Corporate controlled news, how extensive is it?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Wait, don't let the length of this post stop you from looking at it! Read the beginning and end. The middle is full of citations and examples so people have an idea what I am talking about and can judge the evidence for themselves. For the middle, read my comments and the names of the links. Then read, skim or skip the quotes as your interest and time allow.


BEGINNING
When I brought up the issue of "quasi-censored" news in the USA, some People didn't know what I was referring to and others didn't believe it was an accurate description. And when I cited Democracy Now as an Example of "real news", there was the typical response of, "you just think that's real news because you agree with the views held by the producers." Just the use of the word, censorship and there were instant relpies of denial from forum members.

If you look at the article, Media bias in the United States; From Wikipedia, there is a good case made for both claims of media bias leaning left and right. Regardless of which way you think the evidence falls, the issue I bring up is not the bias but the narrowness and manipulation of what is covered. I called it quasi-censorship for lack of a better term. News programs like Democracy Now are not part of the corporate news network that is threatening the public's access to freedom of speech and freedom of information. All the free speech in the world is useless if there is no outlet for the message.

We have the Internet and books and news programs like Democracy Now. But only a minority of people avail themselves of these news sources. The result is we are becoming a society where those in power have increasing control of the information that the majority of people get and base their opinions and world views on. This is a serious threat to freedom and democracy.

The method which this is occurring is not some Trilateral Commission conspriacy or even necessarily a coordinated effort. It has come about gradually through various events and circumstances. That doesn't make it any less dangerous. I found this article, Corporate media; From Wikipedia, and the one following had descriptions which best explain what has and is occurring, (emphasis mine).

"Corporate media" is a term of derision used by some media critics in the political discourse in the United States and elsewhere, particularly by leftists and progressives, to imply that the mainstream media is manipulated by large multinational corporations. The critics point out that the main national networks, NBC, CBS, and ABC, as well as most if not all of the smaller cable channels, are owned by large corporations: General Electric, CBS Corporation, and Disney respectively, which they say manipulate and filter out news that does not fit their corporate agenda. They also argue that the programming on Fox News Channel clearly reflects the conservative views of its owner, Rupert Murdoch, who heads FOX parent company News Corp., as well as Roger Ailes, the CEO of FOX News itself.

Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman have established a propaganda model that they claim explains this alleged bias. The common misinterpretation of this model is that all bias is conscious and centralized. The process however is hypothesized to be decentralized and operates as a confluence of factors that includes, of course the overt pressure from owners but also other factors. One is the tendency of journalists to obtain news from the same few sources (Reuters, Associated Press) which themselves tend to cover the same news under the same perspective. Due to the desire to reduce operation costs, the mainstream media favors news pieces that are pre-made by these news agencies instead of conducting their own investigative reporting. This same economic pressure makes media susceptible to manipulation by government and other corporate sources through the widespread use of press releases. The point of view of the military, police, CIA, and political offices are often reported as facts. Quite often, the press releases are published verbatim without any fact checking. Factcheck.org that was created by the Annenberg school of Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania found hundreds of misrepresentations in political ads that were never corrected by the mainstream media. Studies also show that those who rely on the media for their information have a poor understanding of the issues and are unable to discern misrepresentations in political advertising. It is becoming increasingly common for video news releases (VNR) to be created by government and corporations, mimicking TV news story-format to be used straight into broadcasting in a newscast. Other factors include the cost of litigation. Large corporations tend to sue over any news that are against their interests, causing great expense for the news editors. Even if the litigation is lost, the cost of time and pressure will certainly bias a reporter towards avoiding such possibility.

Fair - Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Not only are most major media owned by corporations, these companies are becoming larger and fewer in number as the biggest ones absorb their rivals. This concentration of ownership tends to reduce the diversity of media voices and puts great power in the hands of a few companies. As news outlets fall into the hands of large conglomerates with holdings in many industries, conflicts of interest inevitably interfere with newsgathering.

...the most important transaction in the media marketplace--the only transaction, in the case of broadcast television and radio--does not involve media companies selling content to audiences, but rather media companies selling audiences to sponsors.

This gives corporate sponsors a disproportionate influence over what people get to see or read. Most obviously, they don't want to support media that regularly criticizes their products or discusses corporate wrongdoing. More generally, they would rather support media that puts audiences in a passive, non-critical state of mind-making them easier to sell things to.

Official Agendas
Despite the claims that the press has an adversarial relationship with the government, in truth U.S. media generally follow Washington's official line. This is particularly obvious in wartime and in foreign policy coverage, but even with domestic controversies, the spectrum of debate usually falls in the relatively narrow range between the leadership of the Democratic and Republican parties.

The owners and managers of dominant media outlets generally share the background, worldview and income bracket of political elites. Top news executives and celebrity reporters frequently socialize with government officials.

"news" is defined chiefly as the actions and statements of people in power. Reporters, dependent on "access" and leaks provided by official sources, are too often unwilling to risk alienating these sources with truly critical coverage. Nor are corporate media outlets interested in angering the elected and bureaucratic officials who have the power to regulate their businesses.

MIDDLE - The evidence
As I looked for information to provide examples of how information is becomming more and more manipulated and controlled, even I was shocked at the extent of it. No doubt many of you have heard of the WA Press Corp plant, Jeff Gannon. And perhaps you've heard of the Bush administration payment of columnists.

Thousands of dollars were paid to at least three commentators to promote Bush administration policies.The payments were revealed on January 7, 2005, in an investigative report by Greg Toppo of USA Today. USA Today had obtained the information through documents provided by the U.S. Department of Education after the newspaper had made a Freedom of Information Act request. The documents showed that Armstrong Williams, a prominent syndicated columnist and pundit on CNN and CNBC, had received $241,000 of tax money through the Education Department's contract with Ketchum Communications, a public relations firm. In exchange for the money, Williams promoted the No Child Left Behind initiative and encouraged other journalists and commentators to provide favorable views of the law. Williams admitted that he had received the payments and wrote a column entitled "My Apology," admitting to the charges but writing that he "did not change [his] views just because my PR firm was receiving paid advertising promoting the No Child Left Behind Act."

Williams' column was cancelled by the Tribune Company, which had previously syndicated his work. A second syndicated columnist, Maggie Gallagher, was revealed to have also accepted public funds from the Bush

administration. An article by Howard Kurtz of The Washington Post first reported on January 26 that Gallagher had received $41,500 in two federal contracts from the Department of Health and Human Services for authoring brochures, a magazine article and a report and briefing government employees in support of Bush's marriage initiative, which redirected welfare funds to pay for premarital counseling and abstinence education.

