PBS Newshour: TV, Radio Talkers Shaping Political Discourse in U.S.
By Heather Thursday Nov 05, 2009 12:00pm
From The Newshour with Jim Lehrer--TV, Radio Talkers Shaping Political Discourse in U.S. It was nice to see Thom Hartmann and Media Matters' Eric Burns featured in this segment. They both did a great job here.
GLENN BECK, Host, "Glenn Beck": If it wasn't for FOX or talk radio, we would be done as a republic.
JEFFREY BROWN: In a multimedia world of talk and more talk, the latest big talker is Glenn Beck, known for his folksiness and emotion, which sometimes spills over to tears...
GLENN BECK: I just love my country.
JEFFREY BROWN: ... and, most of all, for his over-the-top style and words, which, for many, push the limits of acceptable public rhetoric.
GLENN BECK: ... is that there are Marxist revolutionaries who have dedicated themselves to principles that will destroy our nation as we know it.
I'm saying he has a problem. He has a -- this guy is, I believe, a racist.
JEFFREY BROWN: Since moving from CNN Headline News to FOX last year, Beck has successfully built up his cable TV audience. He now reaches almost three million viewers with his 5:00 p.m. show, unseating FOX's Sean Hannity for the number-two spot, right behind the network's Bill O'Reilly. On radio, Beck's audience of nine million is second only to Rush Limbaugh.
All of these talk show hosts far exceed the numbers of their liberal counterparts. And, as the numbers grow, so has the attention in other media, and Beck's seeming influence on the national agenda.
Beck is a persistent critic of the president and his policies. Among much else, he helped rally opponents to show up and speak up at this summer's town hall meetings on health care, and led the way on exposing problems with ACORN, the community organizing group that ran into numerous public controversies.
ROGER HEDGECOCK, Radio America: I like Glenn Beck personally. And I like that his TV show, in that he is speaking truth to power. That's his attitude. He really is trying to overturn the apple carts.
We're not in favor of illegal alien amnesty.
JEFFREY BROWN: Roger Hedgecock is a nationally syndicated conservative talk show host carried on 100 stations through the Radio America network. He recently joined dozens of other talk show hosts to broadcast live from Capitol Hill, addressing their discontent with the Obama administration's immigration policies.
Beck and others, says Hedgecock, are giving the public something it otherwise doesn't get.
ROGER HEDGECOCK: I mean, where in the mainstream press are we actually getting investigative reporting of who's behind Barack Obama? What is -- who are the elements of his coalition? Why do so many of them appear to be self-avowed socialists and communists, in a way that suddenly we can't talk about without getting labeled, without having our advertisers attacked? This is fascism, in a way.
JEFFREY BROWN: That kind of rhetoric, says Thom Hartmann, a progressive radio host, is both uncivil and dangerous. Hartmann reaches 60 stations nationally on his daily show.
THOM HARTMANN, radio talk show host: There are some people who will use the excuse of it being show business to be very irresponsible and present things that are not news, things that are not fact as if they were fact.
I'm concerned that, in the United States, demagogues are -- are reaching out to people who are appropriately frightened and concerned about their economic situation, and telling them that the people they should blame are actually the people who are trying to help. You have got people standing in the streets, saying, well, you know, Glenn Beck told me that this is -- this is some evil plot.
MICHAEL HARRISON, editor and publisher, Talkers: Yelling, screaming, insulting, not always checking its facts. And I say, what else is new?
JEFFREY BROWN: Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, a leading industry trade publication, says that some historical perspective is necessary.
Advocacy and sharp opinion have had a place in American journalism from its beginnings, sometimes attracting huge audiences. Harrison points to the broadcasts of Father Charles Coughlin, whose hate-filled rants against Jews and others drew some 40 million listeners in the 1930s.
FATHER CHARLES COUGHLIN: So that the people would drive the money-changers from the temple, and you did it!
MICHAEL HARRISON: Radio, popular radio in America, all the way back to the '30s, has been a street medium. It's always been the medium of the street, reflecting populism.
So, what you hear on radio and what you're seeing now on cable news talk television, which is really an extension of talk radio, is just the First Amendment in action.
JEFFREY BROWN: In some ways, says Kathleen Hall Jamieson, who studies public rhetoric at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center, and often helps analyze it for us, today's sharp-edged talk does come with advantages.
