Yeah … PRAVDA.

I don’t know if it’s true, because I was just a self-centered, easy-going kid at the time, but wasn’t there an Olympic event where the USSR team lost to the USA team (don’t recall the event), and the PRAVDA headline went something like : “USSR comes in second …”

THIS IS exactly how today’s media is writing/spinning/wording/crafting the news of the day…

For example: you see this in the MSM’s descriptions of the debate about the Iraq War. Supporters of the war are usually referred to as “hardliners”, “hawks”, or “conservatives” (Joe Lieberman might chafe at the last description). War opponents, by contrast, are almost always referred to as “moderates”. Rarely if ever are war opponents labeled as “doves” or even the now-shunned “liberals”.

Thus, MSM stories about a group of Republicans seeking to stop funding for the Iraq war might go something like this: “Moderate Republicans today unveiled a new compromise plan to confront the Bush administration and its hard-line stance on the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq.”

Never mind that these “moderates” are not seeking a compromise – they want to force a withdraw of US forces. The Bush administration and many others in Congress oppose this. Why can’t the MSM be honest and simply report the actual debate between the two sides, rather than create a phony paradigm involving an imaginary conflict between “hardliners” and “moderates”? Is it really so hard for the MSM to call supporters of the war “war supporters” and opponents “war opponents” and let the debate begin?

For that reason I use the term “MSM” with a heaping helping of sarcasm. With their artificial “mainstream” they compose a modern-day “Ministry of Truth”.

I’ve always seen the “mainstream” in MSM as that entity of media that the public is easily and daily accessible to (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines …).
And no, it is NOT mainstream by any sense of the word’s political meaning. But I’ve taken to calling it the LLLMSM … Lazy Lame (kudoes Laura Ingraham) Liberal MSM … But after the Bill O`Reilly, Juan Williams, and Rush Limbaugh attacks of this past week I’m thinking of calling them PRAVDA …

I don’t watch O’Reilly however I managed to watch on the internet a portion of a recent show where he had Tammy Bruce on as guest and she clarified the intention of this type of attacks made against ‘conservative’ talk show hosts; the intention is to de-legitimize or rather criminalize the conservative voice. I remember back when Monicagate had happened and my own response was much like Tammy Bruce’s ‘how come National Organization of Women is surrounding a notorious male-chauvanist pig who was getting his rocks off at the office with an intern half his age’. Yet, the only thing out of the media was to smear all those uptight conservatives getting their panties in a wad over a BJ.

The pattern has been going on for a long time yet, so many will never know that it’s happening since they are not engaging in alternative sources of information such as the various weblogs tracking the pattern.

Seriously, I live in NYC and if I had never brought a personal computer in 2001, taking the time to read from those with professional experience in any given field I’d still be stuck on stupid. This is why it’s very frustrating when having a conversation with those who still get all the news about culture/public policy/politics from media sound-bytes or worse Hollywood entertainment.

I know this will sound strange however, for an example, my dentist (educated and well-established) still reads the NY Times and believes the entertainer Jon Stewart’s news bytes and whenever I point out the disparities made in these media outlets he looks at me as if I’m from another planet; because of his very narrow mindset which 9/11/2001 could not even change I find as the years go by I’m becoming less confident in his ability to treat me properly.