Forget the mainstream media.

[DaveT]

The only way to beat them is to ignore them. In point of fact, fewer and fewer people watch TV network news, and the national print platforms are in decline as well.

Worrying about what crap the corporations want to put out is not just a waste of energy -- it is a surrender of power. If you believe in your heart that something isn't real or significant unless the Corporate Media says so, you are giving away your birthright as an American Citizen to participate in self government. What we, the people, say and think matters, even if the guys who own the TV stations don't care to put it on the air.



A powerful myth grew up after Watergate about how Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford nailed Tricky Dick. It was an exaggerated and self congratulatory narrative that the media told about itself.

The far more significant players in breaking open the Watergate scandal were Judge Sirica, Sam Ervin, Tip O'Neill, Archibald Cox, Leon Jaworkski, Peter Rodino and a dimly remembered phalanx of lawyers working for the Senate Select Committee, the House Judiciary Committee and the Special Prosecutor's office.

The Corporate Media were not nearly as ludicrous in their slant in those days as they are today in the Post Telecommunications Act universe, but almost all the pundits sneered at the "crazies" who thought that they were going to impeach Nixon -- right up until the Supreme Court ordered the production of the infamous tapes.

Forget the corporate media. They have less influence today than they had yesterday. And they will be weaker still tomorrow. Do your part and tell all your friends that you don't pay any attention to Network News, the NYTimes, the WashPost, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Time, Newsweek, US News and World Report -- and least and last, the Fox News Channel.

There are a near infinity of independent sources of information. Use them.

[Ahgoo]

1. Agree Completely

MSM is too slow and too biased. The 'series of toobz' is my resource.

[Ishoutandscream2]

2. DU is my news source

Tried to watch morning news yesterday. YUCK! Won't make that mistake again.

[bdamomma]

10. DU and all the other progressive sites, BBC Front News and any

other foreign website, forget ours. Just think about all the people out there who do not have access to a computer, and just have to rely on our media, god, no wonder so many people are walking around in a daze.

[onenote]

12. I wouldn't rely exclusively on DU if I were you

DU is an extremely valuable resource, without doubt. But you have to sort through the information here. There is a lot of speculation and outright misinformation posted here. Any day there are numerous example evident. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with DU -- just that treating it as your news source would be a mistake.

[onenote]

14. delete - dupe

[Clark2008]

17. Was it even news or was it more entertainment pablum?

[SteppingRazor]

3. Indeed. Let us all stick our heads in the sand.

I'm not saying tune in to Fox News — hell, I think cable news in general is pretty awful. But to ignore every news outlet just because it's owned by a corporation — not to mention to ignore some great journalists who are doing excellent work in such places — seems short-sighted to me.

[jwirr]

6. I think that we should be careful about watching much of MSM

because all we are doing is raising their ratings. KO and others should be faithfully watched for just that reason. Taping the shows on tivo(sp?) is one way of supporting their ratings. I quit watching MSM news years ago and I do not have my head in the sand. I do read an occasional newspaper but mostly I go on-line visit many new sites: BuzzFlash, DU, ThinkProgress, Common Dreams, BBC, various foreign newspapers, The Nation, Mother Jones, Smirking Chimp, and many other sites. When we faithfully tune into idiots like rush and o'riley we are just encouraging them. They are on there because the sponsors want to reach customers. If we are not there they will be replaced with someone who people will watch like KO.

[SteppingRazor]

9. But BuzzFlash, DU, ThinkProgress, et. al...

often cite the reports of the NYTimes, WaPo, etc. If we took the OPs advice, and everyone ignored the MSM, it would follow that sites like Buzzflash would have their news content cut severely.

Also, I watch news to get information, not to make a political statement with regards to ratings.

[DaveT]

7. Do not ignore great journalists

even if their work happens to appear in the MSM. Please do not take my proposition too literally. For example, you can read Frank Rich while still ignoring the front page lies planted by Judy Miller at the behest of the Bush Administration. By the way, the good stuff is usually reproduced on other platforms.

But I still maintain that we should not cede the power of the gate keeper to the particular small circle of corporations that own the platforms I mentioned above.


Could you name one great journalist working for a TV network?

[SteppingRazor]

8. As far as anchors, Keith Olbermann's good. But if you mean reporters in the field...

I'd say Christiane Amanpour's probably the best, though there are many, many other good ones. And that's just in the reviled world of cable news.

If you mean TV network news, and you specifically mean anchors, you're limiting me to only three options. Of the three, I'd say Brian Williams is the best (speaking of Amanpour, check out Williams being interviewed by her in the documentary "Telling the Truth: The Best in Broadcast Journalism," in which he's the first to admit "The previous couple of years haven’t been the proudest for the media in this country.")
(source: http://www.jrn.columbia.edu/events/dupont/truth_description_2007.asp)

But, as I said, by asking specifically about network TV, not broadcast journalism in general, it's kind of limiting.

[DaveT]

15. Cable is not broadcast.

I was referring to Network News in my original post -- and in asking for good journalists in TV, I did not mean only anchors. Who is a good journalist working for NBC, ABC or CBS?

And, more to the point at hand, how much air time does journalism of any stripe actually get on network TV?


Again, my post was intended to address the widespread lament that the media is not "doing its job." There are many variations on the basic theme which suggests that there (1) used to be a golden era of good mainstream journalism and (2) to suggest that this golden era can and should be reprised. Neither idea holds water.

The corporate media is doing its job -- which is following the orders of the people who sign their checks. To call for people to quit pining for the day when corpoate news won't be slanted is not to bury your head in the sand.

In my opinion, to expect anything but what you have seen from the corporate media for these last five miserable years is to be an ostrich.

[H2O Man]

4. "One shudders to think

that the Watergate conspiracies might have been effectively concealed and their most dramatic episode might have been dismissed as a 'third-rate' burglary conceived and committed solely by the seven original Watergate defendants had it not been for the courage and penetrating understanding of Judge Sirica, the thoroughness of the investigative reporting reporting of Carl Bernstein, Bob Woodward, and other representatives of a free press, the labors of the Senate Select Committee and its excellent staff, and the dedication and dilligence of Special Prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski and their associates."
-- Senator Sam J. Ervin, Jr., Chairman; Individual Statement; The Senate Watergate Report.

[Supersedeas]

5. I am finally reaching your conclusion as well.

[blm]

11. You forgot Fr. Robert Drinan, a real hero in Congress then.

.

[DaveT]

16. Agreed. nt

[Mr. Ected]

13. Funny That They're Also the RW Pundits' Whipping Boy

Everytime I hear Hannity or Limbaugh referring to the MSM as the "liberal media", I laugh out loud. Strange how their listeners seem to believe that crap.

Then again, their listeners believe all their other crap, too.

[PhilipShore]

18. I agree, and write the news

I had a few news ideas, and I actually received responses from the NY times, Aaron Brown, and Sam Donaldson; and for one of my ideas for a story, I even received an award in the mail -- shortly after from the Southern Poverty Leadership Center.