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: To the extent that opinion talkers argue from one clear ideological point of view, they increase the likelihood that their listeners understand that ideology, are able to see politics through that ideology, and, as a result, that politics is coherent for them. That's important, because it increases engagement, and that's a positive effect.
JEFFREY BROWN: But, Jamieson says, it's engagement of a certain kind.
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: The downside occurs when this type of insulating discourse is used to tag the other side, the opposition, as more different than it actually is from the listener. It polarizes.
So, the audience becomes locked up in its own little ideological world. The rhetoric becomes more shrill, more strident. It becomes hysterical and hyperbolic. And then one's sense of that as appropriate discourse is something that one begins to feel. One think that it's appropriate to ridicule the other side, to demonize the other side. One stops calling it ridicule and demonization. One starts to think that that's how we talk politics.
JEFFREY BROWN: And, of course, there's the rub for many, if what we see and hear in the talk-fests is actually how we increasingly talk and do politics.
One response from a cable news heavyweight, CNN's Lou Dobbs: What's wrong with that? Dobbs, who's made himself a lightening rod for his oft- stated blasts against immigration policy, added a radio program to his portfolio last year, and has built an audience of 160 stations.
LOU DOBBS: That's one of the great things about talk radio, is that people, whether they're the talk show hosts, or whether they're the listeners, the callers, are speaking forthrightly.
And I think we need more of that, not less of it, in this country. We have now a body politic constrained by some sort of political correctness that seems to seek to control thought and expression. We need to break away from that. I don't mean to be profane and to be ugly in our speech, but we certainly need to be direct, and, yes, even salty.
JEFFREY BROWN: But Eric Burns of Media Matters, a liberal watchdog group, says the breaking away goes too far.
ERIC BURNS: That's one of the biggest problems that we see with folks like Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, and other personalities in the conservative movement, is they are regularly peddling conspiracies theories, lies, smear campaigns.
And this is -- these are provably wrong information that make its way into mainstream media, that makes its way into people's homes, into their living rooms, where they're turning on their television sets expecting to get news, and they're not getting news. They're getting propaganda.
JEFFREY BROWN: Another argument sometimes put forward is that all this talk, after all, is just a form of entertainment, and most of us know the difference.
GLENN BECK: But that's just me, you know, your typical white, hate-mongering bigot clinging to God and my guns.
JEFFREY BROWN: Glenn Beck has long worked as a stand-up comedian. He performed on a Common Sense Comedy Tour this summer while promoting his latest bestselling book.
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who regularly attacks media figures and politicians on the right, spent his early career doing sports.
The bottom line for these people, this argument goes, isn't politics; it's the bottom line.
MICHAEL HARRISON: One of the mistakes that political activists and political junkies and political media watching itself make is that they forget that Olbermann's job is not to get anyone elected or to get elected himself, nor is Beck's job to do that. Their job is to be in the news, to create controversy, to be entertaining, to draw audience, and to make money for their companies.
JEFFREY BROWN: Maybe so, but one area where the rise of talk may be having an influence is on blurring the line between opinion and traditional straight news reporting.
A recent poll by the Pew Research Center shows that the public's trust of news stories is at its lowest level in more than two decades.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson says, that's no accident.
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Opinion talk has actually helped precipitate the decline of mainstream media.
JEFFREY BROWN: Precipitate, not...
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: Precipitate...
JEFFREY BROWN: OK.
KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: ... and reinforce, because one of the arguments made in opinion talk on both the left and right is that you can't trust the mainstream; it distorts our points of view on our ideological side; it selectively uses evidence to disadvantage us; it uses a double standard.
And, as a result, if you pay attention to it -- and there really isn't much reason, given that it distorts -- you're less likely to trust it.
JEFFREY BROWN: A backlash of sorts may be under way.
The White House has signaled it's had enough, with Communications Director Anita Dunn recently calling FOX News -- quote -- "a wing of the Republican Party."
A number of companies have refused to advertise with Beck.
JOE SCARBOROUGH, MSNBC: We're going to have a conservatives' honor roll...
JEFFREY BROWN: And, in September, conservative MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough announced an honor roll for conservatives willing to denounce what he called Glenn Beck's hatred.
Still, Michael Harrison of Talkers magazine, embracing provocative speech, says there is one more point worth remembering: As today's media becomes more fragmented, programs appeal to smaller slices of the pie than in the days of three television networks, a handful of radio groups and city papers. That may, in the end, limit the larger influence of any particular talker, no matter how loud his or her voice appears to be.
