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2008-02-15 Home Front: Culture Wars

How Broadcast Journalism is Flawed (Devastating critique)

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Posted by Atomic Conspiracy 2008-02-15 00:00|| || Front Page|| [4 views ] Top

#1 The purpose of journalism is not to inform, but to persuade.

"I'm a little concerned about this notion everybody wants [the media] to be objective"
-- Peter Jennings, October 20, 2004

Posted by gromky 2008-02-15 00:54|| 2008-02-15 00:54|| Front Page Top

#2 The first problem is that journalists no longer (in case they ever did) as the instruments for bringing the facts allowing others to form their own an opinion ("we report, you decide). Instead they consider themselves so superior to us mere mortals that they are allowed to decide what we must think so they distort, hide or invent facts in order to lead us to think what thay have decided we should think. The best example is the string of lies and coverups (eg the Hue massacres by the communists) during and after the Tet who led ameriacn people to lose hope on Vietnam. They have also become fond of their power on politicians: they can make or destroy carreers and that is why too many politicians cave in to the politically corrrect way on crime or immigration even when public opinion favours a tougher line: editorializing, silencing deeds who are popular, endlessly reminding politician's goofups are just a few of the weapons journalist have to ensure the politician steps the party line. And that ven without going to downright falsifications a la Dan Rather or a la Lebanon war.

Third: In the fourties the communists tried to take control of Holllywood in order to influence american public opinion. If they wenet for that relatively unimportant target wouldn't it be logical that they targeted that much more important one? That they assigned smarter people for the operation? That after seeing the failure of the Hollywood operation for direct communist propaganda, they went for a longer term method of controlling journalist schools (thus ensuring future generations of journalist would be left wing) and instead of blatant communist reporting (immediately detected and rejected) merely liberal, pacifist, "look at the straw in America's eye instead of the beam in her opponents" in order to sap America's will of resistance?

Posted by JFM">JFM 2008-02-15 02:41|| 2008-02-15 02:41|| Front Page Top

#3 It's never been about 'facts'. MSM et journalist are part of a business. If the business doesn't make money, it ceases to exist [though not before the usual evolutionary last desperate acts of consolidation and conglomerating]. They sale print columns and broadcast minutes by pushing fear, loathing, doom and gloom. Facts get in the way of getting attention. P.T. Barnum should be the patron saint of the Columbia School of ~~Hucksterism~~ Journalism.

Posted by Procopius2k 2008-02-15 09:03|| 2008-02-15 09:03|| Front Page Top

#4 What worries me the most is the stories the don't cover.

Posted by Ebbang Uluque6305 2008-02-15 14:41|| 2008-02-15 14:41|| Front Page Top

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