The US Media is Terrible

The Propaganda Network just keeps making stuff up to suit their agenda [Fox News: We make it up] and the non-propaganda networks are inept [Digby] or don't want to offend anyone. [ginandtacos.com » DELICATE SENSIBILITIES]. We the people,......... are fucked.

tnb

The Power of Propaganda?

[Nate Silver] talks about a shift toward Libertarianism.

I'd say the dramatic increase starting in 2009 shows less about a change in views but more about the power of The Propaganda Network.

More on Fox's influence here: [TNB - Fox news]

tnb

Fox News

A few links related to the propaganda network. First, a couple on the Jon Stewart appearance on Fox.

[Jon Stewart] and [Jon Stewart 2]

And one from GinAndTacos on Voter enthusiasm. [Gin and Tacos: Enthusiasm]

I think the Tea Party enthusiasm of the last election cycle can be directly attributed to the power of The Propaganda Network. All those old retired folk, at home all day, getting fired up by the crap on Fox were about as motivated as any voter could be. It wouldn't have been the same election without the Fox News created outrage.

tnb

Tea Party Peak?

Economist: Has the tea party peaked

All the crap in this post sounds good and the Tea party probably has peaked but I think the post underestimates, even ignores the effect of the right wing propaganda machine.

I'd say that the turning point, as shown in the chart, was when the financial crisis hit and it suddenly looked like a liberal black man could win the election. At that point, Fox news and the conservative media went on a full-on, attack against government and even remotely liberal ideas, a propagand push of lies, rumors and scare tactics this country hadn't seen in my lifetime, and basically scared a bunch of retired old white people to death. Without Fox news there wouldn't be a Tea Party.

I think the reason the Tea-party seems to have cooled is that the conservative leaders and their propaganda wings know they can't win the presidency with a wacked-out Tea-bagger so now conservative media is pulling back the propaganda push in an attempt to attrack some of the middle ground voters that the crazy propaganda pushes away.

tnb

Indoctrination Camps

Remember a couple of years ago when Beck, Palin, Bachmann and all your Tea-bagger friends were wound up because Obama was going to send our kids to "Indoctrination Camps". Well, its happening now, except the "Indoctrination camps" are being run by the Tea-Baggers.

The right wing in this country has lost it's fucking mind.

Indoctrination Camps for kids

tnb

Fighting Misinformation #2

Brad Delong still at it. [Misinformation]

1. The claim that if Medicare starts limiting the procedures it will pay for, this would be an infringement of your freedom of choice: Paul Krugman: "Nobody is proposing that the government deny you the right to have whatever medical care you want at your own expense. We’re only talking about what medical care will be paid for by the government. And right-wingers, of all people, shouldn’t believe that everyone has the right to have whatever they want, at taxpayers’ expense.... What will it take to shoot this zombie in the head?..."

2. Peter Diamond unqualifed to be a Federal Reserve Governor: Peter Diamond: "Last October, I won the Nobel Prize in economics for my work on unemployment and the labor market. But I am unqualified to serve on the board of the Federal Reserve — at least according to the Republican senators who have blocked my nomination. How can this be? The easy answer is to point to shortcomings in our confirmation process and to partisan polarization in Washington. The more troubling answer, though... a failure to recognize that analysis of unemployment is crucial to conducting monetary policy.... The leading opponent to my appointment, Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the committee, has questioned the relevance of my expertise. “Does Dr. Diamond have any experience in conducting monetary policy? No,” he said in March. “His academic work has been on pensions and labor market theory.” But understanding the labor market... is critical to devising an effective monetary policy..."

3. Haley Barbour's claim that Obama is raising gas prices on purpose: The United States government does not control world oil prices--indeed, right now there is no swing producer that controls world oil prices: it is global supply and demand that set gas prices.

