You got to feel for Walter Moore. Maybe he should just call himself "Wally" and dress up and act like Rodney Dangerfield who plays an obnoxious talk show host in a 1997 movie that at least got some reviews.
Whatever your politics, you ought to support Moore at least getting looked at by the local media, having his public fund-raising events at least get a brief notice and at least have examined why his constituency is so aroused by Jamiel's Law which would crack down on illegal immigrants in gangs.
But poor Walter gets totally ignored in the media -- except for radio talk show hosts like Doug McIntyre on KABC and blogs like Mayor Sam.
Moore held a fund-raiser at Cal State Northridge on Saturday and 300 people showed up so he can get a crowd. He raised about 10 bucks a piece from them to put his campaign warchest at $107,000 so he'll qualify for city matching funds. But he got no press coverage. Stories written about the upcoming mayoral election.state Antonio Villaraigosa as the only announced candidate and refer to the fortune he's raising for his campaign and the possibility that billionaire developer Rick Caruso who's vacationing in Italy is the only possible serious candidate who might challenge him.
In the eyes of the media, it's a coronation, not an election.
This isn't new. Across the country, the corporate media are complicit with the vast machinery of big government, big money and big politics. It's been that way a long time, ever since half the papers in the country went out of business in the 1950s and 1960s because of their inability to compete with television.
All that was left of a once free and vibrant press was corporate ownership of mostly monopoly newspapers. Gone were the 12 papers in New York, the eight in L.A. with a variety of owners and a variety of politics, styles and points of view. Instead, what we got was journalism that reduced politics to on the one hand this and the other hand that as if there were only two ways to see any issue. The result was apathy, alienation, the loss of freedom of expression and the vital public conversations that lead to compromise and progress.
Some think it's all an overt conspiracy but that wasn't my experience in my 44 years in newspapers and publications of various types in many parts of the country.
What there was and is today is a conspiracy of consciousness, a shared belief of journalists that what they're told by the vast army of political operatives and politicians -- and what they tell each other -- is the American political reality, that the political reality inside the world they operate in is the political reality of Americans.
That is the big lie.
Whatever your politics, you ought to support Moore at least getting looked at by the local media, having his public fund-raising events at least get a brief notice and at least have examined why his constituency is so aroused by Jamiel's Law which would crack down on illegal immigrants in gangs.But poor Walter gets totally ignored in the media -- except for radio talk show hosts like Doug McIntyre on KABC and blogs like Mayor Sam.
Moore held a fund-raiser at Cal State Northridge on Saturday and 300 people showed up so he can get a crowd. He raised about 10 bucks a piece from them to put his campaign warchest at $107,000 so he'll qualify for city matching funds. But he got no press coverage. Stories written about the upcoming mayoral election.state Antonio Villaraigosa as the only announced candidate and refer to the fortune he's raising for his campaign and the possibility that billionaire developer Rick Caruso who's vacationing in Italy is the only possible serious candidate who might challenge him.
In the eyes of the media, it's a coronation, not an election.
This isn't new. Across the country, the corporate media are complicit with the vast machinery of big government, big money and big politics. It's been that way a long time, ever since half the papers in the country went out of business in the 1950s and 1960s because of their inability to compete with television.
All that was left of a once free and vibrant press was corporate ownership of mostly monopoly newspapers. Gone were the 12 papers in New York, the eight in L.A. with a variety of owners and a variety of politics, styles and points of view. Instead, what we got was journalism that reduced politics to on the one hand this and the other hand that as if there were only two ways to see any issue. The result was apathy, alienation, the loss of freedom of expression and the vital public conversations that lead to compromise and progress.
Some think it's all an overt conspiracy but that wasn't my experience in my 44 years in newspapers and publications of various types in many parts of the country.
What there was and is today is a conspiracy of consciousness, a shared belief of journalists that what they're told by the vast army of political operatives and politicians -- and what they tell each other -- is the American political reality, that the political reality inside the world they operate in is the political reality of Americans.
That is the big lie.
Continue reading Media, politics and the conspiracy of consciousness.
Ron Kaye