What we saw was a news network pop up fully operational with sources in all the hot spots world-wide, and with resources quite equivalent to mature media conglomerations like Associated Press, CBS, NBC, BBC and the rest. A rather amazing feat that we thoughtlessly took for granted.
I recently read it referred to as the CIA-News-Network.
* BAM *
Ohmygosh!
They just love putting it right in front of our eyes
to watch us miss the obvious…
And miss it we did.
CNN went from zero to a fully-fledged news organization virtually overnight.
Incredible (quite literally, as it turns out).
How did a brand new news outlet get people on the ground at the outset of every major, usually violent action everywhere in the world. Easy-sneezy. The CIA operatives were there making the news, and submitting their reports as they executed their plans. The reports were not necessarily exactly what happened, but more precisely what they wanted you to think happened… otherwise known as propaganda.
But back home, thousands of miles from the action, they impressed us with having reports in real time from hot spots world wide. Without access to competing reports, they owned the dialogue… and the audience. Quite clever actually.
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it – Winston Churchill
When the CIA-News-Network was established there were well over two thousand news organizations with separate, independent owners, managers and staff. It was a competitive market. Reporting accuracy could be compared from one to the other. Reliability and timeliness won market share.
During the 1993-2001 Clinton administration, governmental restrictions to conglomerating businesses went away. Anti-trust activities disappeared from the executive branch. Banks, manufacturing and media has been marked ever since by mergers and acquisitions. Variety shrunk, shrunk, shrunk while size of the remaining few grew, grew, grew.
The real investigative journalists in 2018 are published on the Internet. Now we have millions of reporters who are not only at every action in the world, they know the place, the culture and bear witness to what is really happening.
I cover media here often as you can see from the Bitterroot Bugle Post Categories “media” topic to the right. I’ll put it right here for you, but it is always over there anytime you want to check on it, or any other of my main topics.
https://www.bitterrootbugle.com/category/media/
In the video compilation on the right you see “the variety” of news sources exposed for being neither various nor independent. They used to be, but that went away during the Slick Willy Clinton administration. Thousands of owners were bought out, consolidated into fewer and fewer hands until we have 6 CEOS all demanding a single agreed-upon script from each of the FCC-licensed broadcasting outlets.
“This is extremely dangerous to our democracy” they say on every single one of these “various” news sources… all on the same evening. AMAZING COINCIDENCE, don’t you think?
Every bit as frustrating as the synchronized story fabrication is their constant use of that word to describe our CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC. It is the difference between the best form of government the world has seen and the worst… neither inconsequential nor accidental. I’ll continue that thought in the next day or two.