[DesuMaiden]

I think mainstream media is a joke...I don't take it seriously anymore. The mainstream media almost always presents extremely biased information. The mainstream media is never neutral or unbiased...pretty much the mainstream media needs to always be taken with a grain of salt because the mainstream media is always biased and skewed. Not only are they biased but they also tell outright lies.

For example, according to the mainstream media, the USA invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction...and they wanted to invade Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein and to promote democracy. It turned out the only reason the USA invaded Iraq is because Iraq lies in the middle of one of the richest oilfields in the world. Also turns out Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction, so they lied about invading Iraq for WMDs.

The mainstream media also says invading Afghanistan was to fight terrorism, which is another lie like their lie for their reason of invading Iraq. Again, they invaded Afghanistan because there is oil there. In fact, the whole war on terror really has nothing to do with terrorism...it is all about controlling the oil in the Middle East and Central Asia. We are told so many lies about the war on terror, so why should we believe anything the mainstream media says?

The same goes with 911 attacks on the World Trade Center. The mainstream media says terrorists did it when in fact it was the USA government that did it.

Need I give anymore examples? The mainstream media is lying nonsense...it should be ignored...only alternative media is where the lies of mainstream media are exposed and the truth is revealed.

[DesuMaiden]

I guess nobody here takes mainstream media seriously anymore. That's a good thing. Because you shouldn't take mainstream seriously at all. Ignore it at costs. The worst main stream news outlets are CNN, CBC, and Fox News. Get all of your news from elsewhere. You are better off getting your news from blogs and Youtube than mainstream propaganda bullshit.

Michael Ruppert says " one of the greatest impediments to critical thinking I've removed is that I stopped taking mainstream media seriously a long time ago". And so have I. I've stopped taking mainstream media seriously a long time ago, and I ignore it all costs given that it spews nothing but useless crap.

[Shaved Monkey]

The only mainstream media Ive ever taken seriously is BBC and ABC (Australian Version).
Dont mind the Guardian either.
Everything else needs a thorough BS filter.

[sparky]

.
Mainstream media is to information what military band is to music
......just follows in step

[Sixstrings]

What makes anyone think that media which is not "mainstream" is better?

I had a look at blogtalkradio the other day, out of curiosity, and the top programs on that. One of the top shows had some Ukraine stuff and then they got off into crazy religious endtimes fire and brimstone.

The Ukraine reporting was just all conspiracy theory garbage.

Corporate media has its issues, it's beholden to advertisers and stock holders, but that's still better than media outright owned by government and a direct tool of the government rather than holding government to account.

I used to do some freelance writing for local papers. I wanted to do a story on a shoddy developer whose homes had a mold problem. So anyhow I went to the editor with it, and was told that was a sensitive story to do because the developer did a lot of advertising with the paper. So it comes down to that, sometimes, who's paying the bills.

[dinopello]

It's interesting, when "news" was brought by printed for or by word of mouth by a dude on foot or horse and was weeks if not months old it was deemed to be true. Now, there are sources bombarding us from all directions all the time and nobody believes any of it except what they already agree with. Is this true ? I'm not sure its just amazing how much data people deal with. You could just tune it all out and go on with your life like in the olden days. It probably wouldn't make much of a difference except to your psyche.

[Subjectivist]

I believe it was Mark Twain (Sam Clemons) who said, don't believe anything you read and only half of what you see.

Even in the 1800's people could recognize that all media is agenda driven. They don't report the facts, and just the facts. They report selected facts that they think support their agenda, whatever that agenda may be.

[Strummer]

Corporate media has its issues, it's beholden to advertisers and stock holders, but that's still better than media outright owned by government and a direct tool of the government rather than holding government to account.

Nonsense. The German (ARD/ZDF) and Austrian (ORF) government-owned media and their various local subsidiaries are from my experience consistently the most objective and independent in Europe, maybe in the world.