Michael McManus is the third person to be implicated, in an article by Tom Hamburger of The Los Angeles Times on January 28. It was revealed that McManus, who is a self-described marriage advocate and writes the "Ethics & Religion" column that appears in 50 regional newspapers, was paid through a subcontractor with a consulting firm that does work for the Department of Health and Human Services. The payments were said to be $4,000 plus travel expenses, with an additional $49,000 paid to his organization, Marriage Savers Inc..

But how many of you are aware of just how extensive the fake news business has become?

The Fake News Cycle

How does a video news release get from the drawing board to the six o'clock news? It takes a few good publicists and a few bad journalists. Here's the five-step process of a standard VNR

The amount of money that is being spent on the information campaign of the Bush administration is what really blew me away.

Do ask, don't tell

When PR Watch asked the nine PR firms in the million-dollar league for information on their government work, responses ranged from cautious answers to deafening silence. None of the firms was willing to share any information not already publicly available - including contract agreements or "deliverables" like studies, brochures and VNRs - to clarify what they did with taxpayers' money.

The million-dollar league PR firms are listed below, from the largest to the smallest recipient of federal funds since 1997, along with what PR Watch was able to uncover about their government work.

Ketchum

Ketchum has received a whopping $100.5 million in federal contracts. These include work for the Education Department; Internal Revenue Service; U.S. Army, to "reconnect the Army with the American people" and boost recruiting around its 225th birthday; and the Health and Human Services Department, to "change the face of Medicare," promote long-term health care planning, encourage preventative care, and present home care information. Large contract increases for Ketchum since 2003 mirror the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' PR spending boost, suggesting that Ketchum's Medicare work may be more extensive than is currently known.

Fleishman-Hillard

The recipient of $77 million in federal funds, Fleishman-Hillard has worked for the Social Security Administration; Library of Congress; Environmental Protection Agency; and Defense Department, to introduce "managed care" to employees, due to "rising medical costs" and "decreasing resources."

Matthews Media Group

Matthews Media has received $67.9 million, most or all of which is for Health and Human Services Department contracts. The firm has worked for the National Cancer Institute, to analyze newspaper coverage of tobacco issues; and National Institutes of Health, to assist with "patient recruitment strategies."

Porter-Novelli

Porter-Novelli's government contracts total $59.3 million, also for Health and Human Services agencies. The firm has worked for the National Institutes of Health; National Institute of Mental Health; and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to carry out an "annual mail survey … that examines health-related attitudes and behaviors."

Equals Three Communications

Equals Three has won $23.8 million in federal contracts, including with the National Institutes of Health, on Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month; National Institute for Mental Health; and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Vice-President of PR Kimberly Marr complained (a week after PR Watch's first phone call) about "the extensive nature of your questions and the short timeline." She added, "Everything … is in the public domain."

What "public domain" she referred to is unclear, however, since searches of the Nexis news database, PR trade publications, and the Internet revealed little about Equals Three's federal work. Indeed, the firm's penchant for secrecy is so great that materials posted on its website are sized and cropped in such a way that it's difficult to determine who they were produced for.

Hill & Knowlton

Hill & Knowlton has collected $19.2 million in federal funds. Director of Business Development and Marketing Lily Loh refused to answer PR Watch's questions, claiming they entailed "proprietary information that we cannot share due to client confidentiality," although some work is "available in the public record." Searches revealed just one contract with the General Services Administration, for work on the "Dedication of the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center" in Washington, DC.

Hill & Knowlton's other government work could be well worth hiding. The firm is best known for pushing the first Gulf War on behalf of the Kuwaiti government; flacking for Indonesia during its brutal occupation of neighboring East Timor; helping organize the industry-funded Council for Tobacco Research, to downplay the dangers of smoking; and handling damage control for Wal-Mart in California.

Widmeyer Communications

Widmeyer has received $7.4 million in contracts from the Selective Service System; Federal Trade Commission; Health and Human Services Department, for its National Bullying Prevention Campaign; Education Department; National Institute for Literacy; Farm Service Agency; and Defense Department, for their Deployment Health Clinical Center.

Assistant Vice-President Scott Ward said that Widmeyer "never uses paid third-party spokespeople," and that the firm produces video footage, but not ready-to-air VNRs, for government clients.

Burson-Marsteller

Burson-Marsteller's federal contracts total $1.9 million, for work with agencies including the Census Bureau, on participation rates; Bureau of Engraving and Printing, on the $20 bill redesign; Treasury Department, on money laundering enforcement; and Postal Service, on "Managing Communication During the Anthrax Crisis."

The firm produces VNRs for government clients, according to global public affairs chief Richard Mintz. Mintz said the firm clearly labels its VNRs, but viewers don't see these labels.

Ogilvy PR Worldwide

Ogilvy PR has received $1.6 million in federal funds, for work with ONDCP, on their National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign; and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), on the "Fashionable Red Alert" campaign, to raise
awareness of heart disease among women. In April 2005, NHLBI renewed its contract with Ogilvy for another three years, at a cost of $4.9 million.

in March 2005, the Homeland Security Department hired Ogilvy, "to provide real journalists for its biennial mock terrorist exercise." The director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism said the exercise "raises potential future conflicts even if the reporter doesn't now cover the governmental entity writing the check."

These PR firms' secrecy about publicly-funded campaigns indicates a serious lack of accountability. More alarming is the federal government's reluctance - even refusal, in many cases - to provide information on its contracts with PR firms. For example, documents on Ketchum's work for the Education Department obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests have every dollar amount redacted.

A Bumper Crop of Government-Produced 'News'

"Beef trade with Japan and Canada was on the minds of producers at the annual National Cattlemen's Beef Association convention in San Antonio, Texas," a man's voice intones, as the television news segment opens with a shot of a slowly rotating sign reading "U.S. Premium Beef." The voice continues, "Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns addressed the gathering and afterward took questions from the media."

The two-minute news piece examines trade issues surrounding bovine spongiform encephalopathy, better known as BSE or mad cow disease.

The news piece completely ignores some important, basic facts: Mad cow disease is an always-fatal neurodegenerative condition transmitted between animals - and from animals to humans - via the food supply. The U.S. government doesn't follow World Health Organization recommendations for avoiding animal-to-human transmission of the disease.

Is this shoddy reporting? Worse - it's "news" that's been scripted, recorded and produced by an interested party - in this case, the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The segment, titled "Johanns Addresses Trade At NCBA Conference," is a fake television news story, or video news release, produced by the USDA's Broadcast Media & Technology Center (BMTC).

With its $2.8 million annual budget, BMTC is "one of the most effective public relations operations inside the federal government," the New York Times concluded in its March 2005 exposé on government VNRs.

