Hire right thinking employees

Reporter Jim DeBrosse has a new book out, See No Evil, The JFK Assassination and the U.S. Media. Short summary of JFK’s death: DeBrosse doesn’t believe the Warren Commission Report. It is the second part of the title that interests me, especially since I’ve discussed how bad the media’s coverage of the nasty guy has been.

David Akadjian of Daily Kos talked to DeBrosse. This is a bit of what they discussed. Akadjian first:

One of the things I find most interesting about your book is that there are some great critiques of corporate media and how it protects the status quo. How does establishment media work, and what’s an example from JFK’s assassination?

Debrosse responds:

I borrowed my critique mostly from the seminal book *Manufacturing Consent* by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. The authors point out that the owners of corporate media don’t have to intervene directly in the stories that their reporters and editors produce. Instead, the owners hire “right thinking” employees who mostly share their views and then apply the more subtle workplace pressures that can lead to promotion or demotion within the company. On top of that, the authors point out, elite journalists often travel in the same social circles and share the same interests as those in power.

Reporters who wanted to pursue the truth in the JFK case often had to leave their mainstream newspapers and magazines and work for themselves.

My explanation (derived from years of writing this blog) of how that applies to modern media:

The modern GOP is heavily financed by corporate leaders who have an attitude of however I want to make my money is my business and nobody should be able to stop me (and right now only the federal government and its regulations is the only force strong enough to stop them).

Media has many of this type of corporate leader.

The nasty guy won on a bigoted platform, drawing the bigoted voters. Those bigots include racists and misogynists. That pool of voters includes many corporate leaders in media. They like all the bigoted things the nasty guy says, they want all the bigoted policies he implements. That includes whoever owns the New York Times and Jeff Bezos, head of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post.

These media leaders then hire reporters who are biased as they are or apply workplace pressures to uphold their biases.

An example is NPR. I get most of my mainstream news through them. But I’m also frequently annoyed with them trying to balance viewpoints. Even when they are critical of conservatives they rarely go into how destructive those conservative views are to democracy. And then last October, Michael Oreskes, head of news at NPR, resigned because of complaints of sexual harassment. A misogynist at the head of news definitely influenced how NPR covered the first female candidate for president. And others like him influence how the nasty guy is portrayed to the public. They want what he is selling. Who needs democracy?