[Tanada]

Corporate media has its issues, it's beholden to advertisers and stock holders, but that's still better than media outright owned by government and a direct tool of the government rather than holding government to account.

Can you name an instance in the last 20 years of the Main Stream Media holding any Democrat President to account for anything? I mean ABC/CBS/NBC, not a little watched cable news organization. People find it hard to believe but the high level ABC/CBS/NBC executive decision makers are married to or related too by blood the big-wigs in the Democrat party, the Federal Reserve, the Moderate wing of the Republican Party. It is a very incestuous relationship between the modern American Media 'thought leaders' and the elites who live and work in Washington D.C. and NYC.

[kuidaskassikaeb]

Tanada wrote

Can you name an instance in the last 20 years of the Main Stream Media holding any Democrat President to account for anything? I mean ABC/CBS/NBC, not a little watched cable news organization.

Here's three. I basically just found places that counted O'Bama's negative coverage.


http://mediamatters.org/research/2011/10/17/study-finds-obama-received-unrelentingly-negati/183623

From Jan. 2 through April 15, Romney's coverage was 39 percent positive, 32 percent negative, and 29 percent neutral, the researchers found. Obama's coverage was 18 percent positive, 34 percent negative, and 34 percent neutral.

That means Romney's depiction by the media was more than twice as positive as the president's. So much for liberal bias.

I think I am much closer to Dino's opinion. There are lots of problems with the main stream media, but unwillingness to say negative things about Democratic politicians ain't one of them.

Mostly I think the problems are with the fact that their all going broke and they don't do much of anything anymore. No news isn't necessarily good news. I mean any opinion I have of anything comes from some kind of media, and its nice to have people who at least try to get things right. These people were our eyes and ears and they don't work very well anymore, and I kind of miss em.

[dolanbaker]

The only mainstream media I've ever taken seriously is BBC and ABC (Australian Version).
Don't mind the Guardian either.
Everything else needs a thorough BS filter.

True, and I'll extend that BS filter to all "unconventional" news sources as well, usually that means seeing a story and reading it from two or more sources with opposing agendas and trying to find the real story in between the two spins (where relevant).

[Tanada]

Tanada wrote

Can you name an instance in the last 20 years of the Main Stream Media holding any Democrat President to account for anything? I mean ABC/CBS/NBC, not a little watched cable news organization.

Here's three. I basically just found places that counted O'Bama's negative coverage.


http://mediamatters.org/research/2011/10/17/study-finds-obama-received-unrelentingly-negati/183623

From Jan. 2 through April 15, Romney's coverage was 39 percent positive, 32 percent negative, and 29 percent neutral, the researchers found. Obama's coverage was 18 percent positive, 34 percent negative, and 34 percent neutral.

That means Romney's depiction by the media was more than twice as positive as the president's. So much for liberal bias.

I think I am much closer to Dino's opinion. There are lots of problems with the main stream media, but unwillingness to say negative things about Democratic politicians ain't one of them.

Mostly I think the problems are with the fact that their all going broke and they don't do much of anything anymore. No news isn't necessarily good news. I mean any opinion I have of anything comes from some kind of media, and its nice to have people who at least try to get things right. These people were our eyes and ears and they don't work very well anymore, and I kind of miss em.

I purposely excluded all cable news from my statement. Unfortunately mediamatters does not include links to the Pew polls they used so there is no way to determine what news sources they surveyed to reach the conclusions they came too and all of the quotes on their statement are either right talk radio or Fox cable news, neither of which are considered the old line mainstream media.

[dorlomin]

The Economist, The FT. As biased as anyone but they have a little class.

[sparky]

.
Both the Economist and the Financial Times belong to the Pearson group
the Economist has always been neo-con ,
now the FT is being driven that way too ,deliberately , with an infusion of journalists from the Economist

[dorlomin]

the Economist has always been neo-con ,

The neoconservative movement only sprung up in the early 70s. The Economist has been kicking round more than 100 years longer.

