The American people should be upset with the media. Young reporters,
like all young professionals, graduate from colleges of journalism with an idealized
bent. It is not radical or unexpected to assume that generally they want to do
a fair and honest job in their new profession. However, they are soon allows
themselves to be corrupted by the people they work for. Of course, innate propensities
guide them to media out lets over others, but the “supervisors” corruption is
still there, which intron is most often driven by money. Substitute the words ‘campaign
contribution’ for the word ‘salary’ and you have the same thing. Thus, they
have this in common with politicians; however, we are quick to recognize
corruption in politicians but we are less cautious when we deal with reporter
or news castors. Part of the acquired skill in these professions, is to
influence without the person you are influencing knowing they are being influenced.
The media has this in common with advertizing. A person shopping often selects
one product over anther without thinking: what they selected just happens to be
the product they saw on TV the night before.
Couched in proper circumstances and rhetoric, news castors
and commentators influence people by what they say even if the people would not
accept it in other circumstances. For example, I have repeatedly heard Joe
Scarborough, Chuck Todd, and Andréa Mitchell say derogatory things about teachers
unions in the context of commenting about distantly related topics. They say
things like, “of course, teachers are not free to act with the union approving
what they say” when they are talking about how good charter schools are
compared to public schools. Said often enough, parent, who happens to be working
people who belong to unions, begin to believe “teachers unions” are somehow bad.
I hear the same approach by the same people when they talk about Muslims. Sometimes,
they attributed terrorist acts to Muslims implying all Muslims are terrorists
and not a radical faction of people who happen to be of that faith. They show a
video clip of a radical Mullah preaching hate for the west when the subject is
building a mosque in Wisconsin. Of course, they are sensationalizing but the
effect on society can be devastating. It works the other way around as well.
They do not use the word ‘Jewish’ when reporting Israeli land grabs that keep
the Middle East in flames. That would imply all Jews were responsible and not just
Netanyahu and the ruling right wing minority in their Knesset. Not all Jews are
responsible for that reckless action just as not all Muslims are terrorists.
The media owners promote these subtleties. Of course, the owners
deny what they doing it and of course, the reporters deny they are doing it as
well—no one is guilty of anything. The result is that media owners are becoming
fewer and fewer and media outlets are becoming monopolies. Monopolies are big
business owned by conservatives and of course, conservative news castors best
serve their interests. Fox News is an out standing and not to subtle example of
extreme bias but ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, and BBC is slowing swinging in that
direction. By looking at Fox News, we can predict where all the media is going.
In turn, by looking at the media we can tell where we are going. The reporters
and commentators are completely unprincipled: they lie, cheat, and steal with
impunity. In other words, Fox News radicalism is becoming mainstream. They do
these things while claiming moral superiority, while more and more people believe
they are morally superior. Our society is drifting out of the grasp of the
people but not only can we not see it, we seem not to realize that we are the
ones responsible for doing it.
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