"The Fall of Mainstream Media: When Propaganda Fails, Humanity Awakens
Jeff Berwick
Activist Post
It doesn't happen often, but The New York Times (NYT) has truthfully reported on something recently.
On what did it report? Well, on itself, and how alarmed it is due to its own increasing irrelevance in the face of new sources of information.
NYT is well-aware of the "New Media," as a 96-page internal report, sent to top executives last month, makes clear. Obtained by Buzzfeed, the report "paints a dark picture of a newsroom struggling more dramatically than is immediately visible to adjust to the digital world, a newsroom that is hampered primarily by its own storied culture."
The report ignores its traditional mainstream (MSM) competitors and takes a closer look at new digital companies like First Look Media, Vox, Huffington Post, Business Insider and Buzzfeed.
“They are ahead of us in building impressive support systems for digital journalists, and that gap will grow unless we quickly improve our capabilities,” the report states. “Meanwhile, our journalism advantage is shrinking as more of these upstarts expand their newsrooms.”
“We are not moving with enough urgency,” it says.
A central issue for NYT is “a cadre of editors who remain unfamiliar with the web.”
“Many desks lack editors who even know how to evaluate digital work,” the report continues.
A few suggestions NYT is looking into is a TED talks-style event
series and an expanded op-ed platform, including location-based local
news and information.
But it is too late...
STATING THE OBVIOUS
At the very least, thank you, NYT, for stating the truth even though it was an internal document not meant for the public. And, even if it was already painfully obvious. Still it took bravery for such a dinosaur to admit its own obsolescence.
The paper's model is obsolete, but even worse than the model has been the paper's lack of interest in the truth. As the US empire has grown more out of control, more dangerous, and more insane, the NYT has functioned as a fourth branch of government, a gatekeeper for a totalitarian world a la 1984 or Brave New World.
But the gig is up. The world knows NYT's complicity in erecting a sick and deranged world, and unless the paper breaks major news stories and outs itself as an undeniable friend of freedom, it will continue to lose revenue. No more can NYT expect to serve the elite and its bottom line at the same time. In the age of the Internet, what David Rockefeller was once grateful for is no longer possible:
We are grateful to the Washington Post, the New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years...It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries.Mainstream media is definitely dying, and this is a VERY good thing. The root of the word government combine as "to control minds." The root of the word "govern" is control and the root of "ment" is mind. Without control over minds via the media, the government will lose all control. More young people now get their news from the Internet than television. In mere years most everybody will get their news from the Internet because nobody will trust the mainstream:
Newsweek (which I call Newspeak) has released its last print issue. You'll remember one of Newsweek's last attempts to be relevant again was uncovering the wrong Satoshi Nakamoto as the creator of bitcoin. They found some guy with the right name in the phone book...You know, "quality journalism"...
Clearly the only valuable part of MSM media sites is in the comments section which debunks 90% of the articles published. Popular Science was so overwhelmed by people bringing facts into many of their articles that the site shut off its comments section.
CNN's viewership is at a record-low (the network recently laid off 40 journalists), while CNBC has suffered a viewership collapse as well.
Larry King left CNN because he knew it would collapse. He left CNN for the Russian government propaganda channel, RT, because it is more respected and features more truth about the West. Twenty years ago, this would be have been unheard of for Larry King! A career-ender! Not today...Nope. Today it is a respect-earner. Oh, how things have changed...
THE NEW MEDIA TAKEOVER
The New Media has taken over. Alex Jones is almost a household name and groups like Luke Rudkowski's We Are Change have revolutionized how people get information. (Editor's Note: We Are Change offers "Change Media University" to learn how to become a real investigative journalist that we highly recommend. Forget traditional school). For years now the most popular MSM personalities, like Glenn Beck, have followed the playbook of new media personalities in a bid to remain relevant. Now, in order to remain relevant people like Glenn Beck need to quote or interview people in the "alternative media".
It was not all that long ago that John Kerry and Zbigniew Brzezinski said that the Internet, simply put, is making it hard for them to govern. Secretary of Statism, John Kerry, before a group of State Department workers told the audience that the world has been "complicated" by "... this little thing called the Internet and the ability of people everywhere to communicate instantaneously and to have more information coming at them in one day than most people can process in months or a year."
According to Kerry, the Internet "makes it much harder to govern, makes it much harder to organize people, much harder to find the common interest."
Z-Big echoed his sentiment, saying that public access to information stopped war with Syria.
Bill Clinton, laughingly even suggested the need for a "Ministry of Truth" over the Internet, run by the US federal government, that would censor anything it did not deem to be "truth".
In 5-10 years people will look at you funny if you tell them you watch mainstream media. Why? Because there is no real information nor substance on mainstream media....
