"We decide what the news is. The news is what we tell you it is."

[Q]

Published on Tuesday, June 15, 2004 by CommonDreams.org

The People's Media Reaches More People Than FOX Does

by Jim Hightower

 
While Big Media is "simply in the business of selling products, the people's media reaches more people than FOX does.

Democratic reformer Henry Adams, who decried the decline in democracy as the robber barons rose to power in the nineteenth century, did not mince words about the failure of the news media of his day: "The press is the hired agent of a monied system," he wrote, "and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where the interests are involved." Imagine the verbal scorching Henry would give to today's media barons, who are not merely hired agents of monied interests‹they have become the interests, fully corporatized, conglomerated and well-practiced in the art of journalistic lying to perpetuate the power and profits of the elites.

A handful of self-serving corporate fiefdoms now controls practically all of America's mass-market sources of news and information. GE now owns NBC, Disney owns ABC, Viacom owns CBS, News Corp. owns Fox, and Time Warner owns CNN; these five have a lock on TV news. Of the 1,500 daily newspapers, only 281 are independently owned - three companies control 25 percent of the daily news circulated in the entire world.

These aloof giants openly assert that meeting their own profit needs is the media's reason for existence - as opposed to meeting the larger public's need for a vigorous, democratic discourse. Lowry Mays, honcho of Clear Channel Inc. (which owns more than 1,200 radio stations - a third of all the stations in America), opines that: "We're not in the business of providing news and information We're simply in the business of selling our customers' products."

This single-minded mercenary focus combines with general corporate arrogance to bloat the egos of media chieftains, leading them to think that they really are the infallible gods of our daily newsfeed, with no need to be accountable to the public: "We paid $3 billion for these television stations," said an executive with a Fox affiliate in Tampa; "We decide what the news is. The news is what we tell you it is."

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0615-14.htm

[newscaster]

1. I know how you feel but consider this......

NBC, CBS, ABC CNN, they are all hopefully, profit making efforts which means they must set aside lots and lot of time for non-news programs and commercials. Sponsors buy that time and the network makes money. And you have no idea how expensive it is to run a network, even the WB or Fox. Just the technical aspects of a network are mind boggling. Then you have the cost of the talent. and countless other costs.
For local TV stations, news is the big moneymaker because expenses, while high are not crippling. But for networks news is a money maker but the time restrictions are critical. Most networks give their audience one half hour of news every day and maybe an hour or two on weekends. Thats just newscasts. Magazine shows which are part of the news operation are much more costly and take up one to three or four hours a week.
Lets just focus on the regular network newscast....you know, the ones with Brokaw, Jennings and Rather as anchors. Ten of those minutes are commercials and network program promos. That leaves 20 minutes. Not must time left for news. Now, lets say you have a very very busy day in which there are, say, thirty big stories. 30 stories in twenty minutes? No possible if you want as much information as there is available. So the news director, show producer and the anchor get together and discuss all the stories available to them. Some must get full treatment. Others can be told without film or tape. And some are simply not that important so they don't get on the air except if they can be classified as features and used at another time.
So, there may be some story you know about that you would like to see on the network and when you tune it, it wasn't there. In all likelihood, it wasn't used because there simply was not enough time. Its possible, it wasn't used because of political considerations but I have to tell you, that doesn't happen all that often.
Heres a suggestion. Call a local TV station....ask if you could come down and watch how the newsroom operates in the course of one full day, from morning when the staff gets there to late at night when everyone goes home. But give them a good reason for needing to know because they are very very busy. If they same come on down, be prepared to watch, ask questions and learn.

OK? :toast:

[thebigidea]

2. my heart bleeds all over the floor in sympathy. Honestly.

[Q]

3. If the FCC hadn't been taken over by corporate pirates...

...they would remind ALL of the media you mention that they SERVE AT THE PLEASURE OF THE PUBLIC...THE PEOPLE.

- Since when do they have a 'right' to plunder our public airwaves and then tell us their only interest is to sell products...not inform or provide truthful news?

[sendero]

4. Entities...

...who use the PUBLIC AIRWAVES for broadcasting OWE THE PEOPLE of this country more than their profit margin.

