Is our MSM COMPLETELY useless?

[davidthegnome]

Fellow DU'ers,

I just recently saw the article on the home page - about how Cheney authorized Libby to leak certain classified information (what's being called PlameGate?). Excited, I immediately told my (very liberal) Father about what I had seen. We've both been surprised though, that we haven't seen a single soul in the main stream media reporting this. Haven't seen it on any major news network, and as far as I know, he hasn't heard a damn thing on NPR. Perhaps I've missed something? I don't watch CNN 24/7, and I listen to NPR only rarely - but I do pay a fair amount of attention to the media.

Does anyone know what the current status of this case is? Is Fitzgerald thinking about going after Cheney? Is there anything we can do to really get the word out?

I'm a very confused gnome, at the moment.

[LiberalVoice]

1. Short answer.

Yes

[azmouse]

3. Long answer.

Yes, absolutely useless.

[LiberalVoice]

23. :-)

[Danieljay]

2. Let me give it some thought...

ummm. Yes.

[Orrex]

4. Yes, unless you're looking for info re: missing blond-haired women

[unblock]

5. my life has improved immeasurably since i stopped watching msm "news"

between the commercials and the fluff, you're left with few minutes of actual news, and even then it's slanted both by selection and by presentation.

worse than useless.

[spag68]

14. MSM

Don't forget the subliminal messages.

[brainshrub]

6. No. It sells products.

It's useless as a vehicle to inform the citizenry, but it moves products.

[Betsy Ross]

7. Local paper can't even

publish the correct time for garbage pick-up. 3/4 of front page was a picture of a 40-year-old woman who pierced her bellybutton. From the bottom to the top, MSM is bleeping useless. When they do cover an important story it is only after it has been all over the web so it really isn't news is it?

[davidthegnome]

8. Christ

What a ridiculous Country we live in. Perhaps the MSM is too afraid to report the truth now? Makes me think of Dan Rathers, and how he was actually forced to resign for reporting the truth. Jesus.

[KurtNYC]

9. Useless? Yes and here is why.... it answers to Dick Cheney's office

Consider this story:

It doesn't hurt to report the truth. It's ok. You know. I was on a, one of those morning talk shows and after we went to commercial, the person who was interviewing me said you know, you are right, I mean when the war started, it was very difficult here to book the people we wanted to book, ask the questions we wanted to ask. In fact, I got a memo about my tone of voice. And apparently the brass had received a call from the Dick Cheney's office is what – and said that he didn't like my tone of voice. And I got a memo on it to watch my tone of voice. Well you've got to tell that story! You've got to tell that story. I can't. Well why? They can't fire you.

You are like one of the most well-known people in America. And, you know, you've got to tell this story. If you don't tell it, I'm going to wait like maybe another week. What's today? Within the week, I will put this on my web site. I'll tell the whole story and I'll name who said it. So this person is unnoticed now and I am doing it in a friendly way. Because this is a good person. You know? Just that I think the people deserve the truth and they need to know how the decisions get made behind the curtain. Who is pulling the strings here? Who's calling the shots? It's like, coming from where I come from politically, we always are in this place of yeah, the man this and the man that and this corporation and this and that and there's probably a part of us that says oh, you know, it's really, there's, maybe it's not that bad. You want to believe it isn't that bad. You know? And then, they have made the mistake of giving me a peek behind this curtain and I've seen this happen and it's stunning to me,...

That was Michael Moore talking about his appearance on America's top-rated news source (high ratings than the 6:30 news): The Today Show. He goes on to talk about how Disney (ABC) would not release his film F911.

http://www.alternet.org/election04/19385/

So useless to us, but useful to the WH.

[NanceGreggs]

10. For anyone who missed the latest breaking story ...

... on the MSM today, apparently Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

[xultar]

12. DAYUM. That's news. See for reporting old shit they great!

[Bluzmann57]

13. Thanks for the update

But what about Reagan? Is he still dead? We need to know.

[NanceGreggs]

22. I'm assuming he's still dead ...

... based on two facts:

If he was MISSING in Aruba, it would be all over the MSM.

If he was found ALIVE, they'd be trotting him in front of the cameras to defend Rumsfeld.

