What is the role of media?
Posted on Nov 17th, 2007
by 
Rob
Rob
This is in Response to the Questions and Reflections for November 14, 2007:
Their role is to report. To present facts. Mind you, this is an evolving industry.
Back when journalism and papers started in this country, they were deliberately highly partisan, as many of them began as voices for political candidates. a good book about that beginning is Infamous Scribblers.
Somewhere along the line, journalism became concerned with presenting facts. I'm not certain if this coincided with the growing results of an educated populace or not. The idea became that Americans were smart enough to figure out what needed to be done by themselves, if given the right information.
Apparently, we are headed back to the old days. As we see lately, Faux(or Fix) News(or Noise), as well as CNN, are getting snared in journalistic manipulating. The Fox dilemna centers around Rudy Giulianni, and CNN around Clinton. Both have to do with news manipulation, which has to make any citizen concerned.
The rest of Main Stream Media(MSM) is still behind the eight ball, and considering that 95% of the media is owned by 6 major companies, and FCC rulings promising even more consolidation, we should be concerned. Because at what point does someone decide what news content is going to be made available? My skepticism says it's already happening. Take the Faux News headline, viewable at mediamatters.org, that staes that the rise in gas prices has occurred since the Dems chose Pelosi as House Speaker.
Now that you're done laughing, it is a content issue. It's perfectly absurd, but consider that someone had to broach the idea, it had to be punched into a keyboard to scroll across the screen, and become national televison audience viewing. Do they expect us to believe that it was a mistake? Remember, it's almost exclusively Faux Noise viewers that believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that the US found them, and the "liberal" MSM is hiding that fact.
Media consolidation and control is not a benchmark of a free society. Rather the opposite.
Dennis Kucinich was right when he ran in 2004 and stated that the media is an issue. How ironic that after he made that statement in Iowa, when Mr. Koppel wasted 12 minutes of a debate rambling ridiculously, that ABC pulled their correspondent from following the Kucinich campaign. No more coverage for you Mr. Kucinich!
Ask yourself, what was the last media coverage that included responses from every Democratic or Republican candidate? Oner would almost think that there aren't 7 or 8 candidates from both parties running for president.
Back when journalism and papers started in this country, they were deliberately highly partisan, as many of them began as voices for political candidates. a good book about that beginning is Infamous Scribblers.
Somewhere along the line, journalism became concerned with presenting facts. I'm not certain if this coincided with the growing results of an educated populace or not. The idea became that Americans were smart enough to figure out what needed to be done by themselves, if given the right information.
Apparently, we are headed back to the old days. As we see lately, Faux(or Fix) News(or Noise), as well as CNN, are getting snared in journalistic manipulating. The Fox dilemna centers around Rudy Giulianni, and CNN around Clinton. Both have to do with news manipulation, which has to make any citizen concerned.
The rest of Main Stream Media(MSM) is still behind the eight ball, and considering that 95% of the media is owned by 6 major companies, and FCC rulings promising even more consolidation, we should be concerned. Because at what point does someone decide what news content is going to be made available? My skepticism says it's already happening. Take the Faux News headline, viewable at mediamatters.org, that staes that the rise in gas prices has occurred since the Dems chose Pelosi as House Speaker.
Now that you're done laughing, it is a content issue. It's perfectly absurd, but consider that someone had to broach the idea, it had to be punched into a keyboard to scroll across the screen, and become national televison audience viewing. Do they expect us to believe that it was a mistake? Remember, it's almost exclusively Faux Noise viewers that believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and that the US found them, and the "liberal" MSM is hiding that fact.
Media consolidation and control is not a benchmark of a free society. Rather the opposite.
Dennis Kucinich was right when he ran in 2004 and stated that the media is an issue. How ironic that after he made that statement in Iowa, when Mr. Koppel wasted 12 minutes of a debate rambling ridiculously, that ABC pulled their correspondent from following the Kucinich campaign. No more coverage for you Mr. Kucinich!
Ask yourself, what was the last media coverage that included responses from every Democratic or Republican candidate? Oner would almost think that there aren't 7 or 8 candidates from both parties running for president.
Access: Public
media
August 2008 