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Does Media Matter? »

Posted by: populist 2 years, 7 months ago

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It only assumes significance if you make it matter by continuing to treat it as though it has legitimacy and supremacy over all other forms of communications. However, if you attempt to make your own media matter, then you can acquire an audience despite refusing to submit to the "old guard" - which is becoming obsolescent, anyway.

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populist

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Comments: 20

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Amazing1
March 18, 2007, 3:22 p.m.
Good essay. Thank you, Populist. And yes, I think the writer has it pegged. Instead of evaluating the current media, we must become the media. There are numerous people here on netscape who have the ability to write, the resources for the research and the gumption to make their thoughts known. The internet is the new forum. I have learned so much from others. The links provided that I would have encountered no other way. And yes, the people who do not agree with me. Although I consider them all foolish not to see things exactly as I do, they have, on occasion, given me pause for thought.
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ind06
March 18, 2007, 3:43 p.m.
Mainstream media often misleads not by specific misinformation or a liberal or conservative slant, but by what is left out. The bias comes in the stories that go unreported, or, as the author points out, the points left out of the reporting of a story (his example: wage stagnation).
Yes, the internet is coming on. Right now we have a relatively open marketplace for ideas and information. I fear, as the sixties counterculture was co-opted and subsumed by the mainstream so to will any concept of social news be defanged, declawed and turned into mere fashion. Witness MSNBC's "The Most" a program geared around the concept of social news, presenting the appearance of viewer interaction but in truth consisting of content wholly decided upon by MSNBC.
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NelsonR
March 18, 2007, 6:37 p.m.
The media exposure develops the agenda it wishes accepted. I for one would prefer a left leaning reporting of the news. Why, the right are a blight on humanity progressing to the next step. Wars, hunger and misery are ideals that should be left behind with the 19th century. It is time for man to evolve to the next level without the archaic notions of borders and idioms.
With hatred, nationalism and despotic thinking, our path will be that of the Dinosaur, extinct. Global humanism is and should be the path for our continued evolution. If we retain the conservative path our demise is assured.
The media is the extension of human thought and if it is abused we will never continue to prosper and evolve. On the opposite side of me I know we evolved from subservient characteristic norms, Neanderthal, that progression will be blocked by the antiquated thinking we are endowed with.
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scriblerus1
March 19, 2007, 1:27 a.m.
As I look back over the past six years of the Bush administration and the way the media played 9-11 and the Iraq war, I know the mainstream media leave a great deal to be desired. Right after 9-11, the networks cheerled Bush. I could see what was happening, how we were being strangled by these snakes. It was maddening to watch and yet be almost powerless to do anything about it. I had to do something to preserve my sanity, if nothing else. I began writing letters to the editor, started my own blog, debated on the NYT and WP websites, published articles at Online Journal and Smirking Chimp. I like to think I made a little contribution to the turn the nation has slowly taken over the last couple of years. Yes, we are the media. The price of democracy is eternal vigilance.
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elzorro2162
March 19, 2007, 7:22 a.m.
The article says that we should be participants and not merely consumers. I agree 100%. Some of the so called "news" we receive are fabricated such as the toppling of the Saddam statue, that was a mere photo op, and it was taken as a historical moment representing the war. Think also how the Pentagon has succeeded in controlling the press; in Vietnam War, the press was wherever it pleased to bring the news from the battlefield. The coverage was unbiased to say the least. However today, the journalists are "embedded" in with US Forces. Therefore they will only report what the US Army wants them to see in the battle, not what the rest of the world and the Iraqi people see. This war is probably worse than the Repub crybabies complain as "negative" press. Because of this the war has been dehumanized and sanitized for further megalomaniac agenda.
Z
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Beau7890
March 19, 2007, 7:23 a.m.
I agree with the article, to an extent. The concern I have is that if more of us ignore the mainstream media and create our own outlets rather than try to make existing ones more responsible in their reporting, the facts will get lost.
Though all news outlets will always have a slant of some kind (complete objectivity being a worthy but unreachable goal), journalism as a whole can and should adhere to higher standards of accountability and corroboration of fact.
