Outnumbered part 2

Fox News gives their “liberal A “fair fight”

Outnumbered!! Part 1

Fox News gives their “liberal A “fair fight”

My Media (final exam)

The core definition of “Media” stems from the word “medium”. Medium is defined as “the state or condition of being in the middle”.

Based on this, the definition of media should be “a means of unbiased communication”. Ideally, the media should receive its information from a source or sources and relay it to the people. All three elements of this triangle affect each other in an infinite sort of way.

The source, which in this case is the government, depends on the citizens who in this triangle are the people because it is they who choose to be in their position. The government affects the people because they are appointed to by them to govern them. The media effects the government because they choose how they will relay their information, the government affects the media because the government chooses what they will tell them.

The media then affects the people because the media chooses what information, and how to say it. Conversely, the people affect the media because they are the audience and without them, the media would not exist. The news reported by the media depends on what the people want to hear and see. This means that the media has to relay news that will be of interest to its viewers, so in a sense we control what we watch.

This definition and analysis can best explain the six models that were given by Leighley and Tocqueville.

The first model of the media that I would like to talk about is the Profit Seeker model. The Profit Seeker model is to relay news that is of interest to the public, because if the public enjoys what they are watching then the ratings will go up. When the ratings go up, they can charge advertisers to pay more for a commercial on the show.

What does all this mean? The shareholders profit from the money that the advertisers are paying to be on the show and all that money makes a happy shareholder. This is how the Profit Seeker works through the infinite triangle. Since the people are number one on the agenda, the source of the media will be whatever is most interesting to its viewers. If the government is the most interesting topic at the time, then that will be the news for the day. The quote “if it bleeds it leads” is a great example of how this model worked in the nineties. Although crime rates were going down, the media would continue to report on crime and give the audience the impression that the crime problem in America was only getting worse.

The result of this was many excessive police actions (mostly out of paranoia) to calm the public down, such as an increase in security. The triangle here again was quit evident, crime is proven to interest viewers, so now the media has to show crime as often as possible to increase ratings, since crime is so “top of mind” with viewers, the government has to respond with increased security and searches.


The second model of the media is the Propagandist model. The simplistic definition of propaganda is information that is spread to promote a cause, opinion, or goal. The Propagandist model of the media is to be a the puppet of those who are in power, their job is to not only gain profit for their share holders but also to communicate that their political and economic viewpoint(s) are the right one-- at any cost even if it is journalism. This is why Fox News imitates the tactics of the famous Nazi propagandists Goebbels, one of his main ideas was that less substance in order to promote the party, an uninformed citizen is easier to manipulate.

I will explain the issues of Fox News in depth later, but for now, I will use Fox News as an example of the Propaganda model. Fox News’ owner Rupert Murdoch is a huge Republican, and a major supporter of the Bush administration, and many times Fox News serves as a “pulpit” for Bush.

For example during the 2004 elections, Fox News wouldn’t say two hundred days until the election, rather they would say two hundred days until Bush gets re-elected—implying the Bush re-election was a given. Another thing they would do is bas his opponent John Kerry for almost anything, as shown in this video (all though the guy is a conservative he doesn’t realize that a networks aren’t supposed to do negative campaigning)! Fox Prop

In this model the triangle is interesting, because the source and media are not that far apart. The government needs certain messages communicated so that their party will get re-elected. The share shareholders give the media talking points that will make the government look good (what to say ). The media then says what the government “asks” them to in a way that will cause the people to re-elect their party’s candidate. For the media outlet, the payback for this usually comes in the form of preferential access to officials.

The Neutral Adversary is the third model. This is when the media does not take sides but they give the government the feeling that they are being watched. This model presents the story without any bias. As they do give both sides of the story, this can keep the government in check because they know a public who is aware of all the facts, so they had better tell us the truth would look at them. This is extra costly because on top of the research of the story itself, they have to pay for all the extra resources. My fellow classmate Sam Roka (Sam) gave a fine example of this in one of his posts.

He wrote about how a reporter form the Washington post Thomas E Ricks( article ) wrote an article about sending more troops to Iraq, but he didn’t just say that America was going to send more troops he listed three options. The first was to send more troops right away, the second was to send more troops in a long-term fashion, and the third was a complete withdrawal from Iraq.

This was just fine journalism. It gave you the story with enough information for the reader to draw his/her own conclusion from it. The way this works through the infinite triangle is as follows;

The media and the people want the government to tell the truth. The media gets the story from the government, and then presents the story of the government but with enough information to draw their own conclusion from the government; this makes the government extra careful with what they say, because it is easier for people to realize wrongdoing.

The Public Advocate is the third model. This is a step up from the Neutral Adversary, it is similar to the Neutral Adversary in the sense that it wants its audience to be knowledgeable, but it differs in the fact that the Public Advocate counts on the public to respond—not just read..

This model relays both sides of the story. Then they communicate what they think is wrong about it. The Public Advocate model acts as “activist for the people” as Leighley says’ “If the people can’t get their voice heard, then the media will make it be heard. Furthermore since it is a goal to be engaging with the people they will sometimes even use citizens as sources, this way the people feel even more involved and may be sparked to debate or protest “

This media unlike the other models usually must be self-funded, in order not to be influenced by outside agendas. With a freedom, anything can be said or debated because they fund themselves, and are not afraid to offend a sponsor because they do not have any. An example of this form would be from Dan Gillmor’s blog, in one of his introductions (Gillmor ).

In short, Dan Gillmor was reporting an announcement by a Chief Executive of the regional telephone giant Qwest, in the middle of his speech, Gillmor got a piece of news emailed to him by someone who followed his blog. He informed him that this executive had cashed in two hundred million dollars of his company’s stock while it was going down. It is easy to imagine how the press conference went after that.

This really shows us how infinite this triangle really can be. The people told the media the news, then the media asked the source about the news, then the source created updated news and the media relayed this to the public.

