Monday, April 20, 2009

from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals The Stories Behind the News

from NY to Israel Sultan Reveals
The Stories Behind the News

How America Lost its Free Press

Posted: 19 Apr 2009 07:14 PM PDT

It's hard to miss just how much the media environment around us has changed

in a fairly short time. Bias is nothing new as far as the media is concerned.

Most of the major media outlets are run and staffed by people whose own

views run left of center.

That simple fact alone does not ensure bias, anymore than a bus counter

staffed entirely by one race automatically means that other races will be

discriminated against. As human beings we all have prejudices of one kind

or another, acting on them in a workplace environment however is a matter
of choice. And the current media environment is the product of a choice by

editors, producers, anchors, reporters to not only bring that bias into the

workplace, but to enshrine it as a heroic virtue that embodies all that is best
about the profession.

The barriers to bias in journalism depended on old school codes, such as sticking

to the facts and not inserting your own viewpoint into the story. Those

codes are virtually gone today in major media outlets, as even news stories

on the front pages of major newspapers such as the New York Times can be indistinguishable from its editorials.

The facts have ceased to matter, instead an upscale suit and tie version of

tabloid sensationalism heavily colored by liberal bias and projected through

the prism of first person egotism has become the typical mode of reporting.

When the cinematic versions of Woodward and Bernstein became the image

of the reporter, the beginning of the end was already here. The ideal now became

the young college educated progressive reporter bringing down the reactionary

power structure. It still is the ideal today.

But where for the past few decades the media was simply biased, that is

stories distorted or colored certain key issues and personalities, we have gone

well beyond bias into outright propaganda.

The difference between bias and propaganda is the same as the difference

between a Dan Rather anchored newscast and one broadcast out of

Saddam's Iraq, or Putin's Russia or Kim Jong Il's North Korea.

Bias colors the reporting of an existing story, propaganda is concerned solely

with talking up the talking points of the regime. Propaganda newscasts do

not "report" anything, they exist only to indoctrinate. They come in

two flavors, fluff pieces on the government and the people, and
harsh criticisms of the enemies of the people.

Accordingly propaganda newscasts and newspapers make for very boring

viewing and reading. You can only read so many times that everything is fine,

that the government is doing great and that the Beloved Leader loves small

children and puppies before you go out and look for something more

interesting.

Even if you do support the government and the Beloved Leader.

No wonder FOX News is beating CNN, MSNBC and co in the ratings. Agree or

disagree, FOX News gives you an interesting story. The only story CNN and

MSNBC have to offer you involves pictures of the Obama's new dog.

Propaganda media only works when government authority silences
any independent papers and stations.

Without that iron glove of the nanny state in action, people quickly turn

the channel.

It's the same reason conservative talk radio is seeing booming ratings,

while the producer of Air America is looking for ways to stay out of jail over

embezzling money from the Boys and Girls Club to keep his ratings

deprived operation going. The White House may have declared war
on Rush Limbaugh, but the only way Obama can beat him in the ratings

is by preempting prime time programming on every channel.

Everywhere you look major chain newspapers are folding, their

readerships evaporating, not because the public has turned into illiterate

digital savages (as many overwrought columnists would like you to believe)

but because major newspapers long ago stopped investigating and reporting

the news, instead they kept churning out the same human interest stories

spiked with lifestyle coverage creep. Newspapers could not compete with

radio or cable news in reporting breaking stories, but in turn they gave up

on serious investigative reporting and became generic.

The constant omnipresent coverage of every single one of Obama's "historic"

sneezes, with optional photo calendar, postcard and commemorative coin sets

for only 9.95, has done nothing to save newspapers.

No more than every magazine sticking the Obamas on the cover has done

anything to arrest their inevitable fate. Propaganda doesn't sell, at least not

widely enough to matter. There are only so many people who will buy their

20th magazine with Obama on the cover months after the election. Most

people will just glance over the same stories on the internet and move on.

But it is not just the media conglomerates who are suffering a terrible loss,

but it is Americans in general who have been betrayed, shortchanged and

deprived of a Constitutional right, a free press.

The media syndicates turned newspapers, radio stations and TV stations into

sausage. They ground each one out the same, standardized the viewpoints,

with the occasional flavoring of a dissenting viewpoint. And then in 2008 they

slipped the bounds of bias, and got in line to kiss the posterior of Barack.

And with that the American free press ended and what had been bias

became shameless sycophanty for the regime and frenzied attacks on

the political opposition. With the political opposition seemingly demolished

and the crown resting on King Hussein's unlined and hollow brow, the

propaganda became tedious.