What IS News to the MSM?DNC?

[Annie]

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/050613/13john.htm

6/13/05
By John Leo
Stories Not Told

As distrust of the press grows, news articles are relentlessly scrutinized for bias, but almost no one is focusing on stories that are simply ignored. For instance, a May 18 report in the Afghan newspaper Kabul Weekly said the riots that killed 17 people were not about disrespect for the Koran in American detainment camps--they were a show of force by the Taliban and another fundamentalist group, Hezb-e Eslami. "These demonstrations were organized by the Taliban and their supporters, and only some naive people joined the protesters," the newspaper said. The BBC picked up the story on May 22, but so far as I can see, it was completely ignored in American news media. If you edited, let us say, a large newspaper in Washington or New York, or a prominent newsmagazine accused of causing these famous riots, wouldn't you want to check this one out?

Another example: On a May 13 panel at the National Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis, Linda Foley, the national president of the Newspaper Guild, said that the U.S. military deliberately targets journalists, "not just U.S. journalists either, by the way. They target and kill journalists from other countries, particularly Arab countries, at news services like al Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity." We have heard this before. Eason Jordan, then a CNN executive, said something similar on a panel at Davos, the annual economic conference in Switzerland, setting off an enormous furor. Foley's comment was almost universally ignored by the news media. Thomas Lipscomb of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote a column about it. More than two weeks later, Jack Kelly, national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the Blade of Toledo, Ohio, said the Sun-Times (Lipscomb's column) was the only newspaper in the country to report what Foley said.

A column in the St. Paul Pioneer Press mentioned it, and so did an editorial in the Washington Times . Bloggers and The O'Reilly Factor brought important national attention. But a Nexis database search last week failed to turn up a straight news report on Foley's remark anywhere in America since Foley spoke on the panel. Remember, she is president of the union representing 35,000 reporters, editors, and other journalism workers. "Where is the professionalism and the authority that is our main claim to writing the indispensable 'first draft of history'?" Lipscomb asked in a follow-up piece in Editor & Publisher. He wrote, "The mainstream media couldn't be bothered to cover 'Easongate: the sequel.' " Foley sent a letter to the White House calling on it to pursue the "worldwide speculation that the U.S. military targets journalists and the media." In other words, she doesn't have to back up her charge, but the White House should start trying to prove that what she said is false. There is no lack of hutzpah in the MSM! :shocked:

Rule 18. A different omission marred the reporting of Amnesty International's report charging torture in U.S. detainment camps. The group didn't just call Guantanamo a "gulag," an over-the-top remark that was universally reported. In a press release that most reporters ignored, the group also invited foreign governments to snatch certain visiting American officials off the streets and bring them to trial for crimes against humanity. The suggested snatchees, should they travel abroad, were President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA Director George Tenet, and other unnamed civilian and military officials. Amnesty International said that "all states have a responsibility to investigate and prosecute people responsible for these crimes," just as the British pounced on Augusto Pinochet in London in 1998. The snatching recommendation wasn't new, but the Amnesty press release is a useful reminder of the dangers of signing on to the International Criminal Court.

Mainstream media have been reluctant, in all the coverage of treatment of detainees at Guantanamo, to mention that the al Qaeda training manual specifically instructs all of its agents to make false claims of torture. The New York Times seems to have mentioned the manual's torture reference only once, in a short report from Australia. Several other papers mentioned it as a one-line quote from a military spokesman who pointed it out. But until the Washington Times ran a front-page piece last week, a Nexis search could find no clear and pointed article in the U.S. press like the one by Alasdair Palmer in the London Sunday Telegraph, with the headline "This is al Qaeda Rule 18: 'You must claim you were tortured.' " He wrote that the manual doesn't prove "that the Britons were not tortured in Guantanamo. But it ought to encourage some doubts about uncritically accepting that they were--which seems to be the attitude adopted by most of the media." Amen to both points in that last sentence.

 

[Bullypulpit]

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/opinion/articles/050613/13john.htm

The media simply reports that which will offend the fewest consumers and thus ensure continued ad revenue. And let's not forget the stockholders either. They get upset and heads roll in the newsroom.

