This is because the corporate media is in the MISINFORMATION and DISINFORMATION business, because they applaud the "concentration of wealth and power" agenda that that is at the core of Reactionary (not to say "conservative") ideology.
For example, when Republicans (and many Democrats) demand TAX CUTS for the WEALTHY in TIME OF WAR - an economic strategy that of course forces BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN SPENDING, and thus future taxes, ON to SOMEONE.... inevitably, ON TO THE WORKING FAMILIES of America.
The corporate media also approves of CONSOLIDATION of local media under huge, vast media empires, for example Rupert Murdoch's FOX TV empire, which can make or break a candidate with relentlessly positive or negative coverage. (Fortunately, the failed campaign of Rudy Giuliani for president reveals and exception to this rule. Despite favorable, almost fawning FOX 'news' coverage of Guiliani, Republican voters who had recently urged the impeachment of President Bill Clinton for his Monica affair, could not bring themselves to vote for a thrice-married, adulterous former mayor of New York, who not only used city funds to chauffeur his mistress/wife around, but whose claim to 9-11 fame was seriously undercut by firefighters and other experts who asserted that Giuliani's pre-9-11 foresight was flawed, not to say dismal.) (For example, putting the New York City disaster headquarters right in the World Trade Center - which had been the target of the earlier 1993 terrorist attack.)
The local TV news media will happily tell you about local celbrity functions, about killings and murders in the area ("if it bleeds, it leads") and about the general trend of the economy and housing markets in that area... but they will NOT tell you, that when Mr. Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, "Signals A Federal Rate Cut" what the story means is that the US Treasury printing presses are working overtime to print devalued dollars.
This Financial Times article does spell out that path in the first sentence of its rate-cut story,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/85eeb76a-e546-11dc-9334-0000779fd2ac.html
The dollar fell to a fresh record low against the euro on Wednesday as Ben Bernanke signalled that the Federal Reserve is likely to cut interest rates again next month.
but does not spell out that the goverment is printing millions more in unbacked paper currency.
Network (much less local) newscasts will be even more vague on the causes and consequences of America's cheap credit economic policy, and how it acts as yet another TAX on working families, allowing the super-wealthy to buy huge government-backed assets for pennies or dimes on the dollar, while ordinary consumers will potentially be stuck with huge credit-card and home loan debts down the line.
(ConsortiumNews.com details exactly such a sweet-heart deal made by Chicago's Pritzken family back in 2001.)
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/022708a.html
The above diversion into financial/ECONOMIC issues is only to highlight ONE area where local TV newscasts are superficial to the point of being propaganda: they can tell you about a FED RATE CUT, without mentioning, much less expressing concern over, the HUGE, OUTSTANDING US federal deficits and DEBT SPENDING - which deficits DROWN OUT other efforts to bring desired social, education, health-care, and enivormental projects to the fore.
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Broadcast TV delivers a "fuzzy" view of primary Campaigns 2008....
by Buzzflash.com
27 Feb. 2008
http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/election08/089
I have cable, but quite a few of my friends rely on "rabbit ears." -- Chad
For those with cable or satellite TV, February 17, 2009 doesn't mean a whole lot. For those who use rabbit ears to get television, the date in February is a significant deadline. February 17, 2009 marks the transition from analog to digital TV.
And if you do have cable or satellite, you probably think the transition isn't significant, but to many Americans, their TV watching depends on it.
So what does this have to do with politics? We keep hearing that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have had 20 debates. But if you are one of those who don't have cable or satellite, there haven't been 20 debates. There has been - one? The only one that leaps to mind that was on broadcast TV was the Saturday night contest in New Hampshire on ABC.
For goodness sake, we had a writers' strike, where networks were showing low-rated reruns. And we had a scenario where CBS and NBC both blew off Saturday night programming to cover a regular-season football game scheduled to air on the NFL Network. (ironically, CBS blew off "Good Night, and Good Luck" to show the game. Did CBS eventually reschedule that December broadcast?)
And yet the networks couldn't show presidential primary debates. If they were worried about ratings, then all four major networks should have carried the debates at the same time, or traded off so each network would have carried an equal number of debates.
Saturday night programming is so devalued on the broadcast schedule that only FOX consistently runs first-run programming on Saturday Night (COPS, America's Most Wanted). This fall, ABC's Saturday night programming was literally college football games. So, since the networks devalue Saturday night so much, they could have had the debates on Saturday night and not "suffered" too much.
Despite what the corporate media would like to believe, the airwaves belong to us. They serve a purpose to a lot of Americans who vote. The millions of coupons the government is printing up for digital converters (so those with analog TVs can still watch TV after the conversion) proves over-the-air TV is still relevant.
Think about this when it comes to political coverage on TV: In Canada, you can watch "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and the "Colbert Report" with an antenna on CTV, but you can't watch those shows in the United States with an antenna.
One easy solution for broadcast TV is to stream the debates on a separate digital channel. For example, in Chicago, the NBC station (Channel 5) broadcasts its regular fare on 5-1. A weather channel airs on 5-2. If it had a third digital channel, the station could have run last night's MSNBC debate on 5-3.
The right-wing element goes nuts over a brief exposure of a female nipple (e.g., Janet Jackson), yet there's no protest over a lack of political debates on broadcast TV. If the right-wingers feel the airwaves need to be protected from a nipple, the left-wingers need to stand up to protected the airwaves from ignorance.
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