Hopefully, we will eventually have an administration that will restore the requirement for responsibility that is required for using the public resource of RF spectrum.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. That's no excuse for filling the newscast with trivialities

such as scandals and cute kitten and puppy stories and commercials for network programs or mass market movies disguised as news stories while completely ignoring what's going on in state and local government--topics which local newscasts used to cover up till about the 1970s.

I used to volunteer at a non-commercial radio station that didn't have its own news department and used the AP wire service. It was up to the announcer which news items he or she would read during the "news at the top of the hour" segment, and the whole tone of the news changed depending who was on duty that shift. One announcer filled his news segments with "happy talk" crap, while another managed to find serious news items.

I know you have only a limited amount of time to do the news. But why fill your twenty minutes with painstaking detail about the weather and helicopter flights to high school football games? Why do you concentrate on shootings and fires that scare suburbanites into thinking that city dwellers are a bunch of degenerates instead of educating your viewers on how the city works?

Sorry, I don't buy your rationalizations.

[Q]

6. Good post...

- Bowling for Columbine covered this issue a bit: how the American media sells FEAR and products at the same time. Nothing better (for them) than a cowed, uninformed consumer with loads of credit cards and not a whit of interest of how the government is screwing them and their grandchildren.

[Elidor]

7. So basically...

Out of every 24 hours, they grudgingly set aside 20 minutes of corporate-compromised propaganda in the name of "public service?" Gee. How very generous. We're so lucky to have the American newsmedia...

[Q]

13. Television and radio broadcasting used to be VERY different...

...before the Reagan FCC started to loosen up the rules for content and 'serving the public'. This was the first stage in the 'hostile takeover' of the American media by the Republican party. Among the first rules and guidelines to go was the 'Fairness Doctrine'...which opened the way for one-sided partisan monologues and propaganda disguised as news.

- One political party in the US now controls the majority of the media. As we have seen...he who controls the media controls democracy and the government.

[Suspicious]

8. Who are you trying to convince?

NBC, CBS, ABC CNN, they are all hopefully, profit making efforts...

That pretty much sums it up. Profits before the people - it's the battle cry of the grinning corporate slime running the show in this country - and we have to admit, they've got it down to a science with their stranglehold on media ownership. They make a profit from propagandizing the public - could it get any better?!

The sad thing is, the little guys doing the grunt work for them have been so indoctrinated, they can't see the behemoth that has engulfed them.

A few snappy words are sufficient when they harmonize with the conventional wisdom in a matter of seconds. It takes longer to intelligibly present a very different assessment of political realities. - Normon Solomon, "Noam Chomsky - Saying What the Media Doesn't Want Us to Hear"

http://www.fair.org/media-beat/011206.html

[Eloriel]

9. Oh brother

I don't even -- can't even -- fashion a reply to that.

Okay, this: Yeah, what you say is no doubt true. But it has absolutely NOTHING to do with what was posted from that article. Nothing.

I take it you're in the "news reading" business. Your response does more to demonstrate the myopia in the field -- and the problems we're up against -- than probably any 10 articles we could read.

[Q]

11. It used to be that network competition was based on quality...

...of programming and journalistic integrity. Now they just load up on corporate cash and don't even pretend to have integrity. It's all about profit margin and the public be damned.

- PBS and NPR were the last holdouts in the public interest. Now even they are being bought up and sold to the highest bidder.

[ConsAreLiars]

10. This is an excellent overview of OUR communications network.

With the links, it is not only a pretty good summary of our media, is is a useful resource page for folks wanting to get the word out.

The key to our media is that it is decentralized and built up of autonomous collectives of investigators, reporters and broadcasters.

Rather a contrast with the corporatist model of highly centralized control, and a great source of strength.

[Q]

12. "We decide what the news is. The news is what we tell you it is"

- Reminds me of another quote:

"The rights you have are the rights given you by this Committee (HUAC). WE will determine what rights you have and what rights you have not got." - J. Parnell Thomas

[Veggie Meathead]

14. There is another word for it courtesy of, who else, Ronald

Dumbsfeld, who calls it TOTAL INFORMATION DOMINANCE. He appointed the
convicted criminal, John Poindexter, to oversee this project.Supposedly this project withered on the vine after receiving criticisms when it was floated as a trial balloon.I am not so sure it died given what Sy Hersh is reporting about back channel strategies
in the DoD.