4. Stephen L. Carter’s very bad Bloomberg column that demand is slack because of "uncertainty": Jim Henley: "We’ve worked for more than one business... we know the typical share-of-revenue that incremental labor expense takes across various business lines. and we have a lived understanding of all the uncertainties and risks attending pretty much any business. Comparing this last bundle of risks and uncertainties to the possible impact of regulatory change on additional incremental labor, we’re left with a set of reasonable possibilities.... 1) The guy is telling the truth, but his business is unusual.... 2) The guy is a blowhard whose business is doing worse than he says. 3) The guy is a moron or coward... leaving money on the table.... 4) The guy is a prophet who should liquidate his business immediately! Because any regulatory risk that applies to new workers he might hire that’s big enough to keep him from hiring more also applies to the workers he currently has on his payroll.... Any of these seems more plausible than Carter’s conclusion that this man’s story holds lessons for us all. It’s certainly suggestive that Carter describes his business as “low margin” but with demand picking up. If demand is picking up and he isn’t ramping production then either demand was really weak and is only getting back to normal, one or more of his competitors beat him to the punch on cranking up the volume, or nobody here knows how to play this game. The article reminds me of the criticism that intellectuals tend to lack real-world business experience.... Certainly Carter presents us with a piece of “pro-business” advocacy that suffers from apparent unfamiliarity with business..."

tnb

Fighting Misinformation

Brad Delong, Fighting Misinformation on day at a time. Here are three things large groups of people believe, or at least say, that are not true. There are many more at the link.

For the Virtual Green Room: June 5, 2011 - Grasping Reality with Both Hands

1.Tort reform is the way to control health-care costs: Aaron Carroll: "How much does the malpractice system really cost in the U.S.?... $55.6 billion in 2008 dollars, or about 2.4 percent of all U.S. health-care spending.... So yes, that is real money, and it theoretically could be reduced.... [W]e could look at Texas, where non-economic damages on malpractice lawsuits were capped at $250,000 about eight years ago... Medicare spending seems to have gone up faster than the nation’s since 2003. Hardly a persuasive argument for tort reform = cost control.... [T]ort reform, which might lead to a 10 percent reduction in malpractice premiums (not small), which might translate into a health-care spending reduction of 0.1 percent..."

2.The RomneyCare that so many Republicans used to support is very different from ObamaCare: Rudi Giuliani: "The reality is that Obamacare and Romneycare are almost exactly the same. It’s not very helpful trying to distinguish them. I would think the best way to handle it is to say: 'It was a terrible mistake and if I could do it over again, I wouldn’t do it'..."

3.Doctors are all leaving Canada to practice in the U.S.: Aaron Carroll: Except for Austria and Germany, fewer doctors were satisfied practicing medicine in the United States in 2009 than in any other surveyed country. That includes Canada. And it was before health care reform, so you can’t blame any dissatisfaction on the PPACA.... Except for Germany, more physicians in the United Sates felt that the system needed to be completely rebuilt than physicians in any other country.... So let’s stop pretending that doctors in outer countries are miserable, and practicing in the Unites States is paradise.... The meme is that physicians are leaving Canada in droves and moving here. Is that true?... In the mid-1990s, the number leaving for the U.S. spiked at about 400 to 500 a year. However, in recent years, this number has declined, with only 169 physicians leaving for the States in 2003; 138 in 2004; and 122 in each of 2005 and 2006. These numbers represent less than half a percent of all doctors working in Canada..."

tnb

Trump, Republicans and Fox News

Found here: Balkinization

Fox News has become the stable for Republican presidential candidates, who flock there to stay in the public eye while deciding whether to run. One effect of this retreat-to-the-media strategy, however, is that the lifestyle it offers is so good, and allows prospective candidates so many different ways of making an excellent living, that when the race actually begins a few of the horses don't want to leave the stable.

tnb

GroupThink

The Irish Economy » Blog Archive » Stephen Collins and Groupthink

Groupthink occurs when people adapt to the beliefs and views of others without real intellectual conviction. A consensus forms without serious consideration of consequences or alternatives, often under overt or imaginary social pressure.

Most of the people I know and interact with on a daily basis, many friends, have little education. Some have college experience but many don't have more than a high school education. Some never completed high school. They are normal, mid-western working class people, truck drivers, factory workers, teachers, health care workers, WalMart clerks, etc. Many are very religious, some are racist but many are just sort-of-religious, not-really-racist, dope smoking, beer drinking working class people. Most of them have never paid much attention to politics or economics in the past but in the last couple of years, it sure seems like they've all become motivated political, economic and monetary policy experts. Almost universally, their expertise is really Fox News GroupThink.

They almost all believe the basic conservative, Fox News, Tea-Bagger Views. Free markets provide the best outcomes in all cases. Government is always corrupt and inefficient. Private enterprises are always a better solution than government enterprises. The FED is inherently bad. Many (most?) believe we should go back to the gold standard.

