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Forum Post: Condemn venal journalism for severely fooling the people

Posted 12 years ago on Oct. 23, 2011, 11:15 a.m. EST by ShowRealHist (60)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement

Condemn venal journalism for severely fooling the people by hardly ever showing asset price histories that look like cocaine intoxications. Here they are: http://www.showrealhist.com/begun.gif http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/08/26/weekinreview/27leon_graph2.html http://www.showrealhist.com/RHandRD.html

Bubbles are well-shown -- these histories are kept out of sight, because the ‘establishment’ make more money from bubbles. The ‘establishment’ are conpersons first.

Consequence? -- “The financial crisis that afflicts the country is largely a result of speculative bubbles, built on false hopes, in the housing and stock markets.” R.J. Shiller, here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/business/09shiller.html

Venal journalism talk: “The public’s right to know”. Venal journalism walk: “The public be suckered”.

Adolf Hitler originated the term “The Big Lie” in his Mein Kampf, 1925 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Lie and Nazi practice included much of ‘deception by omission’.

America’s brainwashed reality derived from the superior cash flow of journalistic nonfeasance.

Condemn venal journalism for severely fooling the people.

18 Comments

18 Comments


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[-] 2 points by hchc (3297) from Tampa, FL 11 years ago

I remember when I transfered schools from Rochester to Tampa, in 05 or 06. Right in the middle of the housing boom.

Rochester is a dump, rust belt town. Cool ya, but not exactly on the edge of productivity (although we are leading in fuel cell tech). We didnt get much of a housing appreciation (but loans were still more available due to fed policy- no, you conservative idiots, the housing bubble had nothing to do with Carter or Clinton).

Got to Tampa, and little ranches were going for 180k. I was flipping them for people, telling them its nuts. All they wanted to talk about was how much they had appreciated.

I asked them if more people were moving to Tampa than normal. Nope. Were the houses working harder than they usually did (sarcasm)? Nope.

So how long is this craziness going to last? No one knew, and really no one even wanted to think about it. I told them when Bear Sterns fell that it was a big big sign, no one wanted to think. No thinking, just blind faith that things will always stay as they currently are.

They always say that no one saw what was coming, but I find that as bullshit.

[-] 1 points by ShowRealHist (60) 11 years ago

These real price histories obviously show pasts dominated by serial bubbles. SO, lessons learned are apparent, IF these histories are seen! I bet that the 'system' fully agrees, and chooses ignorance for the customer.

[-] 2 points by johnward1544 (1) 11 years ago

This is just the very same experience that people had in Boston all those years ago. The corporations operating under the same British Crown Charter that crushed the Indian sub continent for two hundred years. Your war of independence was lost in 1886 when the Supreme Court allowed Corporations Fourteenth Amendment rights by granting them 'Personhood'. President Obama handed you a great victory when he declared "A Corporation is NOT a person". all that is needed is for the Supreme Court to reverse its decision and return 'Sovereignty' to the people.You should not allow alien entities such as international corporations to share the sovereignty that you paid for with your blood under Washington's leadership. It is yours not the stock exchanges of the world. Take back your flag.

[-] 2 points by ARod1993 (2420) 12 years ago

We've complained about this problem on the OWS forum I don't know how many times, and it is true that the way things are right now we can't really trust any particular media outlet on its own to give us a complete picture of what's going on in the world at any given moment. I'd like to suggest a plan of action to rectify it at least partially, both in the short term and quite possibly in the longer term as well. To begin, we should consider pushing for the reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Rule.

As far as I'm aware, the rationale for dropping the Fairness Doctrine was that the sheer breadth of channels available on things like cable TV meant that we could endorse the "anything goes" mentality because if the field was wide enough then surely somebody would keep the public interest in mind and journalism would get better for the lack of regulation. Did that actually happen? Absolutely not. Actual good investigative journalism became much harder to find on the airwaves, and generally the group that would go out of its way to look for it was the group that needed it the least.

The Equal Time Rule would also be a great way to deal with changing the way we run campaigns in this country, as it pretty much dictates that no television station or overtly political event, save a few exceptions, may offer different airtime rates for different candidates and are required to give the candidates the same sweetheart rates that they give firms with whom they have a close relationship. I would expand its scope a bit so that actual debates would be subject to these provisions (providing an appropriate forum for independent candidates) and consider requiring broadcast TV stations to provide actual equal advertising time to all who request it.

Also, just a little side note: the Fairness Doctrine provided a very wide latitude to television stations as to how controversial political issues are presented or how different points and counterpoints are presented (format, style, length, etc.). A 1-to-1 equal time rule for different views was also not enforced and in fact was not part of the doctrine. The point was that differing views must be given their chance to be heard, and the standards of how this was to be accomplished was left up to the stations themselves. It was a way of holding broadcast TV to decent journalistic standards without exerting influence over which views were or were not "allowed".

To the people who want to cry censorship: there are already things that you can't say or do on broadcast TV because it is public airspace (the "Seven Words You Can't Say on TV" routine is one of the more humorous examples); the only reason I can think of that those rules should even exist is that on some level broadcast TV should be required to maintain a minimum level of usefulness for the American people. If we're going to sanitize broadcast TV the least we can do is put more intelligent programming on it.

If acting outside the political sector is more your thing, then you should start by knowing this: We actually already have something operating largely independently of corporate influence; it's called PBS (short for Public Broadcasting Service) and it operates for the most part free of corporate sponsorship. It's a highly decentralized organization in which individual member stations (which in turn are run by local nonprofits, communities, or universities) will supply a lot of their own content, with a few of the biggest stations (WGBH Boston, WNET New York, and WETA in DC) contributing a lot of the more interesting stuff including the NewsHour and Frontline. There are no ads and they run large parts of their operations off of small private donors. They haven't been perfect, but they've been light-years better than most commercial TV stations.