[xultar]

11. Depends on how you define COMPLETELY and USELESS...

But I'd go with a big fat yes under most circumstances.

[deutsey]

15. Not useless to their corporate masters

But to us? Yes. Useless and quite harmful, in fact.

[davidthegnome]

16. This is pissing me off.

Granted, I know there's little reason to have faith in our MSM, but I've always considered NPR a bit more reliable. As far as I know though, they haven't spoken of it either. Well, fuck em all, I'm going to write an editorial.

[annabanana]

26. good! You DO that gnome-man...

Here is the truth:

We are the media. If Americans are going to learn the truth, they cannot wait to have it served up for them on "ABC at 6:O'Clock every week night"... They are going to have to go look for it.

And we are going to have to do the best we can to see to it that they FIND some..

(I highly recommend www.truthout.org for what we're not seeing, that needs to be seen)

[helderheid]

17. yep.

[Telly Savalas]

18. There's an extremely high noise to signal ratio

and a right-wing bias to varying degrees depending on the source, but you could easily write a 1500 book on why Bush is a total failure, using articles from CNN.com as your only source.

[riona]

19. They're useless

but, on the positive side, you know your tv is still working.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

20. Not if you enjoy informercials punctuated by plain commercials.

I can't understand why anyone bothers with the bubbleheads selected for their bright teeth and frosted hair that sound like Shirley Temple crossed with a duck.

And, as for the women broadcasters..

With the exception of Christiane Amanpour.

[EC]

21. watch BBC and read The Guardian for any real news

about the USA....

[stillcool]

24. some 'news' quotes...

“News is what someone wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising”.
– former NBC news prez Rubin Frank

“Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.”– Richard Salent, Former President CBS News.
and my favorite.....
“Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization.”
– George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwight and critic, 1856-1950

[msgadget]

25. I saw it on an NBC affiliate the night it broke

(I stood and cheered for the first piece of political news in eons) and I do hear bits and pieces time to time on the regional NPR stations I listen to. As a matter of fact, check out some of the NPR podcasts and you'll find a few. The papers aren't carrying this on the front page except when a major announcement or indictment occurs. There's so much happening that I'd like to see addressed more but...a LOT is happening every day.

[geniph]

27. Is that a rhetorical question?

[chicofaraby]

28. It depends.

If you think the corporate media's job is to convey information, you are simply wrong.

In the USA, the corporate media's job is to enrich a few people ( i.e. Rupert Murdoch.) They do that by obtaining raw materials for free (bandwidth that actually belongs to all citizens and news releases sent to them by other corporations) and then using a few underpaid, exploited recent college graduates to fluff it up to pad around the advertising. Then a very tiny number of overpaid faces (Wolf Blitzer, Sean Hannity, etc) pretend that these fake stories are important. But the "news" is simply a ploy to sell advertising.

Keep in mind, they aren't selling soap to the public, they are selling the idea that they can sell soap to the soap manufacturers.

If you watch, listen or pay attention to the corporate media, you are helping them deceive us. They use the alleged number of eyeballs watching their crap to convince other corporations that you are influenced by the advertising.

The solution is to turn off your tv.

[Sinti]

29. It's useful in shaping the collective American mind.

To bend it to the will of the PTB. But, for information, forgeddaboutit

You can read foreign news at Watching America if you like, it's somewhat more informative :)
http://www.watchingamerica.com/index.shtml

[Ron Green]

30. My two cents':

My favorite model of the world has a "superego, ego, id" division of society, just as for an individual person. If the media's job is to instruct, inform, and entertain, the MSM plays solely to the id, which is the "entertainment" function. Actual news would address the ego with information, and educational and spiritual programming would occupy the "instruction" segment. What we've got, of course, is non-stop entertainment masquerading as news or art or whatever, because programmers know that the power is in the fear and hunger of the id. Why listen to tedious "government" or "policy" when you can behold the latest horror of a murdered child or a falling skyscraper?

[Sinti]

31. Well said and interesting view :) n/t

[Jim Warren]

32. MSM is a misnomer

Nothing main stream about it, it's shameless whoring for the ruling class and the corps. they run.