Perjorative Words and Agendas

[jazdoc]

To those jumping up and down, expressing their righteous indignation at Deen's unfair treatment by the left-leaning press, I'd remind them of how faithfully the press, even NPR and MSNBC, reported the IRS' targeting of conservative groups and the right's attempts to connect that to the administration for weeks, somehow missing, until just a few days ago, that the IRS was also targeting groups with the word "Progressive" in their names. I'd remind them of the Swiftboat scandal. Id remind them of many, many stories in the last couple of decades that attacked both sides of the aisle...

The fact that the press 'faithfully' promulgated the Democrats' unsubstantiated meme that the IRS targeted progressive groups in the same way as conservative groups would seem to antithetical to the point you were trying to make. Indeed, the Treasury IG refuted the Dems charge last week....http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-mon...ig-liberal-groups-not-targeted-like-tea-party. I would also note that the two top IRS officials to testify under oath about the scandal have chosen to invoke their 5th Amendment rights against self-incrimination; a right taxpayers waive whent they sign their tax returns. Contrast the major media's near apoplexy at last week's Voting Right Act's decision in which 6 of the 7 states under Federal watch have higher voting rates for non-whites than whites (and the state with the greatest disparity is that hotbed of right-wing extremism...Massachusetts) while actual attempts at direct suppression of free speech (and indirectly voter suppression) by a branch of the Federal bureacracy is largely ignored. Just imagine the righteous indignation and coverage that the NY Times and MSNBC's would generate if something similar had happened under the prior administration and Progressive groups had been targeted in similar fashion....

Tim, I love your passion but to think that the major media outlets are anything but sympathetic to Progressives and the Democratic party is to refute every poll taken on the subject over the past 50 years. Reminds me of the quote famously attributed to NY Times movie critic Pauline Kael after the 1972 election not comprehending how Nixon won in a landslide "when everyone I know voted for McGovern".

 

[Bill Hart]

Here's where I have trouble and I'm not grinding any particular political axe in saying it, but where do people get their information? Mainstream media has been rightly criticized, cable news is pick your slant and the newspapers (those that remain) and Internet sources follow a similar pattern- one extreme or the other.
Even the facts are malleable- which makes it hard to discern the 'truth' (assuming that you can step back and see what's going on in real time without the benefit of the passage of time, historical context and thoughtful analysis).
All of which leads to fragmented sound bytes, and statistics that support one view or another.
It's hard work to sort through the thicket. The best I have been able to manage is to access numerous sources and try to reconcile competing 'information.' With respect to legislation, I don't have time to labor through a lot of the stuff (I did enough of that when I was getting paid to do it) and I seriously doubt most of us bother to read these omnibus pieces of legislation. I do read some of the Supreme Court cases (certainly those in my field and others of significance), but extracting the 'truth' (assuming there is such a thing) is a fulltime job.

 

[mep]

The best I have been able to manage is to access numerous sources and try to reconcile competing 'information.'

Bill-I couldn't agree more with what you said. Everyone that owns networks and newspapers has an agenda. You need to read and listen to as many sources as possible in hopes of putting the true picture together. As the old saying "The truth lies in the middle" has more than a little validity to it, you have to listen to both the right and the left to determine what the actual middle ground is in order to come close to the actual truth.

Is anyone here old enough to remember whether Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley slanted the news to fit an agenda like CNN, FOX, and MSNBC does? I think ABC, CBS, and NBC are lesser offenders with CBS getting my nod for the most biased of a major network. Has it always been this way?

 

[Bill Hart]

Bill-I couldn't agree more with what you said. Everyone that owns networks and newspapers has an agenda. You need to read and listen to as many sources as possible in hopes of putting the true picture together. As the old saying "The truth lies in the middle" has more than a little validity to it, you have to listen to both the right and the left to determine what the actual middle ground is in order to come close to the actual truth.

Is anyone here old enough to remember whether Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley slanted the news to fit an agenda like CNN, FOX, and MSNBC does? I think ABC, CBS, and NBC are lesser offenders with CBS getting my nod for the most biased of a major network. Has it always been this way?

For what it's worth, MEP, Vanderbuilt set up a television news archive back in the late 70's to study network news bias, on things like reportage of the Vietnam war. I got involved at one point as a law student in analyzing some of the copyright issues. My favorite, when I was young, was Eric Sevareid- why, I don't know. He seemed to have gravitas. I also liked Aaron Brown when he was on CNN- he was not flashy. It's been a long time....

 

[jazdoc]

Bill-I couldn't agree more with what you said. Everyone that owns networks and newspapers has an agenda. You need to read and listen to as many sources as possible in hopes of putting the true picture together. As the old saying "The truth lies in the middle" has more than a little validity to it, you have to listen to both the right and the left to determine what the actual middle ground is in order to come close to the actual truth.

I would go even further...you need to actively seek out viewpoints that you know are in variance to your own.
#1 -- it's way more interesting,
#2 -- you are likely to learn something and sharpen your POV,
#3 -- the other guy might just be right!

 

[mep]

I would go even further...you need to actively seek out viewpoints that you know are in variance to your own.
#1 -- it's way more interesting,
#2 -- you are likely to learn something and sharpen your POV,
#3 -- the other guy might just be right!

Mark-I always reserve the right to become smarter by being better informed. I am a news junkie and I always get a kick out of reading how different the "same" story can sound when told by different people with different agendas.

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Mark-I always reserve the right to become smarter by being better informed. I am a news junkie and I always get a kick out of reading how different the "same" story can sound when told by different people with different agendas.

Can't help but think there shouldn't be an agenda when it comes to reporting the news. "Just the facts Ma'am!".

 

[cjfrbw]

Can't help but think there shouldn't be an agenda when it comes to reporting the news. "Just the facts Ma'am!".

There is always an agenda. Stuff is just sprayed out like a garden hose on soil, with the hope that a harvest will be reaped from it.

Don't know how anyone can look at the so called newscasters and news organs of the past, about which we now have documented histories for comparison, with all of the malfeasance they protected and mythology that they promoted, and not view them as inherently manipulative and fear based. Careers could always be ruined by honesty and authenticity, but seldom through hypocrisy and propagandizing.

There is a window of obfuscation about news that tends to cease about the thirty year mark, beyond which it is pretty clear to see that politics and news were games of epidemic blackmail. Everybody had something on everybody else, and the trick was to keep it all hushed up through mutual assured destruction. The nuclear warheads of real information were kept dormant, but occasionally an extreme measure of power dislocation would generate a deployment. As a wag once said, "the people would never believe it anyway!"

Of course, government and press fear "the mob" and riling it up, a fear that has existed since governments became big. The idea is to surf the mob and its prejudices without being swallowed up and incinerated by it.

Clark Gable talked about the "fine print" of celebrity. The public would elevate you disproportionately, but would also throw you down and tear you limb from limb arbitrarily.

The idea is to lull people into a coma of convenient and wishful thinking misinformation and misdirection, which is, unfortunately, a successful endeavor.