The fifth model is The Objective Fact model. This model also stems from its core definition. “Objective” is derived from the word “object”, which when defined as a noun means anything visible or tangible, and is relatively stable in form. Objectives when defined as an adjective, means, “not influenced by anything”.

Your opinion is like an object, and now we can clearly define the Objective Fact model. This model requires your opinion to be unaffected by the news given to you, so that you can form an opinion on your own, in order to have your own opinion the media must give you news that is completely un-tarnished and includes all details of whatever happened.

An example of this would be C-Span, they just state the facts and list all the details. This works through the infinite triangle in the way it’s supposed to. Government provides facts to the media, the media sticks with the facts, and then the audience takes the fact and decides how to react to it-- without the addition of anybody’s agendas and with every detail.


The sixth model is the Alexis de Tocqueville model (Tocqueville). He says that the news should be presented broadly in a form that is accessible to everyone. The news should be put into the simplest explanation possible right on your doorstep. You should be informed with out having to make the news a main part of your life.

Just as the government sends, you tax information they should send you the news everyday. The citizen must be informed and then can choose whether or not he wants to, take action on the news that was just given to him. However, whatever he chooses to do, the stress is on being informed. The reason why the stress is on this is that one the cornerstone’s of a democratic society is that the citizens have the right choose their government.

If the citizen is not informed, then he does not have the opportunity to formulate an opinion. An example of this would be a local newspaper that was given out free, all it says is what happened that day and that’s it, the people know what’s going on and they can decide to decide, but it was available and that’s all that matters.

According to Tocqueville, the triangle needs to be existent in a similar way to that of Objective Fact. Tocqueville says unlike Objective Fact because he says that news must be relayed in a simple to the point form and that it is our duty as citizens to know what is going on. That the requirement of the media is to give us just enough information to make a conscious decision whether or not we want to be involved in politics, but we must get the news given to us in the simplest way possible, so that we can have the ability to make this decision.

All these models have their strong points and their weak points, to choose one that I felt represents the media today, I had to see what I like and disliked about each model, only then could I choose which one should be the model of the media.

The Profit Seeker model is good in the sense that its central motive is to please the people so that ratings will rise and as a result so will profit. Since its main purpose is to make money they must keep its audience happy, the Profit Seeker model is a slave to the people. However, its strength is also its weakness, since its goal is to please the people then once they find out what their consumer prefers they will only give similar news stories to this and never give anything different because of the risk of losing profit. Therefore, I could not choose this Model—even though it is the most “authentic”

The Propagandist model in my opinion has no strong point whatsoever, if the news is trying to convince us to do believe something rather then let us decide on our own, they are taking away our democracy. News opinions should never be forced on to a person, nor should they be distorted when given to the citizen. It should be create by a person. This is why I could not choose this model.

Public Advocate I couldn’t choose either for the same reasons as propaganda. I don’t like that an opinion is being given to a person as the “correct opinion”, and I don’t like that this model sort of gives you the need to react. Although its activism is good and so is its agenda, I think that someone opinion on the government must be formed in his own, and not told to him by someone else. When one has an opinion regarding politics he should be able to explain it and most importantly defend it, forcing an anti Bush opinion is just as bad as forcing a Bush opinion.

This brings me to Objective Fact. At first my ideal model, but I am a realist not an idealist. Would it be nice for a reporter just to say what happened in the news with only the facts and with total objectivity? Yes. Nevertheless, this is impossible, because everyone has their own way of explaining/interpreting something, and it is very hard to say just what happened and without showing a little bias towards a side and it is even harder to include every fact.

The only way to really achieve this Objective Fact goal would be to read the entire transcript on C-Span, which most people today will not do. Objective Fact would be great, if it was available in an easier way but it is not and that is why I did not choose Objective Fact.

This is why I have chosen a “hybrid” of two models. I call this “mutant model” The Tocqueville Neutral Adversary model. What is great about putting these two together is that we can achieve Fox News’ ironic slogan “We Report You Decide” or as Huggy Bear said in Starsky and Hutch “Yo I lay it out for y’all to play it out”.

As I said before, it is impossible to have Objective Fact, but it is not possible for someone to report without being accused of “leaning towards” one side, and lists all the details of it. This is how I came to my “mutant model”. If everyone gets the news with both opinions in a truly “to the point” sort of way, then they can formulate their own opinion on the subject, if they want and if they do not then they do not have to.

The objective problem is gone because although there is a bias towards one side, the reporter lists the other side equally. This way a citizen can be properly informed and then if he/she wants, can formulate their own opinion on the matter. Then chose whether to be a Public Advocate

Today’s Mass Media has in my opinion utterly failed to achieve this standard. To understand this failure, I will have to digress into a brief history lesson that was given in Robert McChesney in his book “The Problem of The Media”.

The Bill of Rights (Bill of Rights ) specifically and un-specifically shape and created a blue print for our media system and its policies. Many politicians understood the importance and potential of the media such as Madison and Jefferson, here are three constitutional provisions that show this.

In Article 1 Section 8 it authorizes Congress to establish the copyright , the reason why the copyright law was established was “To progress of science and useful arts”.



The original fear of a writer was this theory; If I steal your soda then you lose something tangible, but if I copy your writing, what exactly do you lose as I wouldn’t buy it anyways?

The fear of this would have given the writers a lack of motivation to write because everything that they write would be stolen pr plagiarized. This is why it says “for the progress”, because now the writers can give society intellect and different views. McChesney says that it is very hard to imagine how many publishing and media industries would not have existed if it without this copy write protection.

The next one is the First Amendment, which is free speech . This obviously is open for a very wide interpretation. Many people like to live and die by this amendment, and it has struck much controversy in the forming of the media and in today’s mass media and new media culture.

