The Great Mainstream Media Lie [Reader Post]

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We work hard, or we strive to find work while counted amongst 86 million “invisible” unemployed, or we stress as one of the Bureau of Labor Statistics 14.6% unemployed, and when rare tranches of time allow, during our otherwise consumed days, we sporadically tune into the mainstream media. The Gallup organization recently informed us that 60% of us do not trust the news media.  And yet, . . . it still influences our determinations as it wishes.

Whether for news or entertainment, roughly 85% of our media is at minimum liberal minded and more often than not, very extreme in its socialist leanings. For a century our media has equated the progressive mindset and itself with higher intellectual discourse.

We collectively have come to accept the fact that media bias is present and predominant. Are we not all subjective beings after all?  Is subjectivity not a fundamental, though limiting, ‘truth?’  So, subjective it is. But what of our media?  What of our 4th estate, so called because it is purportedly one of the pillars buttressing our rotunda of freedom?

Is our media providing Truth? Does it deconstruct official pronouncements digging for Facts? Does it deliver Insight for a little stimulus to our contemplations? Does it contribute Wisdom to our general social fabric?  Does it add to our k

nowledge as we make our way through the good, the bad, and the ugly of our political and economic realities? It can’t, but that is not its greatest disservice to the listening and viewing public. The great lie is that it pretends independence and fictionalizes its neutrality of thought.

The mainstream media fakes objectivity. It feigns to be telling us truths while doing anything but. It professes to be delivering informative facts.  While its most visible representatives contribute to Democratic Party coffers, they make misrepresentations which affect public consciousness.  The great lie is the pretense.

The vast majority of the 4th estate is perpetuating the fraud and deceit of its objectivity. All such objectivity has long ago been perniciously vaporized.

Most of its audience does not have the time to dig for broad based clarity and truth.  Most of its audience simply accepts. It accepts as facts, the myriad lies.  The masquerade is cleverly delivered in elegant prose, sprinkled with shrewd convolutions which are in effect unhealthy, destructive and uneducated contentions, seeking to destroy all disapproving voices.

The Founding Fathers held fervent respect for ‘the Press’ and its participation in the democratic process, providing it protection in the Bill of Rights. They had anticipated a continuation of objective reporting on all government affairs by ‘the Press.’   Lady Liberty today sheds tears for the disintegration of the 4th estate, and the disappearance of an essential column expected to responsibly nourish our society. That broad, consequential element described in 1841 by Thomas Carlyle as being more important than all other pillars of good governance, no longer exists.

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Great read, James.
Those Founding Fathers had a press that was accepted and openly slanted in whichever direction it’s editors chose.
Historically the early press in this country were referred to as ”yellow papers,” because they were almost all one-sided.
You had to gather your own thoughts, listen to those on both sides yourself and arrive at your own viewpoint…..pretty much just as today.
But today the pretense of ”objectivity” is held up by our media.
Doesn’t matter how often it is proven not to be the case.
Today Google is out earning ALL print media.
Gee, why is that.
Because most people know they have got to go to sources and find viewpoints and read reasonings (or rationalizations and excuses) and reach their own conclusions.

Like today, a top militant in Hamas was pinpoint targeted by Israel’s IDF.
See the video:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/11/ahmed-jabari-eliminated.php
For months Hamas had been firing rockets into Israel.
But how did our Obama-loving/Israel-hating media (they WANT Susan Rice as Sec State) express it?
Like Israel killed people on the streets of Gaza (just happening to kill a man who called himself Hamas Bin Laden in the process…..
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/15/world/middleeast/israeli-strike-in-gaza-kills-the-military-leader-of-hamas.html?hp
http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/14/world/meast/gaza-israel-strike/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

One Israeli blogger http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/ showed one target, a Fajr-5 missile launch site to be in the same neighborhood as a gas station, a mosque, a couple of factories, homes and playgrounds.
The damn thing could have hit any city or town in all of Israel, so it had to go.

The communists/socialists own the public schools, the universities, the churches and all media.
Checkmate and game.

