The reason some people think the mainstream media is doing a great job is because they tell us this, over and over again; and after the shooting at the Capital; they did it with more hype and appeals to emotion, making it more effective!
The reason a lot of other people don't buy that at all is because they check with other sources to get their news and it doesn't take much to learn how much more the media is with hyping themselves than they are on reporting on the most important issues, despite all the propaganda and deceptive public relations designed to glorify the mainstream media!
With all the coverage that the public listens to they might get the impression that journalism is a dangerous job, and it may seem so after a shooting but after checking several lists for top twenty to thirty most dangerous jobs it's clear that they don't make any of these lists, and one of them includes a subcategory for homicide with only nine entries also not including journalists.
Not that this makes the Capital shooting any less tragic; but it's just the beginning of the lack of reporting on many of the greatest threats to the public and how to prevent them, which is what good journalists should be doing.
I've written several times about how the media declines to report on some of the most important contributing causes of violence and how it escalates, including Prevention of violence has to address all causes, not just Guns! which reports on how early child abuse often leads to escalating violence and abandoned inner cities have the worst violence problems, partly because jobs have been shipped overseas and the political establishment ins constantly cutting funds to educational or child care opportunities while increasing funds to prisons that clearly don't work; yet the best reporting on this is in alternative media outlets that the traditional media portrays as fringe.
For all practical purposes the mainstream media, that portrays itself as heroically and bravely reporting the truth, routinely declines to report the best research on one subject after another, often, perhaps, becasue they even ahve a financial incentive to ignore some of the contributing causes of violence including as I recently pointed out in Insurance Executives Profit By Inciting Murder Occasionally Paying Killers where I explained that an enormous amount of the money going to insurance premiums is going to advertising, which would be reduced if the media did a better job exposing how our insurance system is actually providing an incentive for an enormous amount of fraud and even murder.
All these propaganda ads they come up with telling us how good a job reporting the news are distracting complacent people that don't check with alternative sources from the fact that our media establishment is a for profit organization, and as Robert McChesney reported in several of his books including "Rich Media Poor Democracy" and "The Problem Of The Media," as they've been consolidating into a much smaller group of corporations controlling a larger percentage of the media market, with six oligarchies controlling over ninety percent of the media, they've been slashing their budget for investigative reporting and the so-called wall between advertisers and reporting has been virtually eliminated.
Those that control the media and the political debate are the ones in the least amount of danger of the threats that face us, yet they're the ones making the most money, with the least amount of accountability. If you check the lists of most dangerous jobs it's clear that the highest paying ones are the safest and the working class dominates the most dangerous jobs, including loggers, fisherman, and a variety of other labor intensive jobs, yet this reporting is buried where no one sees it, while they hype of some of the smallest threats to society, which don't impact the vast majority of us. One of the things they hype the most is crime or violence, but the workers at the highest risk of murder, cab drivers, aren't getting any attention at all, while they provide an enormous amount of hype when the rare reporter or celebrity gets shot.
The second most dangerous job, when it comes to murder is police officers, who're killed at less than half the rate of cab drivers, which does get much more attention, however, when it comes to all threats to police on the job they come in fourteenth to eighteenth on several lists cited below, and other threats besides getting shot on the job cover more than half of their deaths as well, yet this is practically never reported in the mainstream press.
But even this isn't fully in context. Police are much more likely to be shot and killed in areas where violence is higher; so if the media wanted to report on the causes of this violence and how it can be prevented, they could and should report about more research showing how early child abuse leads to escalating violence and how abandoned inner cities also leads to more violence. After police officers the other top targets for murder on the job are all working class people, mostly that have to deal with the public, especially food service managers and retails sales or cashiers, presumably in the highest violence areas as well, but unless you do your own research you're not likely to find out about this since the media doesn't report it in a high profile location where most people will see it.
And of course, before the Capital shooting and another shooting a few years ago in Virginia where a reporter was killed, is the threat to reporters in war zones, including Iraq and Syria; however, even these reporters are at much more risk if they're local reporters and freelancers, not from International networks that routinely provide the most war propaganda giving an enormous advantage to pro war voices!
Perhaps the most famous reporter killed on the job, James Foley was a freelancer working for Global Post a little know online news reporting outlet, not the mainstream media. The vast majority of quality reporting on international affairs including wars, which are routinely proven to be based on lies, doesn't come from mainstream media it comes from small outlets that most people aren't familiar with.
