The decline of news and the rise of right-wing corporate propaganda in the mainstream media.

by James K. Sayre

30 May 2007

Recently the was a commentary published in the San Francisco Chronicle entitled, The decline of news (May 29, 2007) by Neil Henry, a professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley. This misleading bit of corporate propaganda was bemoaning the coming cuts in the staff of reporters and journalists working for the S. F. Chronicle. Actually, for the last six years, the Chronicle has been one of the leading print media cheerleaders for the Bush criminal regime and their attempted destruction of our Bill of Rights, our Constitution and our American democracy and their ongoing wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq. In his commentary, Mr. Henry Neil actually refers to the Chronicle's journalists as "committed to seeking the truth and reporting it, independently and without fear or favor...". Well, anyway, the "truth" according to Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz, Gonzales and their camp followers and corporate propagandists on Fox News and CNN. All the Bush regime thugs are known serial liars. When have any of them ever spoken the truth on any subject? The S. F. Chronicle has been happily covering up the truth on the stolen Presidential Elections in 2000 and 2004, the complete lack of any effort on the part of the Bush regime to stop the terror attacks on 11 September 2001, the lies that led up to the criminal illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and the intentional defunding of levee strengthening around New Orleans prior to Hurricane Katrina and the massive flooding of that fine American city, just to cite a few examples.

And Neil Henry wonders why there has been a steady decline in paid newspaper subscriptions over the past fifteen years or so. This decline would seem to parallel the concentration of the mainstream media into few and fewer hands. And almost all of these hands are very right-wing in their attitudes and are invariably pro-corporate greed and in favor of further media concentration. With the creation of the Internet in the mid-1990s and the creation of alternative news media with progressive web sites, curious people have many competing alternative information and news sources in the 21st century.

These new alternative web sites are a great alternative to the the traditional newspapers and television news outlets which have shed their traditional responsibility to report the news and the truth in the last fifteen years or so.

I check out Think Progress: thinkprogress.org , Huffington Post: Huffington Post.com , LeftCoaster.com: theLeftCoaster.com, Crooks and liars : CrooksandLiars , Cannonfire: Cannonfire Blogspot , Citizens for Ethics (in Washington) (CREW): CREW , Wayne Madsen Report: Wayne Madsen Report , Democratic Underground.com: Democratic Underground , DailyKos.com : Daily Kos, Eschaton/Atrios : Eschaton/Atrios.com , Black Box Voting at Black Box Voting.org , Brad Blog : Brad Blog , Fire Dog Lake : Fire Dog Lake , BuzzFlash.com: BuzzFlash, Rawstory.com : rawstory.com,, Online Journal : Online Journal , Common dreams? CommonDreams.org , Truth Out.org. TruthOut, before I read any of the daily newspapers for "news."

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Web page last updated on 30 May 2007.