they don't!

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...but with some of the same drivel and more of greater relevance. But it will be easier to separate what's relevant and what isn't. Hopefully some of the neanderthal throwbacks will disappear.

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Mainstream media cuts back on staff and reporting because of declining revenue, particularly classified ad listings. Alternative media regularly begs for money, claims it cannot do more reporting because of lack of money, often functions with volunteers or as non-profits, and sells ad space to politicians thereby increasing campaign costs and the need for fundraising. (As I write this, the premier ad on the Alternet site is for John Edwards 08.)

I look to mainstream media to tell me what has happened at City Hall meetings, to give me the school lunch menu, and to provide me with information that I need for daily living. I look to alternative media to give me insightful analyses, stories that have not yet made it into the mainstream media, and different takes on major events.

Essays such as the one above do not provide any value. It is a rehashing of the same old stuff. (At this point, Alternet usually responds by saying give more money and they can do more reporting.)

How do we reform (return) media to the role of serving the community? Do we charge for online access to papers? Do we pay for longer stories and have synopses free? (Considering how short most stories are now, it seems as though we only have synopses.) Do alternative publications need to charge for single copies or online access? Does having free weeklies make people take news for granted? Is it possible for a low-income or middle-income person to start an alternative publication for profit without spending hundreds and thousands of dollars on advertising, marketing, and promotions? How do we break people of their habits of reading the mainstream media and not looking at alternatively media?

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One of these years, soon, maybe 2007 or 2008, the nations that hold US dollars will decide that the scam is over and its time for the US to pay up. Our trade deficit roars on as our budget deficit is about to leap higher. In 2007 the first big bulge of baby boomers turn 60; by 2012, the boomers will be at least 65, meaning that social security and medicare will be drained dry. Since Congress lacks the guts to tell Gramps and Grammy that they have to keep working or to move in with April, Brad and the Twins, the Feds will print more money. (Even if A Dem like Hilary or Edwards is elected, the tax "increases" created by expiration of some of the Bush Tax cuts will be offset by new politically dictated cuts for the Mighty and Sacred Middle Class.

So USA is Broke is the Headline; whether it's in 2007 or a bit later will depend on the economic strategy of our New Master, the "Peoples" Republic of China.

Perhaps we'll be saved by China's moving manufacturing operations into the US (at appropriately low wages of course).

Won't it be nice to see all those empty malls! They can be converted into rental housing units for the milliions who lose their homes because they cannot pay $2,000 mortgages and $4,000 per year property taxes.

Also, a Depression will finally halt urban sprawl, protecting a bit more of the environment. Economic slowdown will reduce the US share of global warming.

Aside from food, what DOES the US make that anyone wants nayway? (Porn? Films? TV Reruns?).

The economic collapse of the US and the apathy that prosperity engenders is much more important than the "next year will be like this year, only a little more" that your timid article states.

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Just once we could have a run for president with several choices in the primary races WITHOUT the media telling us who the frontrunner will be, who the party pick will be, who the winner will be, BEFORE THEY EVER GET STARTED?!

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I've already seen him spoken of as 'fringe'. This man could really make a great candidate if only the media would allow it. Perhaps a Gore/Kucinich or Kucinich/Gore ticket.

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For example, take some lessons from guys like Keith Olbermann and even to some extent Lou Dobbs and why not recruit and help young men and women who want to rise to the level of these people. You're just going to have to face the fact that media reform via changing the public discourse is going to take time and effort no matter what. Stop giving up and stop allowing media outlets such as Air America to crumble. Of course, if Air America had learned to reframe and go on the offensive rather than play defensive and react, they wouldn't have faced the status they're in. Take a look at the difference between Phil Donahue and Keith Olbermann. Olbermann never hesitates to use his sports reporting skills to go on the offensive whereas Donahue for the most part reacted and played defense as if he were just a plain old talk show host.

