it’s on the media not to exploit their trust like they do

and there’s your problem, in a nutshell (so to speak) - the media are mostly worthless, faithless, and useless.

It’s more than just trust; it’s the very foundation of civilization itself. I know that sounds hyperbolic, but all civilization is based on specialization of trades and skills. The media is meant to used its skills to inform the public. That is its specialization, and they are very well-compensated for it.
Right now they are delivering warmed-over talking points and catty gossip. Then we’re told (mainly by professional scolds in the media) that if we aren’t informed, it’s because we are a bunch of ignorant ass, lazy Wii players. That’s the moral equivalent of an auto mechanic letting the air out of your tires and replacing the oil with sand, then telling you that you should take better care of your car, you neglectful asshole. Then collecting a paycheck.

The corporate news media are, in fact, worse than worthless; by and large, their political agenda is active, barely hidden, and opposed to the interests of the viewers. Thus, any appeal to what they “should” do, alas, needs to be expressed in terms of “what they should do but won’t”.

I think that it should be possible for a low information voter to watch an hour of election coverage and know the basics—-like that McCain is a right wing radical and Obama is a centrist Democrat—-so that they can vote according to their beliefs.

The problem is that the window on acceptable behavior has been kicked so far down the road to the right that McCain IS the moderate conservative and Obama still gets saddled with the “liberal extremist” stereotype.  McCain can talk about bombing Iran and Americans will nod and smile, because bombing Iran is what they expect Republicans to talk about.  Obama spells out an alternative energy plan or discuss universal health care at his own peril, because solar power and wind energy are crazy pipe dreams of that liberal hero Al Gore and universal health care was a Hillary Clinton fantasy of the 90s that will never actually work in this country.

Low information voters have been roped into this notion that the status quo is as good as its going to get.  Talking about how Europeans have it better or the Chinese economic models are more prosperous or how NAFTA has drained away jobs is unpatriotic for reasons only a wingnut can explain but everyone seems to accept.  The only way to improve is by using a magical “free market” that hasn’t been effectively in operation in a generation.

That’s just the mindset that Americans have embraced.  Until you break that mindset, you’re screwed.

[insert well-considered comment that adds to the discussion here]

Kidding aside, it really is astounding what the ratio is between actual facts to bloviating discussion on most “news” shows. The media really do not believe the American people can make up their own minds about what candidates say and do. Clearly we need to listen to four talking heads blather about their ingrained preconceptions for an hour instead being presented with the facts and left to our own interpretations.

In this day and age, if you want to be informed, ya gotta do it yourself.  At a minimum that means looking a variety of information sources and comparing them to collect facts and glean meaning, while also doing research to understand the context of things.  And none of us have as much time for this as we need.

For many Americans, it’s more than just a matter of limited time—even the most minimal of those skills just aren’t there. The MSM has been evil in the betrayal of its audience’s trust, to be sure, but it’s been aided and abetted by our public K-12 schools. Show me an American high-information voter or media consumer, and I’ll show you someone who was either fortunate enough to opt out of the standard public school system, or who braved the opprobrium of administrators as well as their fellow students to get those skills in spite of the fact that they went there.

But that’s a minority. Those of us who have the skills are, unfortunately, at the blind and capricious mercy of those who don’t. That’s always been the price of living in a democratic system, even when the democracy is a sham. The only high-info people who get excepted from this iron law are those who’ve decided, for a variety of motives, to become info-grifters. The only cause for hope is the Internet, which the telecoms and media companies and their toadies in government are doing their best to wall off into “safe, convenient” (and easily-metred and monitored) digital gardens.

They have a responsibility to get that basic information out and many of them are failing miserably

It’s more that they have a responsibility to obscure and lie about the basic information and are succeeding spectacularly.

“Obama is a centrist Democrat—-”

His 2007 voting record identifies him as the most liberal Senator.

http://nj.nationaljournal.com/voteratings/

If the left is Marx he’s right there in the middle.

The National Journal rankings are BS, Dr T.

Just by coincidence (of course!) the most liberal Senators in 2004 were John Kerry and John Edwards.

I bet the second most liberal Senator will all of a sudden be Evan Bayh should he be picked.

