Al-Jazeera. Media's Role in Shaping Political Culture - 06 - 2012. LSESU Austrian Society public lecture Date: Thursday 14 June 2012 Time: 7.30-9pm Venue: KSW.1.04, 20 Kingsway Speaker: Gerhard Zeiler Chair: Dr Bingchun Meng Gerhard Zeiler is the President of Turner Broadcasting System International. In this role, Mr Zeiler oversees a global portfolio of branded television networks and related businesses that includes versions of core Turner Broadcasting brands such as CNN, TNT, Cartoon Network and Turner Classic Movies, as well as country- and region-specific channels. He has executive oversight for all entertainment and kids networks and media services offered by the company to markets outside of North America; the distribution and commercial operations of CNN's international services; all of Turner's international joint ventures; and all licensing and merchandising activity.
This event is free and open to all with no ticket required. Twitter and Facebook Accessibility. “Militants”: media propaganda.
The Economist. Massive May Day Turnout Highlights Media's Disconnect From Reality. Share In my recap of the May Day event in New York City yesterday, I briefly summarized the inaccurate crowd estimations published by major publications like Reuters and the New York Daily News. Reuters declared the protest was a “dud,” though eventually walked back that diagnosis to make the exact opposite claim that the resurgence was “far from being a dud,” and the Daily News absurdly claimed that mere “hundreds of activists across the U.S.” participated in the marches even though in New York City alone, tens of thousands of people took to the streets.
But that was only skimming the surface of bad establishment media coverage. CNN published a screed from Amitai Etzioni, a professor at George Washington University, titled “Why Occupy May Day fizzled,” that appears to make the argument that Occupy failed because capitalism still exists. However, keeping the “general strike” theme also gave lazy journalists an easy out to dismiss the entire protest as a failure.
Want to understand the economy? Don't read the press. New York, NY - Financial journalists are supposed to be among the most educated and savvy about the economy. Many have either worked on Wall Street, or have advanced degrees in economics and business. Over the past few years, their "news hole" has expanded significantly as the financial crisis became a top global news story. As reporting on workers declined, reporting on business surged because it tends to attract corporate and institutional advertising. And yet is the reporting we are getting on financial issues better than ever?
Is it more trustworthy, and better informed? Unfortunately, some of the same patterns that invariably lead to misunderstandings remain. Here are three reasons: 1. 2. 3. Here are some examples. Last week, the press dutifully reported the "good news" that US economy had created 200,000 new jobs and that the unemployment rate had dropped. Sounded good. It can all be misleading. Economists tend not to be very good at economics. Huh? Beat the Press with Dean Baker. Economist Dean Baker gives his take on media coverage of the economy - Bio Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C.
He is the author of several books, his latest being "The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive. " Transcript PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. End DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. Comments Our automatic spam filter blocks comments with multiple links and multiple users using the same IP address.
You Can't Fool Mother Nature For Long: Mainstream Media. Submitted by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds You Can't Fool Mother Nature For Long: Mainstream Media The Corporate Media in the U.S. is a handmaiden to the Financial and Political Elites, issuing simulacra of "news" and "analysis" in service of the Status Quo. If there is any America "industry" ripe for widespread discrediting, it is the U.S. Corporate Media--the six corporations that own most of the media outlets the conventional American sees, hears and reads. Ask yourself how many hard-hitting, high-visibility series on the underbelly of American sickcare have been issued by any Mainstream Media outlet.
Then look at how many of these outlets live off the revenues of adverts for pharmaceutical products, health insurance, fast foods and packaged foods-- all industries that are profiteering from the current sickcare system. The answer, as far as I can discern, is (unsurprisingly) zero. Present-day journalism in America has an unspoken double-standard. This is of course false. Make-believe Media: The Politics of Entertainment. In Make-believe Media, Parenti turns his eye to entertainment for an absorbing, challenging look at the way America’s “free and independent” television and film industries actually promote the ideas of the economic and political forces that control them. Through thoughtful analysis of specific entertainment programs from family sitcoms to medical dramas, cartoons, and blockbuster movies, Parenti explains why entertainment can alter our view of history, politics, race, sex and class differences.
Although programs may seem apolitical in intent, Parenti argues that they have a powerful influence not only on how we dress, talk, and spend our money, but also on how we define social problems and which ideological images we embrace. Even viewers who claim to be immune to the obvious messages of film and television will find Parenti’s analysis provocative and compelling as he urges us to become more critical about what we choose to watch.
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Media Consolidation: The Illusion of Choice. By Barry Ritholtz - December 16th, 2011, 2:15pm click for full infographic Via Frugal Dad: Source: Frugal dad Category: Digital Media, Financial Press. The illusion of choice... Bias in television news coverage of political events: A methodological analysis - Journal of Broadcasting - Volume 22, Issue 4. Politically-partisan television. Who Owns What on Television? All those hundreds of TV channels may lead you that there's a true diversity and variety in today's television ... but you'd be wrong. A handful of large companies control what you see, hear, and read every day. Let's take a look at who owns what on television - here are the TV channels owned by 6 of the largest companies in media, as depicted by their logos: General Electric General Electric is a true behemoth: the conglomerate is the world's third largest company with market capitalization of nearly $370 billion and annual revenue of $173 billion (2007).
The company produces practically everything - from aircraft engine to locomotives to medical devices. GE's media holding includes television networks NBC and Telemundo, 27 television stations in the United States and many cable TV networks, including the History Channel, A&E, and Sci Fi Channel. Update 7/8/08: A&E is co-owned by The Hearst Corporation and ABC, which in turn is owned by Disney.
Time Warner Like cartoons? News Corporation. Illusion of Choise: The Mega Companies Behind 90% Of Media. We all know that everything you see on TV, and much of what you read online, is ultimately owned by a few mega corporations. But if you were pressed about how much those companies actually own, I’d bet you’d be off by about a factor of 2. Frugal Dad--the same company behind that Walmart infographic we did recently--took it upon themselves to show exactly how concentrated our media landscape actually is.
As the chart rather alarmingly points out, the revenue for those six companies is $275.9 billion. Which sounds like an awfully big number--and starts to set your bullshit detector off. Okay, now my bullshit detector is clanging like a fire alarm. For one, it’s absurd to believe that the sparse media choices we have are a result of a few companies with wicked, wicked opinions about what we should be reading and watching. The reason all the media we see is the same is because the media business sucks. [Top image: Brad Wynnyk] Ownership Chart: The Big Six. "Meet the Press" by Nicholas Confessore.
In the fall of 1999, journalist James K. Glassman and economist Kevin A. Hassett published a book provocatively titled Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting From the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. The New Economy was not a high-tech version of tulipmania, they argued, and the stock market was not overvalued. Properly understood, wrote Glassman and Hassett, the Dow--then upwards of 10,000--was actually undervalued: "Stock prices could double, triple, or even quadruple tomorrow and still not be too high. " It was a bold thesis, and more than a few skeptics disputed it in op-eds and book reviews. So optimistic was Glassman, in fact, that a few months after the book appeared, he launched a dot.com, Tech Central Station, based on just the kind of vague-but-intriguing business plan that attracted so much venture funding at the height of the tech boom.
Within a few months, of course, Glassman was forced to eat a certain amount of crow. But TCS doesn't just act like a lobbying shop.