Cable news is useless. TURN IT OFF.

[Guest guest]

http://web.takebackthemedia.com/geeklog/public_html/article.php?story=2004091607\

0023934

 

Cable news is useless. TURN IT OFF.

 

Thursday, September 16 2004 @ 07:00 AM GMT

Contributed by: Stranger

 

Media WatcherWell, here we are. We're a little less than two months

out from Election Day, and the corporate media is filling people's

heads with misinformation and worthless, trivial matters that aren't

worth the time spent thinking about them. Rather than talking about

the fact that Bush plans to cut funding for Homeland Security if he's

returned to office or talking about how Iraq is circling the drain at

this very moment as a result of the Bush administration's utter

incompetence, CNN and the rest give 5 hurricane reports an hour, when

they're not (still!) talking about Laci Peterson or Martha Stewart.

 

The Republican party and corporate media have snuggled in together for

the duration of the campaign. You could see it in the saturation

coverage that the cable nets gave to the fatally flawed polls that

Time and Newsweek reported in the days after the RNC convention in New

York, which gave Bush an 11-point lead that was simply never there.

You could see it in the wall-to-wall coverage they gave to the Swift

Boat Liars for Bush - nearly two weeks' worth of repeating charges

that were shaky to begin with and stood up to about five minutes of

scrutiny.

 

You can see it in the debacle surrounding CBS' 60 Minutes II report on

Bush's desertion from the Texas Air National Guard. Somehow, after

claims of forgery were made, the story for the cable nets became the

forged documents rather than the legitimiate and explosive story they

contained. To this day, rumors run rampant and charges are hurled that

somehow the Democrats and the Kerry campaign are behind the memos, and

nary a word is whispered about the fact that Bush disobeyed a direct

order from a superior officer, was busted down to flying trainer

aircraft, and ultimately grounded from pilot duties. Nothing is said

about the numerous gaps in Bush's record, which move him past AWOL

status and firmly into deserter territory. These are facts - but for

some reason, the cable news networks are more interested in talking

about IBM Selectric typewriters and proportional spacing.

 

That the cable news nets have taken leave from the facts in order to

prop up the Bush administration is, in the 3 years after the September

11 attacks, a given. Every utterance by Bush is given equal weight and

treated like the Sermon on the Mount, while Kerry's blistering attacks

on Bush and Cheney get mere seconds of coverage. The shrieking-head

programs on Fox and MSNBC now don't even bother with the true liberal

viewpoint, content with instead having a conservative and a certified

right-wing loon provide the 'debate' - which in most instances

consists of debating whether George W. Bush is great or really, really

great.

 

This web site is edging up on being two years old, and we've always

advocated taking back the media through action alerts and other ways

of letting corporate media know we're watching them. Well, the

realization has dawned that the media may just be too far gone to get

a handle on at tis point, and the only thing that will reverse the

media's slide into terminal mediocrity is putting John Kerry into the

White House and hoping like hell that he installs a bulldog as

chairman of the FCC. It's going to take a lot of legislation and maybe

even prosecution to return the media to a form which will guarantee

even minimal levels of fairness and balance. The Fairness Doctrine

must be brought back in order to afford a public platform that

disseminates more than GOP talking points, and the Justice Department

may have to 'Ma Bell' the media conglomerates in order to return media

outlets back to local, community-oriented programming. It's going to

take a lot of heavy lifting, a lot of subpoenas, maybe some invocation

of RICO statutes. There is the distinct possibility that only a part

of what needs to be done will be accomplished in John Kerry's first

term, and it may even take longer than two terms to get the media's

house in order. And that means that there's only one short-term course

of action that will make any difference.

 

Turn it off. Turn it all off.

 

Let's face facts here. Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are not going to

change the formula which has given them whatever success they have on

TV (and even their 'success' must be measured carefully - on

O'Reilly's best day, he still gets his ass kicked by reruns of cop

shows on the commercial networks). They will continue their incessant

liberal-bashing, because it's a formula that works. And CNN will

continue trying to peel off some of Fox' audience, blissfully ignorant

of the fact that Fox viewers still call them the 'Clinton News

Network.' And MSNBC will present White House shills all day long (with

the notable exception of Keith Olbermann's excellent 'Countdown'), and

they'll accept their puny audiences and toe the Bush line.

 

So let them. Kerry/Edwards have all but shut out the cable news

reporters, instead giving press availability to local media outlets.

They're adapting a strategy that was cooked up by the White House when

they 'moved past the filter' to take their spin on the Iraq war to

regional and local media outlets (they've abandoned the concept,

probably realizing that there's no way to spin Iraq positively at this

point). The result is that they're building their constituency from

the ground up, without the help of the cable networks.

