Understanding our corporate media

Glenn Greenwald:

The most revealing political quote of the last year came, in my view, from the second-highest ranking Democratic Senator, Dick Durbin, who told a local radio station in April: "And the banks -- hard to believe in a time when we're facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created -- are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place."
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This is hardly unique to the banking industry. This is how the political system works generally.

This is also how our media works.

Recall Katharine Weymouth's plan to sell access to the Washington Post's real customers...lobbyists, business leaders, and government officials.

What about the Post's readers? Sorry, suckers. You are just the hoi polloi targets of corporate friendly information product, aka journamalism.

Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander wrote recently wrote a column in which he bemoaned the Post's 'liberal bias'. Alexander quoted Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism: "Complaints by conservatives are slower to be picked up by non-ideological media because there are not enough conservatives and too many liberals in most newsrooms."

Not mentioned is the lack of diversity in views of the very small number of very wealthy corporations and individuals who sign the paychecks of those writers.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" - Upton Sinclair

P.S. And now for something completely different: President Obama should donate his Nobel prize money to ACORN.
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