The media can't handle the truth-Media sheep facing truth-hungry Internet wolves

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/08/27/lyons/


The media can't handle the truth

Media sheep facing truth-hungry Internet wolves

By Gene Lyons

snip//

But here's the big thing about "mainstream" journalism and what Ambinder calls "information asymmetry." Upton Sinclair said it best: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Furthermore, the safest place during a stampede is the middle of the herd. Establishment journalists with mortgages, car payments and children in private schools saw what happened to the Dixie Chicks. Why couldn't it happen to them? (The job I got fired from that month wasn't paying my bills.) The United States had been attacked. Feelings ran high, especially in New York and Washington.

What did it matter if we killed the wrong Arabs, so long as Arabs were being killed? In Thomas Friedman's immortal words, "We hit Iraq because we could. That's the real truth."

Under oath to a Senate committee, Condi Rice told a barefaced whopper about the Aug. 6, 2001, CIA terrorism briefing that Bush blew off. Media insiders pretended not to notice. Bush made a slapstick skit of searching under his Oval Office desk for Iraqi WMDs. The press laughed on cue. He claimed that Saddam Hussein forced him to invade Iraq by expelling U.N. arms inspectors. (In reality, Bush made them leave.) Pundits praised his charm.

Long under siege for "liberal bias," media careerists now find themselves confronted with people they see as passionate amateurs. True, fearless scrappers like my friend Joe Conason have always been around, and somebody like Paul Krugman -- a world-class economist who doesn't care what, say, MSNBC's Chris Matthews thinks of him -- can be very annoying.

But what's really driving these jokers up the wall is economic and intellectual competition from the Internet: people with first-class minds and a passion for truth that some of them can barely remember.

[Laelth]

1. k&r for truth and the reality-based world. n/t

:dem:

-Laelth

[ixion]

5. second that

:woohoo: for Truth!

[T Wolf]

2. The M$M that dominates (dis)information dissemination in this country will continue to do what they

(lie and spread corporate propaganda) unless there is a threat of consequences.

On boycotts, etc., since the truth does not have pockets anywhere as deep as the corps, they cannot be fought on that front.

Believing that the "new" media can compete with the established media in terms of getting the message out is also a false hope - the numbers are too one-sided.

The weak point in their arsenal is the actual people who spew the lies. Make the talking heads fear to be a part of the machine and you may be able to affect change.

[orpupilofnature57]

3. MSM ,have served as a confusing ,divisive tool for New World Order

Ruppert has no use for reality.Thank God for the Fact Freaks ,wasting their live on the computer ,I call them my Teachers.

[bemildred]

4. Being a lying propaganda tool has consequences. nt