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"Is The Mainstream Media Dying?" May 18th, 2014
By Michael Snyder
Ratings at CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have all been plummeting in recent years, and newspaper ad revenues are about a third of what they were back in the year 2000. So is the mainstream media dying? Despite what you may have heard, the mainstream media is certainly not completely dead just yet. The average American watches approximately 153 hours of television a month, and as I pointed out in a previous article, about 90 percent of the "information" that is endlessly pumped into our heads through our televisions is controlled by just six gigantic media corporations. However, there are a whole host of signs that things are changing - especially when it comes to news. More Americans than ever are losing faith in the establishment-controlled media and are seeking out alternative sources of information. Is this a trend that the big media companies are going to be able to reverse at some point?
For years, the "news business" has been dominated by CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. But now all three channels are rapidly losing viewers. According to a recently released Pew Research study, the number of prime time viewers for all three networks combined fell by 11 percent last year...
In 2013, the cable news audience, by nearly all measures, declined. The combined median prime-time viewership of the three major news channels—CNN, Fox News and MSNBC—dropped 11% to about 3 million, the smallest it has been since 2007. The Nielsen Media Research data show that the biggest decline came at MSNBC, which lost nearly a quarter (24%) of its prime-time audience. CNN, under new management, ended its fourth year in third place, with a 13% decline in prime time. Fox, while down 6%, still drew more viewers (1.75 million) than its two competitors combined (619,500 at MSNBC and 543,000 at CNN).And the decline is far more dramatic when you look at just the key 25 to 54-year-old demographic.
From November 2012 to November 2013, CNN's ratings for that demographic dropped by a staggering 59 percent, and MSNBC's ratings for that demographic dropped by a staggering 52 percent.
Is this a sign that Americans are finally getting fed up with the endless propaganda being spewed by those establishment mouthpieces?
A recent survey conducted by a liberal polling firm would indeed seem to indicate that this is the case. That survey found that only 6 percent of Americans consider MSNBC to be their most trusted source for news...
NBC News and sister cable network MSNBC rank at the bottom of media outlets Americans trust most for news, with Fox News leading the way, according to a new poll from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling.
In its fifth trust poll, 35 percent said they trusted Fox news more than any other outlet, followed by PBS at 14 percent, ABC at 11 percent, CNN at 10 percent, CBS at 9 percent, 6 percent for MSNBC and Comedy Central, and just 3 percent for NBC.And of course it is not just the big mainstream news networks that are in decline.
A recently released Pew Research study discovered that the decline of America's newspapers continued in 2013 as well...
The Newspaper Association of America has stopped compiling quarterly reports on advertising revenue. According to its annual numbers, which were released in April 2014, overall revenue for newspapers in 2013 was $37.6 billion, a decrease of 2.6% from 2012. Within that total, combined print and digital ad revenue decreased by 7%—to $20.7 billion.Seven percent may not sound like much, but you have to realize that these declines have been happening year after year. When you look back over a longer time frame, it really puts the massive decline that we have witnessed in advertising revenues in perspective...
It took a half century for annual newspaper print ad revenue to gradually increase from $20 billion in 1950 (adjusted for inflation in 2013 dollars) to $65.8 billion in 2000, and then it took only 12 years to go from $65.8 billion in ad revenues back to less than $20 billion in 2012, before falling further to $17.3 billion last year.
Even when revenues from digital advertising and other categories described by the NAA as “niche publications, direct marketing and non-daily publication advertising” are added to print ad revenue (see red line in chart), the combined total revenues for print, digital and other advertising last year was still only $23.56 billion in 2013 dollars, which was the lowest amount of annual ad revenue since 1954, when $23.3 billion was spent on print advertising alone.Yes, you read those numbers correctly. As you can see from this chart, newspaper ad revenues are now about a third of what they were back in the year 2000.
That is not just a "shift" - that is a massive tsunami.
Needless to say, the big newspapers are quite distressed by all of this.
For example, "the Grey Lady" herself is essentially in a state of panic at this point. Just recently, a 96 page internal New York Times report was obtained by BuzzFeed that basically skewers the company's current strategy when it comes to the Internet...
A 96-page internal New York Times report, sent to top executives last month by a committee led by the publisher’s son and obtained by BuzzFeed, paints a dark picture of a newsroom struggling more dramatically than is immediately visible to adjust to the digital world, a newsroom that is hampered primarily by its own storied culture.But they still don't understand the true cause of their decline.
It isn't the fact that they haven't adapted to the Internet very well that is the primary reason for their decline.
Rather, it is the fact that the American people are losing faith in the New York Times and other similar establishment mouthpieces.