MICHAEL HARRISON: We have these nationally famous people who really have much smaller audiences than the awareness of them would indicate or make you believe. What happens is, they -- they talk to their faithful in terms that the faithful expect and understand. They preach to the choir. And some of the things they say are repugnant to people who have other choirs.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, a nation of choirs. The question is, is it the beautiful music of democracy in action or the cacophony of destructive politics?
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"the latest big talker is Glenn Beck, known for his folksiness and emotion"
Only Americans would confuse folksiness with mental disease, retardation and naked self promotion.
The reason Beck loves America so much is that in any other civilized country, he would be in a padded cell with a 24/7 Thorazine drip.
ROGER HEDGECOCK, Radio America: I like Glenn Beck personally. And I like that his TV show, in that he is speaking truth to power. That's his attitude. He really is trying to overturn the apple carts.
I can't stand it; that's too funny.
the former San Diego Mayor and one time convicted felon (political corruption) saved by an appellate court reversal. Of course in Roger's mind his case was "justice triumphed," but when it happens to others its beating the system on a technicality. Just another crass, hypocritical opportunist. What AM time slot will Duke Cunningham get when he's paroled? You know it's coming.
Beck is about as insane as any republican I have ever met!
republicanism/conservatism is a mental illness that is killing America!!!!
I think that the point of the news story is that talk radio is a mental illness that is killing America.
The fact is that conservativism has its place. The government should stop persecuting people who grow marijuana. The government needs to stop trying to ban online poker. There are some subjects in which conservatism should be the way of doing things. The problem isn't conservatism, its NEO-conservatism.
Here's how I prefer to put it, by separating Ron Paul (and people who refer to Paul supporters as Paultards and fuck right off. he's not nearly as hypocritical as most politicians are and comes to debates with more facts that most politicians do. I disagree with what he says, but I will defend to the death his right to say it.) and, say, Michelle Bachmann.
A Ron Paul conservative says 'I want government to give me the power to do whatever I want'. A Michelle Bachmann conservative says 'I want government to give me the power to make YOU do whatever I want.'
So, Beck is from North Korea? Boo, hoo! He misses the Dear Leader! He's certainly trying to get rich by destroying ours.
that's taking Michael Savage-Weiner's dumb slogan and twisting it around. Extremism is a disease. Conservatism is an ideology with which to disagree.
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ABCNNBCBS&FOXPRAVDA
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PBS better be careful about who they talk about. I'm starting to smell another Gingrich "zero out" -
Public Broadcasting is the enemy of FOX fascists.
Great reporting by PBS. Wonderful explanation of constipation being the reason why I can't take a dump, without explaining what constipation is, why it may have happened and what I can do to get rid of it.
More journalistic non reporting.
when there is no explanation and it will not go away.
Dumbed down for the Fux crowd, without really dealing with the biggest problem (Fux), for people (Fux viewers) who'll never watch PBS.
In the Weimar Republic political parties, even moderate ones, were accompanied by their own private armies, their paramilitary wing. How far a leap is this to having a party with it's own propaganda network?
actually naming parties.
Weimar has nothing on these fascists that prefer control to labels. Labels are for your enemies.
I saw that story and it pissed me off.
One "historian" kept referring to it as a part of history, and the democratic process, and included Father Coughlin, like none of us know who he was.
No mention of what's happened since him like:
The Fairness Act from 1948-1980
The consolidation of the media to about 5 or 6 major corporations
AM radio is primarily talk shows, and the talk shows are primarily extreme-right
The infotainment where we're more likely to hear about Britney's poon that Britain's war casualties
There was no mention of the false equivalencies in the name of balance
And there was no mention of reporting the controversy, instead of unearthing the truth within the "controversy."
Exactly.
Father Coughlin was one of the reasons why we had the Fairness Doctrine.
..is what kind of coverage could you have to balance endless speculation about Britney's poon? Would it have something to do with Justin Timberlake's johnson? I don't think that kind of media would be much of an improvement, frankly.
I'd see a vast improvement talking about JT's dick in a box vs. BS's box!
Keep the masses dumbed down and distracted. Meanwhile . . .
...............right?
In Rome they feared the mob. In America, not so much. XE is waiting in the wings. And there are those Halliburton camps already built.
