• 1. Ownership–
  • • corporate concentration, size, cost, ‘interlocking directorates,’ pressure from the ‘top’
    • Chomsky on ownership
    • And now a word from Sinclair Broadcasting
    • Sure, but can ma and pa outfits run 24/7 cable networks??
  2. Advertising
  • • Toyota’s problems , Glenn Beck
    • Ever heard of rBST?
    • Not even PBS is immune (or always forthcoming)
  3. Source
  • • How many correspondents cover the White House, Pentagon, Capitol??
    • ‘Message force multipliers’ (David Barstow’s NY Times story)
      • subsequent media coverage
      • PBS has unusual guest
      • White House response
    • Fake (hearing aid) news (credit score) videos (chocolate, and allergy tests), sometimes with attribution (and increasing sophistication)
    • Not just the US–feeding confirmation bias from TV news
    • Astroturf (more examples)
  4. Flak–negative feedback
  • • Media Matters, PR firms (after release of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’)
    • Trump and CNN’s Jim Acosta
    • Fox’s Greg Gutfeld on the ‘legacy media’ (and January 6)
    • CNN’s Brian Stelter on Fox
    • Social media (trolling, doxxing . . . generates much heat, little light or, as Farhad Manjoo puts it, reflexive egotism, righteous activism, and the ‘easy dunk‘)
  5. Anti-communist/terrorism
  • • Bill Maher after 9/11 (anti-terrorism)
    • Chomsky et al. on East Timor (anti-communism)
  6. Other filtering pressures
  • • Ratings bait, beats, et al.
    • Cost (especially of investigative journalism)
    • Careerism — money, fame and integrity don’t always get along
    • News cycle (24/7 and attention spans) and (who has?) access

A bit more on fake news

As if the ‘real news’ on commercial outlets wasn’t filtered enough, The Center for Media Democracy has released a report exposing the widespread practice of fake news, or video news releases (VNRs), produced by the public relations industry for various clients and provided free of charge (hmmm . . . is that tax deductible?) to news outlets, you know, the ones with local reporters in front of fire-damaged buildings and flashing red lights. See the report here. Here’s a list of the videos (though you may have difficulty getting them to play).