“So the dirty little secret is yeah, we sort of informally agree not to report a lot of things that we see, some of it for legitimate security reasons, and some of it because it could just be embarrassing. And the tradeoff is we get a continued relationship with these people and we can get information.
“And by the way, it is information that we can still hold them accountable for, it’s just that we sort of cover them.”
— Jamie McIntyre, CNN’s senior Pentagon reporter for 16 years, revealing the truth about how our Big Media operates.
[Editor’s Note: McIntyre is now an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Maryland. Hint: ‘Sort of’ covering for sources because they might be embarrassed, ‘informally agreeing’ not to report ‘a lot of things’ you see, and making ‘tradeoffs’ in return for a ‘continued relationship’ is not journalism, it’s whoring for crumbs from your sources, and I hope the ‘Professor’ teaches his students that. H/t to bartcop.com.]
“Today, journalists more than any other cohort of professionals, are responsible for the confusion that surrounds power and its criminality in contemporary society. As Janet Malcolm said in another context, ‘Every journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible.’ “
— Martin Walker, M.A.
“Circus dogs jump when the trainer cracks his whip, but the really well-trained dog is the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip.”
— George Orwell on reporters like Jamie McIntyre.
“Media manipulation in the U.S. today is more efficient than it was in Nazi Germany, because here we have the pretense that we are getting all the information we want. That misconception prevents people from even looking for the truth.”
— Mark Crispin Miller
“Every government is run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.”
— I.F. Stone
“I.F. Stone famously admonished reporters never to have lunch with their sources. Stone believed that once a reporter got too close to those in positions of wealth and power, the independent stance needed for good journalism would be lost. He was contemptuous of journalism that allowed government and big business to do as they pleased.”
— Robin Andersen, “On the Shoulders of Giants,” FAIR.org, Jan.-Feb. 2006.
“The American press is, and always has been, a booster press, its editorial pages characteristically advancing the same arguments as the paid advertising copy.”
— Lewis Lapham
“Newscasters who want to keep their careers afloat learn the fine art of evasion. We should never accuse them of doing a poor and sloppy job of reporting. If anything, with great skill they skirt around the most important points of a story. With much finesse they say a lot about very little, serving up heaps of junk news filled with so many empty calories and so few nutrients. Thus do they avoid offending those who wield politico-economic power. It is enough to take your breath away.”
— Dr. Michael Parenti
“The one truth you’ll never hear on any major American news outlet is that war is good for business and the owner of the network is a stockholder in that profitable concern.”
— Arris Jaye
We have a few real journalists out there. Amy Goodman, Thom Hartmann, are two. A few good authors. Unfortunately we’re also losing some. Howard Zinn to death, Bill Moyers to retirement. Unfortunately we have almost no media outlets that will distribute the work of good reporters, except internet.
That’s true about Hartmann and Amy Goodman, and I think Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann and Ed Schultz usually do a good job, as well as Mike Malloy, Stephanie Miller and a few names I can’t think of at the moment. The problem is, Fox News and CNN outgun MSNBC on cable, due to Fox and CNN commonly being part of a basic cable package whereas MSNBC usually isn’t. The same is true of Democracy Now and Free Speech TV, which is featured as an extra on most cable menus, if it’s offered at all. On the radio side, Hartmann and the others have beat Rushbo, Hannity and Beck, et al, head-to-head, but they aren’t syndicated in enough areas to make a real fight of it — right-wingers still dominate the talk radio field with about 90 percent of coverage nationally, and that’s not due to audience choice — it’s because conservative corporate interests control the programming. On PBS, with Moyers’ and David Brancaccio’s shows gone, there’s not much that’s really progressive anymore. (For many years The NewsHour has sagged into a place where warhawk neocons can feel comfortable pumping out their corporate globaloney, the same as CNN — not too many hard questions asked or pursued.)
The Internet is great, but it’s too diverse and diffused and it still doesn’t reach the concentrated mass audience of corporately-owned TV and radio networks.
The only good thing, and it’s unfortunate since it’s based in tragedy, is that grim reality is making all of the Noise Machine talking heads look stupid on nearly a daily basis and it’s gradually having an effect. A real telling moment will be how the GOP does in the Gulf States in 2010 — common sense says a lot of these pro-Big Oil Republicans should be moving into their lobbying jobs come January, but, then again, they own the no-paper-trail voting machines and corporate money is now unlimited, so we’ll see.
Another salient election will be California — Meg Whitman is basically Schwarzenfluffer only worse, but she’s willing to spend hundreds of millions of her own money to buy the gubernatorial election. Will it work, as it did for Bloomberg in the NYC mayor’s race? Another we’ll see.