@Nan G: #1,

Thanks Nan. You emphasize my point, there has always been ‘slant’ in media yet what I find now more than ever irritating is the hypocrisy which has overwhelmingly invaded all levels of the MSM.

When a talking head on CNBC makes a statement about a particular stock, pro or con, laws dictate that the talking head ‘identify’ whether he/she owns any shares in the particular company.

A lying media is worse than a stock being inappropriately promoted.

We’re reached a point where each taking head in the MSM should make an announcement such as, . . . “I am Brian Williams, I support socialism, and I contribute to the re-election of Obama.”

But no. The dissimulation continues and completely warps the public perception.

@John Galt: #2,

As NanG notes, the NYT warps and exaggerates as noted in her linked article on Israel / Hamas. The language used has very specific ideological intent.

During the weeks running up to the Presidential election, the barrage of lies, twists, and hate, spewed by the NYT was unmistakable. It was such that it no longer felt like the NYT of two decades ago. And yet, that’s their prerogative, although they should make that clear to their readers in their masthead, . . . . “We believe in all forms of socialism. . . . Oh, and down with capitalism.”

Some of the articles that have run in that self-righteous rag through the past year on ‘business’ makes one wonder if they are really located in America. Just a look at a couple of articles from their resident clown Krugman is enough to make anyone with common sense seriously ill. He’s the genius who told Obama to let the economy fly over the fiscal cliff. Just brilliant, Brilliant work.

@James Raider:
Agreed 100%…

@James Raider:

Pinch Sultzberger, CEO of the NYSlimes, now mostly owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, once said in an interview that he was a Fabian Socialist. Now, if you are unaware of who the Fabians were , I highly recommend you research them. He wants the NYSlimes to be leftwing. End of story.

But if you really look at it, we have not had an honest press for decades. Yeah, the Founders believed that an free press would keep politicans honest, but even Jefferson used a highly regarded reporter as a lap dog to bash John Adams. That very same reporter, who practically singlehandedly destroyed John Adams, went on to be the one to break the story about Sally Hemmings.

We think of the glory days of journalism when there was Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite. But it was Cronkite, an rabid anti-war leftist, who falsely reported on the Tet Offense and turned the nation against LBJ and the Vietnam War. Go to any journalism school and you will find how students are taught that Cronkite is just this side of being canonized. The University of Texas School of Journalism continues to employ Robert Jensen, who maintains pictures of Che Guevera and Fidel Castro on his class room wall and admits, to any who ask, that he is a Marxist.

How do we end this? We do to them what Obama wants to do to the coal industry; bankrucpt it. And here is how: do not purchase their publications. Advertising money is generated based on readership. No readers, no advertisers, who will take their business elsewhere. That is one step. Another is not to visit their websites, where advertising is also sold to keep it in business. Website advertising is sold based on the number of hits the website gets. No advertisers, no business. It is just that simple.

@retire05: #6,

Go to any journalism school and you will find how students are taught . . . .

. . . Well it turns out that I spent my first university year majoring in ‘journalism’ and switched when I realized what was really being taught (formatting of your writing a la Time Magazine at the time, but nothing on investigation, truth, facts and dissection), and I felt distaste for the leanings of the whole department. It was a waste of time.

I still want to see rules of the SEC applied to journalists and talking heads.

I’ve argued with many on speciousness, and used the example that I’d rather listen to a guy like Hannity who’s a bit of a goof, than sanctimonious priggs like Williams or Koppel. The differentiating factor: Hypocrisy.

I’m old enough James, to remember the days when the only news we had was that coming from the 3 major networks. I was teaching history back then and that was bascially my only source for current events. Fortunately, I had some great conservative professors and was able to weed out the propaganda coming from the small screen. Today, I will occasionally watch the progressive news sites just to see what lies and distortations they are spouting. Unfortunately, most Americans take what they hear and see on the MSM as the gospel. That is sad. The MSM is controlled by those on the American left, although they will never admit to that. The journalism schools and the great universities are now in the hands of the 1960’s and ’70’s radicals. They found their home following the Vietnam protest of the late ’60’s. They simply moved from radical students to radical instructors. Today’s youth are being brain-washed by these very people and emerge from school with a warped view of the world and the United States. This will be difficult to reverse, but I’ve always been a glass “half-full” person and know the ebb and flow of history will come in time. Great post James.

