PHOTOS, PAGE 1

       Editor and prime reporter is Doug Terry, a veteran television and radio reporter in   Washington, DC, (details below)

What’s the point of the right wing news media? What’s the point of Fox News, the radio blabbers, the Murdoch empire and all those on the Internet who follow in their wake? Most of the people who work at these places probably tell themselves something like this: Well, this is what I believe and the other media are biased against it, so this is the way I report. I am fighting the good fight.

Of course, you can tell yourself almost anything to justify what you are doing, especially it it is tied to a regular paycheck. But what, really, at base, is the point of intentionally slanted media and news reports, other than to prove the gullibility of the American public? Of course, one point is to help their side “win” and the other side “lose”, but there must be more to than that, one would think.

All of the sudden, I get it. They are “state media” in training. If their dreams come true, ever, and the Republicans have complete, unquestioned control of Congress, a person in the presidency and a right wing majority on the Supreme Court, the right wing media will be transformed, overnight, into the state media, like in the old Soviet Union, the current Iran, China, Venezuela and who knows how many other dictatorial countries around the world.

One might imagine, as a journalist, that this would be a bad thing. Who would want to be “in training” to be a puppet journalist without independence or freedom of thought? Apparently, there are hundreds, even thousands, of people who want to enroll and train themselves, day by day, for their dreams to come true. It must be so much more comforting to try to make friends with those in power, or who you would like to see in power, rather than questioning their motives and actions.

If you’d like to see State Media at work, observe the Christian Broadcasting Network’s Dave Brody interviewing the far, far right candidate for Senator from Nevada, Sharron Angle. She, of the Tea Part movement, is so far to the right that most people would have to break their arms pointing in her direction. Yet, she has served herself up for lunch and dinner for right wing media interviews while cutting off all access to reporters who try to be objective and reasonably fair. If you have the time and the inclination, it is well worthwhile to follow the link below and watch and read for yourself as this stunning bit of fake journalism reveals itself:

 David Brody

CBN News White House Reporter

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Exclusive: Sharron Angle Talks to The Brody File

In a wide-ranging exclusive interview with The Brody File, U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle speaks candidly and boldly about her faith, her critics, her top legislative priorities, the mainstream media, defunding the Department of Education and oh yes, defeating Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Angle spoke with me Tuesday at her home in Reno, Nevada. Below, you can find some video clips and transcriptions from the interview. (if you only see the transcript for some of the clips, don't worry. The rest of the videos will be there later in the day)

(click above to follow the link)

If you watch these clips, you can see a latter day Vlad Posner on Nightline lying out of every bodily orifice and coming off smooth as melted butter. In the case of Brody himself, he isn’t necessarily, in his mind, lying. But, when you get an interview because your are perceived as “sympathetic media” and you come out, ta da, sympathetic, is it any surprise that you are willing to say how impressed you were on your website?

Dave Brody and the dozens like him are hired media, liars with a cause, beings presumably in search of their souls and lacking all faith in their ability to find truth that isn’t shoveled their way by right wing sources. Perhaps they believe, really believe, that there is no other truth. If so, that makes them even worse off than well trained liars of the Soviet era.

There is a “small” problem with the state media in training model. History, particularly modern history, shows that those regimes which are not subject to challenge, and corrections derived from challenge, ultimately fail. The new state media in training is doing its “movement” no favors by working hard to make themselves into lapdogs. A good argument could be constructed that even the bloated lie factory that was the Soviet Union might have survived had it allowed in some air, in the form of truth, about the status of its revolution. Instead, the official media repeated the lies given to them by the existing powers and, eventually, the whole thing came crashing down like a wood frame house in a 250 MPH hurricane.

This is also the future awaiting Dave Brody at the Christian Broadcasting Network ”News” and the legions at Fox News as well. Journalism in America is far from perfect, subject to hidden bias and inbred systems of belief, but there is no doubt, at all, that it has contributed to the survival and growth of America and its democracy by being, yes, a thorn in the side of power. There seem to be enough people at Fox who used to be journalists that they might, down the road, be able to change their spots and turn into independent voices if the Republican state came into being, but I wouldn’t place a heavy bet on that outcome.

We are in a new, strange era in American journalism. We have had highly partisan media in the past, which was one of the motivations for the creation of the “objective” fiction under which the major media still struggle to operate. Now, we are getting something new, a hook-up, if you will, between large media outlets and candidates and office holders. Heretofore, we have not had completely servile media ready at the drop of a microphone to repeat anything they are told by their supporters. The new paradigm is to dress themselves up as true sources of news and information and then grind away at subtle, and not so subtle, propaganda. How we move forward, out of this kind of mess, is anyone’s guess. At present, we are being set up for the collapse of the idea that truth exists, which, if achieved, undermines everything.

Doug Terry,  10.21.20

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