When the mainstream media became Pravda

The battle to keep the United States from becoming a fascist state was lost not at the ballot box but at the newsstand and in the network news. It probably all started when FCC regulations regarding media ownership were weakened or simply ignored starting during the Reagan administration. Now we have a corporate owned media that is more interested in power and profits than the truth and the news.

A recent example is that when Al Gore gave a speech on Martin Luther King's birthday on the Bush administrations unconstitutional power grab it was ignored, The New York Times, or under/misreported, The Washington Post. As we reported here this was reported by none other than noted conservative Paul Craig Roberts who praised the Gore speech in the same commentary.

The reporting on the recent story about illegal spying by the Bush administration is another example. Over at Media Matters for America Jamison Foser compared the coverage of the Lewinsky story and the domestic spying story in The New York Times and The Washington Post.

[Stories on Lewinsky by the Post]
That's a total of 11 articles, written by or using contributions from at least 20 reporters, and comprising 11,844 words dedicated to allegations that the president lied about a consensual relationship.

[Stories about domestic spying by the Post]
That's all. Three articles, eight reporters, 3,227 words -- and that's generously including the USA Patriot Act article in the tally.

He has a similar tally for the New York Times.

We also reported here that a group of conservatives, including none other than Grover Norquist, had demanded an investigation of the domestic spying issue. Foser points out that this was not mentioned by any of the leading media outlets. The comments of conservative constitutional scholars and nine Republican Senators who oppose the domestic spying received no coverage. Instead all of the coverage is about opposition by the "Democrats".

There is no need to discuss any further how the mainstream media was nothing but a mouth piece for the administration in the lead up to the war in Iraq. They published only what the administration told them and refused to investigate the administration's claims or give any print or air time to anyone who did. The only difference between the media in the United States and Pravda in the old Soviet Union was that the citizens of Russia knew everything in Pravda was a lie and the American people don't.

The worst offenders are the cable and broadcast news networks and with the exception of FOX they are failing. In an attempt to up their ratings CNN has been trying to outfox FOX and as Tim Goodman tells us in the San Fransisco Chronicle they are failing miserably.

These must be great days to work at Fox News. Not only does the 24-hour cable channel beat rival CNN like a sick, sad mule, but Roger Ailes is so deep in the heads of CNN's managers that every time they stumble over themselves in chaos -- which is often -- the chairman of Fox News looks like some kind of psyops genius.

If Ailes -- boo! -- isn't haunting the halls of CNN and driving CNN President Jonathan Klein batty with paranoia, then how else to explain Klein's relentlessly nonsensical decisions, which are driving CNN into the ground? What person rooted in reality looks at CNN and thinks, "Now there's a network on the rise"?

Well, apparently there's one person -- Klein.

If you watch CNN or Headline News with any regularity, then you know it won't be long before the Next Big Blunder. Perhaps that news crawl at the bottom of the screen will read: "We're Out of Ideas -- Try MSNBC."

And speaking of MSNBC: MSNBC ratchets up attack on Iraq war opponents, compares us all to Bin Laden

In a supposed effort to explain how he was "misunderstood" for yesterday comparing Osama bin Laden to Michael Moore, MSNBC's Chris Matthews joined MSNBC's Joe Scarborough in explaining to the American public tonight that Bin Laden is channeling ALL American liberals and ALL those who have a problem with how the war in Iraq is going, including specifically John Kerry, Ted Kennedy and Michael Moore.

Well Mr Matthews it sounds to me like you are channeling Karl Rove when you accuse the over 50% of the Americans who think the war was a mistake and that it's not going well. In this is in spite of the attempts by your network and all of the others to disseminate all of the WH happy spin.

To tell you the truth I think it's hopeless. The United States of America was lost to the dark side when the fourth estate defected.

Update
I have more over at Running Scared