I just watched a scathing report on US media and journalism on RT. I came into it a couple minutes after it started, so I don't know the title to post a link to. Maybe somebody out there knows the name of the program and can post a link.
It documents the take over of US media by conservative to reactionary corporations who then twist news to their benefit which also means supporting politicians they prefer and punishing those political figures they don't like. Both instances involve journalist who lied in their reports columns.
It compares the FCC and license system as it was originally designed under Roosevelt as a mostly local broadcast system, then as it developed into a few national networks. Then they follow the developments of de-regulation under Reagan where a single company can own hundreds of local stations. They use Clear Channel as an example. They found all of Clear Channel's broadcast only reactionary talk shows and no liberal talk shows.
They report that because of this near total monolopy of broadcast radio most of the country only gets a reactionary version of the news. They overlaid a map of Clear Channel control onto a political map of the red blue states and find the only places (the coasts) oftered any other broadcasting. Then the showed several inland state that had started carring Ed Schulz ended up as important swing state. Schulz had better numbers than his competition.
The whole report essencially explains why the US public has such a distorted understanding and knowledge of itself, government policies, and news that is important to know, in order to understand the world and make political decisions that affect them.
It followed the Clinton blow job scandle, the and the effects of all the mainstream media coverage. Then they followed builds up to wars and the endless lying and cover ups of the Bush administration. They also followed the Valery Flame affair.
Sure I knew most of this already, but to watch it put together and documented was something to watch.
Indirectly their work also reveals why AJE and I assume RT and France 24 are not broadcast in most of the US. I watch them all regularly on the computer, so I can get news. Well the answer is that the corporations who own the cable channels obviously don't want to carry these programs. There are two things going on. First is that AJE RT and Fr_24 are completely beyond the US corporate interested control and are outside any commerical influence through withdrawl of ad revenue.
As I've said before these foreign broadcaster all have their own biases. Mostly these biases are wrapped up with Qatar, Russian and French nationalism or national interest.
Anyway if somebody out there comes across this short documentary, please post a link. It was originally broadcast 2-3:00p pdt Sundat June 12, 2011.