News magazines are also experiencing a dramatic multi-year decline. Ad revenues are way down across the entire industry, and any publication that can keep their yearly losses to the single digits is applauded for it...
For a third year in a row, news magazines faced a difficult print advertising environment. Combined ad pages (considered a better measure than ad revenue) for the five magazines studied in this report were down 13% in 2013, following a decline of 12.5% in 2012, and about three times the rate of decline in 2011, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. Again, hardest hit was The Week, which suffered a 20% drop in ad pages. The Atlantic fell 17%, The Economist 16%, and Time about 11%, while The New Yorker managed to keep its ad pages losses in single digits (7%).Mainstream media executives appear to be optimistic that they can reverse these declines at some point, but they simply don't realize that there has been a fundamental paradigm shift when it comes to the news media in the United States.
The general population has lost a tremendous amount of faith in the mainstream media. They are increasingly becoming aware that it is deeply controlled by the establishment.
At this point, the charade is so out in the open that even reporters are talking about it. For example, former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson says that the "influence on the media" by political and corporate interests is "unprecedented"...
"There is unprecedented, I believe, influence on the media, not just the news, but the images you see everywhere. By well-orchestrated and financed campaign of special interests, political interests and corporations. I think all of that comes into play."Wow.
Remember, this is not just some outsider that is saying these things. Attkisson worked in the industry for more than 30 years.
And the American people know that they are getting very little truth from the establishment media these days. A recent Gallup survey found that only 23 percent of Americans have a great deal of confidence in the mainstream media at this point. Increasingly, Americans are turning to other sources for news and information.
This is fueling an unprecedented alternative news boom, and more Americans than ever are relying on the Internet as their main source of news. If you doubt this, just check out this chart.
30 years ago, you would have never been able to read this article. It never would have gotten past the gatekeepers that had almost total control over what Americans read, watched and listened to.
But now things have changed. The Internet has allowed ordinary Americans to communicate with each other on a scale that has never been possible before. As we share information with each other, we are increasingly becoming aware that we don't need the mainstream media to define what reality is for us after all.
If the mainstream media really wants to keep from dying, they should at least try to start telling us the truth.
Unfortunately, that simply is not going to happen. The political and corporate interests that control the big media corporations have way too much to lose.
So we will have to continue to learn to think for ourselves and to share news and information with each other over the Internet.
In the end, we will all be much better off being unplugged from "the matrix" anyway.
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Speaking of the "matrix":
"New York Times publisher denies gender had role in firing; Newspaper stands by removal of Jill Abramson" by Ravi Somaiya | New York Times May 18, 2014
NEW YORK — Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the publisher of The New York Times, released a statement Saturday afternoon detailing his decision to fire the newspaper’s executive editor, Jill Abramson, and responding to a growing controversy over accusations by Abramson’s supporters that gender played a role in her dismissal.
The decision to remove her, which was announced Wednesday, “has been cast by many as an example of the unequal treatment of women in the workplace,” he wrote.
Instead, it “was a situation involving a specific individual who, as we all do, has strengths and weaknesses.”
A pattern of behavior by Abramson, including “arbitrary decision-making, a failure to consult and bring colleagues with her, inadequate communication, and the public mistreatment of colleagues” was behind his decision, Sulzberger wrote.
Though Sulzberger, who is also chairman of The New York Times Co., wanted Abramson to succeed, the statement said, he concluded that “she had lost the support of her masthead colleagues and could not win it back.”
She was replaced by the New York Times managing editor, Dean Baquet.
Abramson has not responded to messages seeking comment since her ouster.
But a message appeared this week on the Instagram account of her daughter, Dr. Cornelia Griggs.
“Big thank you to all the #pushy #bossy #polarizing women and men who get it,” Griggs wrote. “The story isn’t over, not even close.”
--more--"
Related:
Abramson steps down as NYT executive editor
Pay had no part in New York Times editor’s ouster, publisher says
Okay:
"The Gender Pay Gap and the Ouster of New York Times Editor Jill Abramson" by Sheelah Kolhatkar, May 15, 2014
The sudden ouster of Jill Abramson from her position as executive editor of the New York Times has raised the idea that a dispute over inequity in pay may have contributed to her departure.
On Wednesday afternoon, the news was announced to the Times’s own staff during a hastily convened meeting. People were “stunned,” according to the Times’s own reporting on the episode. Dean Baquet, previously the Times’s managing editor, would be replacing Abramson. Times publisher Arthur O. Sulzberger Jr. said that the change was prompted by issues of “management in the newsroom.” The Times article went on to say that Abramson had been perceived as “mercurial and brusque” and that she had had “clashes” with Mr. Baquet and others. She apparently also had tried to hire a new co-managing editor—Janine Gibson from the Guardian—which caused conflict.