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1. "W" will not be impeached.
2. Hallibutron will remain firmly entrenched in Iraq devouring its economy.
3. the "new" Congress will quickly cuddle up to "corporate" fund raising and as quckly lose any taste to control campaign financing
4. the "new" Congress will posture but produce nothing of substance
6. Hilary's star will rise and fall depending upon the mood of the "polsters"
7. "honest" - Mr. Integrity - John McCain will promise everything to every one
8. main stream media will tout its ability to provide credible and objective reporting, while its audience decreases
9. American GI's and Iraq citizens will continue to die all for not
10. there will be a world series in October

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"Those that embrace the coming change will prosper and thrive, while those that fear and filter it in a vain effort to maintain their control will trend first toward growing irrelevance, then to oblivion, and finally -- dinosaurs that they are -- to all-out extinction."

WooHoo!!!

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Changes in the media? The trial of Conrad "Lord" Black, owner of the Chicago Sun Times and a host of other papers. Look for some interesting developments here - as the rock gets lifted, briefly, on whats laughingly called the "news industry."

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It's past time for the American people to realize they are being poisoned – fed a toxic sludge that passes itself off as news and entertainment. American media and TV suck. They always have and always will. The few bright spots have been vastly overshadowed by the negative and shallow.

Like most things in America, our media panders to the lowest common denominator. Until a couple of months ago I was a news "junkie" – listening to National Public Radio (NPR) all day and surfing the news sites multiple times a day. Today I do not read any news sites other than AlterNet, and even that in small doses. I haven't watched live TV in years and what little I catch is mainly because I'm in the same room as my partner and his Tivo. If I see or hear about a show I may want to watch I add it to my Netflix queue and wait for it to be released.

I would much rather read or work on my writing. I no longer miss NPR or any of the news sites. I stopped missing TV a long time ago. And I'm a much happier person for it.

Yet I know my fellow Americans are still being fed the same toxic sludge because I see it in their angry and frightened faces everywhere I go. I feel sorry for them, yet I walk lightly around them because I know how dangerous a frightened animal can be. I see so much rage and fear everywhere it nearly breaks my heart.

And what I find most pitiful is that it's all a matter of choice. Anyone can choose to do what I have done, at any time. I still hear about anything major through my web log or just because it's nearly impossible to completely escape our mass media. There was a saying in the 60's that is even more apt today:

Kill Your TV. (And your radio, newspaper and news web sites.)

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At the beginning of the scientific era, men had the hope that the ability to discover truth would free mankind from superstition, dogma, and the service of power. The belief in truth was powerful. Truth would deliver justice and bring an end to status-based privileges and the falsehoods propagated by privilege. Today propaganda is everywhere in the ascendency.

Every week another apologist for President Bush compares “Bush’s fight for Iraqi freedom” to Abraham Lincoln’s “fight to free the slaves.” The American civil war was not fought to “free the slaves,” as Thomas DiLorenzo and other scholars have thoroughly documented, any more than the purpose of Bush’s illegal invasion of Iraq was to “bring freedom to Iraqis.” The freedom excuse was invented after it became impossible to maintain the fictions about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein’s connections to Osama bin Laden. Bush has yet to tell the real reason he invaded Iraq.

In the US today, demonization and propaganda substitute for facts and analysis. Professors and journalists are quick to lend their names and voices to the untruths that rule our lives. Just as Hitler’s foreign policy was based in propaganda, so is Bush’s and Blair’s.

The success of propaganda enhances government’s illusion that it has a monopoly on truth. It is the monopoly on truth that gives the Bush regime the right to define the “Iran problem,” the “Syria problem,” the “Lebanon problem,” and the “Korea problem” and to apply coercion in place of understanding and negotiation.

Secure in its possession of truth, the Bush administration refuses to talk to the enemies it has manufactured. It will only fight them.

When scholars, such as Walt and Mearsheimer, or Jimmy Carter point out that Israel’s mistreatment of Palestinians is a cause of Middle East turmoil, they are immediately denounced as anti-semites. Columnists and academics who know nothing about the Middle East or its troubles nevertheless know what they are supposed to say whenever anyone mentions Israel in any critical context.

