Our Miserable Mainstream Press
Collaborating with the right, once again... Here's a story from Yahoo:
"Emails: Decision on NBC host stirred response
WASHINGTON (AP) — District of Columbia prosecutors received scores of emails from citizens upset because NBC television journalist David Gregory was not criminally charged for displaying a high-capacity ammunition magazine on his "Meet the Press" show.
Prosecutors received roughly 50 emails demanding that Gregory be charged, plus more than 150 others expressing outrage in the days after officials decided to not prosecute him. The Associated Press obtained the messages through a public records request.
The emails were sent by people from around the country, including some self-identified gun owners and Second Amendment supporters, who accused prosecutors of hypocritically and unevenly enforcing D.C.'s strict gun laws and of giving Gregory preferential treatment."
So let me get this straight: It is a national story that 200 people complained that David Gregory was not prosecuted for displaying a 30-round magazine on TV in Washington, where they are illegal. Forget the fact that the law banning them is to prevent people from using them in guns, which, obviously, Gregory had no intention of doing. Just consider this: 200 e-mails constitutes a major story, as far as our pathetic press is concerned. The article at Yahoo itself had 1,300 responses at the time I saw it. The You Tube video of Beyonce's Super Bowl performance has over 1.3 million hits. Here's a cat video that has over 33 million hits and over 21,000 comments:
200 e-mails is a gigantic, pathetic failure, indicating that, essentially no one in the world gives a damn about this moronic pseudo-scandal. Yet, our mainstream press is perfectly willing to use these 200 e-mails to pretend that the mighty forces of the right are rising up in righteous indignation, in the face of some real outrage.
I remember a couple of years ago when I was reporting fairly extensively about the tea party. I repeatedly covered miserable little demonstrations of a couple of hundred people that the press presented as some sort of massive popular uprising. This was not a case of the mainstream media being duped by right wingers. It was clearly a case of collaboration, in which the media Quislings did everything they could to aid the right in achieving its goals. And that is what is going on here. At this point, the real reason for the existence our mainstream press is to serve the interests of their hyper-rich owners, not to present the truth. Anyone who stands up to them is subject to being crushed, and that is all that is going on here.
The press wasn't always this bad. That's before Saint Ronnie and the ever-wonderful Newt Gingrich saw to it that our media could be totally taken over by a pack of self-serving, greed maddened rich people, who didn't give a damn about anything except manipulating the American people into cutting their own throats, so the rich could lap up the blood.
You can add this to the list of problems which this country has to solve before it gets back on track- problems deliberately created by the would be oligarchs of our nation, in the conviction that everything on earth belongs to them, and that the other 99.99% of the people deserve nothing. That list is so long now that I see no hope that we can ever deal with it in any meaningful way, before corporate intransigence results in the destruction of the human race by our self-generated climate. Even the simplest gun-control measures, with over 90% approval, seem to be impossible in the face of corporate intransigence. How can we ever hope to crush them out of existence and reclaim our country, without a conflagration that will make World War II look like a small time disturbance?
"Emails: Decision on NBC host stirred response
WASHINGTON (AP) — District of Columbia prosecutors received scores of emails from citizens upset because NBC television journalist David Gregory was not criminally charged for displaying a high-capacity ammunition magazine on his "Meet the Press" show.
Prosecutors received roughly 50 emails demanding that Gregory be charged, plus more than 150 others expressing outrage in the days after officials decided to not prosecute him. The Associated Press obtained the messages through a public records request.
The emails were sent by people from around the country, including some self-identified gun owners and Second Amendment supporters, who accused prosecutors of hypocritically and unevenly enforcing D.C.'s strict gun laws and of giving Gregory preferential treatment."
So let me get this straight: It is a national story that 200 people complained that David Gregory was not prosecuted for displaying a 30-round magazine on TV in Washington, where they are illegal. Forget the fact that the law banning them is to prevent people from using them in guns, which, obviously, Gregory had no intention of doing. Just consider this: 200 e-mails constitutes a major story, as far as our pathetic press is concerned. The article at Yahoo itself had 1,300 responses at the time I saw it. The You Tube video of Beyonce's Super Bowl performance has over 1.3 million hits. Here's a cat video that has over 33 million hits and over 21,000 comments:
200 e-mails is a gigantic, pathetic failure, indicating that, essentially no one in the world gives a damn about this moronic pseudo-scandal. Yet, our mainstream press is perfectly willing to use these 200 e-mails to pretend that the mighty forces of the right are rising up in righteous indignation, in the face of some real outrage.
I remember a couple of years ago when I was reporting fairly extensively about the tea party. I repeatedly covered miserable little demonstrations of a couple of hundred people that the press presented as some sort of massive popular uprising. This was not a case of the mainstream media being duped by right wingers. It was clearly a case of collaboration, in which the media Quislings did everything they could to aid the right in achieving its goals. And that is what is going on here. At this point, the real reason for the existence our mainstream press is to serve the interests of their hyper-rich owners, not to present the truth. Anyone who stands up to them is subject to being crushed, and that is all that is going on here.
The press wasn't always this bad. That's before Saint Ronnie and the ever-wonderful Newt Gingrich saw to it that our media could be totally taken over by a pack of self-serving, greed maddened rich people, who didn't give a damn about anything except manipulating the American people into cutting their own throats, so the rich could lap up the blood.
You can add this to the list of problems which this country has to solve before it gets back on track- problems deliberately created by the would be oligarchs of our nation, in the conviction that everything on earth belongs to them, and that the other 99.99% of the people deserve nothing. That list is so long now that I see no hope that we can ever deal with it in any meaningful way, before corporate intransigence results in the destruction of the human race by our self-generated climate. Even the simplest gun-control measures, with over 90% approval, seem to be impossible in the face of corporate intransigence. How can we ever hope to crush them out of existence and reclaim our country, without a conflagration that will make World War II look like a small time disturbance?
Comments
Sounds like a lot till you go back and actually remember that that a score means twenty. So when they get to actual numbers – 50, 150 - it no longer matters in the mind of the reader….
It was “scores”… SCORES I tell you!
That’s…. a flood of people. A seething mass stretching from one horizon to another. Utterly representative of the public will.
Actually, only numbering about what is in line at the cash register at my local supermarket around 10am on a weekday, who are probably grumpier as well.... but who cares? It’s “scores” of people!