The attack on Democracy goes back to before the first World War. After the war, Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud was central in its development.
by Adam Curtis here
• This is also treated in the work of the late (d 1988) Australian sociologist Alex Carey
Part 1 - history through WWII
Part 2 - history after WWII
Mariah Gilardian at TUC radio (user supported) here, produced the clips.
•The documentary on Chomsky (Thought Control in a Democratic Society) Manufacturing Consent here
•The Ad and the Ego here
•George Orwell's 1984, where the purpose of Newspeak is to make political discourse impossible.
•The documentary Orwell Rolls in His Grave here
Download here
•Stuart Ewen here
•The Corporation here
•John Pilger The War on Democracy here
•John Pilger Obama and Empire here
http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/remember....
"Metal presses began to appear late in the 18th century, at about which time the advantages of the cylinder were first perceived and the application of steam power was considered. By the mid-19th century, Richard M. Hoe of New York had perfected a power-driven cylinder press...
"A significant innovation of the late 19th century was the offset press (see offset printing), in which the printing (blanket) cylinder runs continuously in one direction while paper is impressed against it by an impression cylinder. Such presses are especially valuable for colour printing and can print up to six colours in one run.
Apart from the introduction of electric power, advances in press design between 1900 and the 1950s consisted of a great number of relatively minor mechanical modifications designed to improve the speed of the operation." (Encyclopedia Britannica online).
Additionally during World War II, there was a newsprint shortage leading to the use of coarser paper having to be used during the remainder of the war.
So there really was no concerted effort to propagandize society so much as taking full advantage of technological improvements, and the desire to control the raw materials within the course of competitive busienss practices (short of vertical monopolies), and garner the larger advertising revenue. Ads increasingly became more important than the actual content. In fact, right before WWII it wasn't unusual for a medium to large size town have five daily papers, all in competition with pme another.
However, the attack on net neutrality as we know it seems suspicious.
Your mind is rotted from all of the mindless videos that you watch.
That's not a refutation
And even beneath me
I'm not so sure with you.
Watch the links that I provided but don't bother getting back with me because I have had it with you.
You need to study history to go with your economics, because you keep making flat statements that are demonstrably false, however if nuanced would be non-controversial.
I even left it open for you to counter that the time frame in print was roughly only 20 years older than the period you were referring to, and not including the electronic media.
But something has changed in the last 30 years (not 90), with newspapers getting rid of the last of their competitors, the growth of one newspaper towns, now soon possibly no newspaper towns, the flourishing of cable television, and new electronic media outlets, the above referenced dropping of the Fairness Act, and the centralization that has happened since the Telecommunications Acts of the 1980's and 1990's.
But instead you resort to a republican style tactics, by not addressing the issue, and engage in childish insulting.
The links I provided are by well regarded intellects. Not the least of which is Chomsky.
You should study them. You make a response without so much as viewing or listening to them.
That is disingenuous.
Your assertion that there is no such thing as corporate propaganda is utterly absurd.
It is about power and who has it. The corporations have it, they want to increase it. The masses only have power through their own concerted actions.
Unions and government are the means to turn back the power of the corporations.
If the powerful can no longer resort to violence, then they resort to subterfuge and to propaganda.
The corporations suppress the masses by causing them to act in ways contrary to their own best interest, even diametrically contrary. This is best observed in the development of the erroneous belief that they, the powerless, best thrive through individualism. That they, the powerless, suffer, rather than benefit, from concerted action such as organizing unions, or forming governments.
The message that unions by definition, are bad, that government, by definition is bad. This is the object of corporate propaganda, to destroy those institutions which could resist their power.
The points you bring up are subsets of the larger picture, which is the overall mission of corporate propaganda.
I am not making the assertion that corporations are monolithic, or that there is some singular cabal at work, but rather that they understand the general principles of their mutual interest.
Consider Walter Lippmann and Public Opinion from 1922.
For my multitude of informational links you have provided nothing less than multitude of links to mindless videos.
That isn't just childish, it is the work of a jackass.
Chirp chirp chirp
If you're representative of the books you read, I would recommend no one read them.
"Don't interrupt me boy, when I'm preachin' at ye."
You're already on my ignore list.
Excellent. Keep me on your ignore list so you won't be tempted to send any more of your asinine links my way.
Jackass.
Your sound way too like the pathetic recent born-agains on the bus arguing loudly over who's closer to Jesus.
