Interesting analysis of the press by Froomkin: Good stuff. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/04/05/BL2006040501237_pf.html
In the interest of governmental transparency, a legislative act requiring execs to allow a certain amount of direct press time would not be a bad idea. Even more fun would be the judicial fallout of such an act.
Such a legislative act -- basically, demanding that one branch of government talk to the 4th estate -- strikes me as being unconstitutional. But, hey, you can dream. Or fantasize. Whichever.
What about "question time"? For starters, at least in the Senate, where the VP is supposed to be presiding? Each of the 100 senator gets to pose one written question weekly to the VP, which much be answered in 2 working days, either in writing or on the floor of the Senate. If this works, expand it to the House, only one question monthly from each of the 435 MCs.
The Chris Matthews skits on SNL are classic. The real Chris Matthews, much less so. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rachel-sklar/chris-matthews-to-delay-_b_18541.html "I Owe you one."
The media has become slowly but surely a joke. Everything is completely biased and has a twist, when it needs to be. Another thing is that since when the public allowed the news-cast, as a whole, to become so opinionated and always trying to exert the network's stance. Why should the networks have any stance at all -- doesn't `having a stance` take away from being unbiased and just reproting the news?
A joke? Heck, they aren't even funny. There is no such thing as the White House press pool. They are the White House stenography pool.
Woodward and Bernstein killed journalism How so you ask ? When they became the star, "journalism" became secondary The story is second to getting it out first, getting on CNN and then getting a book deal That and most reporters are folks who failed to make the step up from fry guy to mcnugget maker
So reporters are failed working-class stiffs and not the liberal intellectual elites that we've been told that they are?
yesssss, let's give corporate america the pass again oh, and fry guy... classic george, one would almost swear you were a satirical sockpuppet, designed to post insipidly - silly me, i thought most reporters got some sort of schooling
why? do they laughably insist on portraying the administration as unfairly maligned do-gooders? i see your point, that is retarded!
Stop trying so hard to be funny It's not working for you Funny comes easy. You can tell when it's forced
Corporate media, beholden to stockholders and a commodified frame on human events and their own activity harms democracy b/c democracy is predicated on a vital public life; when those trusted to sae guard and promote the vitality of that public life are beholden to corporate elites, public life wanes. When citizens abandon - or never know - their responsibilities as well as their rights, public life wanes...in large part because knowing your responsibilities as a citizen leads you to demand authentic, actionable information from your supposedly democratic media. Instead, because the meida is not beholden to citizens, actualized or no, but to corporations legally bound to maximize profit for shareholders, you get the stenography for power that the WH press corps is; you get the megaphone for power that corporate media is. Indeed, if this were North Korea, and the anchor cut to the reporter covering the President, and that reporter simply told you what s/he's heard, or been told, by the President's people, and then the coverage returned to the anchor, we'd decry that as unabashedly UNindependent media. What's the difference? When the Pentgon calls the invasion and occupation of Iraq OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM, that's one thing, and you understand why the Pentagon chooses the public neams of the operations that they do. But for the media to name their OWN coverage what the Pentagon calls it, as Goodman asked at the beginning of this war, if we had state media, how would it be any different? State and corporations working together to violate your very conception of democracy...the media, and what it does and does NOt do, is the clearest way to see that collusion take place. You havent' had mainstream "news" in longer than most of your lifetimes. You don't know who your representatives are, and you're not told how to engage them. You know about the Ravens, or about Aniston's or Holmes' or Jolie's pregnancies, but not what bills are on the floor of your representative legislatures. You are offered a assumptive, fdaily institutionalization of the current political parties, but rarely (unless it's to laugh at them) the framework not onl of othe factions, but of the weaknesses, democratically, of a first-past-the-post-system. You are inundated with commercials the airtime for which newscasts must sell which commodify and unitze you and your family/children, but are never offered a critique on such forms of ostensible "news." You have the ticker at the bottom of ESPN, but can't get the weather in ticker format on your local news...it's a tenminute segment bookmarked by commericals charged a higher rate - cause everybody's got to wait for the INSTA-WEATHER FORECAST - than other segments of the newscast...and you accept that it takes ten minutes to tell you about the weather tomorrow and during the week, a forecast that these experts get wrong 65% of the time...you accept that NOt knowing through your "news" about the bills that cannot get out of committee in yiour representative legislatures as okay, while endorsing the idea of a ten-minute sports segment that is essentially free PR for...corporatised sport cartels that hold communities hostage and get them to pay for stadia where the owners privatise the profit, and socialise the risk/cost... ...we...need...help... it begins with tearing down and stomping the dogshit out of these so-called "news" outlets. And starting over. What would news that sprung from, and worked to give the best information to, the people, look like? What would it do?
says the guy trying to tell everyone who is and who is not bright and btw, funny emanates from me as if it were a shining chuckle-filled beacon of freedom
See, you don't even know when you're getting what you think is "news" on your local whatever, and when you are not... Corporatised "news," "news" for profit, MUST DIE. We must kill it.
The small chance of persistant knocking by the perma-press is the reason 'Jeff Guckert' was planted in the back of the room (by whichever WH closet case was making ample use of guckerts day job - thets one way to ensure 'access') Only that which wont go away through constant publicity is a public Issue. (a different kind of 'issue' altogether, right Jeff?) Because of the consolidation of media championed by this regime there is not enough variety in media to ensure the public interest. The 'Liberal Media' we keep hearing about is a straw man. If Watergate happened today Nixon would get away with it. What I would like to see is a regular, Parlimentary style 'Question and answer' session in which Cabinet Members, on a rotating basis would publicaly face members of the oppositions Congressional Delagation. The President and Veep would be rotated in once every Month or so. Im sure serious correspondants would amply supply hardball questions once they had Wormtongue-anonynimity.
I am just amazed at the lack of enough interest in the subject matter. The media is shaping the events, not the other way around.
"If Watergate happened today Nixon would get away with it." Even worse-imagine Joe McCarthy today. And yes,I did watch "Good Night and Good Luck "this weekend.