 

[Annie]

The media simply reports that which will offend the fewest consumers and thus ensure continued ad revenue. And let's not forget the stockholders either. They get upset and heads roll in the newsroom.

None of these are 'Dog bites man' stories. None are boring. The job of the news media is to inform the public, they are not doing so.

 

[nosarcasm]

MSM is just an excuse by some to ignore news they do not want to
believe. True or untrue is not the point.

This MSM talk shows a selective believe system that can not be
helpful.

 

[Bullypulpit]

MSM is just an excuse by some to ignore news they do not want to believe. True or untrue is not the point.

Winner!...We have a winner! Give nosarcasm a ceegar!

 

[Annie]

MSM is just an excuse by some to ignore news they do not want to
believe. True or untrue is not the point.

This MSM talk shows a selective believe system that can not be
helpful.

It may be me and it's late, but I'm having trouble following you. One cannot ignore news that is not being presented.

True or untrue is the point, with anything from the media.

All the talk about the MSM is helping to either change them or they will become irrelevant.

 

[nosarcasm]

no the point is that if you use MSM to discredit an information
source you pull something like the Hitler comparison that
politicans of all sides use when they lack an solid argument.

Sure I encourage anyone to question news by any source but
the notion that the so called MSM is more unreliable
then blogs or messageboards is laughable.

At the end you have to collobarate your facts by many conflicting (idiological wise) sources.

When somebody mentions a story and then MSM it is a copout not
to take apart their arguments. The blogs in the majority are pure
opinion maschines , so I am amazed how many take their oppinion
over that of the MSM.

 

[Annie]

no the point is that if you use MSM to discredit an information
source you pull something like the Hitler comparison that
politicans of all sides use when they lack an solid argument.

Sure I encourage anyone to question news by any source but
the notion that the so called MSM is more unreliable
then blogs or messageboards is laughable.

At the end you have to collobarate your facts by many conflicting (idiological wise) sources.

When somebody mentions a story and then MSM it is a copout not
to take apart their arguments. The blogs in the majority are pure
opinion maschines , so I am amazed how many take their oppinion
over that of the MSM.

Wouldn't take their opinion over or under any others. Truth to tell, the blogs so far have been self-correcting as a medium. I do NOT mean 'they correct themselves', I mean if you write something stupid-assuming people are reading what you are writing, you will hear about it via comments and/or email. Same if you write something good.

No one but the bloggers have been able or willing to question the MSM, which is what it IS. As the US News article rightly pointed out, when the president of the Newspaper Guild makes wild accusations, that should be covered. It wasn't, for too long.

They have to rush something like the Koran story to press, people were killed, and they say, "Whoops, sorry!" 'We can't prove it true, so maybe it isn't. But we think it may be, so prove it isn't.'

 

[Bullypulpit]

Wouldn't take their opinion over or under any others. Truth to tell, the blogs so far have been self-correcting as a medium. I do NOT mean 'they correct themselves', I mean if you write something stupid-assuming people are reading what you are writing, you will hear about it via comments and/or email. Same if you write something good.

No one but the bloggers have been able or willing to question the MSM, which is what it IS. As the US News article rightly pointed out, when the president of the Newspaper Guild makes wild accusations, that should be covered. It wasn't, for too long.

They have to rush something like the Koran story to press, people were killed, and they say, "Whoops, sorry!" 'We can't prove it true, so maybe it isn't. But we think it may be, so prove it isn't.'

Perhaps a return to the "Fairness Doctrine" in the media is in order.

 

[Annie]

Perhaps a return to the "Fairness Doctrine" in the media is in order.

Wouldn't change the 'Paris' story! Nice try though! :funnyface

 

[Hobbit]

The media simply reports that which will offend the fewest consumers and thus ensure continued ad revenue. And let's not forget the stockholders either. They get upset and heads roll in the newsroom.

Actually, they don't seem to be doing that anymore. FoxNews, The Wall Street Journal, and several other news outlets widely considered conservative are gaining huge amounts of market share not because of a rise in conservatism, but because people are sick of the media as is.