There are NO ultimate solutions to anything, any more than there is ultimate Truth or ultimate definitions of God. Economics is not a hard and fast science with their theories and laws, but only have models, most of which fall apart outside the classroom, because in the former locale the models are static, whilst in the latter locale it's dynamic.
Remember, there were economic "experts" in the Chicago School too.
A good simile would be rush hour traffic. There's no one hand really directing it, and competing drivers will get in each other's way for half-an-inch, but ultimately no one is getting any where any faster.
for 10 oe 15 years, for all the good it does.
Btw: You left off Jacques Ellul's Propagandas: The formation of men's attitudes and Boorstin's "The Image: A Guide To Pseudo-Events." Neither can or should be overlooked.
Thank you, I never supposed that the list was finished.
we don't need those lefties, drinking their lattes
we don't need no 10 speed bikes to be along our way
jus' gimme a truck that's big and git's me where I need to be
and a chainsaw to cut down them damn trees bundle of trees
and a six pack to wash away my sins
If it was just intense, emotional talk, it wouldn't be a problem, but they lying, and making fools of so many is really really sad. Sad for our democracy. That things like torture, spying on our own citizens, starting illegal wars of invasion, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings are NOT a problem with Beckites, but Universal Healthcare is, a particlar good example of how mentally pliable people can be. The sheeple at the "teabagger protests" were astonishingly mindless, obviously been yanked into it, without any real understanding of what tyranny is. Torture=good. Healthcare=bad.
why do you still have over 80 people in G. bay cuba?
why are you sending MORE troops to afghanistan?
why didnt the new administration drop the wire tapping and private intrusions on US citizens like a certain guy said he would when he came into office? why do they still need it?
see this is the problem with you guys on the left and right. its bad when the party you dont like does it but its ok for your party to do it. do you see an issue with that?
whomever you were that I meant to post this as a reply to but hit the wrong button. At least I respect your god given internet right to anonymity.
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has his stubby fingerprints all over it.
He was a leading strategist in the unsuccessful White House efforts to institute universal healthcare and many other Clinton initiatives.[20]
sandwich makers in his youth you and I might be enjoying lower medical bills and still able to admit watching television.
never will match the ratings of right wing hawkers. By and large left wingers are more intelligent and better informed and do not need to tune into some ignoramus to be told what to think this week.
comparative failure of liberal talk vs. conservative talk.
I tend to think conservatives are tuning in not for what to think, but who to hate this week. Who to blame for their unhappiness.
Liberals are looking for information, not inflammation. They have the innate advantage of being able to get that by reading.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rahm_Emanue...
has had less impact on his grip than his eyesight.
a story about himself.
Yes, we liberals have the rare elitist reading gene but I think it might be rude to brag about it in public.
All my conservative friends know it is a choice.
You mean I wasn't born his way but maybe some time in my teen years I chose to read for information? Since I was a little kid, I loved to read. Sure, some in my family said it was just a phase and I should try to grow out of it but I felt it in my heart that it was right for me.
not to make, preferring to leave such decisions to their spiritual/financial betters?
yeah, that makes sense...
has been destroyed the last 20 years, since reagan killed the fairness doctrine.
by the time the left reacts the right has done all the framing, so the left can only react. by ignoring the right wing talk radio monopoly the left has been playing politics without a front line, and never knew it. still doesn't, even though obama has made 3 references to the importance of talk radio that i know of this year. still, few get his back there.
That happened to Paul Krugman on a TV show.
monica crowley was spouting some unsupported bullshit that FDR made the Depression worse. Krugman doesn't speak without research, and wrote later that the only time the economy really soured under FDR was when he listened to the republicans in 1937 about deficit cutting, and cut back on his social programs.
But by then it was too late, crowley's comments were in the ether with other reichwing pundits quoting it.
Rush is popular in large part because ClearChannel assures his show is broadcast nationwide and in many areas is the only game in town.
AirAmerica was actively blacklisted.
and boycott and call the local sponsors of those stations- most are just looking for the loudest station in the state and still think of the limbaughs and hannitys as entertainers. soon as they get a few calls asking them why they sponsor hatemongering liars and ignorant global warming deniers in their communities they'll start looking for alternatives.
Require that all pundits have at least a college degree as evidence that they have some idea of what they are talking about. Such a rule would put Hannity, Limbaugh and Beck off the air, as none got beyond his freshman year of college before flunking and/or dropping out before they flunked out.
in Congress lately?
