I like to look at the core issues that run through a number of debate subjects.

I've noticed, especially in Iraq debates we often run into the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the media in reporting events accurately and giving a complete picture of events.

Let's get the theories on record.

Is the American media (in general) accurately reporting circumstances in Iraq and the "War on Terrorism"? Why do you hold this view?

Are they "lapdogs" to corporate interest in a way that lessens the value of their reporting?

If you believe in a media tilted towards those in power, how far ranging is this (US, West, the World)?

If the media is dysfunctional can it be fixed and how?

Is the American media (in general) accurately reporting circumstances in Iraq and the "War on Terrorism"? Why do you hold this view?

Are they "lapdogs" to corporate interest in a way that lessens the value of their reporting?

If you believe in a media tilted towards those in power, how far ranging is this (US, West, the World)?

If the media is dysfunctional can it be fixed and how?

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1. I think the events they report are accurate enough, but sometimes they tend to report the more sensational events, leaving the overall picture a bit distorted.
2. Lapdogs to ratings, maybe. For news, ratings should not be a consideration.
3. In this country, some tilt toward the party in power, some against, and overall I think we can get enough info to have a fair idea of what is going on.
4. I think the media, again, is too interested in ratings and corporate sponsorship. The only influence there should be is that of being sued for being wrong. Gives them a little incentive towards checking their sources.

This is one of the few of your questions that I agree with. I believe that we have at least one or two level-headed journalists who are still relics from the good ole' days of journalistic integrity. Anyway, with so many running around Iraq and the Middle-east it doesn't seem likely they could all get away with reporting incomplete or untrue stories.

I do think that the media has become bound to big business to further its agenda. I mentioned journalistic integrity above, the media has been putting a spin on things to make them seem less terrible than they could/are. When ENRON went down the tubes I remember turning on my television and the newscaster reported something to the effect: "... and bankruptcy was filed. Now how 'bout the weather lately?" I think the media has been serving the interest of corporate giants for a long time simply because CEO's are unofficially lining the pockets of the journalists.

How could the media not be biased to those in power? We forget who has the power to pull the plug or send a show through the system. I am not sure whether it is intentional or unintentional but I do think they favor those who hold the cards. Benefactors and advertisers, I would imagine, control a large chunk of operating capital of major media outlets. So, it would almost make sense if the media bows down before the feet of corporate leaders or nations during times of war to put an "it is not so bad" spin on things.

I think that the news outlets are leaning toward whoever is in power for a particular circumstance, or set of circumstances. During the superbowl- no matter what team you had talked yourself into rooting for- don't you always turn-coat during the last five minutes of the fourth quarter to root for the clear-cut winner? The media however, knows exactly who to root for, giving them the better ratings, and better ratings means higher salaries for nearly everyone involved. I think it all boils down to politics, and the media will always be the corporate and political extension of an all ready far-too-reaching arm.

I don't think it is dysfunctional per se. Moreover, it is simply biased and blind toward anything they want to show or pass off as truth. A way to open its eyes would either be to release the lawyers and dig through every inner-office memo to scare the media back into place; or we could simply stop watching the news and that would send them on a downward spiral of rating limbo. Is there an answer? Not really. Once the media began flirting with politics it lost the ability to call mom and tell her it'd be late.

If the media is dysfunctional can it be fixed and how?

Never was this so clearly illustrated than Thursday on MSNBC’s Abrams Report. This was the day Michael Jackson called in sick and ended up showing up in court in pajamas and house slippers.

Dan Abrams must have run the footage on the pajamas and slippers half a dozen times. While the incident was amusing, showing it once or twice, at the most, would have been sufficient.

When people like Abrams overplay a story like this, they sidestep more important issues in favor of "soft" news. The only solution I can think of is sending emails to MSNBC, Abrams and sponsors of the show asking for something more substantial.

MSNBC has not released the Abrams Report transcript for Thursday. I’ll post a link if and when they provide one.

No. The media is overreporting the negative news from Iraq and under-reporting the success stories and positive news coming from that country. That's not just isolated to Iraq. The "news" is primarily focused on the negative in every arena that they cover.



Of course not. If they're "lapdogs", they are lapdogs to a liberal corporate culture that dominates over 80% of those in the "media". If they are guilty of anything, it's groupthink in how they look at the world, people, and this impacts what they cover, how they cover their stories, and the issues they ignore or distort.