And then there is the CRS Report for Congress; Public Relations and Propaganda: Restrictions on Executive Agency Activities; Updated March 21, 2005; Kevin R. Kosar; Analyst in American National Government Government and Finance Division (15 page pdf file), which includes some of the more subtle messages we've been fed in various ways.

Recently, a number of promotional and public outreach actions by executive branch agencies have provoked controversy.1 Some salient examples follow below.

1 The Department of Education hired Armstrong Williams, a television commentator and syndicated columnist, to promote the No Child Left Behind Act on his television program.

2 The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) launched a high profile public relations campaign (DTV — Get It!) to encourage consumers to purchase digital television sets. As part of this effort, former Chairman Michael K. Powell appeared on Monday Night Football, and the FCC created a website [http://www.dtv.gov] that promotes digital television (DTV) and includes hyperlinks to the websites of a number of large corporations with significant financial interests in DTV.

3 The Division for Human Resources Products and Services of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) reportedly issuedguidelines to OPM staff who were preparing presentations and promotional materials for a conference. Staff were instructed to include a “picture” of President George W. Bush in slide shows and to make the President’s presence “prevalent.”

4 The White House has reportedly expended public funds to create and maintain Barney.gov, a child-friendly website that celebrates the President’s Scottish Terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley. The site features photographs and videos of the dogs, along with their biographies and “answers” letters from children.

5 As part of a $1 million public education campaign, the Environmental Protection Agency hired a public relations firm to produce a public service announcement (PSA) urging home owners to help reduce pollution.

6 The PSA, which came in video format, spoofed one man’s effort to reduce pollution by decreasing the quantity of gasoline required to run his automobile. The video told viewers that a home “can cause twice the green house gases of a car,” and directed consumers to a webpage, available online at [http://www.energystar.gov/], that listed energy-efficient household appliances; it did not provide information on the varying levels of emissions produced by different automobiles.

7 In early April 2004, the Internal Revenue Service issued four press releases to remind taxpayers of the looming filing deadline. The press releases also included a policy assertion — “America has a choice: It can continue to grow the economy and create new jobs as the president’s policies are doing, or it can raise taxes on American families and small businesses, hurting economic recovery and future job creation.

8 The Forest Service hired a public relations firm to produce a brochure which promoted increased logging in the Sierra Nevada forest.

9 The brochure argued that the forest had grown too dense and that tree removal was a tool in the “campaign against catastrophic wildfires” that would be beneficial to the forest and its fauna. The brochure included photographs that purported to show that the forest had become overgrown in the past century. However, the photograph showing low forest density in 1909 was taken after the forest had been logged.

10 The Social Security Administration (SSA) has reportedly drawn up a “strategic communications plan” that urges SSA employees to disseminate the message that “Social Security’s long-term financing problems are serious and need to be addressed soon” through speeches, public events, and mass media, and by other means.

In other cases, public relations activities have been judged to have been illegal, as the following examples illustrate.

11 The Office of National Drug Control Policy produced video news releases (VNRs) that looked like evening news segments and discouraged the use of illegal drugs. These VNRs were distributed to local news stations which, mistakenly, aired them as actual news. GAO reviewed the videos and judged that they violated appropriations laws.

12 Home Front Communications, a public relations firm, produced VNRs for the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMMS). A GAO opinion on the VNRs — which contained newscast-like interviews and reports — found them to be a violation of the publicity or propaganda prohibition of the Consolidated Appropriations Resolution of 2003 (P.L. 108-199) and the Anti-Deficiency Act (31 U.S.C. 1341).13

Of course it isn't just the government. In fact, the government accounts for only a small fraction of the fake news industry.

Fake News? We Told You So, Ten Years Ago; by Sheldon Rampton

Here's what John and I wrote in our 1995 book, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations:

MediaLink, a PR firm that distributed about half of the 4,000 VNRs made available to newscasters in 1991, conducted a survey of 92 newsrooms and found that all 92 used VNRs supplied free by PR firms and subtly slanted to sell a clients' products and ideas while appearing to be "real" TV news.

"VNRs are as much a public relations fixture as the print news release," stated George Glazer, a senior vice-president of Hill and Knowlton. "In fact, many public relations firms are well into the second generation of VNR technology. We use satellite transmissions from our own facilities almost on a daily basis, and wait eagerly for fiber optics systems to allow us to dial into nationwide networks. ... With few exceptions, broadcasters as a group have refused to participate in any kinds of standards establishment for VNRs, in part because they rarely will admit to using them on the air. ...

Trust Us, We're Experts

is an eye-opening account of how these entities reshape our reality, manufacture our consent, get us to part with our money, even change our lives. A whole new spin on spin, it will forever alter the way we look at news, information, and the people who serve it up to us.

For example:

* You think that nonprofit organizations just give away their stamps of approval on products? Bristol-Myers Squibb paid $600,000 to the American Heart Association for the right to display AHA's name and logo in ads for its cholesterol-lowering drug Pravachol. Smith Kline Beecham paid the American Cancer Society $1 million for the right to use its logo in ads for Beecham's Nicoderm CQ and Nicorette anti-smoking ads.
* You think that you're witnessing a spontaneous public debate over a national issue? When the Justice Department began antitrust investigations of the Microsoft Corporation in 1998, Microsoft's public relations firm countered with a plan to plant pro-Microsoft articles, letters to the editor, and opinion pieces all across the nation, crafted by professional media handlers but meant to be perceived as off-the-cuff, heart-felt testimonials by "people out there."
* You think that a study out of a prestigious university is completely unbiased? In 1997, Georgetown University's Credit Research Center issued a study which concluded that many debtors are using bankruptcy as an excuse to wriggle out of their obligations to creditors. Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen cited the study in a Washington Times column and advocated for changes in federal law to make it harder for consumers to file for bankruptcy relief. What Bentsen failed to mention was that the Credit Research Center is funded in its entirety by credit card companies, banks, retailers, and others in the credit industry; that the study itself was produced with a $100,000 grant from Visa USA and MasterCard International Inc.; and that Bentsen himself had been hired to work as a credit-industry lobbyist.
* You think that all grassroots organizations are truly grassroots? In 1993, a group called Mothers Opposing Pollution (MOP) appeared, calling itself "the largest women's environmental group in Australia, with thousands of supporters across the country." Their cause: A campaign against plastic milk bottles. It turned out that the group's spokesperson, Alana Maloney, was in truth a woman named Janet Rundle, the business partner of a man who did P.R. for the Association of Liquidpaperboard Carton Manufacturers-the makers of paper milk cartons.
* You think that if a scientist says so, it must be true? In the early 1990s, tobacco companies secretly paid thirteen scientists a total of $156,000 to write a few letters to influential medical journals. One biostatistician received $10,000 for writing a single, eight-paragraph letter that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. A cancer researcher received $20,137 for writing four letters and an opinion piece to the Lancet, the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, and the Wall Street Journal. Nice work if you can get it, especially since the scientists didn't even have to write the letters themselves. Two tobacco-industry law firms were available to do the actual drafting and editing.

Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed

A multimedia report on television newsrooms' use of material provided by PR firms on behalf of paying clients; Diane Farsetta and Daniel Price, Center for Media and Democracy; April 6, 2006.

Over a ten-month period, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) documented television newsrooms' use of 36 video news releases (VNRs)—a small sample of the thousands produced each year. CMD identified 77 television stations, from those in the largest to the smallest markets, that aired these VNRs or related satellite media tours (SMTs) in 98 separate instances, without disclosure to viewers. Collectively, these 77 stations reach more than half of the U.S. population.

The VNRs and SMTs whose broadcast CMD documented were produced by three broadcast PR firms for 49 different clients, including General Motors, Intel, Pfizer and Capital One. In each case, these 77 television stations actively disguised the sponsored content to make it appear to be their own reporting. In almost all cases, stations failed to balance the clients' messages with independently-gathered footage or basic journalistic research. More than one-third of the time, stations aired the pre-packaged VNR in its entirety.

They even edit the newscaster into the fake interview to make the fake news seem more credible.

Indianapolis TV health reporter Stacia Matthews had some good news for women with metastatic breast cancer:

there's a new drug called Abraxane that has twice the effectiveness of the leading chemotherapy treatment and fewer adverse reactions. The news report included compelling testimony from Annice O'Brien, a mother of two who had been battling breast cancer for eight years. "It made me once again feel like I'm going to beat this," she told Matthews.

However, she didn't really tell Matthews directly. The clip was part of a video news release (VNR) commissioned by American Pharmaceutical Partners, the makers of Abraxane. It was produced by a major PR/media communications firm and distributed by satellite to TV stations all across the country (see sidebar for more on how VNRs are distributed). Within hours, the Abraxane feature had been seamlessly blended into at least seven different newscasts in five major cities. Not one of the stations had identified American Pharmaceutical Partners as the source of the story. Some, like WRTV-6 Indianapolis, furthered the illusion of journalism by editing the voice of their own reporter into the segment.

According to a 2002 survey by DS Simon Productions (a leading VNR producer and the creator of the Abraxane package), 88 percent of TV stations use VNRs from medical, pharmaceutical and biotech corporations in their newscasts, and 82 percent of stations used more VNRs that year than the year before.

Of course big business, corporate profits, government and the business of producing the news all go hand in hand.

Battle Tanks: How Think Tanks Shape the Public Agenda

... if you were the least bit nervous about all the worrying reports - from leading scientists, insurance companies and even the Pentagon - about human-induced climate change, don't worry: the Frontiers of Freedom (FF), a
right-leaning think tank, is here to reassure you.

FF has established the Center for Science and Public Policy (CSPP) to alert "policy makers, the media, and the public to unreliable scientific claims and unjustified alarmism which often lead to public harm." If you are so inclined, you can subscribe to the "non-profit, non-partisan" Climate & Environment Weekly, CSPP's email bulletin that keeps track of why climate change is not the problem many make it out to be.

But if you want to find out who funds FF's climate change program, you won't find out by checking their website or annual report. However, over at ExxonMobil's website you'll discover that the CSPP was established in 2002 with a $100,000 grant from the world's biggest oil company.

The Military-Industrial-Media Complex; Why war is covered from the warriors’ perspective; By Norman Solomon

One way or another, a military-industrial complex now extends to much of corporate media. In the process, firms with military ties routinely advertise in news outlets. Often, media magnates and people on the boards of large media-related corporations enjoy close links—financial and social—with the military industry and Washington’s foreign-policy establishment.

NBC’s owner General Electric designed, manufactured or supplied parts or maintenance for nearly every major weapon system used by the U.S. during the Gulf War—including the Patriot and Tomahawk Cruise missiles, the Stealth bomber, the B-52 bomber, the AWACS plane, and the NAVSTAR spy satellite system. “In other words,” we wrote in Unreliable Sources, “when correspondents and paid consultants on NBC television praised the performance of U.S. weapons, they were extolling equipment made by GE, the corporation that pays their salaries.”

“The media’s rule of thumb seemed to be that to support the war was to be objective, while to be anti-war was to carry a bias.” Eased along by that media rule of thumb was the sanitized language of Pentagonspeak as mediaspeak: “Again and again, the mantra of ‘surgical strikes against military targets’ was repeated by journalists, even though Pentagon briefers acknowledged that they were aiming at civilian roads, bridges and public utilities vital to the survival of the civilian population.”

Journalists relied on official sources—with non-stop interviews, behind-the-scenes backgrounders, televised briefings and grainy bomb-site videos. Newspeak routinely sanitized NATO’s bombardment of populated areas. Correspondents went through linguistic contortions that preserved favorite fictions of Washington policymakers.

“NATO began its second month of bombing against Yugoslavia today with new strikes against military targets that disrupted civilian electrical and water supplies. . . . ” The first words of the lead article on the New York Times front page the last Sunday in April 1999 (4/25/99) accepted and propagated a remarkable concept, widely promoted by U.S. officials: The bombing disrupted “civilian” electricity and water, yet the targets were “military.”

American TV networks didn’t hesitate to show footage of U.S. bombers and missiles in flight—but rarely showed what really happened to people at the receiving end. Echoing Pentagon hype about the wondrous performances of Uncle Sam’s weaponry, U.S. journalists did not often provide unflinching accounts of the results in human terms. Yet reporter Robert Fisk of London’s Independent (4/24/99) managed to do so:

This is not a matter of government censorship or even restrictions. Serving as bookends for U.S.-led wars in the 1990s, a pair of studies by FAIR marked the more narrow discourse once the U.S. military went on the attack. Whether the year was ’91 or ’99, whether the country under the U.S. warplanes was Iraq or Yugoslavia, major U.S. media outlets facilitated Washington’s efforts to whip up support for the new war. The constraints on mainstream news organizations were, in customary fashion, largely self-imposed.

Just presenting one side is not enough. Accuracy and honesty are not required even when presenting only one side.

Astroturfing; From Wikipedia (IE fake 'grass' roots)

In American politics and advertising, the term astroturfing describes formal public relations projects which deliberately seek to engineer the impression of spontaneous, grassroots behavior. The goal is the appearance of independent public reaction to a politician, political group, product, service, event, or similar entities by centrally orchestrating the behavior of many diverse and geographically distributed individuals.