But those most at risk aren't necessarily the ones that are most well known, especially if they're killed by allied or United States forces during combat, and the media that wants us to believe they're protecting journalists and are so heroic remained silent, or kept their reporting to a minimum when over a dozen reporters, mostly, if not entirely foreign reporters were killed by American forces, and there were more since then in other conflicts, although they're only covered by alternative media outlets too.
And on the rare occasion where media pundits speak about against wars base don lies and give fair coverage to peace advocates that often provide better investigative research than the mainstream media, which turned out to be more accurate, even though they have much fewer resources the mainstream media often fires them, like when they famously, at least in alternative media outlets, fired Phil Donahue and Peter Arnett, who allowed peace advocates to have a chance to express their views or stood by his story when allies bombed a baby milk factory in Baghdad when the military tried to claim it was a biological weapons plant.
On just about any given obsession du jour like the recent rescue in Thailand or the poison attacks in Britain it doesn't take much to think about what other related subjects they're ignoring while obsessing on this. The missing boys in Thailand weren't reported at all when they disappeared a week and a half before they were found in the cave, then all of a sudden they became a massive obsession. How many more children are missing that aren't getting any reporting at all?
Why aren't they reporting on other threats to much larger numbers of children that could be saved with practical solutions, like reforming our health care system with Single Payer or reporting on how child abuse leads to escalating violence. Occasionally buried under all the obsession du jours about a missing child they report, in a much lower profile way that some of the stereotypes about missing children being taken by strangers are wrong, acting as if it has nothing to do with all their hyped up misleading stories.
When there are much higher numbers of people being killed by smog, or other toxins caused by chemical or energy companies why don't they get nearly as much coverage as the nerve agent attacks, allegedly from Russia?
Could it be that the media has financial ties to these corporations and are selling them an enormous amount of deceptive propaganda ads?
If it's not, it is one hell of a coincidence!
Edit 07/26/2018: Once again the media has portrayed itself as the hero, defending the free press, or so they would have us believe, for speaking out against Trump banning CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins from the Rose Garden event pointing out how outrageous Trump's behavior is; however a closer look might raise some legitimate doubts about this. First of all, they've been controlling who gets name recognition for decades, ensuring that only candidates they approve of have a chance to win elections, and when the right wing got sick of this they provided obsession coverage for this horrible demagogue enabling him to appear to be the only alternative to the incredibly corrupt corporate media.
One thing that they did mention to explain background of this is that it was Kaitlan Collins' turn to represent the entire press core, and that they rotate this once every five days. They mentioned that it was Fox's turn this morning and that tomorrow it would be NBC's and that the same five media outlets rotated every five days. What they didn't mention, although it's clearly implied once you think about it, is that this job is divided up among just five for profit media outlets that follow the same pattern of behavior and as I pointed out previously in Meet The American Oligarchs! these corporations all have interlocking boards of directors and they get their financing from advertising that looks the other way at Wall Street corruption including insurance and health care fraud, or wars based on lies by the Military Industrial Complex!
There are dozens of alternative media outlets, often struggling for funds that do a much better job reporting on epidemic levels of corruption, yet they can't get any access, including the same reporters that were killed during the Iraq War, yet the mainstream media provided minimal coverage of it, if they mentioned it at all.
Many of these right wing supporters of Trump may hate the media for some of the wrong reasons but they recognize that the traditional political establishment has been deceiving them for decades, and they're fed up with them; regrettably they don't recognize the same media they hate is providing obsession coverage for this loudmouth who is one of the few people that can make the mainstream media seem credible by comparison.
An enormous amount of what the media does is staged! I'm not going to go into all the details on this update, although I've done more in past articles, but one of the most obvious examples of how they make a staged interview look spectacular might be this mornings interview with Rep. Kristi Noem the Gubernatorial candidate for South Dakota. She managed to respond to each question without blinking or stopping to think about the subject, as if she knew what questions were going to be asked and had a prepared answer for each. More often than not they do anticipate some questions and prepare answers for them, but this one seemed a little too perfect, especially after seeing many politicians provide their prepared answers when they're asked about unrelated subjects.
