US news media a wasteland?

Politics International Politics
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CNN Stuns U.S. With Actual News

[i]Last week, during CNN’s 25th anniversary celebration, CJR Daily took the network to task for shortchanging international news. As we noted then, whereas in 1994 CNN dedicated two hours of its weekday schedule to international news, the CNN of 2005 to date was lucky to feature two hours of foreign news in a week.

At least until today, when that all changed.

Today the network began simulcasting on its US network its meaty news program “Your World Today” that airs regularly on CNN International.

CJR Daily tuned in at 11:45 a.m. EST. Right away we caught a promo for “Your World Today” – a promo that, as it turns out, actually contained more hard news than the five minutes of “CNN Live Today” that followed. (That was pretty easy to do, given that the “CNN Live Today” segment focused on how to keep your pet from shitting all over the hotel room once you leave the premises. Answer: Put the little bugger in a crate.).

But enough with the ridiculous, and on to the sublime.[/i]

Read the rest of the article:
cjrdaily.org/archives/001570.asp

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News Hound: We watch FOX so you don’t have to.
June 07, 2005

Did Bush Lie To Bolster His Case Against Iraq? Let’s Talk About Michael Jackson!
[i]
Forget the unanswered questions swirling around Bush with regard to the Downing Street Memo and 2002 bombing raids purportedly designed to goad Saddam Hussein into a war. The big story on Big Story tonight was the Michael Jackson trial. Host John Gibson ignored the fact that US soldiers’ lives remain on the line as a result of a possible put-up job and asked, as if it were the most important question of the day, whether or not Michael Jackson’s recent trip to the hospital was for real or just a ploy for the jury’s sympathy. For 10 minutes, Gibson analyzed the case with three different people.

No time was given to the unanswered questions raised to President Bush by Congressman John Conyers and 88 other congressional representatives about the Downing Street Memo. Rep. Conyers’ website says that the response has been so overwhelming, he had to remove the email link. So there’s obviously a lot of public interest in the issue.
[/i]
Read the rest of the article:
link

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Dog’s_Breakfast -
This is always a fertile topic for threads.
Here is another article highlighting some recent MSM(MainStream Media) failures:[quote]Stories Not Told
John Leo, June 6, 2005
As distrust of the press grows, news articles are relentlessly scrutinized for bias, but almost no one is focusing on stories that are simply ignored. For instance, a May 18 report in the Afghan newspaper Kabul Weekly said the riots that killed 17 people were not about disrespect for the Koran in American detainment camps–they were a show of force by the Taliban and another fundamentalist group, Hezb-e Eslami. “These demonstrations were organized by the Taliban and their supporters, and only some naive people joined the protesters,” the newspaper said. The BBC picked up the story on May 22, but so far as I can see, it was completely ignored in American news media. If you edited, let us say, a large newspaper in Washington or New York, or a prominent newsmagazine accused of causing these famous riots, wouldn’t you want to check this one out?b[/b]
townhall.com/columnists/john … 0606.shtml[/quote]
Other examples are cited.

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Another interesting example of the news media exhibiting a strange lack of interest in a the developments of a major news incident.

[quote]TWA 800’s ‘Deep Throat’
Posted: June 7, 2005, 1:00 a.m. Eastern

Editor’s note: In his extraordinary new DVD documentary, “Mega Fix,” Emmy-award-winning filmmaker Jack Cashill traces the roots of Sept. 11 to the political exploitation of terror investigations by the Clinton White House in the desperate 1995-1996 election cycle. To arrange a showing in your city, contact Jack Cashill.

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I find the mainstream/liberal/corporate (whatever you want to call it) media highly unreliable myself.

I thought there was a nice article on commondreams (an admittedly liberal outlet), about how it is the downing street memo has been all but blacked out by major US media. (This may change shortly.)

commondreams.org/views05/0613-27.htm

Although I’d rather see a media revolution, a lot of moderates out there are getting behind the idea of media reform in hoping to make the mainstream media better serve the public. You can find out more about this at http://www.freepress.net/ – the left hand collumn is perhaps the best…