For those seeking reporting of news as unbiased as possible let me suggest The Christian Science Monitor, widely regarded to be about as good as you will get in the U.S. As for TV news, what a joke, all sound bites and propaganda, not to mention the low IQ at which it is focused. CBC Channel 8 is due an award from the Barbados Library Service for encouraging reading. Not much difference in the U.S. Understanding the world around us requires reading, complete with correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc., all necessary for transmitting the subtle nuances that separate news and information from entertainment.
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Here we are “expounding” (yuh like dah word? did i spell it write,right or wright? :D ) the benefits of diversifying our news scources and here you come, while sighting the same reasons as us for so doing, to give us only one choice.

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But is the CSM free of the things that force us to seek multiply news sources? hardly.

Did you believe Jill Carroll’s account of her abduction?

+++++++++
Project Censored noted that the Monitor often publishes articles discussing topics under-represented or absent from the mainstream mass media. In comparison to other major newspapers and journalistic magazines, the Monitor tends to take a steady and slightly upbeat approach to national and world news. Many readers prefer the Monitor because it avoids sensationalism, particularly with respect to tragedies; at the same time, the paper’s staff does operate under the close eye of the church’s five-member board of directors, and has sometimes been seen as avoiding issues that involve the church in controversial and unfavorable ways.

Due to its church ownership, the “Monitor” largely avoids coverage about medicine, disease and death; articles that discuss these topics are carefully vetted for language viewed as inappropriate or unnecessary per church doctrine.Obituaries typically don’t mention the cause of death, and the ages of people in stories are rarely mentioned.

Modernization
The print edition continued to struggle for readership, and, in 2004, faced a renewed mandate from the church to turn a profit. The Monitor, more quickly than other newspapers, turned to the World Wide Web for its future. The Web offered the paper the opportunity to overcome the severe cost and logistical difficulties of mailing out a daily international newspaper. The Monitor was one of the first newspapers to put its text online (in 1996), and also one of the first to launch a PDF edition (in 2001). It was also an early pioneer of RSS feeds. The former editor was David Cook.

Reporter kidnapping
———-
In 2006, Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter for the Monitor, was kidnapped in Baghdad, and released safely after 82 days. Although Carroll was initially a freelancer, the paper worked tirelessly for her release, even hiring her as a staff writer shortly after her abduction to ensure that she had financial benefits, according to Bergenheim.[3]

Beginning in August 2006, the Christian Science Monitor published an 11-part account of Carroll’s kidnapping and subsequent release, with first-person reporting from Carroll and others involved.

Galloway scandal
———-
In April 2003, the Monitor published papers that claimed George Galloway had received money for sympathy to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. These documents were forgeries.

Chris Halsall suggested a correlation between advertisers and news content.

This is not surprising. Media makes its money on ads. Government and big business place many ads. Businesses serve their customers.
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The relationship is explain in this article

“India’s newspapers embrace a profitable but questionable new sideline

http://www.economist.com/business/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=11294242

i read from NYTIMES to Stratfor with National reveiw and the dailykos sandwish somewhere in between. I still find Fox Cable news the least partisan of all the cable and public TV news stations in America, would you like to dispute that? Interestly enough i never knew of Fox or Bill O’reilly it being a subscription channell ( I am a proud cheapo) until a visit to Barbados and seeing him live on so many BLP supporters tv. :D

This is not surprising. Media makes its money on ads. Government and big business place many ads. Businesses serve their customers.

The good news is that both in America and Barbados, bloggers are making big changes by publishing news and by shaming the media to publish.

No news source is unbiased. My solution is to look at several news sources with DIFFERENT biases. This may not be possible when news is being suppressed!

Mr Hinds, I am pleasantly surprised we are in are in correlation for the moment, I’ll enjoy while I can…

http://www.economist.com/business/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=11294258

Let me make a distinction here, I am refering to Fox cable news, and you maybe discussing the activity at a Fox news affilliate in Florida both own by the same parent company but have completely seperate editorial oversight. By the way I don’t watch the Fox providence (wnac-tv) or MyFox Boston (wfxt) both local fox affiliates in my neck of the woods.

The two reporters in question say that threats of lawsuits and withdrawal of advertising were made to the Fox owned TV station as well as to Fox in general. You would have thought if you listened to how right wing, republican blowhards carry on about the benefits of the US system vs. the totalitarian controls on free speech and freedom of the press in nasty, dictatorial commie states like those run by Castro and Chavez, Fox would have used their corporate resources to stand behind the TV station’s reporters and get this important story on the air to inform Americans of the dangerous crap Monsanto was putting into the food supply instead of folding to Monsanto’s heavy handed threats. However, thanks to the internet at least you can till find out what Fox and Monsanto don’t want you to know. Just go to this website http://www.foxbghsuit.com/ where Jane Akre and Steve Wilson have posted some information regarding the issues they were researching re. rBGH in the US milk supply.