Astroturf -- The Big Business of Fake Grassroots Politics; By Walter Truett Anderson; 1996

In his recent book, "Who Will Tell the People," journalist William Greider showed how this was done by one well-known astroturf manufacturer, a firm called Bonner and Associates, who were representing auto-industry clients during the Senate debate on clean-air legislation in 1990. The amendment being considered would have compelled the auto industry to improve the fuel efficiency of cars -- a move the industry said would also force it to manufacturer smaller vehicles.

Greider reports: "Vans and station wagons, small trucks and high-speed police cruisers, they were told, would cease to exist. The National Sheriff's Association was aroused by the thought of chasing criminals in a Honda Civic. The Nebraska Farm Bureau said rural America would be 'devastated' if farmers tried to pull a trailer loaded with livestock or hay with a Ford Escort." By this same strategy, further support was drummed up among groups representing handicapped persons and senior citizens worried about getting out of small cars with walkers, and among parents who wanted to use station wagons to drive children to school. The effort was focused on six states that had been targeted because their senators were wavering in their vote and might be more inclined to cave in to the auto industry lobbyists if they could later claim
they were merely representing the wishes of their constituents.

We have become a society of media manipulators.

Keeping America Safe from Democracy; by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber

"Key contacts" are employees who have been trained and cultivated to lead the company's political campaign. They are in charge both of mobilizing other employees and of developing a close relationship with their elected officials.

Typically, a employee's duties as a political activist are literally written into his or her job description, and successful key contacts are rewarded with perks including flexible working hours, bonus pay, and opportunities for promotion.

"These people have independent and direct access to policymakers and can usually reach them on short notice," explains Sally Patterson of the Winner/Wagner & Francis PR firm, whose clients include the Edison Electric Institute, Exxon and the National Association of Counties. "With key contacts, a company can identify, recruit, and activate a small number of influential citizens and opinion leaders to contact public officials through personal letters, phone calls, or visits.

They are most effective at critical moments in a public policy campaign."

Employees are the easiest to mobilize, Patterson says, because they are "instantly available at the worksite . . . they are the first resource when volume response is part of a grassroots need."

Others disagree, arguing that the sheer economic power of corporations gives them an unfair advantage which subverts rather than enhances democracy. "If you combine the institutions with unlimited resources with those that have new technologies, it could give new meaning to the phrase 'reach out and touch someone,' " says Fred Wertheimer, president of the government reform group, Common Cause.

Grassroots PR has also been criticized for deceptive practices in a number of cases where companies have used people's names without their authorization. In 1994, for example, an aide to Alabama Democratic Senator Howell Heflin was surprised when a letter signed with his own name arrived in Hefflin's office strongly objecting to President Clinton's health care plan.

The aide, Steve Raby, had called the Healthcare Leadership Council, a Bonner-affiliated front group a week earlier, but had not given permission to send any such letter. "I said, 'I disagree with your message,'" he recalled telling the operator.

Bonner shrugged off the incident, saying, "Mistakes happen."

But other legislators have also experienced instances of unauthorized letters purporting to come from their constituents. According to Byron Dorgan, a Democratic Senator from North Dakota, his office has noticed discrepancies when his office writes back to constituents acknowledging their letters. "We've had letters back from people unaware of the fact that something has been sent in their name, and saying 'In fact, I don't feel that way,'" Dorgan said.

In July 1995, an astroturf campaign by the Beckel Cowan PR firm became the subject of a more serious scandal when it was discovered that as many as half of its messages to Congress were unauthorized. Beckel Cowan hired a subcontractor, NTS Marketing, to generate mailgrams against legislation which was opposed by long-distance phone companies.

Suspicious members of Congress began to check the authenticity of signatures on the telegrams they received. They got some intriguing answers: Some signers were dead; some no longer lived at the addresses listed; some were traveling abroad; and a great many said they had never been called or asked to sign.

Beckel Cowan hastily apologized, claiming that NTS Marketing had "severely violated" its trust. Aside from the embarrassment, however, it suffered no further consequences. The U.S. Attorney's office looked into the matter briefly but dropped it because there are no laws that prohibit sending fraudulent communications to Congress.

Academic Freedom Takes a Step to the Right

Horowitz has repeatedly told the story of a student at the University of Northern Colorado who, he says, contacted him after she was forced to "Explain why George Bush is a war criminal" on a criminology exam. The student suspected that her professor punished her with an unfair grade because of her political beliefs. When the student answered the question by writing about how Saddam Hussein was a war criminal, she said she received an "F." This incident, Horowitz claimed, demonstrated the extent of "leftist indoctrination" on campuses and demonstrated why he was campaigning for "academic freedom."

In reality, Horowitz's version of the story is, at best, a manipulative distortion of facts. In March 2005, the liberal watchdog group, Media Matters for America, began raising questions about the story, which by then had been cited in publications ranging from the Christian Science Monitor to the Wall Street Journal. They noted that Horowitz had written an article for his website, FrontPageMagazine.com, in which he claimed that the student's story was discussed during a December 2003 hearing before the Colorado state legislature. Media Matters reviewed the transcript of the hearing and found that there was no mention of any such incident. Subsequent phone calls to various officials at the University of Northern Colorado also turned up no traces of an incident resembling Horowitz's story.

Pressed to substantiate his claims, Horowitz was forced to admit that he had gotten a few details wrong:

* The question on the exam did not ask the student to "explain why Bush is a war criminal." Instead, it asked for a discussion about the disparity between the administration's pre-war claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction versus the fact that no such weapons were found to actually exist. In this context, students were asked to explain how the war might be explained in terms of research on "deviance" that had been discussed in course readings.

Their answers were to take into account "how the media and various moral entrepreneurs can conspire to create a panic."

The question continued, "Where does the social meaning of deviance come from? Argue that the attack on Iraq was deviance based on negotiable statuses. Make the argument that the military action of the U.S. attacking Iraq was criminal."
* The question was one of two essay questions from which the student could choose to answer, so the student was not required to answer it at all.
* The student did not receive a failing grade. Robert Dunkley, the course instructor, told the online magazine InsideHigherEd.com that the student had been penalized for failing to meet the page requirement (she wrote two pages
instead of the mandated three). According to Horowitz, the student claims her grade was raised after she went through the university's appeals process. She ended the course with a "B."

There is actual censorship to take care of specific issues.

Censorship in the United States; From Wikipedia

Since [WWII] war censorship has been relatively light until the advent of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars. In January of 1991, a few weeks before the U.S.-led UN invasion of Iraq during the presidency of George H. W. Bush, Secretary of the Defense, Dick Cheney, had the Pentagon issue a ban on media coverage of returning war casualties.