On health care, most think our current system is the best in the world and that tort reform is the best thing we could do to lower health care costs.

On Taxes, most believe their taxes are too high while the "others" around them don't pay enough. That taxing the rich more would hurt the economy. Most believe that it's "others" who use government services and are "on the dole". Most have a favorite, alternate tax method, usually a flat tax or the fair tax.

On education, They generally think our education system is a mess and its the government's fault. They tend to question the view of academics and experts putting more faith in "common sense".

They also tend to believe that America, and everything American, is inherently better than any other nation on the planet. Europeans are leftist weenies. China uses slave labor. Israel is good. Muslims are bad. They almost universally believe the media has a liberal bias.

Many view the Constitution with an almost religious fervor and will argue that you are against it, you don't believe in it, or you are un-American if you disagree with them on any political or economic point.

Many were really scared to death at Obama's win. Some were sure he was going to destroy the country, take their guns, their property, shut down their churches. Guns sales to the group skyrocketed after the election.

Now 5 or 10 years ago these people didn't believe and often just didn't care about any of this stuff. Today they have well define beliefs and are "experts", willing to argue, with limited "facts", that they are right and any competing view is wrong. Most have never looked at any of these issues. They've never heard the the other side argument. They all just "know" they are right. They've become an army of uninformed, Fox News zombies.

The Propaganda Network has done it's job. It may have wrecked the country but its done its job.

tnb

Fox News

The Propaganda Network - still at it. from Crooks and Liars

[C&L: Propaganda Network #1] [C&L: Propaganda Network #2]

tnb

Enemies - part 2

This said [Enemies]. I do think the Tea-Baggers are the group most exploited today, generally being led by the nose by The Propaganda Network to support things against their best interest.

Political Irony › It’s a Tea Party World

The Propaganda Network

Fox News caught again. At Hullabaloo



Talking about the Wisconsin Labor riots while showing violent protest clips with palm trees in the background.

tnb

Fox News

Fox News Caught Running Old CPAC Footage After Ron Paul's Straw Poll Win? [VIDEOS]

The Propaganda Network caught "balancing" the news again.

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O'Reilly vs Obama

uggabugga

Don't forget Fox Nation, where the real crazies hang out.

tnb

The Rude Pundit on Beck and O'Reilly

The Rude Pundit Nails Beck and O'Reilly. The Rude Pundit

This, on Beck, is a classic.

... You gotta hand it to Beck, though. The son of a bitch is doubling down on psychotic. Here he is from his TV show yesterday: "Progressive, socialist, Marxist groups, religious groups, green groups, communist, powerful unions led by communists, SEIU, AFL-CIO, radical group like La Raza -- what did all of these groups, what were they all working together for? Well, in one way or another, they want to end the Western way of life as you and I understand it." That's some masterful madness right there. One might think that if a large percentage of the American population was working to overthrow everything everywhere, one might see more evidence of it than the broad interpretations of a delusional TV host who is willing to dress like Moses to show us all who's gonna lead us out of Egypt. Or some such shit. Truly, who the fuck knows anymore. All he cares about is that "caliphate" sounds scary and foreign.

Here's some more from yesterday: "They're working together to help stomp out the free market and capitalism. They'll work everything else out later. That's why Code Pink and the AFL-CIO can stand together in America. And it's why they're rushing in to support the democratic revolution in Egypt." And, no joke, in the course of an hour, Beck connected Van Jones, the unionization of the TSA, the Muslim Brotherhood, and community organizers into one grand unified theory of world domination. Somehow, this will bring about the apocalypse. Because it just will. Apparently, liberals are willing to overlook all other goals having to do with equal rights and freedom and throw in with Islamic extremists in order to overthrow capitalism. The Rude Pundit must have missed that meeting.

Beck - Crazy?

Glenn Beck, is he crazy or just doing it wrong?.

Adam Serwer Archive | The American Prospect

Anyway, I don't get it. Conservatives have spent the last two years espousing the links between "caliphate-promoters and the American left." Why turn on Beck? Because he's just doing it wrong?

Egypt - NYT - Frank Rich

A good article here, Wallflowers at the Revolution - NYTimes.com. A couple of clips.

