Mainstream Media vs Upstream Media

For all you folks out there who bash RENSE, read this excellent essay that was posted. It's on the mainstream media's descent into uselessness. I recommend it to everyone.

Mainstream Media vs
Upstream Media
By Gary North
5-30-5

Recently, I was flipping through the local TV channels. I get four stations clearly, but none is worth watching more than once a week. I stopped briefly at an interview. Talking head #1 was a nationally known TV news teleprompter reader, also known as an anchorman. The other one was unfamiliar to me. He was a print media journalist - a reporter. The anchorman began his questioning of the journalist with this observation. "We're both representatives of the MSM: mainstream media."

It hit me. The MSM is at long last visibly on the defensive. The moment you acknowledge that you are part of the mainstream media, you are necessarily also acknowledging the existence of another media, which I like to call the Upstream Media. It swims against the mainstream, which is flowing downstream. It's easy to flow downstream. You just let nature take its course.

The trouble with downstream rafting is that eventually you either hit the rapids or go over the falls. In any movie about going over the falls, someone in the raft asks:

"What's that noise?"
www.rense.com...

I'm not a big Rense fan, I like some of the info he presents but I feel that he recycles other peoples news sometimes. I know Rense is not the author but this essay for example reminds me of something I read about during the Clinton Impeachment, the MSM was already noticing then that people like Matt Drudge could work outside of their bureaucracy and get to the facts.

Rense is entertaining to a point but he's not a good person to rely on for alot of your news. There are alot of sources these days and thats great and it's getting better.

The fact is that the mainstream folks know that the web and alternative view points are hurting their prestige and more importantly their ratings, hence the blog updates on news shows, and having bloggers do interviews. I doubt that the choice of bloggers to appear in MSM news is un-influenced though.

The Mainstream Media's problem is that they've denied so much coverage of relevant happenings and analysis that they've allowed themselves to sink into mediocrity and uselessness. Currently they are about 2-3 weeks behind in coverage. The net now drives the news. As someone who works in the belly of the beast, I say GOOD for the net. The MM is finally getting hip to it. You know what's happening? The people are now supplanting the shareholders views. It's Democracy at work.

If the MM doesn't fully figure this out soon, they're gonna lose all credibility. And market share.

Yep, I think you hit it right on. I almost never watch news on tv anymore, I always look up news on the web, you get the story alot faster that way.

Originally posted by looking4truth
Yep, I think you hit it right on. I almost never watch news on tv anymore, I always look up news on the web, you get the story alot faster that way.

TV "news" is a joke.

When I'm not working on something specific, I will read an average of 60-70 pages of news and analysis a day collected off the internet. STuff around the world. You wouldn't believe the difference of perspective you get. It's profound. And you see so clearly how inadequate our MM's coverage is.

let's hope the draconians don't put the clamps to the net anytime soon. tv news is worse than three weeks behind. they are blatanly hiding the important factors of societal transformation from us.
they're not ALL idiots. luckily, they think we are. it's good to be underestimated in battle.

The craziest thing happened. I wrote a scathing critique (op/ed) of the botched invasion and occupation of Iraq, demanding for Rumsfeld (et al's) head on a platter for gross incompetence and deriliction of duty. I got a shytload of emails, letters and calls (mainly supporting it). One of the emails I got was from one of our local tv anchormen. He said "Why aren't YOU on the editorial board!!!" That made me totally rethink him. After that, I had some respect for him that I never had before. He just retired, so he was probly old school and just as sick of it all as I am.

Originally posted by EastCoastKid
The craziest thing happened. I wrote a scathing critique (op/ed) of the botched invasion and occupation of Iraq, demanding for Rumsfeld (et al's) head on a platter for gross incompetence and deriliction of duty. I got a shytload of emails, letters and calls (mainly supporting it). One of the emails I got was from one of our local tv anchormen. He said "Why aren't YOU on the editorial board!!!"

That made me totally rethink him. After that, I had some respect for him that I never had before. He just retired, so he was probly old school and just as sick of it all as I am.

hey, that's really cool, ECK. i doubt that said talking head will actually propogate your stance, though. the mainstream is the mainstream, afterall. it can't flow against itself, yeah?
just a hunch, but i think the internet is starting to drive the mainstream. wouldn't that be great? true democracy at work.

[edit on 21-6-2005 by billybob]

The net truly is driving the mainstream these days. When something gets big on the net, the mainstream can't ignore it.

Here's an article on tv "news."

Network news shows struggle for survival
By BILL STRAUB
Scripps Howard News Service
June 20, 2005

- No less an authority than Sam Donaldson, the television newsman notorious for bellowing hard questions at presidents, has concluded that it's time to blow taps over that most venerable of institutions, the network evening news.

Beset by mounting competition, journalistic missteps, changing demographics and the departure of some long-term marquee personalities, the network evening news program is a shell of its former self - no longer attracting the devotion that made it, in the 1960s and '70s, America's dominant information source.

"I think it's dead, sorry," Donaldson said during a panel discussion at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas last April. "The monster anchors are through."
www.knoxstudio.com...