Real News Comes to Local American Television (And the Right Wing Hates It)!

Well, instead of doing a follow up piece to my article on the coming war with Iran, I thought I'd publish this short article on how real news is slowly piercing the bubble of imposed ignorance of the main-stream media in America.  

I'm referring of course to the vast empty wasteland that passes for "news shows" on local television. "Infotainment" has utterly conquered CBS/NBC/ABC and CNN and other cable "news" channels now more resemble the old Saturday morning kids' shows than a real news program with hard international news, analysis and preferably, film of wars, disasters, and international events. The travesty that is Fox news doesn't bear mentioning. When the MSM try to give news, it almost always has a hard-right wing slant, imposed by the need to give primacy to Administration and inside-the-beltway sources and never step on any toes.

Most Americans could be forgiven for not even knowing there is a world out there. But, it's changing in a big way now with BBC news and Democracy Now! coming to a TV station near you. And the right wing isn't happy at all about it! Oh, no Precious, not happy at all! They're sputtering and mumbling to themselves like the character Gollum in the Lord of the Rings films. Which makes me very happy indeed!

Changes In The Wind!

Two huge changes are now in the wind. The dead whale that is the MSM won't be reformed overnight, but some cracks are appearing around the edges.

First, BBC World News by now is available nightly to 9 out of 10 Americans on their over the air PBS stations, and BBC also launched it's own cable 24 hour news channel here in the U.S. http://news.bbc.co.uk/... It's already on air in New York, and is seeking deals with all other cable companies to put it in every major U.S. market.

"What we're not setting out to do is carve a niche that reflects America back to Americans," [World News Tonight anchor George] Alagiah said. "What we're trying to do is reflect the world back to Americans."

The importance of this is that as a foreign news source, the BBC isn't directly subject to right-wing pressure. The fundies and their congressional allies can't censor their news coverage, the worst they can do is scream about PBS carrying the broadcasts. But that just makes them look like fools and opens them to charges of censorship.

It will be a serious newscast that stresses the BBC's reputation for impartiality, although "sometimes being impartial means working hard and going out and getting the truth," he said.

In short, telling truth to power.

The broadcast will stand in contrast to American network morning shows, where the balance is tipping more toward entertainment, he said. The BBC also has an advantage over CNN since it has about three times as many journalists stationed outside of the U.S., [New York Bureau Chief Jeremy] Hillman said.

In Denver, BBC World News is on twice nightly at 6 and 10 on the local PBS station nightly, so you have two chances to watch it and the audience is growing. The BBC is certainly not devoid of institutional bias itself, but compared to anything in the U.S. it's a breath of fresh air! They actually have film of what's going on in the middle east for instance including gasp non-embedded reporters acutally reporting the news without having to worry that some screaming Reich-wing nut is going to accuse them of "liberal bias" because they report about (for instance) civilian casualties in Iraq. It's far from perfect but the right is already screaming!

The BBC 24 Hour News Channel Isn't Available Yet In Every City, But Already Right Wing Is Screaming!

Check this article out from hard-right London Times editor (and sometime Fox News bloviator) Gerard Baker of the "RealClearPoliticsl"!
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/...

Emboldened, [the BBC's] mangers now clearly think the time is now ripe to enter the US TV news market and offer a distinctive product. A few years ago the former boss of the BBC attacked American television news for too slavishly following the government line. Instead the BBC now says in its publicity, it will offer "both sides of the story".

Roughly translated this means the BBC thinks that, while the vast majority of Americans are morons who are perfectly content to swallow right-wing rubbish from their political and media masters, there is an educated and sophisticated elite on the coasts that feels somehow its worldview is underrepresented by the current giants of the mainstream media in the US.

What part of that isn't true? But, this critique only is more evidence of some "elitist bias." Therefore the reader can instantly dismiss any criticism of the MSM for broadcasting "right-wing rubbish" without even discussing the overwhelming evidence that it is rather prosaic reality and not some left-wing fantasy.

Personally, I love the "educated and sophisticated elites on both coasts" part. Living in Denver - right smack in the heart of America I can testify that it ain't just those goofy isolated elites on the coasts who are getting a wakeup call. The BBC World News is on both local PBS stations nightly, and now DemocracyNow! has a hour-long nightly news show 5 nights a week! And Colorado is front and center in the blueing of America too, as most of you know.

