Guest blogged by Jill C. of Brilliant at Breakfast
As much as we’d like to believe that more Americans are getting their news from blogs, the reality is that print media — news magazines and newspapers; and television news broadcasts are where most people get their information. With the news publishing industry being right up there with the auto industry in terms of being on the ropes, those with the loudest voices are the ones who will control the agenda. In this age of cost-cutting, newspapers are cutting their Washington bureaus, as the New York Times reports:
[snip]
Most papers, even those in big cities, have wagered their survival on local news, printing far fewer reports from Washington, Beijing or Baghdad, and relying more on news agencies for those articles. A survey of newspaper editors released in July by the Pew Research Center found that 57 percent said they published less national news than they did three years earlier, while 62 percent said they printed more community-level news.
Just what Americans need — an excuse to be even more narrowly-focused and provincial than we are.
The problem with the decline in Washington news bureaus is that it gives even more clout to the Washington pundit corps that even as the economy continues to collapse, even as GM and Chrysler close factories and talk merger while Washington fiddles, even as the upcoming Alt-A mortgage adjustments loom ahead of us in March, even as Iraq threatens to explode again, Greece erupts in unrest, and the Bushistas continue to steal as much of the Treasury as they can on the way out the door, has decided to party like it’s 1993. They smell blood in the Blagojevic waters and if there is less actual news reporting, they control the agenda. This is how we end up with Time Magazine deciding that photos from 1980 of Barack Obama with a doobie constitute news just as worthy of reporting as the fact that the American era is over. Because when the feces hit the fan, the corporations that control the media want to make sure that the mobs with pitchforks and shovels decide their problems are because Barack Obama experimented with drugs in college, not because their public faces gave a criminal Bush administration a free pass for eight years.
That is about the coolest set of pictures I have seen yet and I’ll bet many others who have experimented back in the day see it that way too.
It’s almost reassuring that he might have a decent thought running through that mind of his.
I want to see the pics of Bush snorting coke.
I bet they are out there somewhere.
{Comment spam deleted. – BF}
Does anybody else think our “war on drugs” is a cover for covert trillion dollar off shore bidness? Shit, we grew up with alcohol, pot, and once in a blue moon trip…today these kids face oxy, then the much cheaper 98% pure heroin, coke monkeys and crack junkies, and designer drugs…WTF? Its more like war on our children’s souls!
Ancient, without a doubt the war on drugs is a scam and we have private prison profits for lobbying now to make sure it stays that way
OT. After watching this DN interview:
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/12/18/duncan
how come no one speaks to including this in our education system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_multiple_intelligences
When I got my teaching certificate, and first found out about this understanding of intelligence, I was blown away with such a great step forward!
NCLB is BS. Teachers lose a month of teaching, to teach to a test not every kid fits into.
And lastly, when it comes to education, why do states fund schools on local tax bases? Yeah right, everybody gets the same education.
Agreed Flo, chasing dollars instead of educating and strengthening our society!
My passed on Mom, has 7 Spanish Angels still fighting in this world.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63A__INJecI
She was a teacher btw.
And you know Flo, my coca-cola noncia Dad…. reminds me of you. I took care of them both, before they passed. Shit, that’s what I’m back in school for. Now I’ll just get paid. 🙂 My Wild Alaskan fish biz is picking up though! He was funny.
My dang sister called me today, an we got all weepy. Sorry folks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3afUrkx_VwM
point well written. A pathetic state it is with the NEW WORLD ORDER criminals in complete undisputed control of the US mass media bullhorn.
The bushit-cheney administration destructors must be prosecuted in a world court for murder and high crimes after bombing the 3 WTT to the ground at near freefall speed under 10 seconds.
Architects and engineers for 9-11 truth http://www.ae911truth.org
After 8 years of a morally criminal war against nature, the bushit administration plans to auction off 110,000 acres of Utah’s wild lands on friday to their oil baron/investment banker buddies. bush and cheney think this land belongs to them.
Grizz
Sorry. The spam filter keeps snatching the wrong comments in fits and blasts and sometimes it takes a while to find and fix. Sorry.
Sounds to me like an argument for the corporate media being equal to domestic terrorists.
Deception leading to deaths.
Deception leading to destruction of US Constitution.
What better definition is there?
The sooner we realize that we no longer control our government the sooner we can take the pain and regain control, till then, enjoy fantasy land, and worse.
By the way if anyone out there has been cleansing their homes of roaches you can always send them to me. I am interested in how many different kinds of ROACHES there are. I can put them on the clip one at a time and inspect them, perhaps even come up with ideas to help you clean your homes of all your roaches more easilly?
(Okay yeah this is a 2008 theft of the original script, but hey roaches could be the new health care plan–with hospitals and medical expenses so high)
Brad, your final sentence is what I call devastating simply because it is, quite simply, truth.
As it should be. America has been brainwashed through the spin cycle so many times, we have all decided to jump off the Corporate Media Merry-Go-Round, which is now spinning dangerously faster and faster in a desperate attempt to appear credible.
Sadly, it is the American people who lose out if we DO NOT get our news from each other and the blogs and truth-telling newsgates like the Bradblog, Alternet, TruthOut, OpEdNews and so many others. It is up to us. Those who have a natural curiosity, a command of the language and no fear, will lead. The American Conscience is speaking up and this is comforting as I ponder a future of swift reversals and challenges. It is the awesome power of the people that will straighten our road to progress. Give to Alternative media, the BE THE MEDIA.
Jill C. I apologize for mistakenly assuming Brad wrote this piece. It is time for us all to be all about solutions to BAD media. Here’s hoping in the new year and beyond, we can pull our foundering ship of state back into full sail into recovery. We must restore the rule of law, a media that serves the public interest, a green energy future and accountable governance. Yes we can? Yes, we WILL.