As I have argued again and again here, you may think it is insignificant. I think otherwise, The simple way of settling whether it is an important issue for the public domain, is to go out and asses the publuc domain. I will be doing this in London tomororw. I assure you, when I tell people there was a 3rd skyscrpaer, the reaction is "Holy crap, how the hell do I not know that?!". This is the barometer of significance of a story to public interest- namely the interest of the public.
I apologize for not taking your word for it, but I doubt that you are actually getting that reaction very often, from telling people
only that there was a third skyscraper that collapsed on 9/11. If that's all you're telling them, then the reaction is more likely "Huh, I didn't know that." Which is the same polite reaction you'd get if you told them what the base 10 logarithm of 1000 is.
But more likely, you're actually telling them more than that. You're probably telling them that there was a third skyscraper that was destroyed by controlled demolition on 9/11. Getting the reaction you describe is not surprising in that case. It's easy to get a "Holy crap, why didn't anyone tell me that?!" reaction by telling people stuff you've just made up. Try the one about how Coca Cola can dissolve an inch-thick steak in half an hour. That gets the "Holy crap!" reaction almost every time.
I define high levels as people who have a significant influence on output. This would include, to a large degree, the important news journalists.
This comment had me mystified, until I saw this in your following post:
And you end up with ideologues like Bill O Reilly and Sean Hannitt...
Holy handgrenades, is that what you mean by "important news journalists?" Dude, those guys are
television performers. Journalists are people who research events and then write stories about them for publication in print or audiovisual media. The guys who talk on camera are no more journalists than the guys who pour ink into the printing presses at the newspaper.
That sheds a whole new light on your propaganda theory. The phenomenon you're complaining about does indeed exist! But it's not a malevolent system you're up against here, it's human nature. You're right that there's a filtering process, and it's exactly this: the people who get to be top entertainers, such as important television "news journalists," are the ones who succeed in entertaining people. People find some things more entertaining than others, sometimes contrary to those things' relative importance (just as they find some food more appealing than others, sometimes contrary to those foods' relative nutritional value). The ones who best entertain the most people in the ways that they most want to be entertained are the ones who become "important."
If you don't like this state of affairs, perhaps you might suggest a solution besides (1)
forcing the audience to listen to more thorough and balanced news coverage even though that's not what they prefer, (2)
forcing media producers to provide more thorough and balanced news coverage even though it's not what its audience prefers, or (3) changing human nature to cause people to prefer more wholesome fare. As doing any of these things would require tyrannical measures far more objectionable than the situation they'd be intended to cure, I'd suggest learning to live with the status quo. (The best shot at accomplishing #3 to a limited degree, without tyrannical measures, is to improve education in certain ways. Perhaps that has something to do with us being here at the forums of an
educational foundation.)
Is the whole "it's a big conspiracy" a way to pretend that there's another solution to this unfortunate situation? After all, if the problem were not human nature but instead the work of a big conspiracy, then we could solve it by exposing and eliminating the conspiracy! Alas, the problem is not that easily solved. It's clear that the consipracy does not exist because the media that's supposedly protecting the interests of the powerful, is constantly turning against those same powerful figures. (The counterargument that the ones the media turn against are thereby revealed to be not the true powerful interests is, unfortunately, circular. "The democratic propaganda system protects the truly powerful. The truly powerful are the ones that the democratic propaganda system successfully protects.") This phenomenon cannot be logically explained by the propaganda theory, but it can be easily explained by the entertainment theory. It's been known since ancient times that the public finds seeing the reputations of powerful people smeared even more entertaining than building them up.
This is not correct. Let's take an example. I'm pretty well qualified, but I would never conceivably get employed by the BBC, I would state, since I would not be the kind of person who would label the Iraq war as a quagmire. And if I did happen to slip through the net, it would be systematic that my reports would never make it as "news", no matter how significant they were.
When you talk of being qualified, do you mean for journalism or for being a TV entertainer? I can't assess your promise for the latter, but I believe you have some of the needed qualities for the former, while lacking others. Your insistence on defending word usages and turns of phrase that 99% of readers would find confusing or misleading (such as "it would be systematic that my reports...") because they are (in some cases) technically gramatically correct, would be a major handicap, as it indicates contempt for the audience.
This does exist. Watch Outfoxed, and see reports on this. Look at the firing of Phil Donahue, or maybe Dan Rather, to see how powerful interests get shielded when journalists dont tow the party line. This is a news story.
Are you referring to Phil Donahue's firing from MSNBC in 2002? IIRC, there were two reasons for the firing: that he was getting low ratings, and that he wasn't sympathetic with public opinion on the Iraq war. In other words, he was failing to entertain the audience and tell it what it wanted to hear. The firing wasn't to protect the powerful, it was to protect the public from not being pandered to. Entertainers who fail to entertain the audience get fired.
As for Dan Rather, he was by your definition in a high level position, and held that position for decades. Did the conspirators kick out one of their own? That's an awfully slow filtering process going on. I'll also point out that one of his stated goals when he left/was kicked out of CBS was to become more involved in actual journalism. In any case, if Rather himself was "high level" then his firing is not a valid example of the friction that would be inevitable between the "high level" people and the journalists working for them.
So, yeah, the MSM sucks. That suckage is directly traceable to human nature acting through free-market economic forces.
And of course, any shortcomings of the MSM at reporting certain details of some 9/11 events, whether due to democratic propaganda systems or pandering to the audience or circumstances that overshadowed those details and prevented cameras from being nearby, does not prevent buildings from collapsing due to airplane impacts, debris damage, and uncontrolled fire.
Respectfully,
Myriad
