The media does not have a political agenda. It is not liberal, it is not conservative. It is simply to make money.
All of the networks are like that, even FOX. Now, Fox "News" does in fact, deliver the "news" with a right-wing slant. But the point of that isn't nearly as much to further Rupert Murdoch's right-wing agenda as it is about making him extreme amounts of money. Murdoch is making a killing on a market where he is the only product - the market for the nightly news to be delivered exactly as the Dumb People wanted it to be, just so it made all of the pieces of the story they had been sold by FNC to the audience.
The Nightly News didn't make sense. I thought America was a place where nobody was above the law and we aren't supposed to be the people locking other people up without seeing a lawer or torturing, and yet here we are on the News doing it. FNC said, "Don't worry. We ARE the greatest country in the world. You see, the truth is, it doesn't matter if you lock people up without a warrant and torture them, because that's not really important. What's really important is that YOU are safe." That made the DP feel safe. That made their mental picture of the world fit the information coming into them. They report, and you decide...exactly what they want you to decide, and exactly what you wanted to decide the whole time.
But what they really wanted was they wanted their market to want to watch it. And all they have done is made the product that would be a monopoly in a huge market. How nobody else has stepped in to fill the void in the liberal end of that audience is beyond me. The possibility for an audience is tremendous. First of all, you have all of the pissed off liberals who have been forced to choose between FNC and a load of other news stations that were, in the glorious tradition of major corporations everywhere, trying to make a carbon copy of the product which was the most successful, rather than making the connection that, oh yeah, there is a mirror market which is currently UN-FUCKING-TAPPED. And it's not like there isn't proof the goddam thing would be a cash cow: for chrissake, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are only the two hottest goddam shows on TV right now. If you are under 40, you watch TDS and The Colbert Report, regardless of your political ideaology. And if you're a liberal, you don't miss an episode - you'll DL it if you have to.Comedy Central claims The Daily Show has a nightly audience of 1.7 million voters, whereas Bill O'Reilly has over 2 million. That seems like a win for O'Reilly, but when you factor in the fact that TDS originally airs at 11:00, which is too late for many people, who usually watch the show's rerun the next night at 8 or download the show off the internet, it's plain that TDS's audience is much bigger than O'Reilly's audience (and, it turns out, are more knowledgeable than O'Reilly's and better educated, too). Imagine a whole news network devoted to this the way FNC is devoted to the right.
The Conservative claim that the other networks are liberally bent is ludicrous, and especially now, that all the other networks are doing their FOX impressions. Watch the Daily Show - that is the news with a liberal bent. CNN is NOTHING like the Daily Show. Wolf Blitzer has been neutered a long time ago. The media has found a picture that sells well, and it does its best to sell that picture. And it sells whatever it thinks will sell best. Sometimes that means it delivers the liberal bent, but more often than not, it means the conservative view point, since it's the conservative viewpoint that is doing so well on FOX. A liberally bent news network would be better run, receive more favorable reviews, be more influential, and make more money than FNC. Imagine TDS and The Colbert Report times 24 hours. Why George Soros isn't all over this is beyond me. And don't give me "Air America". I don't know a single liberal who listens to political talk radio DURING THE DAY. Most of the time they're busy at their, ummmm, jobs. I can't think of an idea any worse than to try and counter the Repub's dominance of talk-radio. Most of us have advanced to more modern methods of communication, like TV or the internet.
All of the networks are like that, even FOX. Now, Fox "News" does in fact, deliver the "news" with a right-wing slant. But the point of that isn't nearly as much to further Rupert Murdoch's right-wing agenda as it is about making him extreme amounts of money. Murdoch is making a killing on a market where he is the only product - the market for the nightly news to be delivered exactly as the Dumb People wanted it to be, just so it made all of the pieces of the story they had been sold by FNC to the audience.
The Nightly News didn't make sense. I thought America was a place where nobody was above the law and we aren't supposed to be the people locking other people up without seeing a lawer or torturing, and yet here we are on the News doing it. FNC said, "Don't worry. We ARE the greatest country in the world. You see, the truth is, it doesn't matter if you lock people up without a warrant and torture them, because that's not really important. What's really important is that YOU are safe." That made the DP feel safe. That made their mental picture of the world fit the information coming into them. They report, and you decide...exactly what they want you to decide, and exactly what you wanted to decide the whole time.
But what they really wanted was they wanted their market to want to watch it. And all they have done is made the product that would be a monopoly in a huge market. How nobody else has stepped in to fill the void in the liberal end of that audience is beyond me. The possibility for an audience is tremendous. First of all, you have all of the pissed off liberals who have been forced to choose between FNC and a load of other news stations that were, in the glorious tradition of major corporations everywhere, trying to make a carbon copy of the product which was the most successful, rather than making the connection that, oh yeah, there is a mirror market which is currently UN-FUCKING-TAPPED. And it's not like there isn't proof the goddam thing would be a cash cow: for chrissake, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are only the two hottest goddam shows on TV right now. If you are under 40, you watch TDS and The Colbert Report, regardless of your political ideaology. And if you're a liberal, you don't miss an episode - you'll DL it if you have to.Comedy Central claims The Daily Show has a nightly audience of 1.7 million voters, whereas Bill O'Reilly has over 2 million. That seems like a win for O'Reilly, but when you factor in the fact that TDS originally airs at 11:00, which is too late for many people, who usually watch the show's rerun the next night at 8 or download the show off the internet, it's plain that TDS's audience is much bigger than O'Reilly's audience (and, it turns out, are more knowledgeable than O'Reilly's and better educated, too). Imagine a whole news network devoted to this the way FNC is devoted to the right.
The Conservative claim that the other networks are liberally bent is ludicrous, and especially now, that all the other networks are doing their FOX impressions. Watch the Daily Show - that is the news with a liberal bent. CNN is NOTHING like the Daily Show. Wolf Blitzer has been neutered a long time ago. The media has found a picture that sells well, and it does its best to sell that picture. And it sells whatever it thinks will sell best. Sometimes that means it delivers the liberal bent, but more often than not, it means the conservative view point, since it's the conservative viewpoint that is doing so well on FOX. A liberally bent news network would be better run, receive more favorable reviews, be more influential, and make more money than FNC. Imagine TDS and The Colbert Report times 24 hours. Why George Soros isn't all over this is beyond me. And don't give me "Air America". I don't know a single liberal who listens to political talk radio DURING THE DAY. Most of the time they're busy at their, ummmm, jobs. I can't think of an idea any worse than to try and counter the Repub's dominance of talk-radio. Most of us have advanced to more modern methods of communication, like TV or the internet.
posted by k - L - g at 4:47 AM
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