Many people equate free speech with freedom of the press, if the government cannot penalize speech, and then neither should the “speech of the media”. This like everything can be used in a good way and bad way. If free speech would be used in the media to report whatever is happening that day, even if it is a negative issue about the government then that would be proper use.

However if it will be used by the press as an excuse for utter unaccountable freedom which would give them the right to only pose a partisan opinion and then advocate for it, then I would have to say I am not down with that.

Historians say that the first amendment was created because of a popular opposition to the antidemocratic nature of the government at the time. This is why when Jefferson became President he got Samuel Harrison Smith to create a newspaper unlike the present partisan one at the time.

The Right “to establish offices and Post Roads” was another monumental component in establishing the role of the media in the constitution. In 1792, there was a debate about how much to charge newspapers to be sent through the mail. All the parties agreed that the newspapers should be sent at a cost well below that of normal mail and the government should subsidize that it, this was to encourage the production and distribution of newspapers. Because as Tocqueville said’ “An informed citizen is one of the cores of democracy” The debate was whether or not these newspapers should be free of postal charge and not just subsidized. Benjamin Bache said that any postal charges for the newspapers would open the door to commercial pressures. James Madison wrote to Jefferson that even a token fee for postage was a “tax” on newspapers and a forerunner for something worse. When the telegraph was invented ,a similar theory of it being a government monopoly like the postal system was brought up. However, at the end of the Civil War it had become a competitive market. Thus began an age of commercialization, competition, and monopolization of the media

These three excerpts from the Bill of Rights can explain perfectly how media should work through my standard; it should be given to everybody in a tax-free way free of any commercialization, with a detailed report of what happened. The Neutral Adversary part I rather added in through the liberties of “free speech”, but nevertheless we see that the news was meant to be free of any particular partisan opinion in order for a democracy to function.

Unfortunately, the media of today does not value these three in the correct way. The media is not something that is subsidized by the government and works through a few of the models that I have listed, mainly the Profit Seeker and Propagandist models.

Today most news organizations are owned primarily by six corporations(link), this leads to many problems, because in general, a corporation just owns one form of the media but now corporations own many types of media (news papers magazines radio etc….).

When you have this kind ownership of these six corporations in control( the 6), it eliminates a very important thing, diversity in the media. When you have six corporations who monopolize the news industry, it means that you will only really have one different voice in the news. It is nearly impossible for an independent cable company to succeed in this world, to quote Ted Turner, “ the days of starting up a cable television network or trying to do it from outside the media business are over. It’s almost impossible”.

Another disturbing factor in this is Fox News, which is owned by News Corporation. If you add up all the media outlets that News corporations owns (courtesy of “OUTFOXED") their estimated audience is around 4.3 billion, the view of fox news is the same view as the rest of their media outlets. 4.3 billion People all getting the same conservative opinion is very scary and disturbing.

Another problem with today’s media is that they are all Profit Seekers, as most people are who have jobs. The media’s goal is to maximize profits; this makes it a competitive market because who ever gains a better audience gets the big money advertisers, which equals an increase in profits.

There are several consequences in this model, the first one is the substance that is being put on the news and the way that it is being put on. The media’s main interest is to gain a wide audience, how do they gain a wide audience? The definition of news as quoted by Jack Fuller in Leighley is “the reports of what has recently been learned about matters of some significance or interest to the specific community that news organization serves”.

Media has taken tips from television for this, it is widely known that a very popular thing to watch in television in America is violence sex and drama, so the media tries to give the news regarding these interests and putting them in certain forms to gain a greater audience. For example this why you see a headline’s of Lindsay Lohan breaking a nail at night club, rather then a story about social security policy. The media has figured out the publics main interests and have been exploiting them ever since. The little control the people had over the media has evaporated even more and because the media knows what kind of things their public likes, they don’t run anything that won’t gain those ratings.

This also affects the way the news is being presented. For example, today when you watch a news broadcast, many of the stories will be short, there are many graphics used to keep the audience focused, and the media choose the order based on “buzz words” and popularity. This media sets the agenda of what is deemed important and what is not, this is why during the mid-term elections many people did not even know they were going on, however they did know that Britney dumped K-Fed.

Another issue with this Profit Seeker model is that on top of the media already being controlled by the interest of their owner, and all the things that are part of his corporation, their advertisers ultimately control the media.

The media would like to keep their advertisers happy, therefore will do whatever they have to in order to keep them. For example if Coke was one of CNN’s top advertisers, CNN would probably NOT run a hard hitting story on the negative effects of soda to your body, because it would not be of interest to their advertiser.

It gets even worse when sponsors will cancel advertising, if the anchor of a news broadcast is pro-gay marriage, the sponsors product is something wholesome, and “family oriented”

Another issue is one brought up by the Daily show’s John Stewart during his appearance on CNN’s Crossfire (Stewart's plea). John Stewart’s main issue was that this debate on Crossfire was not really a focus on political issues but rather a greater focus on the personalities on the debate show. This is very true, most of the political commentators or debaters on television are more known for their personalities than their views. The reason for this is that the more absurd the personality, the more people hate and the more people want to watch him, so that they can criticize him.

My last two issues with today’s media are with Fox News and the coverage during the War on Terror. Rupert Murdoch, who is known to be a very right wing conservative and has always been a huge fan of Bush, owns Fox News.

This reflects on the broadcasts and content of Fox News in major way. When the war on terror began Fox made the constant connections between Saddam and Osama, they also helped create the anthrax fear. Fox said that the terrorists were sending anthrax in our mail, and that it was no longer safe to go outside, Fox said, “we recommend that you do not leave your house”. This created an environment of fear in America and an enemy which gave the Americans the need for a solution to this threat, and who was their hero? Bush.

Fox would put an emphasis on patriotism , and would say that this is a war on terror so if you don’t support it you are supporting terrorism, Are you a terrorist? They put a flag in their slogan, they gave us the impression that the war on terror was like a basket ball game, first were winning ,then were losing, now were making a comeback. There have been times were I have ask myself how many points do we have!!

