Poor Bill Moyers Thought the Mainstream Press had Grown a Backbone

The great Bill Moyers wrote an article in Salon today lamenting the fact that he had initially praised CNN for announcing it was going to ban pathological liar Kellyanne Conway from appearances on the network, but then reversed itself within a day. I feel Bill’s pain, but like the Cowardly Lion, the sycophantic mainstream press still hasn’t found the wizard to give it the courage it needs.

The American mainstream press has been a propaganda arm of the government for a very long time (recall the virtually unanimous support for the disastrous Iraq war) the problem today is that the Trump team isn't playing by the old rules, and it's disrupting a once cozy relationship. Past administrations and presidents lied all the time, but it was done with civility and decorum that was acceptable to the networks, so it was okay. With Trump and his administration, there isn't that thin veneer of reasonableness to slide lies by unquestioning interviewers. The Trump buffoons are up in your face with lie after lie after, forcing the networks out of their comfort zones. As Moyers clearly points out, CNN and the others want badly to play along, to let the game continue has it has for decades, but Trump and his minions are far too dull-witted and ideologically zombified to understand the rules of the game. The mainstream media is being forced to fight back, not because it really wants to call out the administration's lies or it has some new-found zeal for exposing the truth. Panicked, CNN almost called a time out, but then decided it wasn't ready to call off the game.

The Morning After

Perhaps even more interesting than the Democratic debate itself is the reaction of the mainstream press on this morning after. The media has quickly declared Hillary Clinton the winner, but polls taken after the debate (CNN among others) indicate those watching it felt that Bernie Sanders won. What’s going on?

Let’s start with the obvious. CNN is owned by TBS, aka Time Warner who is Hillary’s seventh largest donor. In addition, Anderson Cooper, the debate moderator, works for the Clinton Initiative. Only six or seven mega-corporations own virtually all of the media and entertainment in America, and they are, of course, run by the 1%. Do you think they want a democratic socialist to sit in the Oval Office? Of course not.

One glaring example I came across this morning was on Yahoo’s landing page. There were three featured stories on the debates. None of these teasers included a photo of Sanders or mentioned Sanders in their leads. They all focused exclusively on Clinton, with one dual image of Clinton and Joe Biden, who wasn’t even in the debate. The mainstream media’s agenda couldn’t be any clearer than that.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe this country’s elites are stacking the deck against Sanders, and today’s reaction to the debate is living proof. America’s wealthiest citizens fear a Sander’s win, and for good reason. The question I and others have is how far will they go to keep him out of the White House?

Media authority bias on display in protest coverage

The mainstream media’s biases are on full display in an article about this weekend’s national protests against the grand jury decision in the Eric Garner case. This morning’s front page of CNN reports on the protests in Oakland and Berkeley California that became violent. Here’s the headline:

“Protesters flood California highway, throw explosives at officers, police say”

Right off the bat the players in this drama are typecast, protesters bad, police just doing their jobs. Then we get into the article, and for the first ten paragraphs, we are treated to reports from the police on what happened – explosives where thrown, officers suffered minor injuries, vandalizing police cars, and on and on. If you make it as far as the eleventh paragraph, you’ll find this:

“The acts of violence were apparent anomalies in a sea of protests nationwide…”

So CNN spent two-thirds of the first section of a front-page article describing a rare situation among the hundreds of protests around the country. How come? Oh, and then there is the fact that not one demonstrator was interviewed to counter the allegations made by the police. I read somewhere else (can’t remember where) that Berkeley protestors are claiming the police instigated the violence.

Aside from simply being sensationalist, the article is clearly from the perspective of the police or state, with little credence or regard for the people. To me it’s journalistic malfeasance bordering on propaganda to publish a story like this without presenting both sides of the issue.