The difference between left and right wing media is the left wing assumes the people who listen to it have some degree of intelligence and can understand what is told to them. The right wing assumes those who listen to them are too stupid or lazy to think, so they invoke knee jerk reactions through lies and fear mongering.
If PBS had started their discussion with my premise, their panel might have been interesting.
May 2008, Jerry Springer delivered the Northwestern University School of Law commencement address and got standing ovations.
but many of the chubby girls fighting over a flabby philanderer on Jerry's show are fairly conversant in the profitability of botique practices in intellectual property law.
..made a case for not bashing the degree-less and how they've won over the big numbers in audience so they should be listened to. Of course he was talking about beck, limbaugh & hannity, all of whom don't have degrees from college (and I often wonder whether they have birth certificates as well). I openly laughed!
listen to this guy for a few minutes and that's about all I can stand. He is quite good at controlling the conversation with his callers. When he gets challenging opinions, he goes right to break and you never hear from the caller again.
That is one of the first coherent, completely agreeable things I have heard come out of Lou Dobbs' mouth. I do agree that there is a place for people like Glenn Beck on our airwaves. I am concerned that due to the nature of community involvement and public participation on the left, progressives and moderates (and sane people) have now been left behind when it comes to getting their messages (which are certainly worthy) out there.
Every time Sarah Palin twitters, an angel loses its wings.
And don't want to speculate.....but there's been a mass shooting on the base at Ft. Hood, Texas....15 shot, 7 dead.
Again, no speculation.
Until Beck and O'Reilly, Dobbs get a hold of it.
Predicts Obama will be blamed.
A: At least the cable news helicopters cannot hover over the scene if it's on base.
B: That part of Central Texas has been missing the TV satellite trucks ever since the Bushes abandoned the brush farm.
I doubt press helicopters would be allowed to fly over.
But repetition is on thread since we are talking about right wing talk shows.
you were just referring to lack of large scale press outlets in the area.
Sorry.
Home of the Little Joe, Johnny y La Familia Museum
tambien.
..a right wing zealot with a gun and issues now could it?
Why did he shoot up an Army base?
Cuz' he had issues and guns but he was such a quiet neighbor.
Yep, can hear it all now and my sympathies go out to the families of the dead and injured. Its bad enough that our soldiers have to go to fight and possibly die on the field of battle but for this to have happened..unconscionable.
You just don't turn the kind of rage--that kind that lets you slaughter innocent people for the 'mission' but still look yourself in the eye when you shave--on and off like a switch...
Must be Bachmann supporters.
More and more shades of VietNam and its consequences.
it's Mexican Cartels, terrorists or right-wingers.
Hood is right down there on the border, though, almost right across from juarez, one of the bloodiest scenes of the mexican cartel wars...
and the troops, iirc, had been involved in border patrol/interdiction work...
could be...
The barbarians pecking at the frontiers of the Empire is never a good sign...
Since Waco, where Fort Hood is, is in Central Texas, that's a tad bit far from the border. Please consult your atlas.
as Ft. Hood. Of course, Ft. Hood is bigger than many of your eastern provinces with two Senators.
And Liberalicious, try getting out of Houston. Waco is home to the Dr. Pepper Museum and the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame. the ashes of Mt. Carmel are nearby. Ft. Hood is more your Killeen/Copperas Cove/Harker Heights Metroplex. Center of the Texas Payday Loan industry.
n/t
Progressive/left-wing talk radio and television will never have the ratings as right-wing talk radio and television have. By our nature as liberals we are free-thinking and open-minded and don't need the constant reinforcement of our views 24/7 & 365 as the right-wing does.
us on our favorite blog commentary threads.
So true!
and consideration as "weakness" or "unmanlyness" either.
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So true! I think we sometimes also assume mankind is just as free-thinking and open-minded as we are and get burned sometimes, but hey it's our nature.
Another point that you might think about is in today's consolidated, corporate, media world, progressive/left-wing talk is 180 degrees opposite of the opinion and narrative being presented by 99% of the sponsers and media corporations that present talk radio. In the piece they claim that Beck has an audiance of, if I remember right of a bout 8 million on his radio show. What they didn't say is that he is on somwhere between 3000 and 4000 stations. Thom Hartmann on the other hand is on 60 stations and where he is head to head with Limbaugh or Beck he or Ed Shultz are equal or beat them in audiance share. What they do not get is the high priced sponsers that flock to the right wing shows. The right wing noise machine is mega huge and self sastaining.
don't believe the rw bullshit about progressive radio not competing- they have a well protected monopoly developed and subsidized over 20 yrs- progressives like thom hartman, randi rhodes have beaten limbaugh and sons on even terms. there are blue areas of the country dominated by RW radio with NO progressive radio. and in a country that voted overwhelmingly for obama, doesn't it seem weird 90% of talk radio is RW?
the ratings are baseless- if there was any fact checking going on the RW media machine couldn't survive except as specialized outlets.