BTW, If Fox is all that great a news source, how would you account for this story (I can bet this is one story that was not covered by the well coiffed, bloviating gasbags and flag lapel-pin wearing, faux-patriots at Faux News):

A new study by the Pew Research Study shows that viewers of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report have the highest knowledge of national and international affairs, while Fox News viewers rank nearly dead last:

snip

The results about Fox News echo findings of previous surveys. In 2003, University of Maryland researchers studied the public’s belief in three false claims — that Iraq possessed WMD, that Iraq was involved in 9/11, and that there was international support for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The researchers stated, “The extent of Americans’ misperceptions vary significantly depending on their source of news. Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions.” Fox News viewers were “three times more likely than the next nearest network to hold all three misperceptions.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/16/daily-show-fox-knowledge/

AH said:

But GM if Fox CABLE news is not the most open source reporting on American TV then who is??? I need know, as I need to be watching them.

Hate to break it to you AH, but none of them can be trusted. They are not called corporate media whores for nothing. A few corporate conglomerates (some of them with interests in the arms making “defense” industries) basically own and control 90% of the US media outlets these days and while they may or may not overtly set the agenda as to what news will make it to air and how it will be presented, it’s not like the journalists and reporters would need to get detailed instructions as to how to handle stories every day, (unless they blatantly step off the reservation like the two at Fox) . I would think a junior reporter will quickly get a handle on what types of stories and what slants on stories get approval from the bosses and pats on the back and bring on pay raises and promotions and what stories and slants on coverage result in him/her spending a career covering the equivalent of the debates at city hall on funding for new garbage trucks etc.

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called “alarmist” for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly. In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote “in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media” — controlling almost all of America’s newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies. This was greeted with skepticism at the time. When the 6th edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world’s largest media corporation.

In 2004, Bagdikian’s revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations — Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) — now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric’s NBC is a close sixth.

http://www.corporations.org/media/

“The modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority of people, who are innately obedient to authority. This obedience-truth will then become a consensus-truth accepted by many individuals unable to stand alone against the majority. In this way, the truth promulgated by the propaganda system – however irrational – stands a good chance of becoming the consensus, and may come to seem self-evident common sense.”

David Edwards, author of Burning All Illusions

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media_control_propaganda/Media_Control.html

I’ll just leave you with this snip from an article by Norman Livergood PhD, a former department head at the US Army War College where he researched and wrote papers on topics like brainwashing, psychological warfare, mind control etc.

Brainwashing America

The puppet Bush regime is using new, aggressive forms of brainwashing to change the very way Americans think and feel.

This is the psychological dimension of the demonic cabal’s general onslaught against American workers, just as the “war on terrorism” is the military dimension and corporate crime and tax cuts for the rich comprise the economic dimension.

We are living under the beginning stages of a military dictatorship in precisely the same way that 1930s Germans suffered under the Nazi regime.

As in the case of Nazi Germany, state-sponsored propaganda (brainwashing) is a vital part of the Bush regime’s strategy.

New propaganda slogans are being overtly and subliminally implanted by Bush and his gang through their speeches and actions:

* Dissent is treason

* Constitutional liberties are less important than security

* The “war on terrorism” excuses any attack on civil liberties

* The Bush administration has the right and the duty to bring about “regime change” in any nation it chooses

* The economy is basically sound

* Only a few bad apples are found in the corporate barrel, which requires no new oversight laws

* If Bush and Cheney say they’re not guilty of corporate crimes, then believe it and shut up

* It’s okay to lie about weapons of mass destruction as a pretext of starting a pre-emptive war against Iraq

* The election in 2004 was completely fair and legal

* Karl Rove can out a CIA agent and not have to face any legal repercussions

* Using the Republican Party strangle-hold on the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government to institute a dictatorship is okay

SNIP

In an earlier article, I reviewed the varied aspects of personality profiling and simulation. While serving as Head of the Artificial Intelligence Department at the U.S. Army War College, 1993-1995, I conducted studies on profiling, psychological programming, and brainwashing. I explored and developed personality simulation systems, an advanced technology used in military war games, FBI profiling, political campaigning, and advertising. Part of my discovery was that:

* unenlightened human minds are combinations of infantile beliefs and emotional patterns

* these patterns can be simulated in profiling systems

* these profiling systems can be used to program and control people

Personality simulation systems are being used to create political campaigns that apply voter profiles to control their voting behavior. TV commercials and programs use personality simulation to profile viewers to control their purchasing and viewing behaviors. And sophisticated propaganda and brainwashing techniques are being used by the Bush junta to keep American citizens under control.

http://www.hermes-press.com/brainwash1.htm

My only advice would be to get your news from as wide a variety of sources as possible, including the blogs and the web and from overseas sources such as overseas newspaper web sites etc. , and don’t assume that because a story came from a so-called mainstream source it must therefore be true or it must be the “correct” way to look at some issue. Most importantly always be prepared to question authority.

by TREVOR YEARWOOD

THE CARIBBEAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION (CBC) is short-changing Barbadians as it seeks to capture the attention of youths in its programmes.