@Ron Russell: #8,
Thanks Ron.

The MSM is controlled by those on the American left, although they will never admit to that.

This is one of the great failings in our society. With the disease of socialism having contaminated practically all of the MSM, and the MSM staunchly remaining in denial, the road ahead is not pretty.

They know that what they are doing is insidious, or else they wouldn’t deny so much, and pretend otherwise.

@Ron Russell:

I have to debate your history a bit. You said that the great universities are now in the hands of the 60’s/’70’s radicals. While that is true, you fail to acknowledge who taught those 60’s/’70’s radicals. In the late ’30’s, the Frankfort Marxists, who were mostly Jewish, fled Nazi Germany and migrated to our universities; UCLA, Stanford, Columbia, Harvard. All of those universities have journalism schools that were well thought of. The Frankfort Marxists taught the ’60’s/’70’s radical revolutionaries, like William Ayers, who then went on to teach in our schools 20 years later. The legacy continues.

Also, in the 30’s/’40’s we had the man whose every word was hung on to, whose every article was taken as gospel, Walter Duranty, and who even received a Nobel Prize for his false, and lying reports on Russia.

@retire05: #10,

Walter Duranty

Good one. Here you’ve hit on the quintessential NewYorkTimeser bon-vivant suckling other people’s money and promoting its taxation and its redistribution, particularly to himself and his buddies. He was a Pulitzer prize winner, a liar, a sycophant, an adulterer and recognized as one of Stalin’s useful idiots. Perfect.

Oh, but wait, that sounds eerily familiar, . . . why do visions of the White House Press Corp come to mind?

JR, there is a great contradiction in the brew. Would Conservatives choose to corrupt the media with lies and obfuscation if they had the power? No, I don’t think it is their nature. On these pages we have a cross section of Libs, Progressives, Socialists, and Communists; and not once have we heard any of them call out a Democrat or the MSM on a falsehood or outright lie, no matter how obvious and clumsy the attempt to defraud the public.

Hypocrisy and lies contribute to the weakening of our country and the Constitution, but the Lib’s first dedication is not to the country or the Constitution; they are first and foremost loyal to the Democrat Party. Many of us consider ourselves to be Conservatives, but our first loyalty is to the Republic and the Constitution.

Controlling the ideology for the lesson plans and texts of K-12 seems absurd to us, but it is imperative to the Socialist of the Bill Ayers mentality. To the Conservative, an actual accounting of history is essential: telling lies for political advantage and using children as models for future Useful Idiots is despicable. Yet, every night, millions sit in a semi-hypnotic state being fed the mindless pablum of the Left’s propaganda harpies.

There is a major disconnect, and it becomes even more obvious when Americans only begin to pick up on Benghazi when it involves adultery and hot babes. Benghazi or Fast and Furious should have been enough to bring down the Obama Administration; unfortunately, the majority of Americans are incapable of grasping the concepts of either of these tragedies through the prism of Socialist indoctrination. Our teachers and professors are far more effective than Stalin’s, Mao’s, or Ho Chi Minh’s henchmen. They may bully or ridicule students, but there is no torture or death involved. Yes, we have evolved from an industrial nation into a psychological nursery for Socialist indoctrination.

Let’s not tip toe around the tulips, Obama has inherited masses of indoctrinated Useful Idiots, all ripe for the picking.

