There won't be any real change in this country until we "fix" the media.

[BattyDem]

Now, more than ever, I am convinced of that. :-(

This morning, I took my mother to the doctor. Her doc doesn't take appointments - he sees people on a "first come first serve" basis - so we got there an hour early. CNN was on the television and we saw Reverend Wright's entire speech, plus the Q&A session.

First, a little background ... my mother doesn't know much about Wright, except that he's Obama's pastor. Of course, she heard the "endless loop" that was on the news every night and was a bit offended. However, when I explained about the comments being taken out of context and told her about Wright's military service, community service, etc., she felt better about him and didn't hold it against Obama in any way. In fact, she's been angry over the way Obama has been expected to answer for someone else's words.

Anyway ... the two of us sat in the doctor's waiting room with four other people and we watched Wright's speech. We were both very impressed. Judging by the interest of the others and their laughter during some of the Q&A responses, I believe they were impressed as well. We were called in to see the doctor immediately following the Q&A, so I couldn't discuss the speech with anyone else, but as I was getting up, I heard someone on CNN say something about "Obama's pastor" and the woman who was sitting across from me said, "That's the guy?!?" She seemed very surprised that the intelligent, articulate, reasonable and sometimes amusing man she just listened to was the "unAmerican" preacher that everyone was talking about. She simply shook her head and had a look of disbelief on her face, as if to say, "Why did they make him out to be a lunatic when he's obviously not?"

Mom and I were happy that CNN carried the entire speech and we assumed the issue would finally be put to rest. After all, it was painfully clear that Reverend Wright was not the "monster" he was portrayed as. In fact, the speech was wonderful and there was no way any reasonable person could disagree with the points he made.

I didn't watch TV or surf the internet at all today, so I was unaware of the response to the speech. A little while ago, Mom turned the TV on and within moments I heard her yelling. I asked her what was wrong and she said, "They're spinning it! That damn Stephanopoulos is twisting everything the pastor said! It's all being taken out of context! I SAW THAT SPEECH and they're making it out to be something it wasn't! It's not fair - that's not the way it happened! You are so right about the media! They twist EVERYTHING!!!"

The first thing I said was "Why the hell are you watching ABC News anyway?" :P She said she just turned on the TV and ABC was already on ... so I'll let it slide this time. ;-) When she heard them mention Wright, she continued to watch because she wanted to hear what they said. I watched a little bit of the report and of course, I became almost as furious as she was. I say "almost" because as much as I wanted to believe that the issue would finally be resolved, there was a part of me, deep down, that knew they were going to take two or three comments and trash Wright (and Obama) all over again.

I'm so angry and discouraged right now. It's never going to end. It doesn't matter who our candidate is. I don't think any DUer is naive enough to believe that the media will continue to go easy on Hillary if she gets the nomination. Yes, I know they have been tough on her in the past - but right now, they're trying to take Obama down. He's the main target. When they're done, they will definitely go after her again. ANY Democrat is going to be destroyed by the corporate media! They will use any means necessary. If they don't have anything to attack our candidate with, they will make something up or exaggerate or twist words or manufacture outrage - whatever it takes to bring the Democratic candidate down! They did it to Gore. They did it to Kerry. They are currently doing it to Obama and if they succeed, they will do it to Hillary Clinton. Until we break up the media monopolies and take control of our airwaves, we won't have a fucking chance against the corporate machine! :-( :grr:

[anonymous171]

1. Thanks Bill, for the Telecommunications Act of 1996

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. spot-cracking-on. Our media is a pile of steaming shit.

NO, I take that back. It's not steaming, because it's old and cold.

It's a pile of old, cold, dried up useless shit that only knows how to serve shit.

But even before we change the media, we somehow have to convince the 290,000,000 ignorant Americans that they're not eating caviar.

[Cha]

3. Thanks, BattyDem..I've been knowing and

saying that since 2000.

[LakeSamish706]

4. Unless we get an Obama in the White House, this country is doomed...

and I do mean doomed.... We cannot survive another 4 or 8 years of either a Bush/McCain or Clinton in the White House.

[SeattleGirl]

5. Absolutely correct!

This whole thing just pisses me off, and Clinton supporters, if you think she will get an easy ride if she gets the nomination, think again.

They will tar and feather her, drag her thru the mud, and won't stop until they draw and quarter her, and they don't have to have FACT ONE to do it with.

And you know that.

All of us should be pissed off at how the media gives the fucking Repukes a free ride, and does it's damned best to vilify all Democrats.

[MnFats]

6. well...people do have some responsibility of their own to recognize...

...bullshit when they see/hear it.

[tabasco]

7. It's never been more apparent.

They are much, much, better than Goebbels and the crude Nazi propaganda apparatus. Much more subtle. But when the have-mores' power is threatened, as it is by Obama, we can see through the deception as the propaganda machine goes into attack mode.

[hisownpetard]

8. I share your feeling of dejection about what the MSM is doing to this country, to many good

people in it, and to the once-esteemed Fourth Estate. What a helpless feeling it engenders, to watch them
slice and dice the truth on a daily basis and continue on their way, without consequence.