In February 2004 a study from FAIR, the national media watch group, found that 76 percent of all 319 news sources appearing in stories about Iraq on the nightly network newscasts (ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News) in the month of October 2003 were current or former government or military officials.

On February 17, 2006 U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld stated, that "in this war, some of the most critical battles may not be fought in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq, but in the newsrooms in places like New York and London and Cairo and elsewhere. [...] While the enemy is increasingly skillful at manipulating the media and using the tools of communications to their advantage, it should be noted that we have an advantage as well, and that is, quite simply, that the truth is on our side, and ultimately, in my view, truth wins out. I believe with every bone in my body that free people, exposed to sufficient information, will, over time, find their way to right decisions."

And propaganda techniques are used extensively.

Propaganda - From Wikipedia

Propaganda is a specific type of message presentation directly aimed at influencing the opinions of people, rather than impartially providing information.....Over time, however, the term acquired the negative connotation of disseminating false or misleading information in favor of a certain cause. Strictly speaking, a message does not have to be untrue to qualify as propaganda, but it may omit so many pertinent truths that it becomes highly misleading.

Fascinating historical examples of propaganda are on the Wiki page.

The techiniques being used by the Republican Party and the Bush Administration are most commonly:

* Appeal to fear: Appeals to fear seek to build support by instilling fear in the general population, for example, Joseph Goebbels exploited Theodore Kaufman's Germany Must Perish! to claim that the Allies sought the extermination of the German people.
* Argumentum ad nauseam: Uses tireless repetition. An idea once repeated enough times, is taken as the truth. Works best when media sources are limited and controlled by the propagator.
* Black-and-White fallacy: Presenting only two choices, with the product or idea being propagated as the better choice. (Eg. You can have an unhealthy, unreliable engine, or you can use Brand X oil)
* Falsifying information: The creation or deletion of information from public records, in the purpose of making a false record of an event or the actions of a person during a court session, or possibly a battle, etc.
* Glittering generalities: Glittering generalities are emotionally appealing words applied to a product or idea, but which present no concrete argument or analysis. A famous example is the campaign slogan "Ford has a better idea!"
* Intentional vagueness: Generalities are deliberately vague so that the audience may supply its own interpretations. The intention is to move the audience by use of undefined phrases, without analyzing their validity or attempting to determine their reasonableness or application. The intent is to cause people to draw their own interpretations rather than simply being presented with an explicit idea. In trying to "figure out" the propaganda, the audience foregoes judgment of the ideas presented. Their validity, reasonableness and application is not considered.
* Obtain disapproval or Reductio ad Hitlerum: This technique is used to persuade a target audience to disapprove of an action or idea by suggesting that the idea is popular with groups hated, feared, or held in contempt by the target audience. Thus if a group which supports a certain policy is led to believe that undesirable, subversive, or contemptible people support the same policy, then the members of the group may decide to change their original position.
* Oversimplification: Favorable generalities are used to provide simple answers to complex social, political, economic, or military problems.
* Slogans: A slogan is a brief, striking phrase that may include labeling and stereotyping. Although slogans may be enlisted to support reasoned ideas, in practice they tend to act only as emotional appeals. Opposing slogans about warfare in Iraq or the Middle East, for example, such as "blood for oil" or "cut and run," have stifled productive debate about objectives more than they have assisted it.
* Stereotyping or Name Calling or Labeling: This technique attempts to arouse prejudices in an audience by labeling the object of the propaganda campaign as something the target audience fears, hates, loathes, or finds undesirable. For instance, reporting on a foreign country or social group may focus on the stereotypical traits that the reader expects, even though they are far from being representative of the whole country or group; such reporting often focuses on the anecdotal.
* Transfer: Also known as association, this is a technique of projecting positive or negative qualities (praise or blame) of a person, entity, object, or value (an individual, group, organization, nation, patriotism, etc.) to another in order to make the second more acceptable or to discredit it. It evokes an emotional response, which stimulates the target to identify with recognized authorities. Often highly visual, this technique often utilizes symbols (for example, the Swastika used in Nazi Germany, originally a symbol for health and prosperity) superimposed over other visual images. An example of common use of this technique in America is for the President to be filmed or photographed in front of the American flag.
* Unstated assumption: This technique is used when the propaganda concept the propagandist want to transmit would seem less credible if explicitly stated. It is instead repeatedly assumed or implied.
* Virtue words: These are words in the value system of the target audience which tend to produce a positive image when attached to a person or issue. Peace, happiness, security, wise leadership, freedom, etc. are virtue words.

The Propaganda Model

The propaganda model is a theory advanced by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that alleges systemic biases in the mass media and seeks to explain them in terms of structural economic causes.

First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: the Political Economy of the Mass Media, the propaganda model views the private media as businesses selling a product — readers and audiences (rather than news) — to other businesses (advertisers). The theory postulates five general classes of "filters" that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five are:

1. Ownership of the medium
2. Medium's funding sources
3. Sourcing
4. Flak
5. Anti-communist ideology

The first three (ownership, funding, and sourcing) are generally regarded by the authors as being the most important.

Although the model was based mainly on the characterization of United States media, Chomsky and Herman believe the theory is equally applicable to any country that shares the basic economic structure and organizing principles which the model postulates as the cause of media biases. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Chomsky stated that the new filter replacing communism would be terrorism and Islam.

Propaganda - The best War ever!

Weapons of Mass Deception; Topics: Iraq The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq

* Top Bush officials advocated the invasion of Iraq even before he took office, but waited until September 2002 to inform the public, through what the White House termed a “product launch.”
* White House officials used repetition and misinformation - the “big lie” tactic - to create the false impression that Iraq was behind the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States, especially in the case of the alleged meeting in Prague five months earlier between 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta and Iraqi intelligence officials.
* The “big lie” tactic was also employed in the first Iraq war when a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah told the horrific - but fabricated - story of Iraqi soldiers wrenching hundreds of premature Kuwaiti babies from their incubators and leaving them to die. Her testimony was printed in a press kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait, a PR front group created by Hill and Knowlton, then the world’s largest PR firm.
* In order to achieve “third party authenticity” in the Muslim world, a group called the Council of American Muslims for Understanding launched its own web site, called OpenDialogue.com. However, its chairman admitted that the idea began with the State Department, and that the group was funded by the U.S. government.
* Forged documents were used to “prove” that Iraq possessed huge stockpiles of banned weapons.
* A secretive PR firm working for the Pentagon helped create the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which became one of the driving forces behind the decision to go to war.

The Victory of Spin; How a GOP echo chamber methodically spreads its views through conservative media giants and highly placed columnists, journalists, and opinion makers.