It has been pretty solidly Liberal in its outlook since the start. This often rubs up against my Social Democratic outlook, but then I dont want to waste my time reading things that only reflect my own views back at me.

[kuidaskassikaeb]

Tanada wrote

I purposely excluded all cable news from my statement. Unfortunately mediamatters does not include links to the Pew polls they used so there is no way to determine what news sources they surveyed to reach the conclusions they came too and all of the quotes on their statement are either right talk radio or Fox cable news, neither of which are considered the old line mainstream media.

The pew study from 2012

http://www.journalism.org/2012/11/02/wi ... aign-2012/

These are among the findings of the content analysis of 2,457 stories from 49 outlets from August 27, the week of the Republican convention, through October 21, five days after the second presidential debate. For mainstream media, the study included the three broadcast networks, the three major cable news networks, the 12 most popular news websites, 11 newspaper front pages and news programming from PBS and NPR along with radio headlines from ABC and CBS news services. From these outlets, PEJ researchers watched, listened or read every story in the sample and counted each assertion for whether it was positive in nature about a candidate, negative in nature or neutral. For a story to be deemed to have a distinct tone, positive or negative assertions had to outnumber the other by a factor of three to two. Any story in which that was not case was coded as mixed.

Network news viewers received a different narrative about the candidates depending on when they watched. Romney fared better than Obama on the network morning shows on ABC, CBS and NBC. During the 7 a.m. half hour, negative segments outnumbered positive ones by 9 points for Romney vs. 17 for Obama. In the evening, Obama fared better. His narrative was fairly evenly mixed, with positive segments outnumbering negative ones by 2 points. For Romney, negative exceeded positive by 17 points.

That was hard.
I guess everybody wants to talk bias, and as a liberal I think the bias is center right, but really I think that the demise has been much more damaging than simple bias and probably makes me more of a doomer than anything else around here. Society needs unbiased refs, judges, whatever if only to deliver unpleasant news. As the representatives of the press are always outgunned, out thought, and intimidated, the powerful can effectively sensor the press. And when things are reported the press can be attacked as biased. For myself I would have to say that there is no source at this point that could convince me that it's safe to live near a fracking site. I know for certain that any study would be tainted because the oil companies would not leave the outcome to chance and they are powerful enough to control the outcome.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... relations/

Here's another PEW story about the gap between PR and the news media

The salary gap between public relations specialists and news reporters has widened over the past decade – to almost $20,000 a year, according to 2013 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data analyzed by the Pew Research Center. At the same time, the public relations field has expanded to a degree that these specialists now outnumber reporters by nearly 5 to 1 (BLS data include part-time and full-time employees, but not self-employed.)

[quote]A Pew Research Center report on 2012 presidential election coverage documented how journalists in that campaign often functioned as megaphones for political partisans, relaying assertions rather than contextualizing them. Noting a “sharp rise in the influence of partisan voices, spin doctors and surrogates in shaping what the public is told about the biography and the character of the candidates,” the report connected that phenomenon to the “diminishing reportorial resources in newsrooms.”



That pretty much says it all.

[Pops]

I believe it was Mark Twain (Sam Clemons) who said, don't believe anything you read and only half of what you see.

LOL, the truth is right there: "reality" as imagined by a human is purely subjective, just a Subjectavist points out.

Tanada says media is biased to the left because it doesn't always agree with him, KKK says it is biased right for similar reason. The fact is they could both be standing on a street corner, facing the same scene and would likely give different descriptions of whatever events might take place. Does that make them biased? No, just human, we all view the world through the prism of our experience.

[Tanada]

Tanada wrote

I purposely excluded all cable news from my statement. Unfortunately mediamatters does not include links to the Pew polls they used so there is no way to determine what news sources they surveyed to reach the conclusions they came too and all of the quotes on their statement are either right talk radio or Fox cable news, neither of which are considered the old line mainstream media.