We do our little thing - write angry letters to ABC or whatever else we can think of - but to whom and to what power
are they held accountable for the damage they do?

I'm all riled up with nowhere to go!

[Life Long Dem]

9. It will end once the sheeple don't follow

H-I-L-L-L O-W-E-E-E where r u?

[Tribetime]

10. That's what I was saying 4 yrs ago, I thought maybe

things would change....ya right

[corporatemedia]

11. You got that right ! But, unfortunately, it may be too late. n/t

[kster]

12. One of the top two things that need

to done immediately upon taking office, Get our troops home! Take back our media! Go back to Hand Counted Paper Ballots, which is what got us in all this trouble in the first place!

K&R.

[cliffordu]

13. If by fix, you mean castrate, I'm there.

[Barack_America]

16. EXACTLY what I was going to post!

:rofl:

[cliffordu]

17. Great minds....

:patriot:

[hannybal]

14. The media was not a big problem here 1 or 2 weeks ago

When it started to turn against Obama.

[Zodiak]

15. As a low-post person, how would you know our history with the media?

This site has done plenty of fighting against the mainstream media. So many of us have considered them to be the enemy for many years. Symbolman, a long-time DUer, actually made a website called "Take Back the Media" and has been doing all sorts of things to fight against the media. That's only one example.

So you are dead wrong....just posting drive-by one-liners in order to denigrate the membership of this site overall because you know the majority of us are Obama supporters and you are not. Sounds like sour grapes to me.

So tell me, in 40 posts....how have you developed such a strong sense of resentment towards this site that you have to engage in such activity? Are you the sock-puppet of a banned member? Have you been hating us from afar for years?

People on this site HATE the media and have for a damned long time.

[dreamnightwind]

20. infrequent posters

Hey, I agree with the gist of your post, just one point I'd like to make: I, and probably many others on here, frequently read but infrequently post. In fact, I've probably read a couple of hours a day on here for the last 2 years or more, and I have only 14 posts or so. I'll bet there are many others in similar situations. So all I'm saying is, a low post count doesn't tell you all that much about how much time someone has spent on DU.

Thanks for jumping on the Hill supporter who didn't like Obama supporters objecting to the media spin of Rev. Wright's talks, I thought their post was inappropriate no matter how many posts they have.

Also thanks for the Symbolman media site mention. I wasn't aware of it, I'll check it out.

[stillcool]

18. Somehow, Someway...

300 million people have got to get it together.

[dreamnightwind]

19. So what do we do about it?

Excellent post. It's so obvious that we often overlook it, but really, media control, to a large degree, equals control of perceived reality. No less.

To those who think the American people just need to be smart enough to see through media manipulation, well, some are, most aren't, and if they were, the media would just find different ways to manipulate the message that are less transparent.

Seriously, propaganda works. Always has. The answer isn't for everyone to see through it, the answer is to get the media out of corporate hands.

Corporations have agendas. It has more to do with profit than with veracity. Hell, it's right there in the corporate charter, they have to maximize returns for their shareholders. That's what corporate values are, profit. That'd be the 2nd or 3rd thing to change after (if) we get publicly controlled and financed media.

It's been going on for a long time, and just gradually gets worse. We're the slowly boiling frog, the changes are subtle and most of us don't even notice it much, and we're just about cooked.

In my opinion, there's no better place to focus than on media ownership. And no better time than now. Every other issue that confronts us, whether it's the economy, global warming, foreign wars, social justice, they'll all become achievable if we can get an honest media that's not based on corporate profits.

They'll try to control internet media soon, and they may even succeed. This is no joke people, the only way it stops is for people like us to focus our efforts on it.

I can see one other place that could possibly be a better initial focal point, and that would be campaign finance reform (complete public financing of elections, no corporate money whatsoever), that'd be an even better reform-that-enables-other-reforms, but with the current propaganda machine, who's going to get all worked up about the need for campaign finance reform? Not people who get their information from the corporate media, that's for sure.

It might be possible to slip in underneath the corporate media. The future of broadcast media is the internet, not cable, satellite, or over-the-air. This change will happen soon, in most of our lifetimes. Why not get some people's version of CNN and MSNBC going on the internet? I know there are some fledgling efforts at this, and CNN and MSNBC aren't the best models anyway, but building the future we want on the net could be done without the huge infrastructure needs of the mainstream broadcast media. Then, when the 'net becomes the new media instead of cable and satellite, we'll have our alternatives in place, and the lies of the propaganda machine will be more transparent when compared to honest public media.

Or it could be approached through legislation, giving the airwaves and the bandwidth to public instead of corporate interests. I don't know how we could ever get that done, though, we'd have to pry it out of the corporations' cold dead hands.

[JeffR]

21. K & R! And please hug your mom for me.

I love her.

[barack the house]

22. Depressing but honest post all we can do is try. Let's fight fight fight. And hope.