Today's media script: "The economy is improving"
Everything will be stretched to that script. News to the contrary, if it cannot fit the script, will be moved to some obscure page in the paper. Other economic news (eg, huge deficits and the future costs and effect) will be glossed over if mentioned at all.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
It is neither nonsense nor conspiracy: it is group-think, it is human, and its presence is simply irrefutable.
You may continue naked if you wish, but you cannot say you were not warned.
California leaned. Indeed, the US learned (WPM)
How is it that the NY Times AND the Washington Post find themselve APOLOGIZING for burying the information pointing AWAY from WPM in their inside pages? :they were, and still are, following a "script". To some it is indeed handed out. To others, it is found my inference, it is found to be a path of least resistance.
NO newspaper wants "Watergate" all by themselves. The NY Times would NOT publish the Pentagon Papers today. That's not where they make their money. They do better as a "respectable" newspaper.
Following the script.
It is neither nonsense nor conspiracy: it is group-think, it is human, and its presence is simply irrefutable.
You may continue naked if you wish, but you cannot say you were not warned.
California leaned. Indeed, the US learned (WPM)
How is it that the NY Times AND the Washington Post find themselve APOLOGIZING for burying the information pointing AWAY from WPM in their inside pages? :they were, and still are, following a "script". To some it is indeed handed out. To others, it is found my inference, it is found to be a path of least resistance.
NO newspaper wants "Watergate" all by themselves. The NY Times would NOT publish the Pentagon Papers today. That's not where they make their money. They do better as a "respectable" newspaper.
Following the script.
See "out foxed" DVD.
See "Grover Norquist"
The basic script is often something that is NOT put out in writing, it just becomes so: eg, Bush can't speak at all, Kerry flip flops, and given a basket, the fruit just keeps falling into it.
However, I did NOT say ALL media gets a written script. But the GOP surely sees that a standard line is distributed to its supporting commentators.
Recently, the Times included a research piece where the reporter found the the scientist who wrote in support of some product safety did NOT in fact write the letter: he, and others, had gotten the words from a company, were sent the words by that company hired to write up the argument, and distribute it as needed and suggests to selected scientists takes that they send it as a letter to the editor, which they do, signed without attribution to the real source, as if it were their own researched opinion.
Fabulous piece of investigative reporting.
I see you will choose to find it "conspiracy" nonsense.
You KNOW the people in the bar speaking about the great service they are getting from AT&T are hired for that purpose, right? You KNOW that a million is not a big fee for a 30 second advertising spot. Of course there are distributions among "friends" about how to portray a certain news item. I did that all the time within IBM as staff work. The "right words" are a very valuable comodity.
Interesting dialogue. I perceive an underlying question here which is "where does my news come from...?"
People have this problem with food, they're eating all the time, but if asked what they've been eating over the past few days, they have no idea. People can get really fat eating terrible things and they would swear they are eating well. A nutritionist would advise logging everything that goes into one's mouth over the course of a couple weeks or so, to get a better idea where the fat is coming from.
So, how about logging the source of our news over the course of a week. Every story you read, find the ACTUAL SOURCE of the article, i.e. who wrote the piece. Many stories just fly around the internet, sometimes appropriately attributed to the author, sometimes not. Google could make this detective work kind of fun. After the sources of information are logged, this data can be further analyzed: Who do these people work for, what are the common themes, etc.
I don't think we could rely on any 3rd party to provide us this information reliably. My prediction is that we'll find that the press is essentially a loudspeaker - a system geared more to produce and market news that is fed to it (i.e. eye candy), than a system designed to find and report what is happening. If this is truly the case, the premise that a master "script" exists is plausible because the system is essentially a gigantic player piano that cannot make a sound without someone feeding it a tune.
Post a Comment