Tim Arango of the New York Post exposes more of the paid advertising disguised as news and opinion infecting our information system.

Major U.S. newspapers often quote Jeff Kagan - regarded as one of the most influential telecommunications analysts - but invariably leave out the fact that he is paid by many companies in the industry to offer his comments to the media.

Kagan, who according to his Web site was quoted nearly 600 times last year, has never hidden his financial relationship with the companies he covers. His Web site declares: “Kagan is a ‘fee-based’ analyst. He gives interviews, analysis and insights to the media for free, and charges everyone else.” But the publications that quote him rarely, if ever, mention the financial ties.

Read The Full Article Here

Janine Jackson of FAIR deconstructs the media’s analysis of our ‘booming’ economy (by ‘booming’ do they mean that as a reference to the fact that so much of it hinges on the military-industrial component of it?)

Again and again, the majority of Americans’ understanding of their own economic situation was presented as somehow disconnected from reality, ascribed to “pessimism,” ignorance or irrationality. The Wall Street Journal (12/6/05), among others, suggested poll respondents’ negative assessments might be “spillover from concerns about the Iraq War,” as if the war rendered people incapable of noting whether or not they can pay their bills.

Even the inclusion of significant countervailing data, like sluggish wage growth or escalating healthcare costs, data that demonstrate that Bush’s vision of an economic horizon “as bright as itís been in a long time” (UPI, 12/2/05) is simply not the reality for most people, was insufficient to shift the story from one of essentially “good news.” The most outlets could manage was to say that such factors suggest “that recent gains in the economy do not apply across the board” (L.A. Times, 12/6/05), that many workers are not “fully participating in the economy’s gains” (Wall Street Journal, 12/6/05), or that “many economic benefits are not making their way to ordinary workers” (Washington Post, 12/6/05). But why these ordinary workers, representing the majority of households, should not be considered the arbiters of whether or not “the economy” is good is never explained.

I guess people are just too ignorant to understand how those massive corporate profits and huge bonuses for CEOs are actually benefiting them. Trickle down is right. With emphasis on ‘trick’. And ‘down’.

Read The Full Article Here

CNN’s Aaron Brown reveals some more uncomfortable truths about the nature of the news business these days, though not surprising if one has been following the continuing discussion regarding these matters on USTV over the years.

Brown, who described cable news anchors as “highly paid piece(s) of meat,” began his TV career as a reporter and anchor at KING-TV News in Seattle. In December 1991, he joined ABC news to anchor “World News Now,” the network’s overnight newscast. In 1993 he joined “ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.” In the summer of 2001 he was hired by CNN to launch “NewsNight with Aaron Brown.” He has received several journalism awards, including an Edward R. Murrow award for his coverage of the Sept. 11 attacks.He suggested his eventual demise at CNN resulted from criticizing the network’s obsession with lurid celebrity gossip while short-changing meaningful news.

He compared such “breaking news” to heroin ˜ it’s good for a while, but will eventually make you feel used and dirty

“The news in this country is a business,” he added. “You might not like to think of it that way, but it is.”

And as a business, the question becomes “who owns it and who profits?”"

The question that is the 800lb gorilla in the room.

Brown goes on to bemoan the fact that news is not delivering real information for people, and failing the primary function of journalism.

As veteran journalist Richard Reeves pointed out on freedom and the press, “real news is the news you and I need to keep our freedoms.”

Read the Aaron Brown story Here

During the run-up to the Iraq War, the nation’s leading print and broadcast media could have saved lives if they had questioned the administration’s pronouncements, according to Helen Thomas. Instead, they were an echo chamber for the White House.

I honestly believe that if reporters had put the spotlight on the flaws in the Bush Administration’s war policies, they could have saved the country the heartache and the losses of American and Iraqi lives.

It is past time for reporters to forget the party line, ask the tough questions and let the chips fall where they may.

Read her pointed analysis in ‘The Nation’ Here

This is good. No surprise really.

“Why is Matthews speaking at so many events with Republican-associated trade organizations?” Johnson asks. “What is NBC policy on speaking engagements and why does NBC keep it hidden? Are these trade associations paying Matthews to purchase influence?”

Matthews is listed at a speaking bureau known to command hefty fees. While it can’t be proven whether Matthews has taken money from the groups, speaking fees are a regular practice for large trade organizations who invite big-name media stars to speak to their memberships. Such fees typically run in the five-figure range, and occasionally exceed $50,000 per engagement.

Read The Report

More fetid evidence of the corrupted nature of our media system. A good behind-the-scenes critique of Tim Russert’s role in the ‘Plamegate’ affair, and his disingenuous handling of it.

Look, I know NBC News and Russert would much prefer to debate hoary charges against me rather than the real issues at hand. So let me remind them what those issues are.

Russert refuses to come clean with his audience about his role in Plamegate . He is a participant. He was interviewed under oath by Fitzgerald. But he continued to report on Plamegate as if he were a disinterested observer rather than a major player. And he still refuses to come clean and explain why he fought to keep from testifying in front of the Plamegate grand jury about his fateful chat with Scooter Libby — even after Libby signed a waiver allowing him to do so.

Plamegate is the perfect segue to another unanswered question. How can someone with these ethical issues go and speak on ethics in the media, as Russert is about to do at Ripon College in Wisconsin next Thursday? And why is NBC refusing to disclose what his speaking fee is?

