Media Bias Alert!

[mhollis]

Some of you, dear readers, are familiar with the fact that I work for a large national television news outlet. I have and shall decline to state who they are (not Fox, which does not report news, they report opinion dressed up as news) but I was privy to a conversation with one of our producers who has just been given an assignment:

Scare the Bejeesus out of America

This producer and a correspondent, let's call her A.M. (her real initials) are to highlight the reasons why you, Joe and Jane Q. Public need to fear for your very lives. Our intrepid producer will use graphics and effects to show you the insides of nuclear power plants, shipping containers, trucks and so on all dressed up to wreck havoc with the American Public in another Al-Qaida Terror attack. Meanwhile, A.M. will spin out a script (with spin being the operant word) based on no real actual evidence, no real investigation and no real facts designed to put you on your guard and increase your uncertainty after having viewed this "news" report.

Why this report will be important

It will be seen by at least one-third of the evening news-viewing audience (our ratings are tending towards good and very good in this age of cable television and the Internet) and the piece will be very well-produced and pre-produced. It will air sometime around the Republican National Convention and it will be re-aired or "re-purposed" on other media outlets. It will be the source of some commentary. And the information contained in the report will not be any actual news or based on any actual investigation -- only surmise and summary of stuff we all ready know. For the viewer, it will be effective. I know this producer very well and she does excellent work, when given a chance. The reporter, A.M., has seen her star fall -- she is no longer on the cutting edge of great journalism and she knows it. This may be her swan song or an attempt to bolster her profile. She used to get the inside scoop on governmental issues, now she's routinely bypassed.

Why this is biased

Presently, the "war on terrorism" is the only bastion of Shrub's strength in the polls. And he means to really rely on this to get a bounce in the polls after the Republican National Convention and slide in for a home run on Election Day. This is an excellent strategy; the Republicans have the media eating out of their hands and pandering to them as it is. We don't ask this administration any hard questions, we don't challenge their statements that are false, baseless, or easy-to-prove falsehoods. We also do not make a point of the fact that the Bush Administration has appointed lobbyists for polluters to positions in the EPA regulating pollution, that Bush has held fewer press conferences than any sitting President since 1900, that, after finding Microsoft guilty of acting inappropriately as a monopoly all threats to take action against their practice were dropped, etc. And we pander to the Bush administration by producing "news" pieces with no actual content that pander to the Bush strengths, while we continue to air misinformation on Kerry's Vietnam war record.

Television has, indeed, come a long way from challenging the likes of McCarthy over his red-baiting. Now we pander to an incumbent that our corporate owner desperately wants to keep in power so that they may continue to reap profits and tighten their control on more media outlets with an FCC that thinks it's OK when one corporation owns two out of three TV stations you see in your locality, half of the radio and the only newspaper left standing.

This proposed piece has not aired. I would that those who read this article know in advance that the network I work for has, in subtle ways, decided that manipulation of this even-steven Presidential race is just fine and that unbiased coverage is no longer relevant to the mission of all television stations to serve the Public Interest, Need and Convenience.

[Ghetto_Boy]

1. Wel written, good post BTW..... BUSH SUCKS!!!!

[papau]

2. Well said - :-)

:toast:

:-)

[DoBotherMe]

3. I don't see how Andrea's "expose" could help

*. Kerry has been pounding this issue for years: that we have not secured our own dangerous sites that can be used by terrorists. Homeland security has failed miserably on this issue too.

[Cocoa]

4. it's Bush's strongest suit

and the fear involved keeps people from thinking straight, so the very true things you say about Kerry and DHS won't matter to many people.

[TiredTexan]

5. You need to be very, very careful here.

One of our other members posted something very similar about a radio station he worked at. Freepers figured out the station, and turned in the information. By the information in the post, the station figured out who the poster was. He was fired.

Thanks for the information, but be very careful if you want to keep your job.

[Ducks In A Row]

6. watch out

a guy was fired because a freeper figured out who he was and reported him for his psotings here.

[mhollis]

9. Thanks for your concern

But my concern is that what we broadcast is biased in a subtle way and designed to play into the hands of the Republican right as they intend to fill Congress, the Senate and the White House with their stooges.

I have a very good sense of history. Back in the days of Taft, 15% of Americans owned their own homes, almost everyone rented. Why? You had to come up with a 50% downpayment in order to purchase real estate. I believe that this administration and those it represents wants to take us back to that era, where the US Government was not involved in the lives of the average Joe and what the Company said was law enough. Back then, there were few Americans who had health insurance -- mostly the wealthy. most people couldn't afford a car, unless it was a Ford Model T and that took a good five months' wages. There was no Social Security, no welfare, unemployment insurance, no social safety net of any kind. There was also no income tax or taxation of interest, capital gains or dividends.

I figure on one hand we have Osama bin Ladin (who, by the way, has not been found yet) who wants to take the world back to the sixteenth century. These Republicans want to take us back to the 19th. I'm not sure which is worse.

I do not write these missives from work. I cannot imagine the corporation I work for going to this website, let alone taking any interest in my rantings.

Please nominate this page to the homepage. I would like all readers of DU to know that this report is headed for a television near them.

[smiley_glad_hands]

7. Thanx for the heads up!

Change your ID if its your real name. The freepers will be out 2nite.
On Edit: Don't post from work either.

[scarletwoman]

8. The WORST part about the media bias, isn't the bias itself...

it's the fact that the vast majority of the public is completely unaware of how we are being manipulated -- let alone the cynical purposes driving this manipulation.

At least the common citizens of Soviet Russia KNEW they were being fed propaganda and lies, and adjusted their perceptions accordingly.

sw