Showing posts with label Media Concentraton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Media Concentraton. Show all posts

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Fear & Loathing! Ominous Music Heard Throughout U.S. Sends Nation Into Panic

Fear due to Advertising, and Loathing due to 'Newsproduct'

...or is that the OTHER way around?

Either way... Be Afraid.... Be VERY afraid!


Ominous Music Heard Throughout U.S. Sends Nation Into Panic
H/t Minstrel Boy

Monday, August 24, 2009

Iraq: The Incredible Shrinking (News) Story... Interactively Charting a 92% Drop In Reporting From 2007-2009



I quote myself, from June 30 2009, Iraq's "Sovereignty Day":
Iraq is KIND OF for Iraqis - Technically US troops are OUT of Iraq's cities (On a more circumspect note, when searched, Google said "Did you mean to search for: US troops are OUT of Iran's cities") today, however US Troops WILL remain in and around the cities of Iraq on 'standby' until 'requested' by Iraqi commanders.

Expect those incidents to be un-reported to the US press
, who will most likely NOT be present in any manner where they could physically observe US troop movements themselves, or for that matter be aware of ANY activity by the 132,000 'contractors' (cf. mercenaries) remaining in Iraq. In Da' Buffalo's opinion, the dirtiest part of the Iraq war is just beginning... under the radar, and without press observation, even as the US appears to be withdrawing. [Source]
More today on that suppression of factual information:
Man who sold Iraq war now vetting embedded journos

"A public relations firm that organized the opposition to Saddam Hussein during the 1990s and “coerced” journalists during the run-up to the Iraq war is now vetting at least some embedded journalists in war zones to keep out those who have a history of writing negative stories about the US military, a new report claims."

“Any reporter seeking to embed with US forces is subject to a background profile by The Rendon Group..."
H/t: Minstrel Boy
Rendon Group is the organization that staged the Saddam Hussein statue 'pulldown' in a nearly vacant Firdoz Square during the first days of our occupation of Baghdad, and supplied the flags Kuwaitis waved at us when we 'liberated' their country after Iraq's invasion over a territorial violation later to be found factual, Kuwait's 'slant drilling' into the neutral zone between their land and Iraq.
More on Rendon Group HERE

(Click the image for the interactive, customizable version of this graph, courtesy of The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism)

The sidebar copy:
92% - Drop in Iraq coverage from the beginning of 2007 to the middle of 2009

June 30 was declared “National Sovereignty Day” in Iraq as U.S. soldiers pulled out from cities there. The date marked a major milestone in the six-year war, and for the week of June 29-July 5, 2009, events inside Iraq filled 5.6% of the newshole, the highest level of media attention to that subject this year. The situation inside Iraq is one aspect of the war that PEJ tracks along with the Iraq policy debate and the impact of the war on the U.S. home front. When all three Iraq threads are combined, the story filled 6.6% of the newshole from June 29-July 5.

Yet last week’s jump in coverage runs counter to a long and clear trend. Media attention to the war has declined dramatically since the News Coverage Index began measuring it back in January 2007. In the first quarter of that year, with Congress and President Bush locked in a battle for control of Iraq policy, the war was the top story, accounting for 22.3% of the newshole. By the second quarter of 2009 (which runs through July 5), it had declined by more than 90%—to only 1.7% of the newshole.

Coverage of the war has steadily dropped as the domestic debate over Iraq policy abated, the violence in that country diminished and the U.S. de-escalated its role in the past few years. For all of 2007, the three Iraq storylines filled 15.5% of the newshole, with the bulk of attention focused on the Washington war debate. (This thread filled 7.8% of the overall newshole). In 2008, Iraq coverage plummeted to only 3.6% of the overall newshole, with the biggest component (2.1%) focused on events within Iraq. In the first half of 2009, attention to Iraq fell even further, to just 2% of the newshole, with slightly more than half of that (1.1%) devoted to the events inside Iraq.

Tricia Sartor and Dana Page of PEJ

Note: *Q2 2009 runs through July 5, 2009 for this report

Date Posted: July 9, 2009 Source, Pew Center


Sunday, February 22, 2009

Lied To Again - Iranian Uranium Edition

Liberally excerpted from Juan Cole's Informed Comment: IAEA Inspectors: Iran not Producing Weapons-grade Uranium and a follow up comment at another posting.

(For a complete trip down the "Orwellian memory hole", watch Norman Solomon's War Made Easy: How Presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death. Narrated by Sean Penn.
Torrents are probably available [Here]
).

