COULD IT BE A COMSPIRICY???

Remember, if you repeat it enough time the masses will believe...

You can change the channel but you cannot change the news."

(SNIP)

"A national survey of fifty local television newscasts by the Rocky Mountain Media Watch, a Denver-based nonprofit group, revealed what viewers already knew," charges Carl Jensen, author of Censored 1996. "Local TV news focuses on crime, disasters, sensational visuals, weather, sports, promotions and ads -- to the exclusion of real news."

With local television stations all reporting the same news simultaneously, one claiming the title "news leader", another billing itself as the one with "total news", it is apparently becoming more difficult for the public to distinguish one from the other--or from common entertainment, according to former CIA agent, Philip Agee.

"Television news is show business," declares Agee in his book, On the Run, Lyle Stuart Inc., 1987, "designed to entertain and intentionally or not, programmed to keep people ignorant." With an observation as this written ten years ago, George Orwell's prophetic world where "ignorance is strength" no longer seems a prophetic forecast, but a present reality.

Surfing between channels, seeking a different perspective on a particular news story, or to even see a different story, one can easily observe that not only are the reports worded nearly identically, but the photography, in many cases, is identical.

A logically sardonic question could be posed as to why the waste of resources? Why not pool them into one reporting agency and charge the advertisers two or three times the standard fee based on how many news sources were eliminated in the consolidation?

The answer, other than the obvious monetary considerations, perhaps lies with Carl Jensen's assessment of Adolph Hitler's philosophy of information control--"More than half a century ago Hitler said the masses take a long time to understand and remember, thus it is necessary to repeat the message time and time and time again. The public must be conditioned to accept the claims that are made...no matter how outrageous or false those claims might be." Censored 1996.

-- y2k dave (xsdaa111@hotmail.com), October 17, 1999

Answers

Television news is a contradiction in terms. It reduces every major issue to a 30-second soundbite. If it bleeds, it leads. If it will scare or intimidate or anger the viewer, it gets headline treatment. It is the major reason that tellvision is the greatest single threat to a functional democracy.

-- Cash (cash@andcarry.com), October 17, 1999.

I think it's important to rename 'the News'...I adopt the suggestion of Sonia Johnson, and only call it "The Olds". It is not new...anything but,...the same old boring nothing day after day...hour after hour. Call it The Olds, and 'newspapers, The Oldspapers.

The media is not invisible to folks who can see and hear. It is ham-handed, shallow, and PR-driven, it is manipulation for the purpose of selling products advertised by each show's advertising clients. Bad news at top...If it bleeds it leads...lots of bad news...the Bang! A commercial showing the good life for those who follow the rules,...not like those bad people at the top of the hour...final segment...a happy faced, 'human interest story',...it is formulaic, predictable, empty.

We could start a movement. Call it The Olds. Turn OFF the television,...cancel your oldspaper subscription. The only way to win is not to play. :-)

--She in the Sheet, upon her hilltop, does not do "The Olds."

-- Donna (moment@pacbell.net), October 17, 1999.

anything stopping ya from turning it off?

-- Mitchell Barnes (spanda@inreach.com), October 17, 1999.

Barnes,

The well may be poisoned. Should we just be quiet about it and drink from the rainbarrel?

Liberty

-- Liberty (liberty@theready.now), October 17, 1999.

I watched Drudge for the first time on Fox--it was interesting. We definitely need more alternatives. The olds is such trash and so unexamined (unless it titilates).

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), October 17, 1999.