PBS is broadcasting more propaganda about the propaganda that is being broadcast. Like YS said, why not tell the whole story without defending the propaganda.
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Actually I got much of my information from Bill Moyer's Journal on PBS,
Not counting textbooks, periodical articles too numerous to remember or count.
7 killed and more wounded in an attack by at least two or three gunmen.
Story
And paranoia.
n/t
or his fingers off so he/she can't keep us informed by keyboard.
And of course, they have to put the "potential terrorist attack" label on it.
needs a reason to forcefully "take away our guns" from the "folks".
Kay Bailey Hutchinson (sp?) was just interviewed on Fox. A report says the FBI are on the way to Ft Hood to investigate this. Kay Bailey said she doesn't know why the FBI should be involved, the base is equipped to handle matters like this. She also said never before has the FBI been called to a base to deal with something like this.
I'm guessing if the FBI was not on the way, Kay Bailey would be asking why they weren't.
Capabilities at Fort Hood? Nuclear Air Wing? Nuclear Ground Support? Storage? Research?
Kaye Bailey is a jackass. She's been briefed. If I DID speculate...it's domestic terrorist right wing nuts, so she is building her CYA story so as not to piss off her radical fundamentalist wingnut supporters.
the FBI has never been called to deal with something like this. Could it be that we never had something like this happen before until we had all of the right wing propaganda shows advocating hate. As far as I know, nothing like this has ever happened on one of our bases located in the states before.
to the success of these creatures.
Popularity and ratings are directly related to how wide you can stretch open your shameless yapper,there by allowing a larger volume of undiluted cynical hatred and lies to gush forth.
After 8 years of Republican corruption,these slime molds feel that 1 year of a badly obstructed and handicapped Obama government is quite enough,regardless of the millions upon millions of folks whose majority votes and values are being forfeited.
$10 $15 $20 Million packages . .
Sheesh
for 8 years.
decided who was going to be Preznit.
Yet this little turd would have you believe the end of the
Republic is at hand because Democrats are attempting to introduce a more humane way to deliver health care.
Bombastic Beck.
the commies have taken over the country.
limbaugh and hannity and sons blanket the country is that the GOP bought up all the loudest stations, keep the competition from getting a foothold, they were heavily subsidized, limbaugh's show was given away, and most of all- they have call screeners to make sure they never have to be embarrassed by real calls.
hedgecock???? what a crook he's been here in san diego... real valid opinion? - i think not n/t
Glen Beck is just another Fox comedy show. Be funny if his red phone would ring, I'd like see his face then.
The good news is that Rush Hannity has been bumped out of the number 2 position, ratings-wise.
The bad news is that Beck is the one who took his place.
Kind of like being told by the doctor, "Hey, you don't have a brain tumor after all! But, unfortunately, you do have pancreatic cancer."
..once the wheels come off, hannity will be back on top continuing his brand of bs. And what of oreilly?
Hedgecock, EX mayor of San Diego. Owned and operated by the Alessio (mob) family of San Diego. Drowned in scandal( should legitimately be in prison to this day), is talking good about Beck? That should let you know when Beck says he's a (paraphrase) a "white, hate mongoring bigot and racist", then you're getting slapped in the face and called "stupid" because you listen to both of these mooks. Send Beck to Donovan or Quentin for a show( it's close to San Diego). He'll feel at home...Boo,hoo!
glenn Beck - intellectual chump
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MHEuudJ-o0&fe...
