Herman and Chomsky, DetectiveDanny

The other night, I was watching Glenn Beck yelling about something on CNN. Occasionally I will read Beck’s commentary on his website as his style is a bit more appealing to me than other talking heads. A few weeks ago he published an article about the influence of conservative talk radio and he claims “No matter the reason, the point is that our listeners have their own brains. They make up their own minds. Talk radio may be one source of information, but it's certainly not their only one”, and he goes on to tout his listeners as much smarter than listeners of other radio shows or non listeners. Chomsky and Herman might get a little laugh out of Glenn Beck as they have a grasp on his position, saying that “media news people, frequently operating with complete integrity and goodwill, are able to convince themselves that they choose and interpret the news objectively and on the basis of professional news values”. To me, professional news values do not exist, they are just a veil behind which these corporations operate. Just like in Citizen Kane when the title character publishes his declaration of journalistic ethics, these promises of subjectivity and morality cannot be taken seriously. The motivations of these corporations can easily affect what news we see and don’t, but also, the writers and reporters have become incapable of these things. When someone goes into the news business, a prime motivation is their belief that they are fit to feed people information because they feel like their philosophy needs distributing. The infinite choices of words eliminate the possibility of standing in a middle ground without a bias as does the willingness of the audience to receive all information as fact.