Wolf Blitzer looks sad

The Politics of News Media
from the book
False Hope
by Norman Solomon, 1994

Corporate control is not interference in the newsroom-if you own an institution you aren't interfering in it, you're running it. Orwell anyone? The conditioned reflex of "stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought." The doublethink process "has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt. "
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"The news" and punditry provide orientation- guiding the public's perception and navigation of the world. At various times, on various subjects, the media compass needle may actually be pointing south, north, east or west; it's no accident that conventional accounts of politics are disorienting, since they take citizens on detours every day-away from clarity about power: who wields it, how, and why. (Astute investors would never make the mistake of trying to get their bearings from the "A" sections of daily newspapers.) As informative compasses, the mass media indicate much more about how those in power want us to perceive and navigate the world than about how the world really is.
Popularized renderings of reality, however phony, supply us with shared illusions, suitable for complying with authorized itineraries, the requisite trips through never-never lands of public pretense. Privately, we struggle to make sense of our experiences; perhaps we can create some personal space so that our own perceptions and emotions have room to stretch. But the limits of privatized solutions are severe. Public spheres determine the very air we breathe and the social environments of our lives. The standard detours meander through imposing landscapes. Beyond the outer limits of customary responses, uncharted territory is "weird"-certainly not familiar from watching TV or reading daily papers. Following in the usual footsteps seems to be safer.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media_control_propaganda/False_Hope.html