Op-ed: Many in the media are worried that if a certain candidate gets elected our free press in the USA could disappear.
But does it even exist now? Hardly a week goes by, according to some critics, when the media does not ignore important stories because the government or the rich want them suppressed. Most would involve matters that involve or might involve national or international security. They could even involve non-controversial events. Imagine a horrible story about an alligator killing a little boy makes world news. Within a few days a mother rushes to the aid of one of her children, its head in the mouth of a mountain lion. She rescues the child, authorities come and kill the animal and a second nearby mountain lion. The mother and the boy are rushed to a hospital in a nearby major city. Injuries are minimal. The media reports the story but without naming those involved. There are none of the usual quotes of what it was like getting the boy’s head out of the mouth. Several days pass and the names remain secret. The family releases a statement saying they appreciate the support of everyone. No names. No details. Keep in mind that government employees were involved in the incident. A few news sites publish critical comments saying the mountain lions should not have been killed. Doesn’t this sound like a national news story. Wouldn’t TV stations be fighting for film of the family? Or perhaps it shouldn’t be assumed that good stories always make the news, at least not with any details. Such an event did happen recently. They used to say on popular American TV shows that the names were changed to protect the innocent. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-06-20/us-mother-saves-5yo-son-from-mountain-lion-attack/7524812 http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/15/us/alligator-attacks-child-disney-florida/ http://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/06/report-after-election-trump-considering-media-company-launch-224423 http://www.newtekjournalismukworld.com/robert-weller/mind-manipulation-with-the-media-the-message
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The Media was the Message Canadian communication professor, Marshall McLuhan, 40 years after his death, has been shown to be a fortuneteller more than a communications theorist. The unlikely rapid rise of businessman Donald Trump as a presidential candidate, and what may be the even more dramatic decline, shows that the medium truly is the message. The Canadian died in 1980, before the Internet became the world’s lingua franca. But his determination that electronic transmission of news itself was more important than the news delivered became a widely accepted article of faith in the 2016 presidential race. No matter how racist, stupid, insulting or outrageous Trump became he got more coverage and high poll numbers. He had actually had his own “reality TV” show spawned by his billions in the real estate industry. He also got more viewers for the networks that telecast them when he became a candidate. “It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” said CBS CEO Les Moonves in February. “They’re not discussing issues, they’re throwing bombs at each other.” The inmates were in charge of asylum. Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy studied the beginnings of the race and found there was an “invisible primary,” before the voting, that made it possible for Trump to gain popularity. The report found claims the media favored Trump over the other candidates, and in fact created him. It has been reported that Trump got $2 billion in free coverage on American television. Hillary Clinton, who led in early polling, got the least and most negative coverage. Bernie Sanders got less coverage than Trump but it was much more favorable. Trump bragged at one point that he could shoot someone and his ratings would rise. It has been said that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of Americans. But put another way, perhaps his precipitous fall, which has Republican leaders talking of replacing him as their candidate, may make sense. Perhaps people became bored with Trump? If that is the problem then his show will simply be cancelled. Related: Exclusive: Is Donald Trump’s Endgame the Launch of Trump News? Mind Control, Subliminal Messages and the Brainwashing of America Op-ed: President Barack Obama wasted no time Thursday endorsing Hillary Clinton to succeed him, and there was no doubt he was relishing the battle. The Republican party publicly made its no. 1 goal to stop everything Obama tried to do during his eight years as President. His likely narrative will be that former President George W. Bush destroyed the nation’s economy and is at least partly responsible for creating ISIS. Obama will be able to claim credit for drastically lowering the unemployment rate and killing Osama bin Laden. “I’m with her, I am fired up, and I cannot wait to get out there to campaign for Hillary,” Mr. Obama said. Obama said of his former secretary of state, who would become the first female president of the country, “I have seen her judgment, I’ve seen her toughness, I’ve seen her commitment to our values up close. … “She’s got the courage, the compassion, and the heart to get the job done.” Obama said he would begin campaigning with her next week in Wisconsin, and Michelle