The belief in truth is fading from our society. It is unclear that scientists themselves any longer believe in truth or the ability to discover it.

All societies have elements of myth, untruths that nevertheless serve to unite a people. But many myths serve as camouflage for evil. One of the greatest myths is that “GIs have died for our freedom.” GIs have died for empire, for the American elite’s commitment to England, and for the military-industrial complex’s profits. There was no prospect of North Korea attacking America in the 1950s or Vietnam attacking America in the 1960s and none today. The Nazis were defeated by Russia before US troops landed in Europe. The US never faced any threat of invasion from Germany, Italy, or Japan.

America’s wars have created hysteria that endanger our freedom. Abraham Lincoln shut down the freedom of the press and arrested editors and state legislators. Woodrow Wilson arrested war critics. Franklin Roosevelt interred American citizens of Japanese descent. George W. Bush has destroyed most of the Bill of Rights. In 2006 Congress appropriated funds for building concentration camps in the US.

Today there are a few large conglomerates whose values depend on broadcast licenses from the government. The conglomerates are run by corporate executives who are not journalists and whose eyes are on advertising revenues. They publish and broadcast what is safe.

The challenges that America faces are not terrorism and oil supply. The challenges that we face are the police state that Bush has created and the disrespect for truth that is endemic in government, the universities, and the media. The US has entered a dark age of dogmas and unaccountable power.

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It's always nice to hope. Our newspapers and news services were once the crowning glory of our society. Is it any wonder that the neocons set out (successfully) to destroy them? If one is to be a sneak thief, he must conceal himself as much as possible. What better way than to replace REAL journalists with bubbleheaded stooges? We need to reestablish our anti-trust laws and enforce them to the max. This is the first step in defeating the oligarcy which has such a stranglehold on our people. We ABSOLUTELY MUST investigate, indict, try, convict, and imprison this evil regime, and the sooner, the better. They must be displayed as an example to those in the future who would steal from us and betray our trust. If the MSM could get back to its traditional role as the watchdog of the people, this all would be much easier.It's nice to hope, but I'm not holding my breath.

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Newspaper & NewsMag Circulation will continue to decline.

Network TV Newz will continue to get worse and lower rated.

Local TV Newz will figure out a way to become even less relevant.

Radio News will continue it's decline.

Big media execs will continue to rub their heads and wonder why nobody is watching or listening.

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If you want truth in the media, then
support Alternative Media and boycott
the mainstream media!

TV is a waste of time: see

www.tvsmarter.com

Instead there are many excellent alternative
news websites such as Alternet.

And of course Air America needs to be supported.

One excellent way to support Air America is to
go to their website:

http://www.airamerica.com/premium/pricing.php

And sign up for Air America Premium

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This must be right wing Rupert Murdoch porn stuff.

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...lets do our best to dump a few more crumbs in the MSM like Tim Russert, Robert Novack, Jon Meacham of Newsweek, deport Rupert Murdoch, Ann Coulter and all her friends like Peggy Noonan, Phyllis Schlafly(not a journalist but in the news and contaminating it). Let us all do a better job of paying attention to the alternative media like Amy Goodman/democracynow.org, non Us news sources like al-Jazeera(if Rumsfeld hates it then it must have some merit and maybe a lot), Air America, and those in the MSM like Keith Olbermann, Lou Dobbs, Jack Cafferty and a few others at the NYT and WaPo and almost no one else. And is PBS holding it's own or getting worse. Frontline is great, Nova is still good, Jim Lehrer seems to be getting worse, while Gwen Ifill and her programs like Wash Week is still good as is Ray Suarez and Mark Shields, while David Brooks is shouting Karl Rove less often. Tucker Carlson and Glenn Beck need to be helped off the air these two are worthless, while Joe Scarborough has gotten a tad more reasonable, but just a tad. I get my news from alternative media and overseas news sources from Glasgow, to the IHT, to the Kaleej Times(Noam Chompsky articles) etc.

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