too ignorant to be journalists!

I am so disgusted with the news media that I have no idea of what a solution would look like.

[SharonAnn]

23. The media now does only entertainment. They no longer do news.

Like Rush Limbaugh used to say when he was challenged on his "facts". "Well, I'm just an entertainer".

[TruthIsAll]

25. Fear of being suicided or job loss, or a comb. of patriotism/ignorance

...

[NaMeaHou]

26. Cognitive Dissonance

can not be maintained without creating mental illness. To prevent this, those who receive their paychecks from those who know they are lying have to begin to believe, at first that the end justifies the means. Then, as time goes by, they truly believe the propaganda. They begin by leaning over looking at the edge, and end up at the bottom of the canyon.

[frank frankly]

27. kick

:kick:

[frank frankly]

28. kick

:kick: