Topic: Is the US press really that free? - page 3. (Read 3289 times)

Yes, they are good examples of what not to follow, but let us not fall into the error of excusing what we have in the west because it could be worse; with the resources we have at our disposal, it should be better, a lot better than what it currently is.

This is crazy! Wasn't expecting this results at all.
Not only surprised by America, but also Southern Europe and the UK!
Long ways to go yet...

The press in the US is obviously not free, as practically everyone else in this thread already mentioned, and I believe mostly for the reasons previously stated: they are paid by people that have a vested interest in spreading their views. Now, there are exception to this, usually in the form of small, mostly online based companies, that don't receive state or corporate funding and rely on public donations instead. Examples are Democracy Now (http://www.democracynow.org/), The Young Turks (http://www.youtube.com/user/TheYoungTurks/featured), The Real News Network (http://therealnews.com/t2/), and so on.

However, I think a more interesting topic would be in what way a "good education" may influence this by limiting the spectrum of "acceptable" opinions. You see, in most cases, I don't believe there actually is anyone telling journalists and editors they can't report on something, or that they need to do so through a specific view; people are groomed to accept it. Then those that more easily rise through the ranks are those that have internalized those views.

As a practical "try it yourself at home" example, what if someone told you that every American president since the second world war ought to be brought before an international court and tried for war crimes?

http://rsf.org/index2014/en-index2014.php
Those are the 2014 world press freedom rankings and the US isn't even in the top 19.

I think the real problem is that the news has become nothing more than a hook to get you to watch commercials. So no bad news or anything that might rock your boat. Certainly nothing that would spoil your shopping mood. 

Good debate requires intellectual honesty. That is a lost art in general whether the topic is religion or politics or just about anything else. That's why we have an aristocracy of idiots playing gotcha politics steering the ship in the US.

one way i see china as being different from the U.S. is that in china, the government controls everything (including commerce). in the U.S., it's an oligarchy where corporations and billionaires run the government.

china controls its media outlets by shutting their mouths with an iron fist, while the U.S. does it by marginalizing the peoples' collective voice.

This question shouldn't even be asked, how can you expect from companies (that's what they are) owned by big corporations to be partial when it is will known that those corps are elites when it comes to lobbying, and they are politically involved

Exactly.

People should debate the issue and not the person/party.

In the U.S any blogger can usually say what they like no matter what and you could set up a newspaper by yourself and print it with a home PC but one thing that does happen a lot is the biggest media outlets take sides in any debate no matter how wrong they are, you will usually find that they take the side of whichever particular ideology they belong to. So for example, Fox news as we all know is blatantly on the side of Republicans and don't even try to hide it, MSNBC and CNN tend to be on the side of Democrats.

How can you tell? Whenever someone on the opposite side fucks up they're all over it, Obama fucks up, Fox News go after him, if Bush fucked up people like MSNBC will go after him but the real clue into who they belong to is in who they defend or DON'T mention, so with Fox News you'll never hear them attacking Bush or other Republicans very much ( except for Ron Paul ) and with MSNBC you'll barely hear them mention anything Obama has done unless it's major or the news journalists can't be bothered keeping up the façade anymore.

You'll even see this mentality on these very forums and it makes it very difficult to talk to Americans about politics because if you mention things that Bush and Obama have done if they're supporters of either ( and I noticed a couple of mainstream republicans worming their way in here ) they'll get extremely defensive about it and try to blatantly deflect the blame. I always wondered why I could never get along with anybody before when it came to talking politics/religion and now I know it's because my views weren't mainstream, they were with the Anarchist/Libertarian type ideologies, hell I bet I could get along with Marxists better than I could with the common politics people follow today but they all seem to have vanished.

People always knock on the government here but a strong independent unbiased publicly funded media source is important in my opinion. Just look at the state of American media to see why.

Although it doesn't have to be government funded, it could be funded on donations, but I don't think people have the will to fund such an organization.

Bilderberg group control media all over the world

Probably pretty accurate barring the most recent events.  Silly they would put India's press behind the US - India skewers their candidates.  In the US we have reporters asking what Obama's most enchanting moment was:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/obamas-enchanted-answer/

So hard hitting I just threw up.

The US press freedom ranking (including the UK) has gone down over the last few years though we're still a lot better than say China and most parts of the Middle East.

https://image.guim.co.uk/ni/1398941918470/Press_Freedom_map.pdf

While we haven't been shooting down air transports carrying "aide" that happens to be 40+ soldiers, the US media is increasingly becoming a joke (if not already).

The morning news on ABC spent 2 min talking about how handsome an inmate was while it spent 13 seconds on missing emails and conflicting information from FBI vs IRS.

However un-free you think you are, Russia and China have it worse.

Yep, and it's only going to get worse.  I know this is a little old, but it paints a pretty good picture of where we are headed.



Same thing with all the banks, Department stores, etc.

Once all our choices are taken away, I fear what our future will look like.

2-3 peoples control news programs in USA

In USA you have monopol on news, and truth

Our press chooses to be protective of the administration. They were originally given the protections they have to be a watchdog but hav ebecome lapdogs. There have been some chilling moves by the current and previous administrations.

I look at it this way.  It's more free than some, but not free enough.  It's no different in Canada, mainstream media has it's own agenda that's driven by whomever owns it.  Media is no longer non biased.  

I try to tune out from it as much as possible.  Far too much fear mongering on a daily basis.  You'd think it was a war zone outside by the way the media reports sometimes. Much easier to push through a militarized police force when the public lives in fear of violence that is actually declining.