There is no fourth estate. A free press is dead in the United States

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

May it never rest in peace.

This is certainly not news to many of you and it didn't happen overnight, but when the press is owned by big corporations who are in bed with the government, YOU NO LONGER HAVE A FREE PRESS.

Period.

No more fourth estate. Forget it. Good on Al Franken and Mike Malloy and Air America and others who are actually trying, but for the most part, there IS NO FREE PRESS in the United States.

Now. What do we/can we do about it? Can Kerry do what Dean threatened to do during the primaries and bust up the ownership of the biggies?

This is a HUGE problem. Bigger than huge. With no free press, we (and I don't just mean Dems, I mean as a country) are SUNK.

[salinen]

1. Welcome to Totalitarianism

It's just a shot away.

[Shopaholic]

2. We'll it's on life support but it's not quite dead yet. . .

We've got Air America Radio.
We've got the Nation
We've got Olbermann

It ain't much but at least it's something.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

7. How many people

pay attention to AAR or the Nation or Olbermann? Total? And as a percentage of the whole?

Ok, maybe not dead, but gasping for air and an hour away from death without heroic lifesaving measures.

[tridim]

16. And we've got the Internet

Blogs, foreign newspapers, etc. It's influence is growing.

[madmax]

3. I agree, I became aware of that in 2000.

At the age of 50! Is that criminal or what? I should be ashamed. Ok, I am. :(

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

5. Well you were doing better than myself

I was only vaguely aware of it, but the past year has really hammered it home for me.

It's dead.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

4. The reason I posted this is because

all this time, whenever I would read posts about the GOP being totalitarianists or fascists, I would agree but it would end there. I always found talk of them wanting to and working to take away our rights kind of over the top.

Kind of tin foil-ish, if you will.

Then I realized I was looking at it wrong: they don't need to be OVERT about it, and that's what I was looking for.

All the government has to do is destroy the fourth estate and it's gravy from there on in.

That is why this has me so completely concerned.

[Nite Owl]

6. If it is true that CBS's

60 minutes was banned in certain places tonight than what we feared would, could happen already has. I hope that there is some good reason for it happening tonight but I doubt that. It's more than tonight but that would be blatant not just coersion on certain stations.

[Meshuga]

9. I heard that too.

That is fucked up! It is crazy how blatant the media is being about supporting Bush and bashing Kerry.

[mhr]

8. Sadly, So Few Have Figured This Out - TV Free Here For Three Years

I could not take the propaganda anymore.

[Meshuga]

11. I'm thinking about getting rid of cable.

TV is not worth it anymore.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

15. I watch the Daily Show

and that's about it. I use my TV to watch DVDs, mostly. Or sometimes I do watch Britcoms on BBC America. That's about all it's good for.

It's amazing how different it is when you don't watch TV "news." You can actually hear yourself think.

[mairceridwen]

20. i still watch the news on TV

Not a lot of it, I keep it on in the background while I clean the cat poop out of the littery box. As a teacher and a student doing progressive scholarship,I still have this perverse intellectual interest in what the mainstream media feeds the herd.

[dweller]

21. BLAM!

somebody got it right.

or is thinking about it at least. Follow that thought to its conclusion.

dp

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

12. I don't even watch TV news anymore

I haven't since the stealing of the 2000 election. I watch some things on CSPAN, but that's it. I cannot and will not stomach "TV news."

But I read the paper and they are almost as bad. I see things on the internet that tell me that the mainstream media is no longer operating as a free press.

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

10. Where's true investigative journalism?

I wrote a letter to the editor of my local paper (biggie, but don't want to mention name of it, I have some freeper "fans") and it got printed. But first, the news desk called me because the opinion people shot it their way because they HADN'T HEARD about what I wrote about (it concerned the RNC). The news desk hadn't either. SO they wanted to ask me about it.

I GOT the information from MSNBC and this MAJOR daily paper for a big city hadn't even HEARD about it.

My God. It's their full-time frigging job and they can't keep up with what's going on??? Can't be bothered?

Where's Pravda?

[AuntPatsy]

13. You guys keep forgetting one huge avenue of

educating the masses....as of yet, the net has not been censored, millions of people are now flocking to the net in an effort to find a more unbiased news avenue..

Give the American people some credit, I watch quite a bit of Cable news, but do I take each word they say as Gospel? Of course not, and I know there are many many out there like me, look at you guys, just keep preaching the truth, people will find the sources...

I believe some are doing what they preach not to do, (believe every word you hear on the news)...

Those days are long gone..

Thank you Michael Moore for accenting this huge problem to Americans as a whole...

[Moonbeam_Starlight]

17. You are the exception

most people still take ANYTHING they hear on TV as the gospel truth.

And the internet has mainstream media sources on it, too, and they are just as biased. Any big network on TV has a web site on the net.

It's true that there are far more sources of differing POVs on the net, but it still doesn't carry the weight and have the reach of TV.

[AuntPatsy]

18. My point is if the media can direct ummmm propaganda to

a certain type of person, cannot the net work in the same way? Like the guy on the free republic site who said he donated fifty dollars to the kerry campaign thinking that he was donating to swb, the repubs are not the only ones computer literate I would think....

[GaryL]

19. It has the weight of CNN, Faux, MSNBC.

These cable networks do shit for viewers compared to the networks. The NY Times get more hits a day. I can't tell you what a salvation this is and I guarantee that if these rats get another four years they'll have us all going through government sanctioned servers.

[Philostopher]

14. I think Kerry has mentioned media consolidation being a problem.

Therefore I suspect, using my powers of circular logic, that this may be why coverage of his campaign is unsatisfactory -- though he's not as outspoken about it as Dean was, if he's mentioned it at all, that's got to scare the 300 pound canaries that keep eating all the other canaries as soon as they get off the ground. So they do the bare minimum and suck up to Bush* because they want to have their way.

There may be a point of no return, which is to say a point at which Bush* is such a liability to them that they have to report the truth about him whether they want to or not, but I don't really know. I hope so, I really do.

Greed is a powerful motivator, though, especially for those who already have money and power.