This patriotic Propagandist approach that Fox took increased ratings, and then made it known to the rest of the media groups that there is money in the flag. This explains why when Bush initially announced war nobody asked him if there was a direct connection between Osama and Saddam, or if he was positive that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

An effect of this money in the flag concept was when MSNBC canceled Phil Donahue’s program, the reason for this was that NBC claimed that it put a “difficult public face for NBC at a time of war. He seems to delight guests who are anti-war, anti bush and skeptical of the administrations motives”. The fear was that NBC would get a liberal antiwar face during a time were the big money is in the flag.

The worst part of this is that Thomas Jefferson started his news paper to get away from the partisan paper norm, now what was worked on so hard to not exist, is coming back stronger than ever.

These are just a few of the many reason of why I do not think the media has reached my standard or any other decent standard of how the media should run. The media today is in a state of total control by their sponsors and corporate owners. What the media says must be in favor of the beliefs of their shareholder and must not offend their corporate sponsors. This is in not at all Thomas Jefferson intended for the media to be. Although he did famously say ““Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without government, I should not hesitate to choose the latter.” I highly doubt he knew the media would be a puppet of the government and a poison to democracy.

Although in a recent post (How are we?) I said that the lack of public in interest in politics has gone down is because these people simply do not care about politics and have discovered interests that gear towards their personalities, I still do not agree with the media’s actions today. My media model is that government should be required to give us the news with both sides of the story; this is my definition of being properly informed. The job of the media is to relay this information in the way that the reader can if he wants to realize that there is a flaw or a problem with what the government said or did. However, my stress was that we must be properly informed, and then it is our choice to pursue interest in it. When there are six major corporations that all have the same republican view, and gives talking points from the boardroom then the citizen is not being properly informed. The citizen is being lied to, tricked, and manipulated, by mass media and as I said are slowly poisoning the great democracy that what created for America.

Now with all these problems in the media today how do we escape corporate control? Is there any hope for our democratic society? What needs to be done? Is there an alternative? Moreover, how do we do it?

These questions are the first steps one must take into destroying today’s era of corporate and commercialized media. If you have a problem with the media say it. Just like the person from the movie the network so famously said, “its time go to the window and say I’m mad I’m angry and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

The people as I said before have a control over the media; however, they just neglect to use it. The reason why this power is being neglected is that the people believe the media does not affect their views and even if the media did affect their views what can they to about it, the average citizen cannot take down these super corporations.

This theory is what causes America to be victims of today’s news media’s propaganda. The statement that the media does not control what I think is correct, but they are the one who relay it to you, with this power they choose how it will be relayed, once they have communicated it to the viewers in the way that they wanted it to be said, the drill it into the viewers. So yes the media cannot tell you how to think but since the give you what to think about they have a role in how you chose to define it and this is very much taken advantage of by mass media.

The second problem that this theory says is a great lead in for the solution to this problem. The opinion is that one person cannot take down a major corporation is most likely correct, but many people can.

This is how new media comes in to play. Ironically, enough what in my opinion-started commercialization of the news has the ability to end or at least minimize it? In the brief history lesson McChesney gave that, I said over and applied for my benefit. I said that a new form of communication (telegraph) ended the government subsidizing the news and lead us into the age that we are in now of corporate commercialization. The solution to this now is very clear, fight fire with fire. Just like a new technology of communication-started commercialization, it can also end it.

In the first chapter of Dan Gillmor’s book (Gillmor1) he explains how the new technologies of today give the audience a new role. This role is now that everyone has the opportunity to be media, we now cannot only watch news, but we can make it. Here are a couple of examples; the camera phone is a perfect one is a major player in this, pictures are a part of journalism and many journalists have expensive professional photographers. It used to be that a camera was a pain because they are too big to carry around and everyone is too lazy to get them developed, it used to be that the only people who consistently carried around cameras were Chinese tourists. Now in an age of camera phones and tiny digital cameras anyone can make new. A perfect example of this was the recent and over covered story of the Michael Richards Racist tirade (My Plea). A member of the audience taped his racist comments on his phone, put it on the internet and it became a national story all because of a member of the audience.

Another major advance in technology is the RSS (Really simple syndication) feed, which give people the option to choose what they are told in their own order. This completely eliminates the power that the media had of choosing what we watch.(agenda setting, priming, framing)

The last example is one that gives the audience a voice. The new voice of the people are called weblog, a weblog is an online journal that someone put up either containing his own thoughts or commenting on though comments of others or even (gasp) Mass Media. This is the new voice and new community, that can actually fit into the model that our founding father of the constitution hoped that media and democracy. Citizens now have the power to change what they are being told if they don’t like it, they now have a voice that is seen by other. The great thing about blogging is that it’s basically free of the threat of commercialization and corporate control that our media is under today.

The reason why the big boys do not affect blogers is that bloger is not in it for the money. A bloger has an idea and wants to get it across, that I his/hers only motive (unless your me and your forced). He is mad and angry and will not take it anymore, blogers have turned into a community, and not just a fad. The people in this community don’t all agree with each others views but they do agree on want point, journalists aren’t the only ones who can get their voice heard and make a difference the people can too. Democracy is coming back with a force!

But who cares what some guy has to say on his stupid blog! It’s just some angry guy ranting away on the internet!!! Many people would say.

This may be true but there are some defenses against this claim, or stereo type. A blog can make difference in a through a single person or through a group. Blogers are a community therefore is they all agree that something is wrong they can change it. This how the uprising of 2003. The uprising of 2003 in a very short was a result of the potential of media cross ownership, this is when one corporation owns several news outlets in one town, further lessening the little diversity we have now. FCC Chairmen Michael Powel wanted to grant access to grant permission to these corporations to expand there monopolies. Fortunately, the people rose up, although these hearings were not on television, they were on the internet, and all the people who knew about this problem were able to discuss it on the internet. This resulted in the citizens actually taking action, they went to hearings, protested, and publicized this problem and its risks. This new activism was successful in its goal and the corporations seeking leniencies with their monopolies were not granted permission to own an entire news outlet of a town.
This was a great example of how blogers united can change something that thing is wrong with our media.

