Quote:
Originally posted by kad
When you are motivated by selling copies of your publication or gaining audience share, its hard to stay independant. Not mention presidential donations.
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This doesn't at all mean that news media will publish the news that people "want to hear" though. People love a train wreck. Watergate, Monica Lewinsky, the Pentagon Papers.
This sells newspapers. This gets coverage.
The biggest news stories are just as often the ones that make the government look bad, that make government officials look bad, and that make an administration look bad.
The sheer number of news media sources guarantees that there is always someone just waiting to print the story and get their big break. Do you think if "a senior pentagon official" showed a New York Times reporter tomorrow that Bush sold weapons to Iraq in 2002 that it wouldn't be on the front page of the New York Times tomorrow?
A few weeks ago the cable news stations got stuck for a week straight on whether the "military plan was on target" because someone said it wasn't. Another three straight days covered whether Rumsfeld had bullied his "faster, lighter" view of the forces into the plan against Frank's wishes. This was based on an "unnamed pentagon source". Another week was dominated by "Did the military plan not properly account for the feyadeen"? because one field commander's comments had been misunderstood by a reporter [in his own words].
It takes absolutely nothing at all to create a wave of negative publicity regarding any administration, action, or otherwise. No amount of Pentagon or White House influence was stopping what seemed to me to be short bouts of insanity.
Yes, people can influence some aspects of the media. No one can influence all of it. No one has control.