Decent reporting: does it exist any more?

[SuperFemme]

I agree with you LM. I watch BBC news to find out what is going on here because they report all the stuff our media squashes.

Balloon Boy was the perfect example of how "news" has turned into a dog and pony show that is akin to 24/7 reality t.v.

In winter of 2004 I was not sleeping much due to medical issues. I had the tv on and at about 3 a.m. up pops a report of a 1.5 mile mushroom cloud over North Korea. A few minutes later Condeleeza Rice is on saying that yes it was a huge mushroom cloud (you could see it on satellite) but she was confident it was NOT a nuclear testing incident.

I fell asleep and woke back up at around 7 a.m. and no mention of the mushroom cloud anywhere. I searched online and found ONE reference to it, but that site was closed for maintenance when I refreshed the page. I watched every channel I could for three days and it was like the whole thing never happened. It was a huge moment of clarity for me that a one and half mile wide mushroom cloud over a country that was illegally making nukes could disappear into the abyss and be covered.

[little man]

call me paranoid, but i have to wonder if the overabundance of conservative news programs is a way to get us inured to violence and wars and power struggles. conservative parties tend to me more hawkish than liberal parties and one of the best ways to get people to agree to things they might not is to scare the bejesus out of them.

point in case: the news after 9/11. like most everyone else, i was glued to the television, watching the same footage over and over. unlike most everyone else, i wasn't hugely surprised, nor was i of a mind that we were innocent victims. after all the governments we've installed and toppled, after all the collateral damage we've done....well, we had it coming. we'd been damned lucky that it never happened here before. i'm also of a mind that our government allowed this to happen. yes, conspiracy theory.

what i saw play out on the news made my skin crawl. i recall seeing all our legislators, walking into some building with lights strategically placed, flags flying...it smacked of the nuremburg rallies, at least visually. and what happened after that? the american public willingly gave away some of their civil liberties...to feel safer.

i see the slant and presentation of current news to be a further extension of that. while the republicans are no longer in power, they still wield a mighty hand behind the scenes. things being what they are, i won't be shocked if obama ends up being a single term president. hard to say what we'll end up with next.