The next one is an example in Gillmor of another positive way to use new media, as actual media! the coverage came from a blogger named Zeyad, whose “Healing Iraq site181” had become an important channel for anyone who wanted to understand how occupied Iraq was faring. His reports were clear correct and drew a large audience because of it. He told this to Gillmor in an email “I was surprised that people would rely on my blog as a source of information together with news,” he told me in an email. “Many of my readers have confessed to me that they check out my blog even before checking out news sites such as CNN, BBC, etc. What I find people more interested in is firsthand accounts of daily life in Iraq, and coming from an Iraqi they give it more credence than if it were coming from western journalists.”

Up until now, new media has been or blog nation has been a work in progress. The informed citizens are doing their part and are writing about issues with that they feel need to be fixed, and sometimes they make a difference. As we saw that new media can even be used as source of news, instead of mass media, but I think that is thinking way far in advance. New media is still in its growing processes and I can’t make an evaluation of it for this reason, I think it has its good things. However it definitely has its bad things, for example trolling problem Gillmor explains in his book, trolling are people who like to mess with bloggers, they will say an opinion just to get spark out of someone. I think that it will take a blogger nation a couple of more years until they are actually taken seriously.

I think that New Media when it becomes a more important part of our media can play a major role in the model that I think the media should be run. The media can be new neutral adversary to complement the model of Tocqueville that I talked about. The news is given to everybody from the media with both opinions so the public can know that they are getting the truth. New Media can serve as a watchdog to the mass media, this way mass media cannot propagandize, distort, set agendas, or do any of the other terrible things that the do now days. I think that a model like this would be a wonderful form, since both sources of information and communication are affected by the citizens to make sure that the democratic dream that was set out for our country stands.

I would like to bid farwell by ending with this video from Robert McChesney.
McChesney press confrence

What Would Gillmor Think?

What Would Gillmor Think?

a tad Inappropriate and provocative but still very funny

The Real Dennis Miller

Las Vegas Dennis Miller Hollywood Theatre at the MGM Grand

Dennis Miller Died and Went to Fox News

Real Free Speech: Dennis Miller on Defeatism About the War

A couple of months ago I made up a very conservative bush supporter, his name was Chris O’Brien and he loved Bush and irrationally came up with reason’s to defend him. I liked Chris and he was a lot of fun to create, however after going on foxnews.com yesterday I realized that he is a real person. Who is Chris O’Brien in real life? Dennis Miller.

I went on foxnews.com yesterday basically out of boredom and saw a Dennis Miller clip and figured I’d watch because I remembered on Saturday night live and on The Dennis Miller Show he was pretty funny. So when I saw that he was on foxnews.com I said to myself this ought to be interesting.

I was right in a sense but not in the way that I hoped. Dennis Miller actually has a spot on Fox news once a week, I knew about this I just didn’t know what he said, in all honesty after his Monday Night Football stint I sort of said I would never watch him again. But I always said everybody deserves a second chance and I remembered Miller in the nineties being pretty liberal, so adding this up I said to myself this would be interesting.

Unfortunately for myself I forgot for a second that this was foxnews.com and liberals don’t really exist in their realm. Dennis Miller talked about the war on terror, saying how we need to “stop whining” and that if we want to win the war on terror that we have to stop being “soft” and “if we don’t fight back our enemy will destroy us”. He fit the mold Orwell article that we read a couple of months ago being the fact that he used a million metaphors which made it very hard to understand. Despite his excessive use of metaphors Miller made his point loud and clear, we went into Iraq to keep our reputation as the strongest country in the world and if we start to wimp out we won’t win the War on Terror.

I found this statement of “winning the war on terror” to be very troubling. I am a competitive macho kind of guy and look at most things in terms of winning and losing. But the war on terror! Come on! The war on terror is a goal, we want terrorism to end. What happens exactly when we beat terror? Does it die? Do we get their territory? I assure you not. I always thought that the war on terror was to prevent similar tragedies to 9/11. I was not aware that it was in terms of winning and losing, nor was I aware that it was to give us as miller said a “Ronnie Lott status” so nobody will go “up the middle on us.

Dennis Miller basically was unheard of after his stint on Monday Night Football, and Foxnews.com has a stellar reputation for being very conservative. I thought that putting Miller’s segment on was an attempt to show us a glimpse of liberalism on their news broadcast. Unfortunately fox news had just used Miller as their puppet, he only says what they want him to say. If you watch his past Free speech segments you will say that he rarely utters a negative word against the president. I think on this segment that I was talking about he even said that Viet Nam was a good thing.

This particularly angers me because now I am feelings fox news’s full effect on all fronts. I thought that after this class fox news wouldn’t get on my nerve’s as much because I wont be as into politics as I am now. I figured one less thing to stress about, but now they not only distort our news but they ruin my comedians.

As I have said in previous blogs I am a fan of standup comedy and love the fact that they can say whatever they want. Dennis Miller used to be a comedian that I liked, but now fox news has paid their way into his routine.

They took a once funny person and smart person and turned him into someone who just isn’t either. It is very clear that Dennis Miller does this for one reason only; money. If I didn’t know better I would have thought this segment came from good old dubya himself. Dennis Miller went from being someone who’s solution to our Palestinian problem was to send them to Vegas, to someone who says that America should keep our troops in Iraq until we win. All I know is that Dennis Miller of the nineties would not have said that.

One of the things I hate more than anything else in the world is someone who thinks that they are funny when they are not all. Dennis Miller has now become that. He is not saying anything absurd anymore, well nothing he thought of at least. If the Hannity and Colmes think something is funny it is very clear that there is a major problem.