Nay, but to live
In the rank sweat of an enseamed bed,
Stew’d in corruption, honeying and making love
Over the nasty sty…
Hamlet (III, iv)

James Raider
very well done, the supremacy of the MEDIA,
I always ask myself who are the influences on that MEDIA when I hear only one side story and so embellish as to give on tingle in his leg,
those media are own by shareholder I presume RICH ARABS MUSLIM FAITH ,
UNTOUCHABLE ON THE NEGATIVE SIDE, and pro the MUSLIM in the leadership,
WHO PROMOTE THE BUILDING OF MOSQUE ALL AROUND THE COUNTRY TO HIDE AN ARMY
OF DANGEROUS KILLER WHICH WILL RESPOND TO THE CALL TO ACTION ANY TIME THEIR LEADER CHOOSE, and if you think the owls where disturbing ,they become school boys compare to the destruction those could do, in their AMERICA SO DREAMED OF CONQUERING, THE MINUTE THEY ARE BEING TAUGHT OF IT’S VULNERABILITY,
and the MEDIA is there to sound it coming by minimising the glory of the great AMERICA,
which is humbling the people so proud before, and now becoming minstriken of why they no more support the MILITARY, WHY THEY NO MORE REACT TO A PRAYER SAID PUBLICLY, WHY IS THE FLAG ONLY CARRIED BY VETERANS WHO HAVE KNOWN WAR, THE PEOPLE ARE FOLLOWING CROWD WHO LEAD THEM ONLY, THEY DON’T KNOW WHY, THEY DON’T NEED TO KNOW, ANYMORE,
THANK GOD WE HAVE THE CONSERVATIVES STILL FIGHTING
TO EXPOSE THE LIES AND THE WRONG,

‘Tis a sad day in America when the press (the dominant, liberal, establishment mass media) is no longer the source of information that we, the people need and depend on to make informed decisions. However, next Thursday we can add to the list of things we are thankful for, the internet and sites like Flopping Aces that now fill in that gap.

Yes, I know. I’ve posted this before (and probably will again) but it fits the narrative.

http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/ae277/RAPH6969/09.jpg

A couple more. Appropriate?

http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/ae277/RAPH6969/OBUMMER/03-2.jpg

http://i979.photobucket.com/albums/ae277/RAPH6969/OBUMMER/04-2.jpg

Rides A Pale Horse
thank you ,
what would we do without you.
always to the mark
best to you

@ilovebeeswarzone:

Thanks again Bees.

I’m sure that F.A. would do just fine without my input but it is nice to have a place to post what little creative talent I possess since my home page became defunct.

And thanks to the crew at F.A. for the same.

So you want to know what we can do to improve our chances? How about getting a toe hold in the media. Instead of waiting for some Republican billionaire to buy some newspapers why doesn’t the GOP make it happen, Instead of waiting around for it to happen? Why do Democrats always seem to have backing to buy media? Why don’t GOP leaders round up some Wall street titans who are on our side(there must be a few) and get them to come up with the cash to invest and then we (the party bosses) find some ambitious young man or men who are on our side to front? We need a few more Rupert Murdochs! Why not stop waiting around for them and go out and create them? How about buying a chain or better yet chains of influential newspapers and maybe a network?

@Skookum: #11,

Lib’s first dedication is not to the country or the Constitution; they are first and foremost loyal to the Democrat Party. Many of us consider ourselves to be Conservatives, but our first loyalty is to the Republic and the Constitution.

Excellent delineation.

I might further point out that in a recently published book, The ­Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt, a self-proclaimed liberal, claims, that conservatives understand their ideological opposite numbers far better than do liberals.
Research suggests that conservatives are more open-minded than liberals. This is just a short walk from ‘liberal narcissism.’

@ilovebeeswarzone: @13,
Thanks MsBees.

WHY IS THE FLAG ONLY CARRIED BY VETERANS WHO HAVE KNOWN WAR

You address a poignant matter deserving broad discussion.

I have been fortunate to have lived for extended periods of time in three different countries, and to have circled the globe so often that I now resist boarding an airplane.

In all these travels, one of the most powerful and profound images to have affected my consciousness is the sight of The Stars And Stripes flying on the front lawn of a home somewhere in America. Anywhere in America from Orlando to Bellingham to Fort Worth. There is no sight quite like it anywhere else in any other country on Earth.

