• Welcome to OGBoards 10.0, keep in mind that we will be making LOTS of changes to smooth out the experience here and make it as close as possible functionally to the old software, but feel free to drop suggestions or requests in the Tech Support subforum!

Role of the Media

tldr; as always, bias in news is ok as long as the bias aligns with mine. Both sides
 
Democracy in Peril: Twenty Years of Media Consolidation Under the Telecommunications Act
President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. The act, signed into law on February 8, 1996, was "essentially bought and paid for by corporate media lobbies," as Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) described it, and radically "opened the floodgates on mergers."
The negative impact of the law cannot be overstated. The law, which was the first major reform of telecommunications policy since 1934, according to media scholar Robert McChesney, "is widely considered to be one of the three or four most important federal laws of this generation." The act dramatically reduced important Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations on cross ownership, and allowed giant corporations to buy up thousands of media outlets across the country, increasing their monopoly on the flow of information in the United States and around the world.
Twenty years later the devastating impact of the legislation is undeniable: About 90 percent of the country's major media companies are owned by six corporations. Bill Clinton's legacy in empowering the consolidation of corporate media is right up there with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and welfare reform, as being among the most tragic and destructive policies of his administration.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 is not merely a regrettable part of history. It serves as a stern warning about what is at stake in the future. In a media world that is going through a massive transformation, media companies have dramatically increased efforts to wield influence in Washington, with a massive lobbying presence and a steady dose of campaign donations to politicians in both parties - with the goal of allowing more consolidation, and privatizing and commodifying the internet.

This issue has not been central in the 2016 presidential election. But it is deeply concerning that, of all the presidential candidates running in 2016, the Big Media lobby has chosen to back Hillary Clinton. Media industry giants have donated way more to her than any other candidate in the race, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. In light of this, we must be mindful of the media reform challenges we face in the present, as we try to prevent the type of damage to our democracy that was caused by the passing of this unfortunate law.
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34789-democracy-in-peril-twenty-years-of-media-consolidation-under-the-telecommunications-act
 
Trump just hired a Breitbart executive to run the rest of his campaign. Some kind of unbiased lack of partisanship by Breitbart. Probably want to cease posting any articles from there on the election.

Yeah, Breitbart should be ashamed for promoting itself with a misleading caption such as "äll the news that's fit to print"
 
Establishment stalwarts like NPR are disgusting.
 
Clinton News Network tries to regain some credibility after misleading their audience.


I wonder why?
CNN’s 723,000 average viewers placed it at No. 16 among all cable networks.
CNN’s drop is significant, as the network was the No. 1 cable channel in Monday-Sunday primetime and Monday-Friday prime, in terms of both total viewers and the key 25-54 news demo as recently as the week of July 25 during the Democratic Convention.

CNN also won the primetime demo during July sweeps but last week marked its second-lowest rated week of the year among adults 25-54 with 193,000 average viewers. Coming out of the GOP and Democratic conventions, MSNBC has topped CNN in total prime viewers all 11 weeknights of August.
http://www.thewrap.com/ratings-cnn-loses-to-msnbc-fox-news/
 
Huffington Post in free fall, Breitbart experiencing tremendous growth.

CqIYKZVXYAEgcGN.jpg
 
Here is the way it works. "All the news that's fit to print," the Ministry of Truth, and the usual suspects tell the left-liberals what to think and when to think it. And the left-liberals, who are so open to the world and change, like it. If they don't cover a development, then it must not be true, and other sources who do cover it are unreliable and not authoritative. Got it.

http://www.investors.com/politics/e...ia-blackout-of-hacked-george-soros-documents/
 
If Soros were a rock-ribbed conservative who supported Republican candidates and causes, you can bet that a swarm of reporters would right now be lustily tearing into these documents determined to expose any and every shred of evidence of influence peddling and misdeeds.

But because Soros is a hard-core leftist, he apparently gets a pass. Shameful

Spot on.
 
Here is the way it works. "All the news that's fit to print," the Ministry of Truth, and the usual suspects tell the left-liberals what to think and when to think it. And the left-liberals, who are so open to the world and change, like it. If they don't cover a development, then it must not be true, and other sources who do cover it are unreliable and not authoritative. Got it.

http://www.investors.com/politics/e...ia-blackout-of-hacked-george-soros-documents/

Just curious, from the "liberal media" crowd's perspective, what's your justification for the dominance of extreme conservative thinking on radio? If your derision of print media for its alleged liberal biases is that strong, shouldn't it also be directed at conservative radio?
 
I don't live in the US, and I don't listen to talk radio. Don't know. At one time there were hardly any consistently conservative voices in national media, print, tv, or radio. Now, there are some. I remember at one time - before the net - the left tried to get a foothold on talk-radio but IIRC it just wasn't too popular. I guess they had too many other forums.

The real problem is that the national media went off toward the left after Vietnam and Watergate and has not returned to the center since. CNN, which was much more mainstream - not right but mainstream earlier - has now become virtually unwatchable. Talk-radio, Fox, The Washington Times, Breitbart, and other more conservative voices only came later, during the last couple of decades, and arrived as a corrective for left bias in the national media. I wish we did not need a corrective but we do. Unfortunately, I think, the polarization will get worse before it gets better. So, you need to consult a whole series of sources - across the spectrum - in order to begin to get a clearer picture of events. If you only read the right or the left, you will be consistently poorly informed.
 
Huffington Post in free fall, Breitbart experiencing tremendous growth.

CqIYKZVXYAEgcGN.jpg

I don't doubt that they both appeal to similar audiences, but the fact that so many people finally found a tipping point with Huff Po during all of this is strange. Personally, I can't stand either of those sites.
 
Rick Astley has over 200,000,000 hits.

Crazy people love Breitbart's lies. it also gives alt-right racists a place to meet.
 
After going nuclear over the Koch brothers, I'm curious to read RJKarl's thoughts on George Soros' influence.
 
I don't think polarization is going to get better. We've entered the era where truth is subjective and malleable
 
My position have been the same since the AOL Wake boards. There should be 100% public financing of ALL federal campaigns. No outside money from anywhere should be allowed.

Neither the Koch brothers nor George Soros should be allowed to give one cent to any political campaign.

As to the insane CU decision, political advertising is NOT free speech. Advertising IS commerce. The Constitution definitively says commerce can be regulated.
 
I have a really hard time squaring Citizen's United with the Caperton case decided shortly before it. The latter dealt with the appearance of bias in the context of the judiciary and held there were Due Process violations where an individual whose company would later appear before the West Virginia Supreme Court in a massive civil lawsuit had donated a ridiculous amount of money to the election campaign of one of the state Supreme Court Justices who then sided in his favor.

Is there something about the relationship between individuals and the executive branch versus individuals and the judicial branch (and the respective functions these two branches perform) that makes Citizen's United different? The one major distinction I can think of is that the Due Process rights of the plaintiff challenging the corporation would be directly infringed upon in an individual context by the relationship here. I don't know if that's a "good" distinction or not though. Obviously the right to a fair trial is the Due Process concern for the judiciary, but the cases really seem pretty similar with very different holdings in a short period of time (both authored by Kennedy).
 
Back
Top