I just hope that fox news doesn’t corrupt any more comedians to show their “liberal” side, because in all honesty I really miss the real Dennis Miller and I am scared that if such a hard core lefty could jump ship for a couple of bucks then who’s next? It may be John Stewart, Colbert, Chris Rock, Bobby Slayton or David Chappelle who knows. But the issue must be addressed, now that fox news isn’t just distorting our new they are changing our comedians too, where will they stop?

The Way We Were or The Way We are?

On Monday while we were discussing the recommended readings for class (that all of us read) a voice from the past came back in my head. At the beginning of the semester we had a question.

Are people born uninterested/interested in a topic or are people just not exposed to this topic and if they were then maybe they would be interested in it?

Much of the class said people choose what they like and aren’t just born with a like or a dislike. I thought to raise my hand in class and say how I disagreed with this but I figured without any support for my argument it wouldn’t really stand, think about it, it’s a tough thing just to BS, especially when its like a fourteen on one . So I put my opinion on the question way in back of my head because at the time I just didn’t have a good enough reason for it.

This question marched back into the front of my head on Monday. Their were two articles explaining why political involvement has been decreasing since the late sixties, one was by Markus Prior and one was by Rodrick Hart, I will some each article up in a sentence or two as the doc would say.

Hart says the involvement has decreased because nowadays with so many sources of information (internet, cable, satellite dish) people replace political activism with political knowledge, they feel that since they know so much then it’s as if they are active.

I would like to change what he says a little bit to sprinkle some optimism on this subject. Maybe back then people were more active because they didn’t know as much and anytime a leader of an anti (fill in the blank you can even choose) organization would say “This is bad lets protest” this person would just say yea this is bad and not really know why its bad or why the people who are doing it think its good, he would just it because just knows what the subject is bad but not why or how.

Now when someone protests they make sure they know everything about it until they know it’s truly wrong, therefore activism isn’t as often, but when it happens it is legitimate protest and has a better chance of making a difference, its not quantity its quality.

So we see this lack of activism could be a good thing, because now maybe these protests make a difference as opposed to back in the day when there so many that people just started to ignore them. That’s just an optimistic thought though, and not my main point.

Prior’s reason is contradictory to this but still drives home the same point, he says that back in the sixties or what I like to call the “olden days” their were no remotes (but there was electricity! unbelievable!) and whatever channel you were watching you were stuck with because you didn’t want to get up, so when something about politics came up you’d be to lazy to get up and change the channel. Back in the day political knowledge was forced down your throat; television stations made you watch it. It wasn’t like nowadays that you have (for example) the choice of “Politics or Sports”, back then it was “politics then sports” but not at the same time. Nowadays if something you don’t like is on you can just change the channel if you don’t like it. In really short they both blame the lack of political activism on technology.

I agree with Hart to a certain extent because in a sense all this knowledge that you have does mislead you to think that you are involved, and I will say a little bit of this is blamed on blogging, because instead of people rallying they will just complain online, but hopefully in the near future blogging will be a way of political activism (In Gillmor’s peachy world). Although I do think when he says more political knowledge=less activism he is sort of right. I will explain as the blog continues why I disagree with him.

However I don’t agree with Prior at all, he makes it seem as if people were never interested in politics at all and they just watched it because nothing else was on. He is saying a little different than Hart too, his argument is that people do not want to follow politics anymore therefore they aren’t active. This is contrary to Hart who says that people have a lot of political knowledge, even more then back then, and are not active because they substitute their political activeness with a in depth knowledge of it.

According to Prior the only reason why people watched politics back in the day was because that was the only thing on. I find that a little far fetched, the sole reason for political inactivity isn’t because people can get off the coach now, and the sole reason for political activity wasn’t because they were to lazy to get off the couch. It doesn’t even make sense, there is no way every one didn’t want to get up back then, when ever someone really doesn’t like something if they have the ability to change it he/she does. According to this current decline in political activism and knowledge people really don’t like politics, don’t you think if they really hated politics that much back then they would have changed the channel?

So what exactly resurrected my little voice in my head from mid September and gave me a support for my answer to the question that was asked? It’s rather complicated to explain my thought process but I will try my hardest. When I was thinking about the difference between these two explanations and my issues with them, my reasoning for my answer to it hit me like a ton of bricks. I realized I can combine the two opinions to give better answer for the decline in political activism and knowledge, and by doing this I can explain why I think that the way we are born is why we like and dislike things and not because you choose it.

As I said before I will explain my issues with Hart later on in my blog, and I am a man of my word. On a more selfish level this will prove my answer to the original question.

Hart says that all this knowledge brought the decline in activism, now people just know a lot and complains more, but they don’t protest in front of the white house anymore. Going by what Hart says, what would he answer to Prior when he proved (with his survey that he took) that people just don’t know anything about politics? Although I don’t agree with his reason the result he is true. Is the reason why the amount of people who have political knowledge has declined because they know too much like Hart says? No, That does not make any sense!
Now I will resolve both of my issues with Hart and Prior as I said before by combining them to prove myself right.

In my opinion I think the reason for the lack of political interest, activism and knowledge nowadays is for one reason, not everybody like the same things because everybody is different. This may seem as a very elementary explanation but it makes a lot of sense. How? I will again have to go back and really make sense of these two (in my opinion) contradicting views.

Although I didn’t agree with what Prior said I do believe in the phrase “take everything with a grain of salt”, if you take a little bit of what he said, sense can be made of it. As prior said politics was one of the only things on back then and people didn’t really have a choice because they wanted to watch television and this is all that was on. Now that other tings are people don’t watch anymore. Hart says that all this knowledge caused a lack of activism because since they know so much they think it’s like being active.