You will not be treated to this image in England, or in France, or in Germany, or Indonesia. There is pride in that image. Not pride of self, but pride of the whole, just as Skook notes above in #12, “first loyalty is to the Republic and the Constitution.”

That pride is a magnet, and that image should be burnished and not slandered as we are witnessing in the liberal media.

@James Raider: #19 Outstanding. (means excellent, in Marine jargon)

Bill H
HI,
GOOD IDEA
we have the creativity here,I GUESS THE MEDIA is here, the best is now in the THE FLOPPING ACES,
and getting stronger as time advance, will it come to beat the media? who knows,
but there are such ideas coming from all the groups and the one who visit
who are catching their favorite POST, their favorite AUTHOR OR BOTH,and one is constantly moving from one to the other POST, ALL GOOD ALL DIFFERENT, KEEP US AWAKE AND electrified,
you can go in the library dig in the older POSTS, and many are fitting the today news that I find incredible
each time I go back.
best to you
bye

When we fall into the next great depression I’m guessing an enraged and disillusioned public will march them all off to prison somewhere or just execute them on the spot. Either way, justice will be served.

@John Galt: Such a 1950’s attitude.

I began reading this article to become aware of some lies. And not unexpectedly I did not find one—just another extreme-right-wing rant. Incidentally, I don’t know how much stock I’d put in either right-leaning Gallup or Rassmussen, since they were rated among the four most unreliable polls of this election—with the highest percent error rates. By the way, where’s you get that statement the “roughly 85% of our media is at minimum liberal minded and more often than not, very extreme in its socialist leanings”—probably another made-up fact.

Glad to see the lib “victory” chatter has finally died off.

I’ve often pondered how we as a people would go about combating media bias, and I can’t come up with anything good. Like governments who harbor and support terrorists, there is the level of culpability they can always insulate themselves from, no matter how obvious their propaganda is.

To make things worse, the 47% simply will not agree that the media is 85% lib biased. Libs won’t admit it . . . ever. They ignore the question, or want to talk about “Faux” News.

So in short, the liberal media is simply giving the majority of the media consuming populace what they want: leftist hate.
And the cycle continues.

@Liberal1 (Objectivity):

By the way, where’s you get that statement the “roughly 85% of our media is at minimum liberal minded and more often than not, very extreme in its socialist leanings”—probably another made-up fact.

Not a “made-up fact”, Lib1. It is an estimation based on a conglomeration of studies over numerous decades on how the print and tv media entities voted in the various elections. The 85% number itself comes from a 2000 internal, informal poll done by Slate magazine. In that poll, 85% of the staff voted for Gore, with none of the 13 senior staffers voting for Bush.

Now, you may wish to point out that it’s a small sample size and all that, but you would be missing the wider point expressed by JR. That is, that the bias itself isn’t what is bothersome to conservatives. It’s the expression of “neutrality” on their part. Their insistence on being fair in the coverage on ALL political issues and stories. And meanwhile, their “news” stories can be broken down to example the bias that is rampant within them. At least to those of us who are actually objective about what we view or read.

@johngalt: You hear 85% or 80% a lot. I remember reading a Politico article in which one of their editors wanted to address the claim that most of the media leans left. He said that makes sense, because most journalists are of a demographic that lean left. His guess was 80%.

In other words, he said “pretty much.”

@Liberal1 (Objectivity): Do you think the bulk of the media is unbiased? Most claims of media bias come from an analysis of what stories get run, the tone, the types of words used, etc.

Subjectivity must be accounted for, but the concern is that the MSM is sculpting public opinion deliberately, not giving us data from which we can make our own decisions.

Do not invoke Fox. I want to know how you account for the bias found within CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, HuffPo, WashPo, NYT . . . you know, 85% of the media?

@Liberal1 (Objectivity):

Sometimes I think you live in a cave, and the only emails you get are from left wing sources that give you daily talking points. No one can be as absolutely dense as you are.

