Media never "going to wake up" or "do its job"

[KurtNYC]

I read a lot of posts with fellow DUers asking when the media will wake up or when the "lazy" journalists will start asking tough question of the Bush administration. The answer with respect to the media in its current form is: Never.

I encourage anyone who has spent time and effort writing or calling media entities to consider the following strategy. Rather than trying to get the corporate owned media to blow the whistle on themselves and their friends (highly unlikely), simply help expose them for the totally biased, self serving, Bush loving whores that they are.

If you think that "journalists" (if we can call them all that) are not telling the truth because they are "lazy", then we aren't understanding this the same way. These people work for Ruppert Murdoch and similar lesser know billioniares. They get memoes from Dick Cheney's office telling them what they have done "wrong." Influence over the media is not strictly on which headlines should appear, which stories should NOT be covered and which stories should dissappear. It extends to the actual "tone of voice" in which stories are read! The media is a weapon and people like Robert Novak are the mercenaries.

We're dealing with people who put an awful lot of stock in psychological warfare. Which, within this country, is carried out by the mainstream media.

If you think I am stretching this too far, I encourage you to browse over these two items. The first is a leaked collection of internal memoes from John Moody, the Director of Fox News Channel to staff. Particularly abhorrant in this batch are lines like, regarding Iraq:

Do not fall into the easy trap of mourning the loss of US lives and asking out loud why are we there?

I think you will see that pragmatic politics is trumping any sense of REALLY supporting the troops.

http://www.wonkette.com/archives/fox-news-memos-the-whole-batch-017613.php

The second includes this eye opener from Michael Moore:

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 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. (applause) 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?

The whole bit is here: http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=113

The way to start defanging this beast is to expose them for what they are. The more propaganda is seen as propaganda (and NOT in any sense OBJECTIVE "news") the less effective it is.

The media's back is to the wall now that Bush's poll numbers are too low for him to be legally elected in November. They will be forced to go to the greatest lengths to try and stop the inevitable. Now is the time to expose them and damage their credibility as much as possible!

(or should that be 'help them damage their own credibility'?)

[ixion]

1. in it's current state, I have to agree. However,

Never is a long time, as the saying goes.

The US media has already lost all credibility on an international scale, there are indeed still journalists with integrity out there, although you won't see many, if any, of them on the networks or the big three cable channels.

What the media whores seem to be missing is the fact that over time, this shameless enabling will be revealed, and the 'news' channels will turn into so much fluff, with people going to other sources to find their news. This is not conjecture. It's a process that began two decades ago when news stations started moving towards infotainment rather than news. Thanks to the internet, it's easy (and advisable) to bypass the networks and cable channels entirely. Without the net, I would have to say that it would be next to impossible to get current news. We'd have to return to homing pigeon.

There is always the possibility that I am being overly optimistic, however. ;-)

[cprise]

2. How does one fix mass media

...after discrediting them?