When you combine these two it works perfectly. Back in the day people weren’t given a choice what to watch the television stations in unison dictated what we watched and in a way what we would be interested in. Now we have options so the majority of Americans do not know much about politics because now they see that politics aren’t the only thing one can be interested. If there were all these options of interests back then, the lack of political knowledge would be identical to what it is now. This decline isn’t because of a lack of availability, it’s because now you have the ability to be interested in something that fits your personality.

Nowadays there are loads of fanatics some are political fanatics some are sports fanatics some are celebrity gossip fanatics and some clothing fanatics ect….. People found interest in these things because for whatever reason it fit their personality. Were all of these interests available to them? Of course! Were any of them rammed down their throat or put in front of them consistently? No!

So then how could these people be so interested in these things? Its simple for whatever reasons each specific topic fit each person’s personality. They could have chosen anything, but these things drew an interest to them. If I don’t know anything about cars does that mean that the in depth knowledge of cars is being hidden from me from the government, so that I wont build a car that could survive on something other than oil which would cause gas prices to go down and the government may lose money? Again No! It just means that I don’t care what’s in a car I just care how fast it goes, but the information is still available to me.

Same with politics the government doesn’t make it hard to find or unavailable to us in order so that we wont form contradicting opinions to them. In fact it would be easier for them if more people were interested in politics because then they could shape their opinions to like the government.

People are born with a liking to certain things, in a day and age were any information is a click away it is kind of impossible to say that information is being hidden. When someone doesn’t click on a war in Iraq headline its not because they can’t see it, rather it’s because they are a kind of person who is not interested in that.

A better way to show this is to explain what entertainment is, Encarta says three definitions (http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/entertainment%2520.html).
1. art of keeping people entertained: the various ways of amusing people, especially by performing for them
2. enjoyment: the amount of pleasure or amusement somebody gets from something
3. performance or exhibition: something that is produced or performed for an audience

So as we see entertainment is clearly subjective, everybody gets their kicks from different things, one person thinks its hilarious when Colbert tears the Bush administration a new one, and one person will fall a sleep because they don’t find it funny , one person will say “O , My, Gawd” when they hear about the Britney Spears divorce and the other will say who cares, one person will jump out of his seat when they see a slam dunk, the other will just say it’s a ball going in a basket. All these people are entertained in different ways and bored by what others say is entertaining.

Think about what your interests are, and then think about why you are so interested in them. I highly doubt the reason why you are so interested in these things is because it was the first thing you saw and said “hey this must be what I am interested in”. it came about because you saw all the options and for some reason this spoke to you.

So the political knowledge and activism hasn’t declined because political information is hidden, it is as available as any other news in the world if not more. It has declined because people have found things that actually entertain and interest them. Back then there were no options, now there are options so people can pick interest that fits the way they think and what they like.

As I said before, in a day and age were every bit of information is available to you with the click of a button it’s highly impossible to say something so widely known as politics aren’t available to everyone.
Nowadays people do know about politics a little, to quote Tocqueville “You don’t have to stop living life to be an informed citizen” you just need to know what’s going on. Now everybody can know what’s going on with out knowing a lot. Everybody knows there is a war going on and everybody knows who our president is. So we see that people are exposed to politics and if they thought it were interesting they would pursue it as one of their interests’s, but for whatever the reason it doesn’t fit the kind of things that interest them so they don’t pursue it.

Now going back to the question that started this, Are people born uninterested/interested in a topic or are people just not exposed to this topic and if they were then maybe they would be interested in it? After my very long answer I can put it simply now. People are exposed to everything these days; the way we are born causes us to choose what we are interested in.

The view from the "Rule"

I’m sure for most of my media and politics class this whole post about anything you’d like thing is probably very easy and they all must loving choosing what to what to post about. However for me and this new “opportunity” I usually have no idea what to write about.

The answer to this is because I always felt unless there is an election or a war most of the things in the news happened yesterday and the day before. And when there is something important going on its coverage is usually botched up, or this important news is a very sick, sad and absurd story , and makes me want to punish the culprit of the crime myself. For example the story about the lady who caged eleven special need’s children that she was taking care of , and made them sit in their own urine, while giving them little to eat, In my opinion that’s deserving of the death penalty and then some.

So basically news either disgusts and anger’s me or bore’s me, and unfortunately I don’t think a blog about my opinion on the death penalty is so relevant to our media and politics class. So back to my main point, that’s why I like looking at the sports scores and the weather and gossip so much, its always new and if its not new its for sure entertaining as opposed to the news that I look at which is just irritating.

So being the spontaneous original person that I am I couldn’t write a blog on something that I felt is old news because that would be hypocritical to my very existence, I couldn’t write a blog about my issues with the world because that’s not so course relevant, and I couldn’t write about my issues with Gillmor’s book because I already did, and wasn’t in the mood to write about how my original issues with the book have evolved into greater and more frustrating issues.

To get off topic a little, I have e-mailed Gillmor my problems that I have with his book and when he finally emails me back (judging by the fact that he hasn’t posted in six days I don’t understand what’s taking him so long!), I will write a follow up blog hopefully solving my original blog which was about my problems with his book.

Unfortunately none of these excuses would exempt me from my two blog a week requirement for my media and politics class, and more importantly I thought it would be a public disservice for the world not to write my blog. So I sat back and thought about the various blogs that were assigned to us over the semester thinking I’d get some inspiration, and as usual my brilliant idea worked.

I am not sure if many of you remember but our first blog of the year was to pick something out that we felt was not news. Many people chose various celebrity updates under the big news headlines to be declared ad un-newsworthy, irrelevant and over covered.

Personally I’m a fan of the celebrity news and gossip so I didn’t have the heart back then to declare one of my prime interests as “irrelevant”, instead I said a John Kerry update wasn’t news.

A little prelude to this topic; our class likes to consider ourselves as the exception and everyone else in the world as the rule. For example the exception clicks on an article about the new bill that was just passed ,looks at it on several websites and then formulates his own opinion regarding the issue, the rule doesn’t even look at this and clicks on the Paris Hilton story.