END
I don't get the impression that everyone in the skeptic community is aware of just how manipulated the majority of TV news is. I think we all recognize there's a lot of filler like Lacy Peterson and Natalie Holloway stories. I think we mostly recognize there are many more murdered and missing people that don't get the same attention. Most people know FOX News is full of unsupported opinion pieces. What I don't think people realize is how much news is occurring that we are not hearing about. I don't think people realize how much news is fed to the US media by people with an agenda and no qualms about dishonesty.

The Center for Media and Democracy is at the forefront of identifying manipulative PR and propaganda.Democracy Now is an alternate news source. You don't have to agree with the political position of any of these sources. But it is well worth the time to investigate what news is out there that isn't part of the corporate controlled conglomerate.

The potential for propaganda blowback in this information age is a given. It's dangerous and foolosh to just listen to the news you want to hear.

But if reported successes in the Middle East are themselves the products of U.S. psychological operations in the region, the "victories" the American public sees may be nothing more than the victory of spin. U.S. citizens need to face these critical questions: What kind of democracy exists in a manipulated media environment? And where does it leave U.S. credibility in the eyes of the world?

FCC on 'Fake News'
Keep writing to these guys, it may help.

Media Literacy; Wikipedia, is worth looking at. And I've signed up for the free, Spin of the day email. Media matters and Truthout are good sources and there are many more on the Internet of course. I think most skpetics can figure out the real news. Now that you know.....

 

[Rob Lister]

Interesting read.

Have you considered the possibility that the very sources you like and that reveal the real truth about the corporate control of the media are also "in on it"?

Either way, you gotta hand it to that Rove guy. He's accomplished alot in six years.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Interesting read.

Have you considered the possibility that the very sources you like and that reveal the real truth about the corporate control of the media are also "in on it"?

Either way, you gotta hand it to that Rove guy. He's accomplished alot in six years.

From their website

Some Democratic organizations are trying to fight fire with fire such as Moveon.org. As such they have been the target of a smear campaign to label them as extremists which is quite absurd.

Media Matters and Truth out have as much criticism aimed at the left and right as far as calling the news on bad reporting. The article on Wiki about bias in the media has arguments on both sides.

But you are missing the point. It isn't left and right. It is money and corporate ownership. It is using the news as an extension of advertising whether it be advertising politics or advertising other products. Investigative journalism is dwindling.

Democracy Now refuses all funds other than donations. There are legitimate sources of information out there.

For true democracy to work, people need easy access to independent, diverse sources of news and information.

But the last two decades have seen unprecedented corporate media consolidation. The U.S. media was already fairly homogenous in the early 80s: some fifty media conglomerates dominated all media outlets, including television, radio, newspapers, magazines, music, publishing and film. In the year 2000, just six corporations dominated the U.S. media.

In addition, corporate media outlets in the U.S. are legally responsible to their shareholders to maximize profits.

And U.S. “public” media outlets accept funding from major corporations, as well as from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Every Corporation for Public Broadcasting board member is appointed by the White House and confirmed by the Senate.

Democracy Now! is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations. We do not accept advertisers, donations from corporations, or donations from governments. This allows us to maintain our independence.

The idea it's just someone else's slant is a foolish position. The saying there is only one set of facts has truth to it. You can interpret those facts various ways but there is a real world out there. One can judge those facts but if you aren't even aware of them in the first place then you're in trouble.

 

[Rob Lister]

Skepticgirl, I don't care what news you read, what news you believe, what news you don't. I hope you don't mind where I get mine either (mostly internet news services like yahoo and google links).

IMO, what you consider a great corporate conspiracy on the part of the right is really nothing more than a very long in coming balance to the scales coupled with several channels having to fill 24 hours of programming while at the same time competing for viewers. The print media is another matter entirely but they too depend on dwindling subscriptions and an increasingly disinterested (in them) readership. The whole playing field is shifting but in the end it will be exactly what people want, else it will not exist (news outlets depend on people that subscribe to it). Meanwhile, get used to more and more 'man-bites-dog' stories. If it bleeds, it leads. That's just the way it is.

 

[UserGoogol]

Doesn't that just reinforce what skeptigirl is saying? As is said in the quoted Wikipedia article, the idea is that corporate bias is not purely because of conscious malice but largely because of economic practicalities. Being biased in favor of "exciting news" instead of "meaningful news" to attract ratings is a part of corporate bias.

The definition of propaganda is "The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause." It is not neccesary for propaganda to be intentional for it to exist, although of course it helps.

 

[RandFan]

Wait, don't let the length of this post stop you from looking at it! Read the beginning and end. The middle is full of citations and examples so people have an idea what I am talking about and can judge the evidence for themselves. For the middle, read my comments and the names of the links. Then read, skim or skip the quotes as your interest and time allow.

Your instincts are correct. It's way too much to have any value execpt argument ad nauseam.

If you look at the article, Media bias in the United States; From Wikipedia, there is a good case made for both claims of media bias leaning left and right.

I'm not certain that you truly grasp the importance of that.


In any event, I'm really not sure of your proposition.

I don't think people realize how much news is fed to the US media by people with an agenda and no qualms about dishonesty.

The Center for Media and Democracy is at the forefront of identifying manipulative PR and propaganda.Democracy Now is an alternate news source. You don't have to agree with the political position of any of these sources. But it is well worth the time to investigate what news is out there that isn't part of the corporate controlled conglomerate.

My understanding is that the internet is the fastest growing source of news. The internet is the most democratized medium of news in history. Look at your links for your evidence. Where did that come from? Who is stopping that information?

I'm not saying that you don't have a point, you do, I don't think the sky is falling though.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Maybe you could re-read the beginning Rob. You missed a lot.

"The method which this is occurring is not some Trilateral Commission conspriacy or even necessarily a coordinated effort. It has come about gradually through various events and circumstances."

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Your instincts are correct. It's way too much to have any value execpt argument ad nauseam.

Your preference for information is in the form of "the sound bite" perhaps?

I'm not certain that you truly grasp the importance of that.
In any event, I'm really not sure of your proposition.

I was pointing out bias concerns are distracting from the point.

My understanding is that the internet is the fastest growing source of news. The internet is the most democratized medium of news in history. Look at your links for your evidence. Where did that come from? Who is stopping that information?

I'm not saying that you don't have a point, you do, I don't think the sky is falling though.

I believe the majority of people in this country still get the majority of news from the TV and a few less from the newspapers.

I agree the Internet information sources are what's stopping the sky from falling. That doesn't mean we are completely safe yet. The Net Neutrality issue and censorship of the Internet in places like China should be a wake up call for all of us.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

As for the argument of, "it's what the public wants" or "buys", that also ignores the facts. If you only take the comment I made about the Holloway and Peterson stories, then perhaps you can argue this point. But the people putting out the fakes news and manipulating beliefs are not reacting to public demand. They are actively marketing their message.