Not long after this news filtered out and set the Internet alight, Ken Auletta offered a broader explanation in the New Yorker:
“Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs. “She confronted the top brass,” one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was “pushy,” a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect.”
*******************
“I’ve loved my run at the Times,” Ms. Abramson said in a statement, according to the paper. “I got to work with the best journalists in the world doing so much stand-up journalism.” She also noted her elevation of many women to senior positions as one of her accomplishments during her tenure.
According to Joe Pompeo at Capital New York, the Times publisher said yesterday that “when women get to top management positions, they are sometimes fired, just as men are.” It would be nice if it were that simple. The gender disparity in the workforce—in compensation, in leadership positions, in the double-standards around management style and physical appearance—makes for a fundamentally unequal playing field. Until that changes, the firing of a woman at the top of her profession will never come without questions about whether gender played a part.
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They can't even tell the truth about themselves; why should we believe anything else they say?
How about giving her a round of applause, people?
Ratings
at CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have all been plummeting in recent years,
and newspaper ad revenues are about a third of what they were back in
the year 2000. So is the mainstream media
dying? Despite what you may have heard, the mainstream media is
certainly not completely dead just yet. The average American watches
approximately 153 hours of television a month, and as I pointed out in a previous article,
about 90 percent of the “information” that is endlessly pumped into our
heads through our televisions is controlled by just six gigantic media
corporations. However, there are a whole host of signs that things are
changing – especially when it comes to news. More Americans than ever
are losing faith in the establishment-controlled media and are seeking
out alternative sources of information. Is this a trend that the big
media companies are going to be able to reverse at some point?
Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/is-the-mainstream-media-dying/#F9u9vf4DkISsVmFr.99
dying? Despite what you may have heard, the mainstream media is
certainly not completely dead just yet. The average American watches
approximately 153 hours of television a month, and as I pointed out in a previous article,
about 90 percent of the “information” that is endlessly pumped into our
heads through our televisions is controlled by just six gigantic media
corporations. However, there are a whole host of signs that things are
changing – especially when it comes to news. More Americans than ever
are losing faith in the establishment-controlled media and are seeking
out alternative sources of information. Is this a trend that the big
media companies are going to be able to reverse at some point?Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/is-the-mainstream-media-dying/#F9u9vf4DkISsVmFr.99
Ratings
at CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have all been plummeting in recent years,
and newspaper ad revenues are about a third of what they were back in
the year 2000. So is the mainstream media
dying? Despite what you may have heard, the mainstream media is
certainly not completely dead just yet. The average American watches
approximately 153 hours of television a month, and as I pointed out in a previous article,
about 90 percent of the “information” that is endlessly pumped into our
heads through our televisions is controlled by just six gigantic media
corporations. However, there are a whole host of signs that things are
changing – especially when it comes to news. More Americans than ever
are losing faith in the establishment-controlled media and are seeking
out alternative sources of information. Is this a trend that the big
media companies are going to be able to reverse at some point?
dying? Despite what you may have heard, the mainstream media is
certainly not completely dead just yet. The average American watches
approximately 153 hours of television a month, and as I pointed out in a previous article,
about 90 percent of the “information” that is endlessly pumped into our
heads through our televisions is controlled by just six gigantic media
corporations. However, there are a whole host of signs that things are
changing – especially when it comes to news. More Americans than ever
are losing faith in the establishment-controlled media and are seeking
out alternative sources of information. Is this a trend that the big
media companies are going to be able to reverse at some point?
For years, the “news business” has been dominated by CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. But now all three channels are rapidly losing viewers. According to a recently released Pew Research study, the number of prime time viewers for all three networks combined fell by 11 percent last year…
” has been dominated by CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. But now all three channels are rapidly losing viewers. According to a recently released Pew Research study, the number of prime time viewers for all three networks combined fell by 11 percent last year…In 2013, the cable news audience, by nearly all measures, declined. The combined median prime-time viewership of the three major news channels—CNN, Fox News and MSNBC—dropped 11% to about 3 million, the smallest it has been since 2007. The Nielsen Media Research data
And the decline is far more dramatic when you look at just the key 25 to 54-year-old demographic.
From November 2012 to November 2013, CNN’s ratings for that demographic dropped by a staggering 59 percent, and MSNBC’s ratings for that demographic dropped by a staggering 52 percent.
Is this
a sign that Americans are finally getting fed up with the endless
propaganda being spewed by those establishment mouthpieces?
Read more at http://investmentwatchblog.com/is-the-mainstream-media-dying/#F9u9vf4DkISsVmFr.99
