Turning PBS into another propaganda tool

In an academic setting, that is exactly correct. In other settings (say the Bill O'Reilly show) it is almost never done and is certainly not required. Which applies to us here?

blatham wrote:

In an academic setting, that is exactly correct. In other settings (say the Bill O'Reilly show) it is almost never done and is certainly not required. Which applies to us here?

Since I'm always getting "hammered" by pseudo intellectuals (you excluded because I consider you to be the real article) I would say we should abide by academic rules..........

BTW......have you ever listened to OReilly? I don't think so.....your jaws would get too tight too quickly. However if you had listened, he reads his mail at the end of each show, an equal sprinkling of critical and supportive, and he is always bound by his guidelines to state a correction when warranted.

I don't swallow everything he says and sometimes I am forced to leave the room but generally speaking I tend to agree with most of his analysis.

You still tend to confuse the ethical standards of reporting vs news analysis. Keep thinking credibility as the foundation for any long term news analyst. Keep thinking code of ethic for any news reporter.

I have never seen someone contort themselves so much to avoid seeing a point.

Blatham

There is nothing that would please me more than to have a truly meaningful debate on what I consider to be an irresponsible Media Machine. Perhaps I can clarify some of my worries and you tell me if I am justified. I will list a few actions that I see in the media most every day which concern me the most:

1. The NYTimes, the LATimes, and the three major television networks have taken a position on war, any war that is purely idealistic in that any war should be waged in Defense only. This means that we must wait patiently until something like 9/11 happens before we can take any military action. To me this is similar to the domestic violence you read about every day----man beats wife and threatens to kill her.......wife gets restraining order........man stalks wife and kills her and takes the kids and or kills the kids also in some parking lot.
As in the idealistic war stance, the preemptive option has been taken off the table from the police so they can't do anything until after wife has been killed. This has been brought about by what I call the ACLU syndrome......if the police take any positive action they will be hounded into oblivion by the ACLU and the Liberal Press.......the ACLU, nor the Press are ever able to protect the wife from getting killed and this is a fact but yet the ACLU nor the press ever get blamed.....only the police take the blame. The same situation exists with preemptive military action......the press will hurl accusations that the Gov't is not doing enough to protect us but yet will howl about the Patriot Act stealing our freedom even though every instance is tested in court.

My point here is that the MSM becomes more entrenched every day instead of testing every major news item against the code of ethics to determine what harm will be done if it is printed..........they instead ask themselves what damage it will do to the administration.....any administration Dem or Repub......and if it will do great damage to the military or the administration they print it immediately without applying the truth test.......all they can see or care about is the headline effect. I never see any evidence that anyone in charge of a newsroom has ever read the Journalists Code of Ethics.

I will not list anymore until you tell me whether I am justified in this one allegation.

I hasten to add that as an ex military guy, I hate war and the senseless destruction it causes but since history tells us that there has always been war, I must take the fatalistic approach that until we are able to inject a drug into every person on the planet that will change human nature with all it's evil tendencies, we will always have war. If one accepts this premise and I think you must, then you must analyse the existing evidence that an enemy will attack or that a man will kill wife and take action to prevent the likely outcome even though if you take action the second guessers will come pouring out of the wordwork. Society will always have it's share of those who stand on the sidelines and takes sniper shots at those who are willing to take action, even if that action proves to be right. Perhaps the same drug that changes human nature will also force the naysayers to hold their tongues.

There was no point in seeking to convert the intellectuals. For intellectuals would never be converted and would anyway always yield to the stronger, and this will always be "the man in the street." Arguments must therefore be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology."

Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.

"The [leader's] aide said that guys like me [ie., reporters and commentators] were "in what we call the reality-based community,' which de desfined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."