No mercy for the mainstream news media

The mainstream news media has been complaining about economic industry problems long before the economic meltdown hit this country. Some people feel sorry for them but as an industry, I don't feel sorry for them at all. I think the mainstream news media as an industry has brought its own demise on its own head, and if they are suffering, they deserve.

I'm conflicted a bit. While I feel sorry for many of my friends in the journalism profession and those good and principled journalists who have lost their jobs or are concerned about the decaying industry, the industry itself does not deserve any sympathy at all.

They deserve what's happening to them and instead of crying for them, especially those Americans who have victimized and excluded and slandered and ignored by the mainstream news media, the American public should be excited that the once arrogant, mighty and often dishonest news media may have to reinvent itself. And maybe even start from scratch.

Maybe this time, if they do have to start from scratch, they will get it right.

For too long the mainstream news media has violated the very principles it set up for itself, claiming to be professional when in fact they have been anything but professional. I think that the media hung the "We're professionalists" stereotype on themselves as a shield from the criticism they have earned.

The mainstream news media is not professional at all. They're whores who pimp for certain insider agenda's and they routinely deny equal voice to the voiceless who are in fact voiceless in America because the media has made them voiceless. Editors pick and chose Op-Eds and commentaries not based on the principles of free speech, equal access, Democracy and fairness but on the basis of "journalist politics."

And there is a Journalism Politics that is sinister, corrupt and the cancer that has slowly eroded the moral fiber that mainstream journalism once asserted.

They have been for years the least respected profession in America for a reason. Mainstream journalists are hypocrites who exclude facts to make the stories and commentaries they right seem more right. They use their power not to enlighten the public but to control and manipulate the public. The robber baron elitists in the media's ivory tower have done so out of pure selfish greed, while lowly editors have done it out of power corruption.

The American public, which has suffered based on their race, religion and ethnicity, has a chance to stand up and exercise true free speech without having their words distorted, filtered or excluded. Americans, with the demise of the mainstream news media, can help redefine the news media to insist on true fairness, true objectivity, true principle and true freedoms.

With the death of the mainstream news media -- and I hope it comes fast -- we can finally have a national discussion about issues without worrying about whose views are popular and whose are not. Americans are smart people. We are educated people. We do not need politicians and power brokers disguised as the Fourth Estate pretending to be caring for our interests when it fact under their stewardship the American people have been children of abused and negligent parents.

-- Ray Hanania

Author, "Secrets of New Media Networking"

www.TheMediaOasis.com

New Book details secrets of overcoming mainstream news media bias

I just finished my first edition of "Secrets of New Media Networking" my collection of ideas on how to overcome bias in the mainstream news media.

It's not about putting a check on someone else's opinions that you like or do not like, but about getting your own opinions into the mainstream news media. The mainstream news media, when it comes to "certain topics," is biased. Plain and simple. I know that because I have been in the news media now 32 years, not including six years working in high school and college newspapers.

The reality is that the extremism in the mainstream bias is the primary fuel feeding the extremism that we find in communities like the American Arab community. The bias reinforces the frustrations of the public and that frustration is consumed by anger, emotion and turns into an unreasoned support of the only option they then feel is out there for them, the loudmouthed, extremists who use violence and hatred to 1) keep their followers in a continued state of frustration and 2) provoke the conflict into more conflict and greater violence which gives them a reason to exist.

If we EVER achieved a real and genuine peace in the Middle East, for example, hundreds of thousands of activists on both sides would find themselves out of a job.

I want to put a lot of those biased activists on both sides out of a job and create a new environment where peace creates a new market that creates jobs promoting reason, moderation, understanding and truly free speech.

But my book is not about the Arab-Israeli conflict, although I do use it as an example -- my personal example of how the mainstream news media bias works. My book is about how to take the bias that YOU see in the mainstream news media to motivate you to easily create an alternative using the Internet to get your message, your views and your products out to the public. It's not hard to do using web sites, blogs of different strategic focuses and topics, social media like Facebook and MySpace, and Twitter and even brokered radio and cable TV public access. It all can come together and create a powerful market place for your views.

The book also discusses the moral responsibility of the media and journalism. It's not good to simply replace one biased media with another biased media. You want to add your views to the public discussion not stereotype, slander or discriminate against the free speech of others. You want to make the mainstream news media objective, not biased towards your opinion. You MUST adhere to principle, fairness, and give others the same that you demand, an opportunity to be heard.

The best strategy to fight extremism, terrorism and violence from extremists is to insure that your strategy includes a significant component that truly expands free speech to everyone. Achieving a fair news media system will do far more to undermine the extremists than all of the military conflict that has been launched in our history as human beings on this planet.

We would have won the Iraq War long ago if we had been more sensitive to the moderates in the Arab World who were shut out of the American effort not because of the war but because the American effort never treated them with respect or respected their views.

I hope you get a chance to check out the new books. CLICK HERE TO GET more information on the book.

-- Ray Hanania

www.RadioChicagoland.com