No. I think the media has consistently displayed a hostility toward those who they believe are "in power". The media have glamorized the role of the "underdog" and have consistently portrayed individuals and groups, who find themselves consistently at the bottom of this society (and other societies) as victims rather than those who have made consistent poor choices.




We cannot "fix" the media by decry. Our fundamental freedoms depend on the freedom of the media without government intervention.

The situation is taking care of itself through the process of competition. The "new media" as illustrated by talk radio, cable TV news, and the internet have added the voices that were sorely missing when the "big three" TV networks and print media relics like the NY Times and Washington Post held a virtual monopoly on the news, reporting, and interpreting/editorializing events.

The people demanded fair and balanced news and there have been plenty of people who have provided those services.

Is the American media (in general) accurately reporting circumstances in Iraq and the "War on Terrorism"? Why do you hold this view?

No. They haven't talked at all about Saddam announcing to the World that he was selling oil in Euro. http://www.monetary.org/petrodollarsvseuros.htm The coverage has been largely edited to be shown to the public in a pro-administration light. Fallujah wasn't covered accurately by major media and on and on.

Are they "lapdogs" to corporate interest in a way that lessens the value of their reporting?

No, they aren't "lapdogs" they are rank and file employees in huge corporate entities with a vested interrest in staying cozy with administrations.

If you believe in a media tilted towards those in power, how far ranging is this (US, West, the World)?

It's pretty much gloabal. Obviously there are tilts both ways, but pretty much, the Powers that be are the mega corporations. Their lobbying power is what runs the government. Money is power, and they have A LOT of it.

If the media is dysfunctional can it be fixed and how?

No, it's not dysfunctional. It's function is to make money for the corporation and it's shareholders. It does that well. Is that it's correct function? NO! So how do we change the function? We have to change the system of ownership somehow. Remember, the corporations fudiciary responsibility is to earn money for share holders. That supercedes everything else in the world of business, hence the "broken" media. It is serving the dollar, not the public that lends out the airwaves free of charge.

I believe that the Free Press is on the right track. http://freepress.net/

First and foremost, the media megalopolies must be broken up. No way, in this country, should the corporate entities have been able to push for "deregulation" successfully. Michael Powell owes an apology to the World for his corporate favoratism as the FCC head. It is time for some good old |"trust-busting" legislation.

I would advocate for non-profit media, ESPECIALLY NEWS coverage. Perhaps subsidized in some way. We need to return to the system of regulating how much ownership is allowed. I have no isssue with entertainment for profit, BUT the news for profit media model is fascist, not democratic. Capitalism has it's problems.

The issue for me is that "news" is a big business where too much is subcontracted to outside parties/sources. I do not get the sense that many of the new outlets actually are that deep in the field. Rather than pulling reports from the affiliates, the affiliates are increasingly pulling reports down from the parent companies. It is all image driven and the quality of investigation is horrible IMO.

Accurately, probably...But with an amazingly obvious bias. Not many people accuse the media of being inaccurate, but everyone knows it's biased...And most know what side of the aisle the media stands on. But I digress...What was the question again.

No, they're "lapdogs" of the liberal politicians in this country with few acceptions [listens happily to the groans]. I think corporations are looked on favorably by the media, but I wouldn't call the media lapdogs.

I don't think the media tilts toward those in power...It tilts toward the left. I can't say how widespread the leftward bias though.

Is the media dysfunctional, more at 11. Yes...yes, extremely. The media is essentially watered down propaganda, it adds to the hostility and ignorance of the country. Unfortunately, the government can do nothing about this. People have to demand from the media unbiased [or at least less bias] and fair reporting.

CP

Is the American media (in general) accurately reporting circumstances in Iraq and the "War on Terrorism"? Why do you hold this view?

I'll just take this first question. I think the mainstream legitimate sources in US media have a general bias either one way or the other. FOX, of course, is biased right. Most of the others are biased left. Such news sources don’t usually lie outright, but are often guilty of omitting important pertinent details, or splicing quotes to place them out of context.