Obama was expected to join the parade. “I know how hard this job can be, that’s why I know Hillary will be so good at it,” Obama said in avideo. “In fact I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office. She’s got the courage, the compassion and the heart to get this job done.” Earlier in the day Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders indicated he was leaving the campaign. Later he vowed to work with Hillary Clinton but shied away from endorsing her. That may come later. For the first time ever, Americans will have the choice of a woman as their president. Hillary Clinton won’t have to worry about fighting off a challenge from Bernie Sanders based on technicalities. Clinton won enough votes in the last Tuesday of primaries to prevent Sanders from arguing that she was counting on delegates picked by the party, not voters. Even Sanders’ dream of winning in California, the nation’s most populous state, failed. He had hoped that might give him leverage to take to the convention but he lost by more than 400,000 votes. But at the end it was a somewhat boring evening that cable television had been trying to make it seem like it would be decided at the last minute or perhaps not until the Democrat convention in July in Philadelphia. The New York Times reported Sanders had already begun laying off workers. Even his threat to keep his campaign going drew mostly yawns. He was under pressure from President Obama to withdraw and most pundits expected he would comply within days. Clinton, whose husband, Bill, served two terms as president, has been playing down the fact that she would be the first female president. On Tuesday night she let it all out. “Tonight’s victory is not about one person. It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible,” she said. “In our country, it started right here in New York, a place called Seneca Falls, in 1848, when a small but determined group of women and men came together with the idea that women deserved equal rights,” she said in a speech in Brooklyn, N.Y. Many leaders around the world are likely to be happy to see her contesting Republican Donald Trump, who is considered too inexperienced to run the most powerful nation in the world. In her speech, she repeated an earlier comment, that the New York billionaire businessman was unfit to be president. “So we all owe so much to those who came before, and tonight belongs to all of you,” she added. She made special mention of her mother, Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham, who died in 2011. “I really wish my mother could be here tonight. I wish she could see what a wonderful mother Chelsea has become and could meet our beautiful granddaughter, Charlotte,” she said. “And of course, I wish she could see her daughter become the Democratic Party’s nominee.” President Lyndon Johnson wanted to step up the war in Vietnam, and the U.S. Navy gave him exactly what he needed. An alleged attack by the North Vietnamese Navy on Aug. 2. 1964 justified sending hundreds of thousands of American military to Vietnam. Questions were raised about what really happened and later historians determined the North Vietnamese had done nothing. Imagine what a President Donald Trump’s Tweet would have been like. “Commie North Vietnamese attack brave American sailors. Nuke them. Show them what real power is.” And it would probably have gotten the same reaction LBJ’s phony declaration did. Just this week shortly after an Egyptian Air Airbus crashed en route from Paris to Cairo a tweet was posted by Trump, or more likely one of his Twitter staff. CNN reported Trump said: "Looks like yet another terrorist attack. Airplane departed from Paris. When will we get tough, smart and vigilant? Great hate and sickness!" Hillary Clinton waited six more hours before saying the Egyptian government feared it was a terrorist attack. “It does appear that it was an act of terrorism — exactly how, of course, the investigation will have to determine,” Clinton told CNN. President Obama made no immediate statement, though his spokesman said the U.S. would provide any help it could. American TV media met to praise Trump, including Chris Matthews, perhaps the most popular MSNBC anchor. They said that even though there was no information to back up his claim he showed his willingness to say what people are thinking. How things have changed in 50 years. We used to fear “the finger on the button would be German…” That lyric appeared in a song, the “MLF Lullaby by Tom Lehrer, after the creation of NATO. Now the fear is that the button-pushing finger will be a reality TV show host who has never served in the military, not even in government. He dodged the draft during the Vietnam War to spend time with girl playthings while married. Op-ed: A movie that has not been released in theaters in the U.S. yet may tell us what to expect if Donald Trump is elected president. It is “High Rise,” and it features British hunk Tom Hiddleston, better known as the characters Loki in the film Avengers and Jonathan Pine in The Night Manager. If the Republicans get their payback on Hillary Clinton for helping impeach Richard Nixon, and many other acts they consider crimes, it is worth downloading High Rise to see what a class war would really be like. Bloomberg Watergate Clinton The film High Rise, released last year in Canada, was considered