I'm concerned that, in the United States, demagogues are -- are reaching out to people who are appropriately frightened and concerned about their economic situation, and telling them that the people they should blame are actually the people who are trying to help. You have got people standing in the streets, saying, well, you know, Glenn Beck told me that this is -- this is some evil plot.
im sorry but are we going ot shut up michael moore and the like when we shut down the glen becks and right wingers? be serious here for a minute and think that the left in america is as bad as the right, if not in some ways more.
when the country is trying to pass a health care plan that 90% of democrats support and 95% of republicans oppose it..... you got more problems than talk shows guys. you got blind idiots clinging to party line frat boy type group brainstorming that is shaping regulations for 300 million people. if that dont scare you then you are an idiot.
when i was born it was the time of the USSR and the US was trying there best to build a world against us. now you are embracing the very same things you danced in the street for when it was abolished in my country. SOCIALISTIC VALUES !!!! health care gov. run.... car industry gov. run...... banking industry gov. run.... ummm........??????? funny what 20 years changed. even funnier, many of the very things that helped break the USSR you are embracing as a country and wanting. good luck with that socialisism thing guys cause it didnt work for us.
[Deleted. Totally rude-Sitemonitor]
because if you are you have me mistaked with someone else. and if you dont like what i have to say you are in denial. even more, im sorry for my bad spelling but english isnt my first language (im sure its your only language)..
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i would suggest you use something other than an online translator because of the word confusion ;-)
Quack quack
Thu, 11/05/2009 - 14:02 — tatar
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Reminds me of the Count and Van Helsing trading Moldavian insults in Dracula Dead and Loving It.
it is and still is a bedwetter and I'll continue to call it one.
again i ask you to respond to my intial posting. refrain from the verbal attack if you lack an ability to formulate ideas.
if what i say bothers you then you should ask yourself why it does first.
tatar is on your ignore list.
Quack quack
Fill your diapers elsewhere.
I repeat, It’s the cacophony of destructive politics!
That problem with the system I'm seeing banners on, what's that about?
Depending on which PC I'm on it's making the print so tiny, proofreading becomes almost impossible.
So, what you hear on radio and what you're seeing now on cable news talk television, which is really an extension of talk radio, is just the First Amendment in action.
the MSM reads and watches so it has analyzed and punditized for 20 years as if limbaugh and hannity and sons were invisible while they hide behind call screeners and an anti free market monopoly to take daily shots at progressive reps and causes, uncontested.
obama put the GOP in dithers by naming rush head of the party, doing what clinton, gore and kerry should have done a long time ago. we might be seeing residual from that now but for a while the MSM treated the GOP operatives as if they had a rushbo tatoo on their foreheads. but the left dropped the ball. then at his health care speech obama named talk radio and cable TV, respectively
so to continue, shortened, obama is asking us to get his back with these 1000 radio stations that take pothsots all day at anything progressive- it is massive country wide coordinated uncontested repetition and it makes real democracy impossible.
the left will keep playing politics without a front line until it pickets those local right wing radio stations and boycotts their local sponsors. most of those sponsors are just trying to get on the loudest stations in the state and will look for alternatives when they get a few calls from people who ask why they would sponsor all the hatemongering and lies and idiotic and dangerous global warming denial.
Why the hell is Eric Burns described as "a liberal media watchdog"?
He's just telling the fucking truth.
where the flow of comment and ideas is a two way street? Why is virtually every site devoted to science a left leaning if not overwhelmingly left in point of view? For that matter why do most scientists take that point of view? Talk radio is largely a passive media for passive minds where such outside opinion as is allowed is carefully screened for concurrence. How do the educational backgrounds of the audiences compare? No this isn't self serving. It is merely the truth. Most of talk radio hosts like Beck and Limbaugh appeal to exactly the same intellectual level as Jerry Springer with the added overtones of fascism and racism. If you want confirmation look at the ads that pay their bills. Many of them are just cons for the gullible. Marketers know their target market.
I was disgusted by the "even-handedness" of this reporting. Kathleen Hall-Jamison never seems to take a stand - I guess she doesn't want to risk offending donors. And the only example they could come up with on the left to counter Beck and Limbaugh was Keith Olbermann. I'm sorry, but I think Olbermann is a much-more-serious person than was stated here.
Are media types ever going to admit that rabble-rousing discourse is, in present-day America, primarily a problem on the right.
PBS Newshour: TV, Radio Talkers Shaping Political Discourse in U.S.
In other news: Water is wet and fire is hot!!!!!
cacophony of destructive politics: 1, "beautiful music" (Rofl) of "democracy in action" (Rofl.): 0
A peculiar feature of Egalitarians is that they share with Statists a tendency toward Jeremy Bentham's Utilitarianism, and his summum bonum of serving the greatest or supreme good.
Yes far better to be serving the love for the elite good ... but in a platonic way of course.
Snerd
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