 

And we should follow their lead. CNN and MSNBC can't draw flies, and

Fox is only #1 because they attract slightly less horrible ratings

numbers. When we turn them all off, we could starve them. Their

viewership numbers at this point are so horrible, that even losing a

couple of thousand people could wipe them off the ratings charts

altogether.

 

We can do this. If the cable networks will not present the least bit

of balance in their coverage, all we have to do is shut them off and

we can make them cease to exist as far as the Neilsens are concerned.

 

I was going to close with a rant on just turning off your TV, but

someone already said it better back in the day when George W. Bush was

still getting smashed and doing lines down in Texas. Paddy Chayevsky's

character Howard Beale says it all in the brilliant Network:

 

We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit

there day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds -

we're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're

spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality and

that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you.

You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your

children like the tube. You even think like the tube. This is mass

madness. You maniacs. In God's name, you people are the real thing. We

are the illusion. So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now.

Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them

off right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now.

Turn them off! "

[Guest guest]

You can turn cable and conventional TV media off, but that doesn't stop

their influence over the nation, over the voter.

Media bias, in fact, worsens when Progressives stop watching, because there

is little or no opposition from viewers that are either already firm

conservatives, or are centrists or very mildly liberal. Media are already

passionately biased in Bush's favor. We can't stand watching this crap.

But we also can't delude ourselves about the consequences of our abandonment

of major media. They go on, ever more powerfully deciding political

contests, and shaping the minds of millions of our countrymen and voters.

We pay the price for our inaction. Dems simply don't know how to fight. If

you remember your childhood, you remember that every school had its share

of bullies. How did we deal with the bully? We " avoided " him; which is why

the tendency to be a bully worsened in those individuals. They saw people

cower in fear, and avoid them. This is what we're doing with media. Media

are the big corporate bosses in society.

 

The solution is staring us in the face, but we'd rather spend our time at

phone banks, " getting out the vote, " and putting signs on our cars, etc.

But Republicans are busy exercising ever more control over media, because

they know that the power, the influence, the spin, is in media. The real

solution for Dems, is to rise up in popular revolt against media bias. Not

sheepishly waiting for them to give us a voice. But revolting openly, in

huge numbers, demanding an equal opportunity to give the voter our

propaganda, in contradistinction to Bush's. Nothing else will do, and

there's almost no chance we'll do it.

JP

-

" califpacific " <califpacific

 

Tuesday, September 28, 2004 4:40 AM

Cable news is useless. TURN IT OFF.

 

 

>

http://web.takebackthemedia.com/geeklog/public_html/article.php?story=2004091607\

0023934

>

> Cable news is useless. TURN IT OFF.

>

> Thursday, September 16 2004 @ 07:00 AM GMT

> Contributed by: Stranger

>

> Media WatcherWell, here we are. We're a little less than two months

> out from Election Day, and the corporate media is filling people's

> heads with misinformation and worthless, trivial matters that aren't

> worth the time spent thinking about them. Rather than talking about

> the fact that Bush plans to cut funding for Homeland Security if he's

> returned to office or talking about how Iraq is circling the drain at

> this very moment as a result of the Bush administration's utter

> incompetence, CNN and the rest give 5 hurricane reports an hour, when

> they're not (still!) talking about Laci Peterson or Martha Stewart.

>

> The Republican party and corporate media have snuggled in together for

> the duration of the campaign. You could see it in the saturation

> coverage that the cable nets gave to the fatally flawed polls that

> Time and Newsweek reported in the days after the RNC convention in New

> York, which gave Bush an 11-point lead that was simply never there.

> You could see it in the wall-to-wall coverage they gave to the Swift

> Boat Liars for Bush - nearly two weeks' worth of repeating charges

> that were shaky to begin with and stood up to about five minutes of

> scrutiny.

>

> You can see it in the debacle surrounding CBS' 60 Minutes II report on

> Bush's desertion from the Texas Air National Guard. Somehow, after

> claims of forgery were made, the story for the cable nets became the

> forged documents rather than the legitimiate and explosive story they

> contained. To this day, rumors run rampant and charges are hurled that

> somehow the Democrats and the Kerry campaign are behind the memos, and

> nary a word is whispered about the fact that Bush disobeyed a direct

> order from a superior officer, was busted down to flying trainer

> aircraft, and ultimately grounded from pilot duties. Nothing is said

> about the numerous gaps in Bush's record, which move him past AWOL

> status and firmly into deserter territory. These are facts - but for

> some reason, the cable news networks are more interested in talking

> about IBM Selectric typewriters and proportional spacing.

>