An extensive study was done by a UCLA professor of poltical science (not exactly your conservative example of a university) that showed that even the bulk of “journalists” at the WSJ leaned left and allowed their political philosphy to seep into their reporting. I have been telling everyone for years to not think that op-ed journalists at the WSJ are conservative, they’re not.

So if you don’t want to get slammed with verbal bricks due to your dedication to the Marxist goals of the DNC, then it would just be better for you to STHU and quit showing you are nothing more than a “useful” idiot.

@Nathan Blue:

The most recent example of media bias are the two cases of assassination by major countries. That of the US, killing UBL, and Israel, with it’s recent killing of the Hamas leader.

In the first case, the words “justice” and “kill”, or their variants, were used almost in exclusivity, while in the case of Israel, the term “assassinate”, or its variants, was used most widely.

However, in both cases, the country in question deliberately set out to eliminate a specified individual. Pretty much the definition of assassinate. So, while they are being accurate in their portrayal of what Israel did, the difference between the stories associated with Israel and the US are purposely reported in order to paint the picture that what the US did was “justified”, or ok, while what Israel did was evil, or wrong.

Imagine our media using the word “assassinate” whenever they reported on the UBL killing. While many people would still feel justice was done, a large portion of the population would have guilt over doing it, simply because of the use of that term, and the feeling that it engenders within people.

@johngalt:

U.S. journalist students are not taught the art of reporting the news in an unbiased fashion. They are taught that they can sway public opinion by doing exactly what you point out; wordsmithing. The use of “kill” vs. “assassinate” makes all the difference in the world when it comes to public opinion. And they are taught that the lede (headline) immediately forms an opinion in the reader as many people simply read the headline, and perhaps the first couple of paragraphs, and that is it. So reporters bury salient facts in the last couple of paragraphs. Newspapers, and other publications, hire people to do nothing but write the headlines to articles written by other reporters.

The press is corrupt. It has always been corrupt, to a certain extent, but now it has just become a mouthpiece for the socialist movement. Let’s take an example: Jon Corzine was just recently found to be responsible for the loss of all those millions in a scam. Every Republican found him responsible. Every Democrat, in purely partisan fashion, disagreed with that (it’s called circling the wagons for the sake of the party). How would that headline read if it was honest?

Conzine Found Responsible for Loss Of Millions

How will it read by the time the press is done?

Republicans Slander Democrat Jon Corzine

Damn, did I say, . . . “85%?”

I meant to write, “90.6973%

@johngalt: #30,

Absolutely. Terminology is critical and the general current crop of writers in the MSM cleverly use extreme adjectives to ensure slant so that invoked feelings suit the purpose, . . . facts be damned.

A Useful Idiot, by definition, never questions the Party or his own motives, they are inviolate or as the Pentagon Chippies say they have inviolability. They are consumed by their own neurosis and are lost souls. Perfect examples of indoctrination by the public school system and the propaganda media. Intellectual pursuits for them include memorizing television schedules and grocery lists, they are perfect citizens of the Obama dream. To question the dream is blasphemy, to call out corruption or lies while pointing to a Democrat leader in good standing with the party is a sin against mankind and the Socialist Movement. Benevolent dictatorship is the ultimate form of Utopia and Obama is the bag man; he has the gift of Utopian beauty and love. Just surrender your freedom and your body to his protecting hands and he will see that you are cared for forever and ever. Our media merely carries the towels and water for the Won, and only he appreciates how important those two products are for tyrants and whores

@Skookum: #34,

If memory serves correctly, you and I very early on in Obama’s ascension to deified status 5 years ago, identified the redolent presence of ‘narcissism,’ . . . . the press conference he just held in the W.H. this week, obliterates any uncertainty. There is zero chance that such vain pomposity can be good for a Nation. NONE.

@Liberal1 (Objectivity):
I have a 50’s tide?
Hahahahahaha, well that fits right in with the left’s identity politics…

Liberal1
not made up fact,
but a real fact,
you are so used at made up,
you lost the ability to see which is real,
among the bullshit you are use too on the lib side,