The non-legitimate sources seem very strongly biased left, IMO. Direct examples can be found in numerous allegations that run rampant on various sites. Depleted uranium causes birth defects and cancer, for instance (completely discredited by the UN’s own IAEA, among numerous other scientific sources, to include the WHO). Another is the allegation that the US used mustard gas Fallujah. This started on an internet conspiracy site, Jihad unspun, written by Muhammad Abu Nasr, of the Web site Free Arab Voice, and then used on on aljazeera.com). Al Jazeera.com is not Al Jazeera (which is found at www.aljazeera.net), but a clever look-alike Web site. It goes like this: Dr. Khalid ash-Shaykhli, had announced at a March 1 press conference that the Iraqi Health Ministry had compiled a report confirming the use of mustard gas and nerve gas in Fallujah. However, in actuality, no one named Khalid ash-Shaykhli works for the ministry, and no such report exists. Type into Google 'depleted uranium' or 'mustard gas US Fallujah' and see how many disclaimers versus allegations there are. I’d estimate one to 5000. The left-wing conspiracies run rampant. Another one that I can think of immediately is napalm. We eliminated the last of our napalm in 2001, which had been stored at the Fallbrook Naval weapons station, but even some (usually considered) “legitimate” news sources have run the rumor that was used it recently.

Regarding nighttimer’s quote, I find nothing surprising at all in the fact that iraq is a dangerous place for non-embedded journalists. Iraq is a dangerous place for everyone right now, particularly westerners. A westerner who drops in to snoop and interview on his/her own cannot expect special protections from the military members who are up to their eyeballs in work and peril themselves. This would not indicate journalists are being targeted. Perhaps we should remember that the majority of deaths in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam were by accidents and fratricide. Is the military purposely targeting itself? 62 percent of the deaths during the first Gulf war were due to non-combat related activities. I remember before day one of that war started, the media announced the 100th casualty. Was the military purposely self-immolating? That’s a conspiracy theory I haven’t heard. Rather, it's “Italians are targeted at checkpoints”/ “journalists were shot purposely”/ “civilians are purposely targeted”. Those theories attract much more interest than the boring truth... it’s really just a dangerous and hostile situation, and that kid manning the checkpoint doesn’t want to be the next fatality from a car running it, which is likely to be carrying explosives capable of blowing him to pieces from 100 feet away.

Is the American media (in general) accurately reporting circumstances in Iraq and the "War on Terrorism"? Why do you hold this view?


Absolutely, and even when there are journalists, managers, and owners who would rather not be innaccurate. The US power players learned from Vietnam. And they control the journalists as best they can. One was killed while filming outside the walls of Abu Ghraib. Before the photos made the news. And that was controlled, too. All of the photos weren't released and never will be. Bush has clamped down on FOIA, reversing one of the few good things Clinton did while he was president.

Another issue, and this has been debated off and on for years, is the CIA and other disinformation monkeys who put out bogus stories in foreign papers (and likely in some of our own). Even when these stories are strictly outside the US, newswires pick them up, and then US papers pick them up, so even when they don't deliberately deceive their own citizens, we are quite often deceived.

The third reason we do not receive accurate information is the cost of going out and getting it. It's far easier to rely on a press release, and reporters who ask hard questions often aren't permitted into the same room as the president or his press secretary.



Are they "lapdogs" to corporate interest in a way that lessens the value of their reporting?

Most are, yes. It's evident in the difference in reporting between NPR (despite its heavy reliance on underwriters), and more mainstream outlets. A few years ago, while browsing Project Censored's top censored stories list, I noticed I had heard three or four of the top ten on NPR, and nowhere else. Meanwhile, I have noticed that foreign outlets often have a different bias or, more rarely, simply a less distorted reporting style. The newswires are also biased, but some less so than others. Knightridder often surprises me, while AP is merely a good starting point (afterwhich digging around in foreign papers sometimes produces a story closer to reality).



If you believe in a media tilted towards those in power, how far ranging is this (US, West, the World)?


I broke a story (or rather, a detail of a story), using only the internet and some time spent away from studying that no news outlet nor even a blogger had found. And that might have meant I was a more dedicated google monkey in that particular instance. However, there was another aspect of the story, picked up, so far as I know, only by VHeadline, and definately not widely disseminated, though it was widely known. This convinces me it's not just the US. It's at very least the West. Because lots of english-reporting outlets from lots of countries were all over this story, but somehow they missed this crucial piece of evidence.


If the media is dysfunctional can it be fixed and how?

I ignore the mainstream media as much as I can in favor of alternative sources. But this isn't easy. I do a lot of my own research. It's time consuming. However, if more Americans would get their news through alternative sources, the mainstream media will either die, or change.