It is unfortunate that reporters have become so lazy as to duplicate press releases as news for public consumption. But when blogging and Internet reporting become the standard, how much more opinion and disinformation will be routinely disseminiated as truth? How will this improve the public's ability to distinguish fact from fiction, propaganda from truth?
Real and factual news reporting is hard work. But the fact that journalists have become lazier and less critical does not mean they should be abandoned.
Avg rating: (+1/-0 1)
Natureboy
March 19, 2007, 8:20 a.m.
I work at a newspaper. "News" is a product, much like sausage or bologna. You sell a set percentage of the media to advertising, like maybe 40% of the paper, then the rest must be filled or stuffed with product.
We are a small town paper so we use a judicious amount of AP US and World material. It also is a product. It stays bland and caters to mainstream taste to optimize its appeal. It also comes in flavors - I have notice that depending which write-thru I select I can get the version of the Bush V. Chavez issue that makes Bush look like a man of the people or the one that shows the people of Latin America denouncing him wherever he goes.
It is all just product.
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Nowalive
March 19, 2007, 9:42 a.m.
Great article, however the current trend has not been to counter a conservative media bias, the media has been slightly (mild understatement inserted)left for decades. Neither side has had a definitive advantage in opinion pushing, but ALL media needs to drop their agendas, and report news, not rhetoric. The media is nothing more than PAC's for both sides.
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scriblerus1
March 19, 2007, 10:41 a.m.
Rather than Left or Right, the mainstream media are commercial and corporate. They use news to sell products and services. Therefore, like any savvy slaesperson, since they do not want to turn off their customers, their reporting generally follows the bias in the nation at any given moment.
Immediately after 9-11, when the nation clambored for someone, anyone, to lead us out of the darkest days our nation had ever faced, they settled on the unlikely figure of George W. Bush. Bush's poll numbers had been trending downward ever since his inauguration when 9-11 came as a windfall of political capital. Always a shrewd politician, Bush was able to use typical sloganeering to take advantage of the attack. The corporate media helped him so so.
Fortunately, the alternative media--Common Dreams, The Nation, Mother Jones--and the bloggers (that's us) exposed the biased reporting in the corporate media and forced them to be more objective and analytical.
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scriblerus1
March 19, 2007, 10:54 a.m.
One of the biggest forces in the media these days is the Right Wing propaganda machine, which is composed of Right Wing talk radio and Fox News (which I call the False News Channel or Faux News).
Knowing they had no real ideas to offer the common people of this land, the Right began developing this propaganda machine around the time of the Nixon administration, which in my great old age I recall as being the first administration to blame their problems on the media.
The Noise Machine worked by appealing to their intended audience's prejudices--race, homosexuality, guns--in order to get them to vote against their own best interests.
The effect of the Noise Machine on the media market was to pull it to the Right. It was as if the whole atmosphere changed. I'm old enough to remember watching Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, and believe me, news has changed since then--very much for the worst.
Now instead of Murrow's analysis, we get busty Laurie Dhue.
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Riverrat
March 19, 2007, 11:27 a.m.
Relying on the media is a sad mistake we sometimes make. We watch the news, read the paper, and read more than one paper, and everyone has a different slant on the same news,
the the trouble is they leave out a lot of the news that we need. I know of several things that happened in my area and looked forward to seeing what the news made of it, most of the local news had three different stories and none of the stories were totally correct. I am afraid we have reached a stage of getting fed what the news wants us to know because they dont think we are smart enough to absorb all the facts and make our own decision, they have to think for us. I respect any news broadcast that points out the bias of the broadcast news and the printed news and tells us what is really going on, there are not many that do that anymore. case in point, some journalist write a story about what they really know nothing about, they wing it or use other news reporting. How accurate is that.
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Macondo
March 19, 2007, noon
The article is correct.
Some sources of information as Faux News are clearly propaganda.
Most of the others as far as TV. are not as slanted but many times not totally objective, avoiding some subjects or telling half truths.
This is the great value of Internet. In the web we are not a captive audience. The above comments of Scriblerus 1, are a good analysis.
It is also very important to get information from world wide sources. We may see the two faces of the coin and have a more accurate picture of events.