Given my love for the celebrity gossip and my distaste for the news nowadays I finally was able to settle on a blog that I like. Since I get to choose what I write from now till the end of the semester I finally realized that this new liberty is to my advantage.

I had always felt that it is fun to look at things from the other people’s perspective because it’s interesting to see how other people think ,and it gives you a different perspective on the way you think. Luckily I am on who has both perspective’s when it comes to the news. I like celebrity gossip and I am also considered the “exception” so I think both ways.

That’s why my blog for today is what I think isn’t newsworthy in the entertainment section of all the big MSM websites. So now you get a genuine example of how the opinion of what our class likes to call the “rule” thinks.

Today as I was going through my daily update through all the entertainment sections of MSM news websites I became enraged. What got me so angry is the fact that they don’t give you the news in their right order of their importance and place things that don’t belong in the entertainment section at all.

For all you who don’t follow the celebrity gossip Britney Spears is getting a divorce from her bum of husband Kevin Federline, since this breaking news she has been partying hard with her new best pal Paris Hilton. This is old news. So what is this new news I speak of?

On Thursday night out on the town while with her new gal pal Paris Hilton, Britney Spears lifted up her skirt and showed the paparazzi that their was absolutely nothing whatsoever under it
(Britney!)

This is major news, it capped off another crazy partying week by our beloved and newly single Britney. However CBS.com, ABC.com, and CNN.com, did not put this as their main headline in their entertainment section, I was astonished.

The only website that had this article as its main headline was the one website that our class hates so much that I am even afraid to mention it, Foxnews.com (sorry). MSNBC.com had an article mocking the coverage and the two pals ,so I don’t consider that a proper story that should have been written regarding the incident.

The other website’s had petty headlines such as Dick Clark auctioning his stuff off, Holiday Movie Blockbuster’s, the penguin movie beating out the new James Bond movie, and some follow up of the whole Kramer racist rant.

None of these should be headlines in the entertainment sections of the news. Entertainment is called entertainment for a reason, and in all honesty what could be more entertaining then the interesting lives of celebrities partying? Nothing!

Furthermore I will use a quote from In Leighley’s book (yes I know not what the “rule” would write but I some time’s just can’t control my damn “exception” side) when she is defining news is she uses a quote from Jack Fuller to explain it better. Jack Fuller who is the president of the Tribune Publishing Company, defines news as “The report of what a news organization has recently learned about matters of some significance or interest to the specific community that the news organization serves”

So being part of the specific community I was pretty astonished when none of these headlines interested me at all. The media correct me if I am wrong is supposed to give the audience what they want. So as a member of the specific community I don’t want to hear about any of these boring headline’s and I’ll tell you why I think they are all not newsworthy in the entertainment section.

The Michael Richard’s racist story is old and tiring already, if he was gay or had a black mother then fine that would be newsworthy, but I’m getting a little sick and tired of him hogging the headlines with his apologies to every black man in the world. To make matters worse CNN wrote a story about all the bigots in Hollywood, this does not belong in entertainment it belongs in politics or law.

The next undeserving headline was the one about how the Penguin movie made more money than the new Bond movie, again if the James Bond actor was sleeping with hmm lets say Robin Williams…. , then yes that would be news worthy, but this headline is about money and it belongs in business.

The next undeserving headline was the one about Dick Clark, he’s old and nobody cares about what he does anymore, if he slept with Ryan Seacrest’s wife (they are co-hosting the new year’s ball drop together)or something like that then that would be newsworthy. But otherwise Dick Clark is old and boring and has no place in my entertainment section

The last undeserving headline was the one that said the upcoming holiday movies, the headlined movie was “Dream Girls” starring Jamie Foxx and Beyonce, this again should not be under entertainment because it is telling me which movies are good for the holiday’s, that’s not news about entertainment, rather its an opinion about entertainment and anyone who is looking at the entertainment section for news like I do, are not looking to see which movies will be good for the holidays, we are looking for celebrity news!
If Jamie Foxx got drunk at the premier of “Dream Girls” then slept with Beyonce and her boyfriend Jay-Z caught them and shot Jamie Foxx, then yes that would be newsworthy.

However telling me which movies they think will be good is not news, it is only a plot by the company making the movie to make more money by putting a plug fir their movie on a website most likely owned by them. This should either be at the bottom of the headline’s or in another section, it certainly has now place in introducing me to the entertainment portion of the news.

Surprisingly the only station that got it completely right was Foxnews.com; MSNBC just wrote an article mocking the whole incident and its victims. Fox however gave an in depth story of what went down, I knew everything and was able to talk to my mother about it the next morning with a complete knowledge of the entire incident.

Foxnews.com as Colbert said best “has two sides of every story the President’s and the Vice President’s”. However in the entertainment portion of the news they lack bias and give us the cold hard facts. It’s nice to see this puppet network get something right once in a while. So kudos’ to foxnews.com for being the only reliable news station for celebrity news and gossip.

As I said before our class has a very clear opinion of Foxnews.com and their lack of ability to give us the right news. It is known to us “exceptions” that when we check the news we shouldn’t go on Foxnews.com and if we do we should disregard what they say or use it as an example of what not to do; basically Foxnews.com is good for nothing.

So I would like to enlighten my fellow “exceptions”, Foxnews.com isn’t something that is good for nothing, it has a purpose. What is this purpose? To relay us the news, but my fellow “exception” would respond to me in anger saying “ they never give you the right news!” and I would say they do when the write about celebrity gossip. We now see that foxnews.com is actually good for something and what their purpose in the world is; to update us on celebrity gossip**. See they finally got something right!


**General Blogers warning: be warned anything else you read will only mislead you from the real news, and might cause severe manipulated opinion syndrome, so when you go on foxnews.com go right to entertainment and you will get your “real news”.