Russert’s latest ethical lapse is his unseemly use of Meet the Press to promote James Carville’s new XM radio sports show while refusing to come clean about the fact that Carville’s co-host is Russert’s college-age son, Luke.

Read the full post here

Dear Bill,

On the Jay Bennish story you used the caption “anti-Bush”, yet kept refering to Mr. Bennish as “anti-American”. I thought it was the “no spin zone”?? No matter how much you and the Fox network try to “spin”, or imply it to be, anti-Bush does not necessarily equate… anti-American !

Scott Welnack
(offended in) Dayton, Ohio

- Posted by Scott for USTV Media

Why Are We Back In Vietnam? (Manipulating The Media)
By Frank Rich
The New York Times

This all sounds so much more relevant and prescient today, doesn’t it? And this was Mr. Rich nailing it back in the fall of 2003.

In his now legendary interview last month with Brit Hume of Fox News, George W. Bush explained that he doesn’t get his news from the news media, not even Fox. “The best way to get the news is from objective sources,” the president said, laying down his utopian curriculum for Journalism 101. “And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.”

Those sources? Condoleezza Rice and Andrew Card. Mr. Hume, helpfully dispensing with the “We Report” half of his network’s slogan, did not ask the obvious follow-up question: What about us poor benighted souls who don’t have these crack newscasters at our beck and call? But the answer came soon enough anyway. The White House made Condoleezza Rice’s Newshour available to all Americans by dispatching her to Oprah.

“No camera crews have ever been granted this much access to this national security adviser,” Oprah told her audience as she greeted her guest. A major scoop was not far behind. Is there anything you can tell us about the president that would surprise us? Oprah asked. Yes, Ms. Rice said, Mr. Bush is a very fast eater. “If you’re not careful,” she continued, “he’ll be on dessert and you’re still eating the salad.”

And that’s the way it was, Oct. 17, 2003.

This is objective journalism as this administration likes it, all right, news you can’t use. Until recently, the administration had often gotten what it wanted, especially on television, and not just on afternoon talk shows. From 9/11 through the fall of Saddam, the obsequiousness became so thick that even Terry Moran, the ABC News White House correspondent, said his colleagues looked “like zombies” during the notorious pre-shock-and-awe Bush news conference of March 6, 2003. That was the one that Mr. Bush himself called “scripted.” The script included eight different instances in which he implied that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11, all of them left unchallenged by the dozens of reporters at hand.

Goes to show you the long-term, real world implications of what a failing media system can do for your society.

Read The Article

This guy is on it, and this show is devastatingly good. Highly recommended.

It used to be, everyone was entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts. But that’s not the case anymore. Facts matter not at all. Perception is everything. It’s certainty. People love the president because he’s certain of his choices as a leader, even if the facts that back him up don’t seem to exist. It’s the fact that he’s certain that is very appealing to a certain section of the country. I really feel a dichotomy in the American populace. What is important? What you want to be true, or what is true?

AVC: You’re saying appearances are more important than objective truth?

SC: Absolutely. The whole idea of authority—authoritarian is fine for some people, like people who say “Listen to me, and just don’t question, and do what I say, and everything will be fine”—the sort of thing we really started to respond to so well after 9/11. ‘Cause we wanted someone to be daddy, to take decisions away from us. I really have a sense of [America’s current leaders] doing bad things in our name to protect us, and that was okay. We weren’t thrilled with Bush because we thought he was a good guy at that point, we were thrilled with him because we thought that he probably had hired people who would fuck up our enemies, regardless of how they had to do it. That was for us a very good thing, and I can’t argue with the validity of that feeling.

But that has been extended to the idea that authoritarian is better than authority. Because authoritarian means there’s only one authority, and that authority has got to be the President, has got to be the government, and has got to be his allies. What the right-wing in the United States tries to do is undermine the press. They call the press “liberal,” they call the press “biased,” not necessarily because it is or because they have problems with the facts of the left—or even because of the bias for the left, because it’s hard not to be biased in some way, everyone is always going to enter their editorial opinion—but because a press that has validity is a press that has authority. And as soon as there’s any authority to what the press says, you question the authority of the government—it’s like the existence of another authority. So that’s another part of truthiness. Truthiness is “What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true.” It’s not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There’s not only an emotional quality, but there’s a selfish quality.

AVC: It seems like you’re actively cultivating a cult of personality on the show.

SC: That’s exactly what those are, these are all personality shows. It doesn’t matter what they’re saying. Doesn’t matter what the news is, it’s how this person feels about the news, and how you should feel about the news. It is also the personality. I’m not playing it nearly as hard as someone like O’Reilly or [Sean] Hannity does.

Read The Full Interview Here

The TPM reports that Time Warner hires Tom DeLay’s Chief of Staff as its head DC lobbyist to ‘improve relations’ with the GOP.

One keeps hearing about the so-called ‘liberal media’, but then, if that is the case, why are they so in cahoots with the Busheviks and the GOP in maneuvering legislation to garner them more power? If they were so hostile to conservative right, why would that same right wing be so wrapped up in manipulating the law to give these same media institutions ever increasing amounts of power? (such as the shenanigans that took place back in 2003 to increase media cross ownership provisions and caps on media assets, as just one example).