The pew study from 2012

http://www.journalism.org/2012/11/02/wi ... aign-2012/

These are among the findings of the content analysis of 2,457 stories from 49 outlets from August 27, the week of the Republican convention, through October 21, five days after the second presidential debate. For mainstream media, the study included the three broadcast networks, the three major cable news networks, the 12 most popular news websites, 11 newspaper front pages and news programming from PBS and NPR along with radio headlines from ABC and CBS news services. From these outlets, PEJ researchers watched, listened or read every story in the sample and counted each assertion for whether it was positive in nature about a candidate, negative in nature or neutral. For a story to be deemed to have a distinct tone, positive or negative assertions had to outnumber the other by a factor of three to two. Any story in which that was not case was coded as mixed.

Network news viewers received a different narrative about the candidates depending on when they watched. Romney fared better than Obama on the network morning shows on ABC, CBS and NBC. During the 7 a.m. half hour, negative segments outnumbered positive ones by 9 points for Romney vs. 17 for Obama. In the evening, Obama fared better. His narrative was fairly evenly mixed, with positive segments outnumbering negative ones by 2 points. For Romney, negative exceeded positive by 17 points.

That was hard.
I guess everybody wants to talk bias, and as a liberal I think the bias is center right, but really I think that the demise has been much more damaging than simple bias and probably makes me more of a doomer than anything else around here. Society needs unbiased refs, judges, whatever if only to deliver unpleasant news. As the representatives of the press are always outgunned, out thought, and intimidated, the powerful can effectively sensor the press. And when things are reported the press can be attacked as biased. For myself I would have to say that there is no source at this point that could convince me that it's safe to live near a fracking site. I know for certain that any study would be tainted because the oil companies would not leave the outcome to chance and they are powerful enough to control the outcome.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/20 ... relations/

Here's another PEW story about the gap between PR and the news media

The salary gap between public relations specialists and news reporters has widened over the past decade – to almost $20,000 a year, according to 2013 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data analyzed by the Pew Research Center. At the same time, the public relations field has expanded to a degree that these specialists now outnumber reporters by nearly 5 to 1 (BLS data include part-time and full-time employees, but not self-employed.)

A Pew Research Center report on 2012 presidential election coverage documented how journalists in that campaign often functioned as megaphones for political partisans, relaying assertions rather than contextualizing them. Noting a “sharp rise in the influence of partisan voices, spin doctors and surrogates in shaping what the public is told about the biography and the character of the candidates,” the report connected that phenomenon to the “diminishing reportorial resources in newsrooms.”

That pretty much says it all.

Fair enough, thanks for looking up the link. Believe it or not I do not spend 18 hours a day on here looking at stuff related to what I read on this website. I tend to look in every few hours to check for messages in my inbox and new posts in threads I am participating in but there are whole days, even weeks when I have other things going on and don't look.

I agree an unbiased source would be wonderful and as one of the few Libertarians around I think the USA media is grossly biased in the pro-progressive direction

Partisans have taken over politics in a way that was last seen in the 1960's, 1930's, 1890's, and 1860's. This does not bode well for my country and I don't like it, but I don't know what I can do that would actually change it. The prior massively partisan periods lead to wars as long as you count Viet-Nam as a war and not a 'police action' like I was taught as a child. The war doesn't always happen when the Partisans are in charge, sometimes they just get the steam roller moving and the war happens no matter who is in charge.

It would be nice if more Americans knew history and understood the implications of resource depletion on the geopolitical situation, but alas they do not.

[Tanada]

I believe it was Mark Twain (Sam Clemons) who said, don't believe anything you read and only half of what you see.

LOL, the truth is right there: "reality" as imagined by a human is purely subjective, just a Subjectavist points out.

Tanada says media is biased to the left because it doesn't always agree with him, KKK says it is biased right for similar reason. The fact is they could both be standing on a street corner, facing the same scene and would likely give different descriptions of whatever events might take place. Does that make them biased? No, just human, we all view the world through the prism of our experience.

I plead guilty, I am just as biased as all those commie pinko leftist progressive neocon conservative tea party advocates I argue with.