Why this garbage? Because we're dealing with a true-apparachik! This guy recently penned a laugher entitled: The Foley Scandal: A GOP Plot to Lose? http://www.realclearpolitics.com/...
suggesting that the Mark Foley scandal was orchestrated by Republicans so they could deliberately lose the 2006 elections so as to position themselves better for 2008! When you're spinning the Mark Foley scandal as good news for the Republicans you're pretty far gone!

But, now we get to the meat of the "Be Afraid! Be Very Afraid! Libruls are Creaping Into Your Den!"

Why should anyone worry? . . . .
The truth is, whoever says it, that the BBC is a publicly funded leviathan, accountable to virtually no-one but itself with increasingly global ambitions, ambitions that in a world of rapidly converging media outlets, are eminently achievable.

So, the BBC is going to take over the world, (unlike Robert Murdoch, for whom this schmuck works of course)! Uh, I'm still not sure why I have to be so afraid! Ah, here we go!

But its producers and managers share one thing in common - a public-sector, European liberal, metropolitan elite view of the world. . . .

[This] creates some very visible problems of truth and fairness in the free world when you're talking about the globe's largest news provider, which is what the BBC now is.

BBC News is produced by a very large team of ideological confreres, who, with a very few exceptions subscribe to the smart London set's view of the modern world.

This thinks, roughly, that capitalism is some sort of conspiracy by evil men against the ordinary working stiff and that big government and higher taxes are the only route to a fair society.

It believes that Europe is the acme of human civilization and that if only Britain and America would emulate it (or in Britain's case, completely subsume itself within it) the world would be a much better place.

It declines to call Islamist terrorists terrorists because the word is a value-loaded one, but it never fails to pore in infinite detail over every "atrocity" committed by America or British forces in Iraq.

It thinks in any case that the war on terror was all got up by oil industry tycoons and clever neocons and that there is no real threat from violent political Islamism at all.

It believes Palestinians are the innocent persecuted victims of violence and imperialism (a recent Jerusalem correspondent memorably confessed to weeping openly when she caught sight of Yassir Arafat's coffin at his funeral in Ramallah) and that the murder of innocent Israeli citizens is on a moral par as victims of war with the killing of Palestinian terrorists by Israeli forces.

It scoffs at religious belief (the last head of its vast religious affairs department was an agnostic), but it holds the doctrine that man--made global warming is true with the passion of any enraptured spiritualist awaiting Judgment Day.

It believes passionately in equal rights for homosexuals, though of course it urges cultural sensitivity when dealing with countries where such "deviancy" is rewarded by execution.

Isn't all this terrible! You mean the BBC is suggesting that global warming isn't some nutty left-wing conspiracy against the oil companies? Those dastards!

Meanwhile, where do I subscribe to the BBC newschannel?!

But things are getting even worse for the right! It's not just the BBC that's creeping into America's dens, spreading it's librul poison of reason and hard international news!

DemocracyNow! Available On Local TV! http://www.democracynow.org/...

Some real liberal TV that is bound to make right-wingers choke is that the DemocracyNow news show is being shown nightly on over the air stations across the U.S. Here in Denver it's on 5 nights a week with an hour news show! (It's at 11:00 P.M., but still there!)

And if you want to understand what that means in terms of coverage compare this coverage of the death of Gerald Ford, with the useless gushing "he was a world leader" garbage on all the other news shows!

President Gerald Ford Dies at 93; Supported Indonesian Invasion of East Timor that Killed 1/3 of Population http://www.democracynow.org/...

On all the mainstream channels: Gerald Ford was a wonderful guy who for some mysterious reason (possibly due to pardoning Richard Nixon) didn't win re-election.

On DemocracyNow!: Gerald Ford was personally responsible for mass-murder in that he personally gave approval to the Indonesian generals who were in the process of launching the bloody invasion of East Timor and flew out of Indonesian airspace (after giving the green light to the generals who were afraid their planned war-crime might result in a loss of U.S. aid), while the Indonesian paratroopers were actually dropping onto the island. And that atrocity resulted in one of the worst acts of genocide proportionate to the size of the population of the 20th century, So, maybe he wasn't such a swell guy after all!

If shows like this get on the air for any length of time, it's really going to undermine the information free zone the MSM have created around America!