Also see: How To Sell a War, A writeup on the Rendon Group, the folks who brought you the Firdoz Square, Iraq "Saddam Statue 'Teardown'", for more on how the media has a hold on your 'Believe Button', versus what is real and truthful.
Sunday, February 22, 2009

IAEA Inspectors: Iran not Producing Weapons-grade Uranium

As I mentioned yesterday, Iran is not producing weapon-grade uranium, and could not easily do so without detection. The Hindu, which despite its name is left of center (and which is one of India's finest newspapers) writes:
' Iran has not converted the low-grade uranium that it has produced into weapon-grade uranium, inspectors belonging to the International Atomic Energy Agency have said.

The Austrian Press Agency quoted an IAEA expert as saying that the uranium substances that Iran has produced at its Natanz enrichment facility have been carefully recorded and remote cameras have been installed to supervise part of the stockpile.

“If the Iranians intend to transport these uranium substances to a secret location for further processing, agency’s inspectors will find out,” he said.

The expert added that “so far, Iran has carried out good cooperation with us in relevant verifications”.

IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei has said that Iran has slowed down its uranium enrichment programme.'

US newspapers are complaining that they are losing money and may not survive. After they put all sorts of falsehoods about Iraq on their front pages, it may be that they fatally wounded their credibility with the US public. In any case, the above report does not show up anywhere on the web or in Lexis that I can find, except here in The Hindu, which tells me that someone is not doing their job.

(See also Dr. Jeffrey Lewis).

So... HOW IS the Western media 'reporting' on this?
(and I AM using the term 'reporting' rather loosely here...)

Anonymous said...

I don’t think it is entirely correct to say that there has been no press response to the IAEC report. Consider the following headlines:

Iran holds enough uranium for bomb
Financial Times 19 Feb 09

Iran has enriched enough uranium to make bomb, IAEA says
Guardian 19 Feb 09

Iran Has More Enriched Uranium Than Thought
NYT 19 Feb 09

(A Buffalo favorite... RFE/RL makes it sound like a 'sport')
"New IAEA Report Shows Iran Nearing Nuclear Breakout Capability
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty 20 Feb 09

Clearly there is a difference in slant between the Hindu article and those listed above.



Saturday, May 10, 2008

How-To Guide: Hoodwinking Voters - Part I - The Disinformation Age

"The League of Women Voters is withdrawing sponsorship of the presidential debates...because the demands of the two campaign organizations would perpetrate a fraud on the American voter. It has become clear to us that the candidates' organizations aim to add debates to their list of campaign-trail charades devoid of substance, spontaneity and answers to tough questions. The League has no intention of becoming an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public." - October 2, 1988, LWV trustees statement, issued by unanimous vote.
The Disinformation Age - Part I

By Carlton Meyer

Sep/12/2008


A common computer adage is “garbage-in, garbage-out”; i.e. putting bad data in a computer produces bad information. This same rule applies to humans. It doesn’t matter if people are educated, intelligent, and logical. They will make bad choices if fed bad information. This happens frequently in American elections because voters are misled by a continual flow of disinformation. Ask any American which country provides the world’s best health care. Very few can provide an informed guess, yet most will exclaim that the United States has the best health care system. This is far from the truth, yet years of corporate advertising, corporate sponsored news programs, and speeches from corporate sponsored politicians have spread this disinformation. Even educated elderly people will parrot the line that socialized medicine doesn’t work, although they eagerly use the government’s Medicare program.

A frequent example occurs when seemingly intelligent Americans state that the media is "left-wing," as though CBS and CNN are run by hippies living in a flophouse.

The American media is owned and controlled by billionaires, who have many other corporate interests. They have little concern for working Americans. This should be obvious, yet these billionaires hire television and radio commentators to complain the media is "left-wing." It is in their interest to keep viewers ignorant and distracted by threats, like terrorists and liberals. American writer H. L. Mencken recognized this decades ago when he wrote: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."[1]

This problem worsened as the American news media no longer attempts to report facts that disturb viewers in order to boost their ratings. Fox News leads the way by hiring young models to deliver happy news or titillating stories about missing children. Walter Cronkite often notes that there are no anchormen anymore, just news readers.

Those attractive faces on television do not write or even edit news stories like he did. They read teleprompter news written by people who are part of network entertainment divisions.News is designed to entertain Americans, not to inform them...


In Full @ WarandPeace.Ru (Was: Sanders Research, dead link)