Musburger1
2,500+ Posts
The excerpt below was take from this lengthy NYTimes article (link). The article was about Obama's chief spin operative, Ben Rhodes.
The job he was hired to do, namely to help the president of the United States communicate with the public, was changing in equally significant ways, thanks to the impact of digital technologies that people in Washington were just beginning to wrap their minds around. It is hard for many to absorb the true magnitude of the change in the news business — 40 percent of newspaper-industry professionals have lost their jobs over the past decade — in part because readers can absorb all the news they want from social-media platforms like Facebook, which are valued in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars and pay nothing for the “content” they provide to their readers. You have to have skin in the game — to be in the news business, or depend in a life-or-death way on its products — to understand the radical and qualitative ways in which words that appear in familiar typefaces have changed. Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
The quote at the end of the excerpt is telling. It summarizes the fact that the the press no longer possess the ability to investigate and corroborate important stories. Or nearly so. That is, Washington can say whatever they won't and it will be reported that way because the government is the sole source and the press has no alternative but take its word and report what they are told. The citizens can be misled and misinformed which arguably is worse than not being informed at all.
Important: Please visit the link below.
Here's another link to an excellent oped by Republican Senator Ben Sasse in reference to the article. It's short, so go ahead and read it. (link.)
Its a great piece. But Ben's a little late to the party. What he is talking about isn't unique to the Obama administration. But his message is good and its about time the public wises up. The editorial is short and gives you a framework for why the NY Times article linked above is important.
I titled the thread systemic deception because that's what it is. Under Obama, we've seen this with Obamacare: "If you like your doctor, you can keep him," and more recently with the Iran deal. You have Hillary Clinton warning that we have to bomb Libya to stop Qaddafi from committing genocide. We have to fund rebels to topple Assad from killing his own people. All of this was manufactured in the White House and then dutifully echoed by the press without having to go out and verify the facts. If you want to look at the Bush Presidency, you have Hussein trying to obtain yellow cake, and the mobile biolabs that weren't. Same thing. Next on the agenda are the TTIP and TPP trade deals. But no one is allowed to know the deatails until after these deals get approved. Trust us.
The job he was hired to do, namely to help the president of the United States communicate with the public, was changing in equally significant ways, thanks to the impact of digital technologies that people in Washington were just beginning to wrap their minds around. It is hard for many to absorb the true magnitude of the change in the news business — 40 percent of newspaper-industry professionals have lost their jobs over the past decade — in part because readers can absorb all the news they want from social-media platforms like Facebook, which are valued in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars and pay nothing for the “content” they provide to their readers. You have to have skin in the game — to be in the news business, or depend in a life-or-death way on its products — to understand the radical and qualitative ways in which words that appear in familiar typefaces have changed. Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”
Important: Please visit the link below.
Here's another link to an excellent oped by Republican Senator Ben Sasse in reference to the article. It's short, so go ahead and read it. (link.)
Its a great piece. But Ben's a little late to the party. What he is talking about isn't unique to the Obama administration. But his message is good and its about time the public wises up. The editorial is short and gives you a framework for why the NY Times article linked above is important.
I titled the thread systemic deception because that's what it is. Under Obama, we've seen this with Obamacare: "If you like your doctor, you can keep him," and more recently with the Iran deal. You have Hillary Clinton warning that we have to bomb Libya to stop Qaddafi from committing genocide. We have to fund rebels to topple Assad from killing his own people. All of this was manufactured in the White House and then dutifully echoed by the press without having to go out and verify the facts. If you want to look at the Bush Presidency, you have Hussein trying to obtain yellow cake, and the mobile biolabs that weren't. Same thing. Next on the agenda are the TTIP and TPP trade deals. But no one is allowed to know the deatails until after these deals get approved. Trust us.
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