 

[RandFan]

Your preference for information is in the form of "the sound bite" perhaps?

Non sequitur.

I was pointing out bias concerns are distracting from the point.

Fair enough.

I believe the majority of people in this country still get the majority of news from the TV and a few less from the newspapers.

We'll let me now be in danger of argument ad nauseam. The fastest grown medium for news is the internet. Assuming a monopoly and I don't that monopoly is on shaky ground.

I agree the Internet information sources are what's stopping the sky from falling. That doesn't mean we are completely safe yet. The Net Neutrality issue and censorship of the Internet in places like China should be a wake up call for all of us.

Ok, I'll grant you these points. I think neutrality should be protected. The problem is that the powers that be can't control everyone.

 

[RandFan]

As for the argument of, "it's what the public wants" or "buys", that also ignores the facts. If you only take the comment I made about the Holloway and Peterson stories, then perhaps you can argue this point. But the people putting out the fakes news and manipulating beliefs are not reacting to public demand. They are actively marketing their message.

I'm not convinced yet and you have not made a simple coherent argument supported by the facts as yet. I'm not going to wade through all of your links to make the case for you.

 

[geni]

My understanding is that the internet is the fastest growing source of news. The internet is the most democratized medium of news in history.

Ever scan through the results of google news? Notice exactly the same stories appearing from dozens of sources? The internet produces more comment but not really more news unless you really go looking for it and can speak a wide collection of languages.

 

[The Central Scrutinizer]

I'm not sure citing fair.org and moveon.org as "non-biased" is a good idea.

 

[RandFan]

Ever scan through the results of google news? Notice exactly the same stories appearing from dozens of sources? The internet produces more comment but not really more news unless you really go looking for it and can speak a wide collection of languages.

Fair point.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Interesting bit of denial from a few folks I would guess enjoy the news they get.

My question then is what about the fake news portrayed as real? Not an issue for you?

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I'm not sure citing fair.org and moveon.org as "non-biased" is a good idea.

I'm not sure I claimed these were not biased? Their own sites may say so. I used sites which documented specific instances of fake news. If you have evidence the specific incidences didn't happen or aren't portrayed accurately by the cited link, speak up. I have no desire here to lose credibility by citing a fake report of fake news.

It's so easy to dismiss this issue as a right vs left. I assure you that is not the problem. I have repeated that three times now counting this post.

Stop looking at the left vs right and look at the news itself. Is there much if any investigative reporting still being presented on prime time TV news? How many times does the TV news present the latest White House Press Conference as actual news rather than the PR photo op it is? How much of a point has the TV news made of the fact Bush "Town Meetings" were with screened audiences and scripted questions? Does the White House Press Corp ever really get controversial questions answered?

To get away from the political blinders people seem to be unable to look past, did you know some of the "latest findings in a study" were actually fake news paid for by the company benefiting from the study results? How convenient for the news station. They get free news clips to run and maybe even revenue from the sponsor of the product the fake news promotes or maybe even that plus that sponsor is one of their subsidiaries.

I know the post is long and forum members won't take the time to read it. But use it as a reference. Go back and find just the parts that document instances of corporate produced fake news. You just need look at my short comments and the link titles between quotes in the MIDDLE part of the OP.

Forget your politics for the moment and just look at the fact the news is faked at least some of the time on 80% of the news stations. Compare that to 10-20 years ago when it almost never happened, or if it happened and was detected, it made headlines. Now when it is detected it gets a yawn.

 

[RandFan]

Interesting bit of denial from a few folks I would guess enjoy the news they get.

My question then is what about the fake news portrayed as real? Not an issue for you?

How much fake news do we get? I'm not certain.

I can tell you that I regularly listen to NPR, and Rush Limbaugh on the radio. On the internet I check out BBC, Drudge, and FOX News. I also follow several blogs including The Huffington and Little Green Footballs. I used to read Coulter weekly but I've stopped. I do read Larry Elder and Susan Estrich and from time to time assorted others.

Most importantly I check into the Daily Howler 2 or three times a week.

My conclusions: There's a lot of crap out there. However I don't see any concerted effort to fake a lot of news. I simply see schlock but somehow the news, one way or the other, get's through.

BTW, I get the impression that Bob Somerby, the Editor of the Daily Howler agrees with you to a degree. I'm not as cynical as Bob.

Do you read Daily Howler? You should.

ETA: Though Bob leans a bit to the left I can tell you that he is fair and by and large non-partisan.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Ever scan through the results of google news? Notice exactly the same stories appearing from dozens of sources? The internet produces more comment but not really more news unless you really go looking for it and can speak a wide collection of languages.

It is a shrinking field for certain. And we need to stay vigilant.

I have made an effort to read a few English language foreign newspaper sources from the Internet. The thing about Democracy Now is they bring up hundreds of issues the mainstream media doesn't. It's only after hearing about it from a DN news cast that I even know there is an issue to Google information about.

If you are a right wing leaning forum member, take on Democracy Now stories with an investigation of your own. The more information we all have the better off we are. I want to know about the other side of all issues. Why wouldn't I? I may trust some news like DN more readily because I have experience with their work, but that doesn't mean I don't want to know about or wont be convinced by evidence contradicting DN stories.

 

[TriangleMan]

I can't comment on American news per se but I wonder about the international sources. I know a reporter who works for the English-language Al-Jazzera news channel (going on-air in September), I'll ask him what he thinks about this issue when he is back from vacation.

 

[RandFan]

How much fake news do we get? I'm not certain.

I can tell you that I regularly listen to NPR, and Rush Limbaugh on the radio. On the internet I check out BBC, Drudge, and FOX News. I also follow several blogs including The Huffington and Little Green Footballs. I used to read Coulter weekly but I've stopped. I do read Larry Elder and Susan Estrich and from time to time assorted others.

Most importantly I check into the Daily Howler 2 or three times a week.

My conclusions: There's a lot of crap out there. However I don't see any concerted effort to fake a lot of news. I simply see schlock but somehow the news, one way or the other, get's through.

BTW, I get the impression that Bob Somerby, the Editor of the Daily Howler agrees with you to a degree. I'm not as cynical as Bob.

Do you read Daily Howler? You should.

ETA: Though Bob leans a bit to the left I can tell you that he is fair and by and large non-partisan.

Uh, no, Rush Limbaugh and a number of the others are not news per se but they cover events and I find that listening to different sides is a good way to get both sides of the story.

I also watch Daily Show and the Colbert report. I'm not sure how much they contribute but it is something.