ACTUALLY THERE REALLY ISN'T ANY SUBSTANTIVE DEBATE ON HEALTH CARE IN THE MEDIA-ITS ALL IDEOLOGICAL CLAPTRAP FROM THE RIGHT WING ON HOW TO MAINTAIN THE FOR-PROFIT SYSTEM EVEN IF IT BANKRUPTS THE NATION-SO THAT WE CAN PAY WAY MORE FOR HEALTH CARE THAN ANY OTHER INDUSTRIAL NATURE WHILE LEAVING 46 MILLION WITHOUT ANY INSURANCE AT ALL. "LET FREEDOM RING,LET THE WHITE DOVE SING."

Posted by David Lucke at 08/24/2009

Please don't tell me The Nation is part of the MSM. Obviously truthful reporting on the drug war is the biggest failure of the MSM,they have spread more lies than Sarah Palin. This never even occured to The Nation??

Posted by mntnman at 08/25/2009

The Employee Free Choice Act.. How can you criticize their coverage, when the issue has almost exclusively been ignored.

Posted by cyclezealot at 08/26/2009

The Employee Free Choice Act is the most important, least covered issue currently on the national front. Representation by, of, and for workers leads to higher wages, better conditions, and a release from the fear of losing one's position. Once fear is conquered, a more vigorous struggle can be waged on a plethora of other important liberties that have been eroded because of the predatory conservative/rapacious capitalist pogroms, begun under the traitorous Nixon regime, still being practiced today.

Posted by EmotionalProblems at 08/26/2009

I got so fed up with the media coverage of the Town Hall Meetings that I wrote the piece below:

JOURNALISM?

Journalism’s content may be categorized as fact, opinion, partial truths, outright lies and B.S.(1). Opinion may include any of these categories or even more than one. The classic adage of checking sources before publishing seems to be largely ignored, particularly by TV and newspapers. Equal weight is given to a piece with no consideration of what category it resides. The media’s fairness doctrine should never include lies and B. S. as equal to the truth in their reporting.

With the explosion of communication technology, media editors must choose what to publish from the vast array of what is available. This process at best is selective and at the worst is censorship, particularly when the selection appears most of the time to be based upon how sensational the piece is. For example, the media picked Hilary’s response to a question asked of her by a student (what did Bill Clinton think?) which was trivial compared to what her 10 day mission in Africa achieved. The public was presented only the answer Hilary gave (which was justified) and the public will be the poorer because sensation took the place of reporting substance.

Another example is the current reporting of disruption of the Town Hall Meetings about Health Insurance Reform. Precious space is used to report rude, uncivil and obnoxious behavior, with content on the lowest level of categories, all in the name of reporting both sides of the issue. In reality, no facts whatever are being reported and because of the repetition, some of the public will take the very lowest quality of news as the truth, when much of it is nationally planned to keep any real discussion of the issues from happening.

This bastardization of the democratic process by special interests is enabled by the willing media to publish the basest form of planned public action, read Propaganda!!!. Some politicians are saying that it is OK, it is the American way, but it violates the fundamental requirement of a democracy or republic that the populace be informed to make the right decisions. We all know that yelling fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire may be “free speech” but it is irresponsible and dangerous. Likewise media reporting with un-true content is not just reporting news, it too is irresponsible and is distributing Propaganda, all to the detriment of civil discourse and the democratic process.

Journalism today is driven and controlled by the profit of about six large Corporate Conglomerates. Television, newspapers and film are all included. Can the American experiment in democracy survive the advent of big media? The answer still is not clear.

As we all know, Thomas Jefferson said, “were it left to me to decide whether we should have government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them”.(2) Very often the second sentence is omitted, which bears particular relevance today when newspaper readership is in the 20% range of the population.

What has not received equal attention is Jefferson’s criticisms of the press and there are many. In an 1815 letter to James Monroe, he said, “A truth now and then projecting into the ocean of newspaper lies serves like headlands to correct our course. Indeed, my skepticism as to everything I see in a newspaper makes me indifferent whether I ever see one.”

When these two quotes are read together, they may be made compatible by Jefferson also thinking that newspapers must responsibly report the truth. The same reasoning applies to TV, predominant in today’s media.

In fact, Jefferson made a proposal to reform the press in an 1807 letter to John Norvell 20 years after his quote about newspapers vs. government. I found this quotation after already formulating the above media categories.

This is the quote: “Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this. Divide his paper into four chapters, heading the 1st, Truths, 2nd Probabilities, 3rd Possibilities, 4th Lies. The first chapter would be very short, as it would contain little more than authentic papers and information from such sources as the editor would be willing to risk his own reputation for the truth. The second would contain what, from a mature consideration of all circumstances, his judgment should conclude to probably be true. This, however, should rather contain too little than too much. The third and fourth should be professedly for those readers who would rather have lies for their money than the blank paper they would occupy.”

(1) “It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” Harry Frankfurt of Princeton University

(2) Thomas Jefferson to Edward Carrington, 1787

Gordon W. Brown, August 25, 2009 7525 Pirlot Place Lone Tree, CO 80124-9781 303-790-8264

Posted by gdnguy at 08/26/2009