On the media and tinfoil

[nadinbrzezinski]

Yes, I am going to reach for the tinfoil...

But I gotta wonder. We have an essential news blackout from Latin America and other areas of the world. Yes I know the US is essentially inward looking, but we also have a LOT of immigrants into this country who come from countries that are outwards looking. I wonder, if State does sanction what our media breaks into breaking nooze moment. I mean, if the coup attempt in Ecuador succeeded, dime on the dollar they would have broken into it.

Just a little tinfoil I know, but I know closed societies need isolation from the rest of the world... and truth be told MOST in the US will not go to furiegner press sources.

[gateley]

1. Just a tinfoil beret, not the entire chapeau.

Although a huge chunk of Americans don't care what happens elsewhere, the lack of ANY coverage seems almost like an intentional blackout. Reaching for my beret now.

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. I know and I know it could be as simple as

our news models don't have international news bureaus. But a girl gotta ask.

[Ozymanithrax]

3. After WWII, and up to Vietnam, most of the U.S. media organizations,,,

kept a lot of really expensive overseas journalists. After 'Nam, as the old guard died, and especially by the 80's with the explosive growth of cable, foreign correspondents vanished.

I still remember at the beginning of the second Gulf War, Fox had no foreign correspondents. CNN had a few faces, but even they had only a few. NBC, ABC, and CBS weren't much better. By that time, the AP was the source of most foreign news.

Just as the thousands of local media outlets were swallowed up by a few big organizations, foreign coverage was limited and outsourced because it was expensive. Whey pay a correspondent to sit in a bar in Rome (Watch Roman Holiday 1953, good movie) when you could contract your reporting to the AP.

Though I respect your tin foil Chapeau, I think this can all be explained as a mixture of U.S. isolationism (a preference for navel gazing) and profit motive. If there were a gaggle of press types sitting in bars in Ecuador looking for a report to phone home, this would be great stuff. That type of recording doesn't exist anymore. I don't see any evidence of some secretive bureaucratic official deciding what is fit for the News to broadcast and controlling the stories.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Manufacturing consent

that is all I have to say. Whether accidental, or on purpose... And I think it is a combo...