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Politics : The Castle -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MSI who wrote (571)	11/17/2002 11:16:23 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7936

Of course, the article did not say "merely", it only reported the facts. The reader can make up their own mind as to whether it was "merely". Rush was chosen because of his proven success in the military/government Sacramento market with a show promoting Ollie North in his Congressional hearings, if you recall those. Limbaugh's success is due to one thing and one thing only: He is THE exceptional talent in the field he is working in. NOBODY comes close. Limbaugh is a total professional at entertaining his audience, and runs a show that has first-rate production and does it with a level of skill that few other individuals possess. The production involves great topic selection and call screening. Limbaugh's skills involve cutting quickly to the point in such a way as to keep the show interesting. Others possessing these skills, although not at the level of Limbaugh's, are Bruce Williams and Dr. Laura. That a talent such as Limbaugh would have received serious promotion is no surprise. I listened to him in '88 and found him to be pompous, but mostly correct. While I don't listen to him today, his audience has continued to exist because he is entertaining.

To: MSI who wrote (571)	11/18/2002 6:19:33 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 7936

I tried to respond to this hours ago but my browser abended. My rewritten reply will be a bit shorter. Regardless of conservative/liberal labels, the issue is the potential influence on current events for specific government and corporate interests. If the potential is there, history and common sense show that it is used, to the max. The potential to manipulate the press and TV and radio is there and it is used. But different corporate or government or political groups manipulate the media in different directions, and will often leak evidence to show that the other groups are lieing or being manipulative. There is not some monolithic campaign to control the media. The potential to largely control the media is almost non-existent, and even the attempt would likely have a negative impact on the group trying to excert the control. As a result of his influence and that of other officials, certain stories that were sensitive to the CIA were not covered and the way other news stories were covered was sometimes affected. A strong accusation with little evidence. Remember even if it can be shown that these stories where not covered by the media owned by capital cities 1 - That is not proof that it was a result of CIA control. There are lots of stories that don't get much media attention, let alone media attention from every single major media corporation. and 2 - That doesn't mean other media outlets did not cover the story. In addition, with TCI controlling the cable TV systems in many markets, it has the ability to limit the type of information that is available in many people's homes. It has been suggested that TCI is now contemplating offering three conservative-leaning channels in some markets, and eliminating the only liberal-leaning one it carries. TCI doesn't decide what get's covered or what slant the coverage gets. If it adds a new conservative channel it doesn't know exactly what that channel will air, and it doesn't change what CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNBC, MSNBC ect. air. If they want to add some conservative leaning channels that strikes me as just a better case of balance, but it doesn't eliminate all the other sources. As for "eliminating the only liberal-leaning one" there is a lot of liberal lean in most "mainstream" news sources. Also if TCI is changing its channel line up it is almost certainly because it thinks it will help it make more money. Because of fears of legal action, some TV stations avoid certain news or advertising. To the extent that this is true it doesn't serve just to promote a conservative agenda, and it has almost nothing to do with your claim that the CIA is controlling the media. This may well lead to a downplay of coverage of arm sales to foreign countries, including Indonesia and China. So now its not just an unsupported accusation, but rather the possibility that something could theoretically happen. When it does happen, and you can show that it has happened, and you have strong evidence that this has something to do with the CIA then get back to me... Furthermore, when CBS was looking to be purchased by Westinghouse, a decision was made not to air a story on 60 Minutes which would have exposed some tobacco industry practices, possibly including the manipulation of the nicotine contents in cigarettes. Because CBS was afraid potential legal action might make it less attractive to Westinghouse, this segment was not aired at the time. Which 1 - Has nothing to do with the CIA and 2 - Did not keep the story about cigarettes being unhealthy or the tobacco companies acting in illegal and unethical ways from coming out. If someone was controling the press to keep the story from getting out then they did an awful bad job of it. Tim