What Can We Do About Leftwing Bias In The Media?
Reader Sid Weiner sends out this plaintive plea:
HELLO OUT THERE ,is anyone listening!
My name is Sid Weiner and I have some outlandish questions I would like to be answered. For starters,our government is made up different branches which are, to varying degrees, held responsible to the voting public.We have a system of checks & balances built into the set up by which each branch of government can counter & curb abuses by any other branch.Along comes the mainstream media with it's ability to influence & manipulate huge segments of the viewing, voting public & greatly influence government policy.These people act as a separate branch of government,they were not elected by the voters, are not subject to governmental checks & balance.Their only loyalty is to various editors,publishers, advertisers & investors who are primarily interested in profits &/or ideological agendas.They act autonomously & are rarely held accountable by the public or government for their actions. (remember Paddy Chayefsky's character Howard Beale?).In effect,through their influence over the public, they hold a hammer over the head of the government in it's attempt to govern.Take this a bit further & examine another aspect of their operations;overseas reporting.A good many of the nations on this planet are ruled by totalitarian regimes who are against honest news reporting inside of their country.The international news services have a choice of being truthful & not being allowed to work in these countries or acting as propaganda outlets for the local regime and staying on.Since there is no money for the company in being thrown out,they stay on & report what they are told to report.If, for example, a news service writes false reports favorable to Syria & these stories influence the American voting public & the public leans on the government in Washington to institute policies which are beneficial to Syria, this will in effect be American policy dictated to some degree by Syria.If the U.S. government needs to intervene militarily in some part of the world & the regime we are up against uses the media to attack American policy; The media can, to a great degree,handcuff the government in it's efforts;if left to the general public it would become military action by referendum.Since few people would vote for war over peace(they would rationalize a reason why war was not needed & learn to believe their own conclusions).This is what is happening in Iraq (who wants medicine if the alternative is candy).The end result is that the government is hampered in carrying out it's policy by the need to be approved by an unelected,untouchable,& compromised news media run by a dandified elite which holds the general public in contempt.To date, the only counter force to these huge international propaganda machines are some internet bloggers & a hand full of late night talk shows.
If you have any ideas as to how to impose some sort of oversite & restraint on these people I would like to hear what you have to say.
SID WEINER sid45z@yahoo.com
P.S.I have absolutely no desire to muzzle or suppress the free & independent press which is a vital service in a democratic society,what I am interested in is accountability to the public on the part of the main media.
P.S.S As to my observations concerning the news media's toadying for dictators in the past 2 examples come to mind. Walter Duranty worked for the NY Times in the 1930's in the Soviet Union & wrote glowing accounts of the Stalinist regimes glorious achievements,etc.,etc.,etc.(the period of the show trials & purges & the massive communist induced famines in the Ukraine).Duranty had to know of the suffering all around him & lied about it all,the NY TIMES had to have known about this duplicity & shrugged it off ;there was no way that the TIMES could have worked out of Moscow in the person of Duranty(if you wanted to call this degenerate a person) for all of those years unless they lied & shilled for Stalin on a steady basis.Any sort of candor & honesty in reporting would have seen a speedy exit out of the USSR on the part of the Times years earlier & they, the Times,had to be aware of this.
Another indictment of the willful falsification of events by the influential media again leads to the NY Times,this time the reporter was Herbert Mathews who virtually invented Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution. Without Mathews' articles in the Times Fidel's revolution was small potatoes & may have never succeeded.Mathews & the Times promoted Castro into the dashing revolutionary idol of the fashionable salon socialists of the time in this country & helped him win power in Cuba.Without Mathews & the NY Times Cuba might be free & prosperous today.
The list of abuses on the part of the main stream media which changed the history of the world goes on & on.
As I asked before, if you can help me with some answers I would love to hear from you!
SID WEINER
sid45z@yahoo.com
Answers anyone?
HELLO OUT THERE ,is anyone listening!
My name is Sid Weiner and I have some outlandish questions I would like to be answered. For starters,our government is made up different branches which are, to varying degrees, held responsible to the voting public.We have a system of checks & balances built into the set up by which each branch of government can counter & curb abuses by any other branch.Along comes the mainstream media with it's ability to influence & manipulate huge segments of the viewing, voting public & greatly influence government policy.These people act as a separate branch of government,they were not elected by the voters, are not subject to governmental checks & balance.Their only loyalty is to various editors,publishers, advertisers & investors who are primarily interested in profits &/or ideological agendas.They act autonomously & are rarely held accountable by the public or government for their actions. (remember Paddy Chayefsky's character Howard Beale?).In effect,through their influence over the public, they hold a hammer over the head of the government in it's attempt to govern.Take this a bit further & examine another aspect of their operations;overseas reporting.A good many of the nations on this planet are ruled by totalitarian regimes who are against honest news reporting inside of their country.The international news services have a choice of being truthful & not being allowed to work in these countries or acting as propaganda outlets for the local regime and staying on.Since there is no money for the company in being thrown out,they stay on & report what they are told to report.If, for example, a news service writes false reports favorable to Syria & these stories influence the American voting public & the public leans on the government in Washington to institute policies which are beneficial to Syria, this will in effect be American policy dictated to some degree by Syria.If the U.S. government needs to intervene militarily in some part of the world & the regime we are up against uses the media to attack American policy; The media can, to a great degree,handcuff the government in it's efforts;if left to the general public it would become military action by referendum.Since few people would vote for war over peace(they would rationalize a reason why war was not needed & learn to believe their own conclusions).This is what is happening in Iraq (who wants medicine if the alternative is candy).The end result is that the government is hampered in carrying out it's policy by the need to be approved by an unelected,untouchable,& compromised news media run by a dandified elite which holds the general public in contempt.To date, the only counter force to these huge international propaganda machines are some internet bloggers & a hand full of late night talk shows.
If you have any ideas as to how to impose some sort of oversite & restraint on these people I would like to hear what you have to say.
SID WEINER sid45z@yahoo.com
P.S.I have absolutely no desire to muzzle or suppress the free & independent press which is a vital service in a democratic society,what I am interested in is accountability to the public on the part of the main media.
P.S.S As to my observations concerning the news media's toadying for dictators in the past 2 examples come to mind. Walter Duranty worked for the NY Times in the 1930's in the Soviet Union & wrote glowing accounts of the Stalinist regimes glorious achievements,etc.,etc.,etc.(the period of the show trials & purges & the massive communist induced famines in the Ukraine).Duranty had to know of the suffering all around him & lied about it all,the NY TIMES had to have known about this duplicity & shrugged it off ;there was no way that the TIMES could have worked out of Moscow in the person of Duranty(if you wanted to call this degenerate a person) for all of those years unless they lied & shilled for Stalin on a steady basis.Any sort of candor & honesty in reporting would have seen a speedy exit out of the USSR on the part of the Times years earlier & they, the Times,had to be aware of this.
Another indictment of the willful falsification of events by the influential media again leads to the NY Times,this time the reporter was Herbert Mathews who virtually invented Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution. Without Mathews' articles in the Times Fidel's revolution was small potatoes & may have never succeeded.Mathews & the Times promoted Castro into the dashing revolutionary idol of the fashionable salon socialists of the time in this country & helped him win power in Cuba.Without Mathews & the NY Times Cuba might be free & prosperous today.
The list of abuses on the part of the main stream media which changed the history of the world goes on & on.
As I asked before, if you can help me with some answers I would love to hear from you!
SID WEINER
sid45z@yahoo.com
Answers anyone?
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 5:39 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home