Do you think the media has swung a bit to our side ??

[kentuck]

Do you still have hope the media will be on our side?
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http://www.laweekly.com/ink/04/45/deadline-finke.php

<snip>
Once upon a time, large corporations and their executives typically avoided any public discussion of their politics because partisan positions alienated customers and employees. But all of that changed after GE bought NBC in 1986. The NBC peacock was literally flipped from left to right. As the story goes, this was done so the bird was looking forward, not back. Yeah, right. Maybe we should applaud Viacom’s Redstone for being aboveboard about his loyalties. So is News Corp.’s Murdoch. (Forget the little fact that Murdoch’s No. 2, Peter Chernin, has endorsed Kerry, or that Redstone’s co-president, Les Moonves, is an avowed Democrat. It’s meaningless because Murdoch and Redstone are media owners, not renters.)

And Time Warner’s chairman and CEO, Dick Parsons, doesn’t need to articulate his politics since he’s a Republican insider from way back. After Parsons nailed the top score on the New York state bar exam, he caught the eye of the late Nelson A. Rockefeller and even lived in Rockefeller’s compound for a time, eventually becoming a trustee of the former vice president’s estate after Rockefeller’s death in 1979. Parsons also is a former law partner of Rudy Giuliani and even managed Giuliani’s transition into the NYC Mayor’s Office. Who better to have at Time Warner’s helm than a GOP insider when the SEC is investigating your company?

Officially, GE (NBC’s parent company) chairman and CEO Jeffrey Immelt has yet to publicly declare himself politically. But anyone who spends time with him knows which way he blows. “He’s as right-wing as they come,” an insider tells L.A. Weekly. “Just as bad as Bob Wright.”

Wright, now GE’s vice chairman but also NBC’s long-term boss, never tried to hide his Republican partisanship because he never had to. For seemingly eons, his mentor and Immelt’s predecessor, Jack Welch, was a rabid right-winger. Welch used to boast openly about helping turn former liberals Chris Matthews and Tim Russert into neocons. And Los Angeles Representative Henry Waxman is still waiting for GE to turn over those in-house tapes that would prove once and for all whether Welch in 2000 ordered his network and cable stations to reverse course and call the election for Bush instead of Gore that election night.

....more

[katsy]

1. Trust no one. n/t

[kentuck]

2. More....

Does anyone think Tim Russert, Chris Matthews, or any others have the backbone to stand up to their right-wing bosses? No way!
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<snip>
As for Immelt, he uses all the Republican buzzwords with obvious ease. Complain about GE’s job outsourcing and he labels it “class warfare.” And he declared to Fox News’ business anchor, Neil Cavuto, that he wished his own network’s MSNBC talk TV could be “as interesting and edgy as you guys are. I think the standard right now is Fox.” MSNBC and increasingly CNBC as well are Fox News clones.

In return, Immelt is beginning to bag Republican perks, like appointment to President Bush’s Commission on Social Security. Besides all those lucrative U.S. defense contracts, his GE has snagged $450 million of orders in Iraq alone in 2003, and an apparent $3 billion more over the next few years. Plus, more than half of Iraq’s power grid is GE technology. Even before the fighting there started, Immelt told CNBC it was a GE business opportunity. “We built about a billion-dollar security business that’s going to be growing by 20 percent a year, so we’ve been able to play into that.”

Nor does it hurt that GE recently installed Anna Perez, a former Bush adviser to W and Condi who also served as press secretary to former first lady Barbara Bush, as NBC Universal’s executive vice president of communications.

......more

[Systematic Chaos]

3. They'll do it only so long as it benefits them

Don't even start kidding yourself. They're still the same bunch of worthless fuckbag pigs. Just that now they're all prettied up with lipstick.

[bearfan454]

4. Some of them are for now

I'm sure some strong arming will be going on.

[ProudDad]

5. No

Look at the few who own the media...