It’s easy to hate on “The Media” as some large entity with the agenda to muck up our electoral prospects. However you have to realize that “The Media” is just a group of for profit media companies, usually part of larger for profit mega-corporations staffed by more or less well meaning people who thing they are just doing their job.

Following the pre-set media narrative and sticking to the idiotic personality driven stories is the cheapest way to produce “News” There’s no money in providing accurate or introspective news, or so they say. It’s cheaper to blab about McCain’s maverickyness then it is to spend a few days combing his wife’s tax returns. It’s like fast food chains, they’ve got a formula for low quality mass produced product and they’re sticking to it. I guess Blogs are little mom & pop restaurants, to extend the metaphor.

The Executives and Funders of Fox News of course has decided that more profit can be realized pushing a blatantly partisan agenda, and they’re right in that, but it’s a profit motive all the way.

His 2007 voting record identifies him as the most liberal Senator.

In other amazing news, sky is blue and water is wet.  Funny how every Senator who runs for President suddenly becomes the Most Liberal Ever.  If Obama picked Ben Nelson as his running mate, Nelson would magically become the second most liberal senator.

The Americans for Democratic Action—a group of self-proclaimed liberal activists—somehow consider twelve senators to be more liberal than Obama. He’s not even in the top eighth of all Senators. He’s a little more liberal than the average Democrat, but no more liberal than Washington senators Cantwell and Murray.

http://www.adaction.org/media/votingrecords/2006.pdf

What is this NationalJournal, anyways? Not the CBC news shows, right?

“it should be possible for a low information voter to watch an hour of election coverage and know the basics—-like that McCain is a right wing radical and Obama is a centrist Democrat”

So you do want the media to editorialize, because most people with such a perspective are from the far left.

McCain is not a centrist, but he also is nowhere extreme enough to be placed in the right wing. Also, he is somewhere between a radical and a reactionary; this is the part about him that makes the actual right wing despise him so.

Obama also is no centrist despite the noises he makes. He is however a Democrat, I will give you that one.

...fortunate enough to opt out of the standard public school system…

I’m sorry, I don’t buy it.  Certainly there are schools that are failing miserably, where even hard-working, bright kids can’t get ahead, but those schools are the exception, not the rule.  Throughout my entire public school career, it was possible to get a good education, if you chose to take challenging classes, if you chose to pay attention in class, and if you chose to do your homework.  Most of my peers didn’t choose to do this, and most of them did not continue their education past high school.  But my peers who took more than the bare minimum of math and foreign language classes and who did more than the bare minimum to earn passing grades are very bright and are likely high information voters and citizens.

I do think there are systemic problems that lead to kids not putting as much effort as they should into their education, but I also believe that a large part of Americans’ lousy education is cultural.  We say that we value education, but we don’t really.  And when parents say they want their kids to do well in school, they’re talking about grades, not the actual acquisition of knowledge and life skills.

I’m sorry, I don’t buy it.  Certainly there are schools that are failing miserably, where even hard-working, bright kids can’t get ahead, but those schools are the exception, not the rule.

I’m talking about a basic, underlying philosophy left over from the late 19th century. If you haven’t already, check out this site:

http://www.johntaylorgatto.com

See especially the “History Tour” link. Gatto is a former NYC and NYS Teacher of the Year.

Throughout my entire public school career, it was possible to get a good education, if you chose to take challenging classes, if you chose to pay attention in class, and if you chose to do your homework.

As I noted above, that’s usually (and, I will acknowledge, often) done in spite of the system, not because of it. As you note, most people in the system don’t do much more than bare minimum. That minimum deliberately excludes and downplays the importance of the skills that MikeEss mentions—skills that are considered superfluous. I’d imagine things have only gotten worse with NCLB.

people seem to think liberals want to make you wear pink panties.

Wait a second! We don’t? Fuck me, how’d I miss the memo?

This is something that’s been bugging me for a while.

I remember that one flap, where a reporter quoted a staffer who said something insulting (”(Clinton’s) a monster”, maybe?) followed by “that’s off the record”.

And there were reporters saying that shouldn’t have been reported, because it could threaten access. Who wants to talk to a reporter who won’t let you take back something you’ve said?

