Quote:
Originally Posted by TnHilltopper
Yes, and as I recall MSNBC was out front promoting the war in Iraq, right along with Fox and CNN.
White House and Pentagon officials decide that using retired military officers as “independent military analysts” in the national media can help change hearts and minds of a reluctant American public in drawing a connection between 9-11 and Saddam in Iraq.
Assistant secretary of defense for public affairs Victoria Clarke, a former public relations executive, intends to achieve what she calls “information dominance.” Her plan to recruit key individuals and in this case former military generals with ties to the defense industry to promote the war.
The largest contingent of analysts is affiliated with Fox News, followed by NBC and CNN, the networks with 24-hour cable news coverage.
If in fact MSNBC was this great bastion of Liberal dominated media, I have to wonder why they went to such great lengths to promote the war in Iraq. I still have a stack of VHS tapes showing MSNBC's little flag in the corner of the screen waving and the headline... "March to war".
Truth is, contemporary commercial media got in lock step with the White House and they flat out sold a war to a reluctant American people. This is a factual provable thing by reams of evidence that is still available and easily searchable. For MSNBC to suddenly find a conscious after the fact shows me they lack conviction, fortitude and a spine. MSNBC is little more than ad men ready to sell people the next improved batch of snake oil.
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First part of your post is in 100% accord with the factual record.
Back in 2003, MSNBC, as did ALL US media supported the lies being spun out of Cheney's office to the ultimate degree: there was, as you noted, the "experts" paraded endlessly in front of the public, experts (retired Brass and other parasitic creatures) which we later found out had FINANCIAL interests in taking this country into a war for oil based on lies, and in keeping this war going ad infinitum.
It had zero to do with "lack of conviction, spine", etc, and more to do with the new reality in our censored media: The "news" branch of the conglomerate was/is supposed to support the corrporate brand.
Look at the events vis-a-vis the timing of Akres V Fox.
In '99, the start of the trial court phase of the case, which Akres won, the multinats were a bit more cautious in using "their" media to tell blatant lies; by 2003, when the Fla Appeals Court reversed the original court's findings, and voided the juries verdict- which non-coincidently coincides precisely with the start of the Oil War, there was no such hesitation, as the sanctions for lying had been removed. From then on, it was news for profit.
ALL US Media did this then, and does this today. It's not about truth anymore, as it was from the 1950's-90's. Instead US media has returned to the 1890's model championed by Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer:
Make the facts fit the business plan. It gave us the far more sucessful (except in the Phillipines) Spanish American War, and the other slime of the "Gilded Age."
So when/why did this change, somewhat, for MSNBC?
Well, as previously stated capitalism: they found a niche market- people looking for the truth, as compared to events unfolding around them. (Hint: a war for oil based on a lie, and a depression are just too big to cover up.)
And, to trace that process in detail, it's necessary to look at the career of Keith Olbermann, as his rise parallels the network's change to a more fact-based approach:
Keith Olbermann - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This quite lenghthy, but here are some excerpts:
When the
Monica Lewinsky scandal broke in 1998
The Big Show with Keith Olbermann morphed into
White House in Crisis. Olbermann became frustrated as his show was consumed by the Lewinsky story. In 1998, he stated that his work at MSNBC would "make me ashamed, make me depressed, make me cry."
[27] Olbermann left MSNBC for Fox Sports Net shortly thereafter.
After leaving Fox Sports in 2001, Olbermann returned once more to news journalism. In 2003, his network won an
Edward R. Murrow Award for writing on the "Keith Olbermann Speaking of Everything" show.
[36] In addition, Olbermann wrote a weekly column for
Salon.com from July 2002 until early 2003.
[37], worked for
CNN as a freelance reporter,
[22] and was a fill-in for newscaster
Paul Harvey.
[38][39]
Countdown's format, per its name, involves Olbermann ranking the five biggest news stories of the day or sometimes "stories my producers force me to cover," as Olbermann puts it."
During the
2008 U.S. presidential election, Olbermann co-anchored MSNBC's coverage with
Chris Matthews until September 7, 2008, when they were replaced by
David Gregory after complaints from both outside and inside of
NBC that they were making partisan statements.
[12] As early as May 2007, when
Giuliani campaign officials complained about him serving in dual roles as both a "host" and "commentator" had this apparent conflict of interest been an issue.