a highlight of the Toronto Film Festival. “Biggest surprises of TIFF so far: “…that Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise (Grade: B+) is something I genuinely dig. Wheatley’s labyrinthine black comedy preserves the 1970s setting of J.G. Ballard’s novel, linking its vision of a residential tower regressing into literal class warfare to the rise of Margaret Thatcher…” Toronto Film Festival Reviews For those who judge a movie by its cast, Jeremy Irons is the arch architect of the five towers, if that is a word. Hiddleston plays Thor’s arch enemy in the Marvel series. As in Les Miserables or the French Revolution itself, class warfare develops. This time between those on the top floor and those on the lower flowers. The soundtrack, which ranges from Bach to Abba enhances the film. It gets to the level of eating dogs to survive. Margaret Thatcher is quoted about how pure capitalism is the only answer. The police, apparently too busy with prison riots are only seen once. That is one cop. J.G. Ballard, author of the book, written in 1975, said the architect of the towers “…without knowing it … had constructed a gigantic vertical zoo, its hundreds of cages stacked above each other. All the events of the past few months made sense if one realized that these brilliant and exotic creatures had learned to open the doors.” Amazon says: “When a class war erupts inside a luxurious apartment block, modern elevators become violent battlegrounds and cocktail parties degenerate into marauding attacks on “enemy” floors. In this visionary tale, human society slips into violent reverse as once-peaceful residents, driven by primal urges, re-create a world ruled by the laws of the jungle.” Fighting for canapés? Cake anyone? Before the architect is shot by a journalist he had tried unsuccessfully to have lobotomized – he was the sanest man in the building -- we learned he planned four more towers like this one. It is the kind of thing you might hear from Trump. The residents are selected to get only certain types. At the close he realized he had chosen too many types. Op-ed: Even before results were in from Pennsylvania Tuesday night the national television had declared Donald Trump the winner. It wasn’t the first time. And then some spent an hour talking about Trump as a winner, declaring themselves fools for thinking otherwise Hillary Clinton had a 58-41 lead over Bernard Sanders but the networks delayed declaring her the winner. They didn’t mention their mysterious exit polls. These were the same polls that declared John Kerry the winner over George W. Bush. Some felt people lied to polltakers because they were ashamed. Four years earlier former Vice President Al Gore got half a million votes more but lost due to the electoral college. One major “narrative,” to use a newly popular word, that has changed. But it is not talked about. Democratic voters, meanwhile, described as very small, and they were at the start. Now they outnumbered Republicans in New York and Pennsylvania. It may have been that since Clinton was the presumptive winner few bothered in the early months. And there was a sexy race among Republicans. Now exit polls find that Democrats are “energized” by the Sanders-Clinton race. Even more likely to energize Democrats is for Clinton to choose a woman as her VP. It received almost no publicity on television during the weekend. It finally was mentioned on Tuesday, but pundits focused on Trump picking a woman. Elise Jordan, a Republican commentator on MSNBC, was quickly cut off when she said Trump couldn’t beat one woman, let alone two. The Washington Post said: “It doesn’t matter if Sanders continues his candidacy until the last votes are cast in June. What matters is that he quits gracefully, and there should be every expectation that he will, for a simple reason: Sanders is not a fool." Simply recycling unproved claims that Hillary is dishonest - most apparently based on discredited Benghazi claims – is boring. It won’t write headlines. Journalists want new things. Trump will try to plagiarize previous claims. Although CBS is on record as saying Trump makes money for them, that doesn’t mean they have chosen to elect him. They chose to make money. They don’t care who the president is. Hillary already has a YouTube channel. She needs to update it hourly, not every two days. It would take little work. Most of it would be just quote the network when they report on something other than Trump. Her tech staff can do a split screen when Trump’s fraud trial opens on the same day as the Cleveland Republican Convention. The judge could grant a delay but they were loathe to do this in cases that have been going on for years. If there was any doubt what Sanders would do he answered it by saying he would "do everything that I can to make certain that Donald Trump is not elected president." More: Biggest surprise of Presidential campaign Hillary Clinton appears presumptive nominee Say goodbye to Bernie Sanders |
Robert Weller
2016 US election news and other news from the USA
Bio
Worked in journalism, including on the Internet, for more than 40 years. Started as a news editor at the Colorado Daily at the University of Colorado, joined a small Montana newspaper, the Helena Independent-Record, and then United Press International. Archives
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