Well, if you want to protect your access to people, by playing nice and letting them take back anything they’ve said, you’re looking out for your own interests, not the interests of the reading/viewing/listening public. And journalists are supposed to be serving the public trust before they serve themselves.

(That said, I would hope that most reporters would be willing to report “...and immediately regretted that choice of words”. People slip up from time to time, and say things they really don’t mean, and reporters are frequently interviewing people in highly emotional situations.)

And it’s something that has to be widespread and bone deep. Unless almost every reporter is willing to hold to these ethics, you’re going to end up having some reporters getting preferred access because of their lack of ethics.

It’s weird… somewhere along the line, the idea that it’s okay to serve yourself first and foremost has become an axiom. It’s okay to cut jobs to make more money for yourself, even if you *could* keep those people working. It’s okay to do what you need to do to get ahead. It’s okay to skip over some pesky ethics rules if it helps you get the big story.

And I’m not sure how to change it.

Zif, your knee-jerk cynicism is not supported by any decent polling data which routinely shows that even Americans who recoil at the word “liberal” support liberal policy ideas.  The gap between what people want and what they think they want is huge, and it’s because the media is telling them that McCain is a “moderate”, and the word “moderate” is assumed by the public to be someone who is anti-war and pro-social spending, whereas people seem to think liberals want to make you wear pink panties.

And the GOP has done an excellent job of making “universal health insurance” synonymous with “wearing pink panties” to the point that people don’t read past the bumper stickers and talking points.  That’s why we’ve got GOoPers chanting “No Timetables in Iraq” while Bush puts forward “Time Horizons” that are embraced as sensible and smart.

And while polls tend to show people embracing alternative energy and universal health care during the off season, the closer election time comes, the more they start looking like dirty words.  Then you look at the people who are polled versus the people who are allowed to vote.  If black people weren’t getting disenfranchised en mass in Florida or Ohio, Bush wouldn’t have made it to his first term much less his second.  But the core middle class white voters - the ones that run the local ballot counts and pick the local delegates and back the local party officials that make the GOP a national organization - are the ones with all the political power.  And they are the only ones Rove has to fool.  The rest comes by nature of the political machine.

Liberals get thrashed in the media and in the polls because our ideas aren’t being effectively marketed.  Even if we win in 2008, we’ll just be looking at a repeat of 1992 - with massive media push back designed to kill every initiative that isn’t lockstep with GOP policy that results in another House slaughter like in ‘94.

“Liberals get thrashed in the media and in the polls because our ideas aren’t being effectively marketed. “

No, it’s because your ideas lead to the slaughter of millions of citizens by their own government over and over again within the last 150 years.

No, it’s because your ideas lead to the slaughter of millions of citizens by their own government over and over again within the last 150 years.

Ah, I see Dr. T sympathizes with traitors who rebel against their own government when they’re about to have their slaves taken away.  That’s the only possible way I can see 150 years, considering that the Soviet Union didn’t even exist until 1917.  Either that, or his math skills are about as good as his reasoning skills.

hey have a responsibility to get that basic information out and many of them are failing miserably, especially in the TV media.

I know a number of people have already commented on this, but I do think it bears emphasis - the media most certainly do not have “a responsibility to get that basic information out “. They have a responsibility to make as much money as possible without upsetting their shareholders. That is their sole raison d’etre.

“Well it’s just like the show before,
And the news is just another show”

the media most certainly do not have “a responsibility to get that basic information out”

American broadcast companies that license the public airwaves do have a responsibility to provide “non-entertainment programming responsive to issues of concern in the community to be served.” This responsibility was fulfilled initially by news divisions that sincerely tried to adapt serious print journalism to radio and TV.

However, since about 1970 or so, when the “Eyewitness News” and “Action News” infotainment formats expanded, the licensees’ definition of “community” has shifted from the general public to the corporation’s shareholders and executives. And since Reagan, the FCC has done nothing to disabuse them of that notion.

So for all practical purposes, you’re correct. But that it doesn’t make it an acceptable situation. We’ll see a similar drama play out when the telcos and cablecos, with the co-operation of their owned-and-operated Congress-pets, start seriously undermining Network Neutrality and enclosing the Web.