[45] Despite this,
Countdown was broadcast both before and after each of the presidential and vice-presidential debates, and Olbermann and Matthews joined Gregory on MSNBC's election day coverage.
[46] Olbermann and Matthews also led MSNBC's coverage of the inauguration of President Obama.
[47][48]
In January 2007
The Washington Post's
Howard Kurtz wrote that Olbermann was "position[ing] his program as an increasingly
liberal alternative to
The O'Reilly Factor."
[52] Media watchdog group
Media Research Center (MRC) compiled a list of the recipients of Olbermann's "World's Worst" for about a year from its beginning on June 30, 2005, and reported that, of the approximately 600 recipients, 174 (29 percent) of those fit their definition of "conservative" people or ideas while only 23 (6 percent) were what they considered "liberal."
[53] During the 2008 Democratic Party primaries Olbermann frequently chastised presidential aspirant
Hillary Clinton for her campaign tactics against her principal opponent, Senator
Barack Obama, and made her the subject of two of his "special comments".
[54][55] Olbermann has also posted on the liberal blog
Daily Kos.
[56' "
The above sections point out 3 very important facets of Olbermann vs the corporate media:
1. Note the influence of the right on the media's agenda. Lewinsky is an excellent example of the corporate media trying to make something out of nothing. Note that ALL pundits on the airwaves (except Olbermann) thought that McCain had done well in every debate, until the overwhelming poll numbers showing that he'd lost badly, and that their positions were putting said pundits credibility on the line.
http://themoderatevoice.com/23538/po...how-obama-won/
"We’ve had four debates now, and each time the census from the pundits has been “it’s a tie on points.” But each time, voters have heavily favored Obama. How are so many people getting paid to be so wrong?"
Because they're paid to say "McCain tied", is the obvious answer. To say more would have completely blown their covers.
2. The clashes between Olbermann and GE (or MSNBC, same thing)'s management.
3. The criticism of Olbermann exclusively from the far right, both GOP and Democratic.
Examples: Howard Kurtz, of the liberal (ha!) Washington Post:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Kurtz
"Kurtz has covered the press since 1990 for the
Post,
[2] and is widely read within the journalism business, although some critics feel he has a tendency to be biased toward the political right.
[3] Others believe he should not be covering the news business because he has a clear conflict of interest. Mickey Kaus, reporting on and partially quoting from a letter by Charles Kaiser in
The New Republic, wrote that Kurtz "has large, non-technical conflicts of interest, since he free-lances and takes money 'from the people he writes about, from
Time Warner to
Condé Nast.'... The most obvious conflict is that Kurtz co-hosts CNN's
Reliable Sources, a gig that rewards him with not only money but national renown."
[4]"
The very goofus Media Research Center:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-k..._b_120200.html
"The far-right Media Research Center (MRC) has
released a new report declaring overwhelmingly positive media coverage of Barack Obama in the network evening news broadcasts. I've scrutinized part of the study and media coverage during one month, and this simple look at reality indicates that MRC is intentionally lying about the media coverage.
According to MRC, in the last month of the primary race, 43% of the network news stories were positive and only 1% were negative. This period covers May 7 to June 3. According to MRC, there were 2.94 stories per day in the final month about Obama, or a total of around 90. This means that according to the MRC, there was only one story in the entire month on all three networks that was negative about Obama. So, out of all of these stories--about Michelle Obama's "proud" remarks, about Obama overwhelming losses in West Virginia and Kentucky, about John McCain and George W. Bush denouncing Obama on Iran and comparing it to appeasement of Nazis, about Michael Pfleger's speech at Obama's church denouncing Hillary Clinton--the MRC claims that only one story was negative.
That's utterly preposterous. So I decided to look at what the real news coverage shows. The best source for this is the
Tyndall Report, which documents the network news coverage every weekday. A good sample of the news coverage is Tyndall's daily list of the key news stories and the angle being offered. Here's a complete list of all of them in the May 7-June 3 period, with Tyndall's summary of the "angle" of the report:"
And of course, Hillary Clinton, wife and CFO of Bill Clinton, who engineered a hostile takeover of the once-people friendly Democratic Party by the corporations, circa 1992. (See: NAFTA, PRN, The Enron Loophole, etc)
In your failure to understand these past events, and how they illustrate just how Olbermann has captured audience share for MSNBC (it's now ahead of CNN, although trails Fox, just as Western Mags trailed Pravda in the old USSR) is where your post strays-and strays mightily- from the factual record.
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