There is no way many people, if any including me, could ever come up with these answers without pausing to think about it unless it was prepared ahead of time. It seemed as if she opposed the protectionist policies that Donald Trump was threatening, yet she managed to look like she opposed his policies while supporting him.
Some might not recognize how this is staged, even after watching it again and thinking it through; however the most obvious way they stage coverage is by simply covering only the candidates that they support. The vast majority of the public never heard of Rep. Kristi Noem, and when the media supports a candidate this is how they begin to give them national recognition, like I once noticed them doing in 2004 for a freshman Senator that had just won in Illinois. The coverage for him seemed out of place to me and more than they covered the majority of new politicians going to Washington, so I remembered it and realized later that it was part of what enabled Barack Obama to gain the name recognition he needed to win the presidency!
That doesn't mean they're grooming Noem for the presidency but she is one of the candidates that they enable to rise while pretending to support the grassroots but actually supporting the same corporations that finance her campaign and figuring out how little she can give to her constituents to keep them supporting her.
White House bans network pool reporter from Rose Garden event 07/25/2018
Rep. Kristi Noem on why she supports farm bailout 07/26/2018
Edit 08/08/2018: The battle between the media and Donald Trump escalates with both sides making partly correct accusations against the other then acting with self righteous indignation denying the truth from the others claims without allowing diverse views implying that these are the only two choices.
As Trump often does, he made a legitimate point with this tweet, but then he twisted it around, and ignored evidence that it could just as easily apply to him. By refusing tor report on the lies about weapons of mass destruction that they should have known didn't exist the media did help cause that war by providing propaganda cover, Trump's interview on Howard Stern's show about the Iraq War, and claims that he would "bomb the shit out of them," among many other things indicates he's just as bad. Both Trump and the mainstream media already have blood on their hands for not doing their job by reporting on major causes of violence as reported above, and arguing back and forth to see who has the high ground as if they're the only options.
The mainstream media helped put Trump in office by refusing to cover honest candidates or many of the most important issues; and now they want us to take their side while they act with self-righteous indignation. If they didn't help create Trump they wouldn't have a scapegoat!
Trump Will Have Blood on His Hands His demonization of the news media won’t fall on deaf ears. 08/03/2018
Trump accuses media of 'causing wars' in continued campaign to discredit journalists 08/05/2018 'I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American people'
The following are some of the sources for this article:
Workplace fatalities: 25 most dangerous jobs in America 01/09/2018
Charted: The 20 deadliest jobs in America 01/28/2015 Subcategory includes homicides with only nine entries not including journalists; highest is Taxi Drivers and chauffeurs with eight murders per hundred thousand or twelfth place for all deaths; police come in second for murders with less than half the murders as taxi drivers, but they're fifteenth for all deaths.
The Most Dangerous Jobs in America 04/08/2010
The 30 most dangerous jobs in the US 05/06/2017 #27. Security Guards and Gaming Surveillance Officers
US military murder of journalists during invasion of Iraq 03/06/2007
Democracy Now! Interactive Timeline of the Iraq War & Discussion on Long-term Impacts 03/19/2013
“Collateral Murder in Iraq.” By Amy Goodman 04/07/2010
Iraq Report: Killed by U.S. Forces 13 Confirmed cases of journalists killed in Iraq by U.S. Forces (March 2003-August 2005)
Journalists targeted by US forces 05/04/2011
Wikipedia: April 8, 2003 journalist deaths by U.S. fire
The Other Side of the Gun Non-embedded journalists sometimes became targets of U.S. forces May 2003
Permission to Fire? Committee to Protect Journalists Investigates the Attack on the Palestine Hotel May 27, 2003
Palestinian cameraman Mazen Dana killed in Baghdad 08/17/2003
Reuters Cameraman Shot Dead While Filming in Iraq 08/18/2003
Syria most dangerous place in the world for journalists 08/20/2014
Arnett fired by NBC after Iraqi TV outburst 03/31/2003
Phil Donahue on His 2003 Firing From MSNBC, When Liberal Network Couldn't Tolerate Antiwar Voices 03/21/2013
Five myths about missing children 05/10/2013
Capital Gazette says it received threats following shooting that killed 5 staffers 07/01/2018
Threats and attacks on journalists aren't rare. They also don't deter us. 06/30/2018
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