This provocative debate isn’t even being acknowledged in most American coverage of the Internet’s role in the current uprisings. The talking-head invocations of Twitter and Facebook instead take the form of implicit, simplistic Western chauvinism. How fabulous that two great American digital innovations can rescue the downtrodden, unwashed masses. That is indeed impressive if no one points out that, even in the case of the young and relatively wired populace of Egypt, only some 20 percent of those masses have Internet access.

and

Al Jazeera English, run by a 35-year veteran of the Canadian Broadcasting Company, is routinely available in Israel and Canada. It provided coverage of the 2009 Gaza war and this year’s Tunisian revolt when no other television networks would or could. Yet in America, it can be found only in Washington, D.C., and on small cable systems in Ohio and Vermont. None of the biggest American cable and satellite companies — Comcast, DirecTV and Time Warner — offer it.

The noxious domestic political atmosphere fostering this near-blackout is obvious to all. It was made vivid last week when Bill O’Reilly of Fox News went on a tear about how Al Jazeera English is “anti-American.” This is the same “We report, you decide” Fox News that last week broke away from Cairo just as the confrontations turned violent so that viewers could watch Rupert Murdoch promote his new tablet news product at a publicity event at the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Unable to watch Al Jazeera English, and ravenous for comprehensive and sophisticated 24/7 television coverage of the Middle East otherwise unavailable on television, millions of Americans last week tracked down the network’s Internet stream on their computers. Such was the work-around required by the censorship practiced by America’s corporate gatekeepers. You’d almost think these news-starved Americans were Iron Curtain citizens clandestinely trying to pull in the jammed Voice of America signal in the 1950s — or Egyptians desperately seeking Al Jazeera after Mubarak disrupted its signal last week.

A few of thoughts.

On the US Media.

Our media, especially television, just plain sucks, with most stories being directed at odd angles of the subject at hand for example,.. With Egypt the stories were, the social media is great, Al Jazeera is evil, it is Bushes fault, it is Obama's fault, the Muslim Brotherhood is evil, etc. With Wikileaks, the cables themselves were hardly covered at all in this country; the stories were about Assange, the "rape", his arrest, etc. TV News just dances around the story offering little real content.


On Social Networking.

Playing up the Internet and social networking's place in the uprising may not be "implicit, simplistic Western chauvinism" but more "the latest-greatest-thing" chauvinism. Social Networking is the latest killer-app of the Internet (the last latest-and-greatest). It's on everyone mind. It seems natural for media types to look for ways to give it credit and tie it to every major news story. If our crappy media were around during the civil war there would have been "trains change warfare" stories. WW1 would have had "Airplanes change warfare stories", WWII probably "Radios or RADAR" change warfare.


On Al Jazeera and US Media

Al-Jazeera should be on all US cable outlets. Some competition in the news market couldn't hurt, could it?

I'm sure one argument of the cable providers would be that there's no market for Al Jazeera, but I think Egypt's revolution has proven this wrong. Besides, is there really a market for 37 home shopping channels?


On Censorship.

Censorship in the US, whether intentional by our government/media, the result of inept media agents or simply set by market forces is being exposed by the Internet. However, the Internet also makes it very easy to hide the true story behind floods of disinformation. Our mass media also play the disinformation game very well. Fox News is the master but the others play it at as well. I fear this censorship-thru-disinformation will get worse before it gets better.

tnb

Stiring the Pot.

The Propaganda Network stiring it up again.

The Fox Link

The Beck Link

An analysis here: Iranian Martyrs Book Found on Mexican Border as Beck Film Premieres | Crooks and Liars

I wouldn't put it past Fox to plant the book as part of a "Beck" Marketing campaign.

tnb

Fox News - More Propaganda

No-More-Mr-Nice-Blog is right on top of the Propaganda Network's crap these days. Here's another example of the Fox News version of "Fair and Balanced"

No More Mister Nice Blog

Here's the actual description of the new press secretary's career.

"CAREER: Time magazine Washington bureau chief, 2005-2008; Time assistant bureau chief in Washington, 2003-2005; Time reporter in Washington, 1993-2003; Time reporter in Moscow, 1990-1993; Time Miami bureau chief, 1989-90; Reporter for Miami Herald, 1987-1988."

Here's Fox Nation's Slanted view.

"Former TIME Mag Moscow Chief to replace Robert Gibbs"

Of course all good Teabaggers know that "Moscow Chief" means "just another communist in the Obama Administration".

Thanks NMMNB

tnb

The Propaganda Network

The Fox guys have taken propaganda to a new level.

No More Mister Nice Blog