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So, I watched The Chris Matthews Show this AM. Guests were Michelle Norris, Michael Duffy, Andrea Mitchell and David Brooks, a pretty typical line-up. Lots of tut-tutting about the stimulus, and about Daschle et al. Near the end of the show, Tweety has a segment where he says to the panel, "Tell me something I don’t know". These are not usually earth-shattering insights, but rather provide a bit of a window into what the Village is obsessing about.
This morning, Norris’s response was more revealing than she probably intended. She said that around the country, mayors and governors, even members of Congress, are grumbling that the administration isn’t explaining the stimulus package. Everyone nods in agreement, all apparently oblivious to the fact that they each have it in their power to use their national media outlets to explain the stimulus package.
Now, I certainly hope that Obama spends more time selling the stimulus. But I found it quite revealing that, apparently, these media figures feel no responsibility to actually inform the public about the issues instead of just regurgitating spin. Apparently the possibility of informing the public never occurs to the Villagers. Lazy or stupid? Or both?
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tutt tutt, how dare you criticize the cocktail weenie set. they are you.
Or a third option – they are tasked with keeping everyone ignorant.
Good point, although that implies a certain level of competence that I fear might be lacking.
I think the news readers are fed what their corporate bosses want them to say, and that anyone with a brain was weeded out long ago. Robert Perry of Newsweek, etc.
I guess the concept of actually researching an issue and reporting about, oh, say, FACTS, without some public figure giving them some dictation to take down and print, that’s just too old school./s
“Reporting” apparently means “reporting what the usual suspects have said.”
Sigh.
Didn’t Joe the Plumber recently tell us that reporters should just tell us what the government tells them to say and stay out of the way? Has the MSM been taking his advice to heart?
MSM says what the Pentagon tells it to say.
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” The Pentagon now spends more than $550 million a year — at least double the amount since 2003 — on public affairs, and that doesn’t including personnel costs. Public affairs officers are, in the words of the military’s training manual, a “perception management tool.” Their job is to provide facts but not spin to American audiences and the American media. “
” Over the past two years, the number of public affairs officers trained by the Defense Information School has grown by 24 percent to almost 3,500. The military is also expanding its Internet presence from 300 to 1,000 sites and increasing its free cable programming on the Pentagon Channel by 33 percent to 2,080 programs. “
http://www.latimes.com/news/na…..2182.story
The site is overloaded at the present time. The last time this happened was when they released 70 UN investigations; it took about a week before the site remained accessible 24/7. If you have Bit Torrent, you can read the site now. “
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” The whistleblower site Wikileaks has released more than a billion dollars of Congressional Research Service Reports, semi-secret reports that are prepared for Congress and not classified but not deliberately circulated to the public. “
The publication of the reports online marks a new day for public transparency in government.
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/….._0208.html