If you could somehow get the update frequency of CNN or various Internet outlets and marry it to the journalistic quality and depth provided by people like the NewsHour team and Bill Moyers, then that would be truly amazing. I brought up PBS because it would seem to be the logical place to start with any plan to build a completely independent news network (because it already is an independent network with a fairly strong base in the communities in which it operates and an independent program pipeline).

What I would advise you to do if you're really interested in this issue is start on Change.org with an online petition addressed to the head of PBS to staff a completely independent wire service and correspondent network of its own and to work with affiliated TV stations to obtain additional 24-7 news channels so that stories can be broadcast as they come in from the wire service.

On top of that, I would look into fundraising platforms like Causes; identify PBS as your nonprofit of choice, and see how many people you could get to donate a few dollars here and there to fund the start-up costs and continued staffing of the wire service and network offices. That way, your request (which I'd figure would be quite expensive to implement) would come with an at least partial funding source, and I think that would go a long way toward getting it implemented.

tl;dr: If you don't like how things are now, do something about it. Start pushing your representatives to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine and the Equal Time Rule, and look into trying to get people to give PBS an independent wire service. Complaining about problems is a great way to get started, but now let's try fixing them.

[-] 1 points by ShowRealHist (60) 12 years ago

Reply to ARod1993 I offer some supporting track records. ONE Mid-1980s, decisive trend breaks [toward apparent ‘unreason’] in people’s saving and borrowing, see 2nd chart here: http://homepage.mac.com/ttsmyf/RD_RJShomes_PSav.html TWO Mid-1980s, Fairness Doctrine enforcement ceased THREE 1985-1986, all 3 major TV networks sold, news staffs cut

Looking at the first two charts at the above URL, which charts I advocate being ongoingly well-apparent to the people, it is clear that showing the LONG-TERM histories is what reveals, at a glance, asset mispricings and collective undersaving/overborrowing. I reckon widespread agreement with this assertion -- from the fact that these histories are nearly NEVER seen! How about: “end of the Fairness Doctrine marked EBI” Effective Brainwashing Initiation

I suggest that OWS put in the masthead some mini-icon of the asset mispricings, clicking on which gets readers to suitable explanation/elaboration. I am not very good at such composition, but here’s a recent ad effort: http://homepage.mac.com/ttsmyf/c6a840ef6f7141d4983fcc776edb0cde.html clicking on which gets to http://homepage.mac.com/ttsmyf/RHandRD.html

[-] 2 points by willrosswriter (69) from Crystal Lake, IL 12 years ago

This is easy for a person to debunk. Grab an inflation calculator, and if the words "inflation adjusted" aren't in the article, adjust them.

In general, don't let ANY media, left or right, spoon feed you truth. They are there to give you data, it's up to YOU to actually do homework.

[-] 1 points by henrygeorge (1) 12 years ago

i wanted to thank the author for visiting my blog.

there is labor-made property of earned wealth. there is law-made property of unearned wealth. the law-made property of economic rent and monetary usury are the two principle forms in which the rich get richer off the backs of the poor. learn about henry george, david ricardo, and the physiocrats. learn about social credit. learn about the zarlenga's plan from the american monetary institute, sponsored by dennis kucinich. learn about true free markets and economic justice.

[-] 1 points by thegatekeeperbeta (25) from New York, NY 12 years ago

So glad these things get uncovered. Makes you wonder how much the establishment "rapes" us without us knowing!

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[-] 1 points by flanga (26) 11 years ago

These things happen all around the world my friend. Where I come from government corruption is rampant :/.

Thanks from Clive @ http://easydiablo3.com/.

[-] 1 points by Thisisthetime (200) from Kahlotus, WA 12 years ago

Excellent information. Thank you.

[-] 2 points by ShowRealHist (60) 12 years ago

You're welcome! This status quo of severely fooling the people is an enormous crime -- except for the fact that it's not against the law. And our USA has military people dying for 'our way of life', which importantly includes this 'severely fooling the people' -- outrage, I'd say.

[-] 1 points by MonetizingDiscontent (1257) 12 years ago

Nice Post. Apparently the dailycapitalist thought so too. Your post is on their site.

http://dailycapitalist.com/

[-] 1 points by ShowRealHist (60) 12 years ago

Thank you, saw it there. I'd be glad to get any good suggestions for more effectively reaching the people with these very instructive, out-of-sight histories ... Help!

[-] 1 points by JesseHeffran (3903) 12 years ago

misinformation is tantamount to screaming fire in a burning building.

[-] 1 points by victoriousg (3) 12 years ago

sometimes just saying something out loud all over the place begins to raise awareness, and to encourage others to allow themselves to rise to the occasion, and maybe eventually it just won't be COOL to be a venal journalist -

[-] 1 points by borkborkbork (4) 12 years ago

How do I condemn it? Burn a newspaper or what?

[-] 1 points by ShowRealHist (60) 12 years ago

One more thought: I use the term "serial herd behaviors" here http://homepage.mac.com/ttsmyf/RHandRD.html Sounds catchy to me, maybe usage of it 'all the time' would be effective.

[-] 1 points by ShowRealHist (60) 12 years ago

Write a Letter to editor. Do a post. Do a Comment. Verbal communication. I haven't yet had much effect, but 'gravity' must be on the side of truth!