[Catch22Dem]

6. No they just smell a little blood in the water

So they go after it. If anyone thinks they're "on our side" they're crazy. They'll sell their firstborn daughters on the Thai black market if it gets them an exclusive. Not all of them, mind you, but most.

[H5N1]

7. no way

[renie408]

8. Whatever

I will take what I can get. The fact that they are not reporting straight out of George Bush's ass is so refreshing that I don't give a shit if they are only doing it for self-serving reasons. We need to ride the wave while we have it.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

9. The Left has never had a "media."

Unless you count the flyers from the 30's.

[Joy Anne]

10. Ick: Disney World is a no-flyover zone?

Oh, well, I recently read that Disney is contractually bound to run twice a day in perpetuity the 700 Club on the cable station it bought from Pat Robertson.

I guess it's two sides of the same coin.

[Applan]

11. They haven't swung to our "side"

The media should not be about sides, although here in the US it always has been as long as I can remember. I think they are just finally starting to see the light and tell the truth.
Next up on the agenda: the truth about Iraq and Bush's war for oil.

[Doctor_J]

12. No

they smell a little blood in the water (sorry for that) but given 1/2 chance, they'll be back shilling for Smirk. I am expecting a Evan Bayh sex scandal or some such thing to sprout wings any day now.

[applegrove]

13. They reported the truth. Our side is the reality based community.

Even Rove admits that.

[ladylibertee]

14. No....It looks like they are HOWEVER....

I feel that the reason why it looks that way is because the MEDIA is starting to express an interest on the more important issues in our country and they are finally seeking the honest truth and holding authorities accountable and asking the tough questions.....something Democrats have always done.We really wont know if the media has finally made the switch until 2006-2008 wink,wink.;-)

[applegrove]

15. It isn't a switch. It isn't one side or the other. The media are supposed

to get at the truth. When they buy the cool-aid, and give a government a free pass because they are intimidated, their viewership goes down.

They are always supposed to be there with the facts. And facts doesn't mean spin. It means the truth. No WMD. Saddam was bad. America was lied into war.

They seem to want to report on the rah, rah, rah of corporation hegemony. But you know what? Canadian TV takes Canadian corporate side in terms on wishing Canadian corporations success. But, at the same time, they also wish success to people. People fighting for better lives. Sometimes people fighting against corporations. That is what I miss. The other side of the story.

They shouldn't be reporting one side or the other. They should be reporting the stories that give meaning to their viewers lives by the choice viewers make to watch them. Not by the choices corporations make to what meaning people should have in their lives.

I make no sense. I am tired. Everything up is down, ...

They have been diminished by what they gave up. We have returned. We will go back to the net if they get so filled with meaningless crap again.

[Disturbed]

16. This Disaster is a Giant rating boost for the Corp. Media.

They can criticize the Bush Admin. now because it is not seen as unpatriotic as is reporting the truth about the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and how screwed up Afghanistan is.

[Berry Cool]

17. Oh dear, yet another bunch of people who haven't been watching

Olbermann, who gets away with murder regularly telling the truth, yet somehow manages to keep his job.

If you don't like the news you're watching, watch different news. Believe it or not, there's some people who NEVER drank the administration Kool-Aid...and he's one of them.

[applegrove]

18. Oh yes - and we do watch these people. I don't know about Ob but

people do give Jon Stewart the numbers.

The numbers are out there. The news channels who report the truth will see their numbers rise.

[Miss Chybil]

19. The media should be on noone's "side."

Truth is non-partisan.

[Outer_Limit]

20. No

[NVMojo]

21. there are alot of treasonous acts that have been committed by media

folk, most of it going unpunished because the Bush clan is unpunished ...

[bluedawg12]

22. we are on the correct side of this crisis but it's ours

to lose. We have to be careful about our message.

We cannot appear vitriolic,callous, or playing politics in any desperation.

Make our points calmy and with correct facts, point out their lies, and sit back and let the media roast them.