Barbadian novelist George Lamming made this charge on Tuesday night, after delivering a lecture in a series sponsored by the Barbados Community College (BCC).

In the lecture, the author of the classic In The Castle Of My Skin spoke of a need to “decolonise” Barbadians’ eating habits and advised caution for those seeking “First World status” for the developing nation.

Responding to questions and comments after the lecture, Lamming told the gathering in the Grand Salle of the Tom Adams Financial Centre that his beef with CBC was its caricature of the Bajan language in its programmes.

“The fuss I make is when I hear the oral tradition being caricatured by people who think if you make it sound ordinary and ordinary and ordinary, the more popular [it becomes] . . . .

“I regret I have to say I think CBC has been one of the greatest betrayals of public trust.

“This attempt to catch something called the youth, to catch the youth, to catch the youth . . . has forced them into all sorts of nonsense.”

CBC did not realise “that the youths are really casualties of the market, that that easy access . . . which the consumer society has given to things has actually put a whole generation into a new kind of bondage”, he added.

Quality of life

In the lecture focusing on Nation, Culture And The School, Lamming noted the frequently made statements
about the need to have Barbados upgraded to a First World nation.

“These statements are [usually] made by people who fail to recognise that in those areas you call First World the phenomenal increase in standards of living reveals a corresponding decline in the quality of life,” Lamming said.

He also touched on Barbados’ high food import bill and the need to change consumption patterns.

“How do you decolonise the eating habits of the people who have surrendered their palates to foreign control?” he asked.

“I live in an island where the synonym of breakfast is Kellogg’s. How do we reverse that? It can’t really be done by legislation.

“It has to be done by some revolution, some turning upside down of the way in which you see yourself,” he added.

Lamming saw it as “most unfortunate” to arouse the expectations of local farmers and then force them to engage in a rivalry with imported food, much of it largely subsidised.

He complained that despite a fertile sea and land with the potential to meet basic food needs Caribbean people had surrendered their cultural sovereignty.

“There is a crisis in cultural sovereignty when patterns of consumption bear little relation to basic needs and cannot
be supported by the productive base of the societies,” he said.

4th Estate Matters from a Bajan askance – I saw CM at a Geo Lamming lecture and said he took real blows from the blogs and he huffed that he gave back some good ones, Ho Hum, LOL!

See how BFP had the Ghanaian rape matter 7 days before the Nation?

This is why blogs are disliked, we dare to unearth what is there as it happens, before the dead-trees or tv & radio whose souls are stored very securely at the Company Store
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Ian my friend. :D How are you? I hope you notice that as much as i does cuss you, and will continue too, :D that i use your good work at your current location to “show up” Carl Moore’s lack of traction in his presidentcy of the quieter Barbados organization. Did he attempt to get ideas from you? He should.

Adrian Hinds,

Ensure our consciences are clear and do what we know we should.
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Make sure our conscience is clear? as in empty our thoughts and become blank slates??? If we do that on what or who’s instructions can begin to do what we know we should do??????

Wow!. People like Adrian can make sense sometime but simply plays the ass when it come to racial issues, especially regarding indians.

So pathetic!
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Indo, wuh um is that you selling and that i refuse to buy? :D

PBS — http://www.pbs.org/
BBC — http://www.bbc.co.uk/
CBC — http://www.cbc.ca/

Note that none of the above are heavily dependent upon advertising revenue…. Simply correlative, or causal?

So pathetic!

See how BFP had the Ghanaian rape matter 7 days before the Nation?

This is why blogs are disliked, we dare to unearth what is there as it happens, before the dead-trees or tv & radio whose souls are stored very securely at the Company Store

I feel your pain
But then, again
Why are you standing in the rain?
Perhaps, your sense is down the drain,
While the rest of you has gone to Spain,
And falling, calling, gives no gain,
But just a sad refrain.
(With apologies to everyone who loves poultry!!)

***************************************
“We miss the weekly columns which flowed from the fearless pen of the late Gladston Holder, who wrote ad nauseam about the clandestine workings of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR).”

I have to confess that I am happy to miss GH’s columns. You see, in his other life he was, among other things, the Government’s Chief Information Officer, but EWB, the PM of the day did not have the slightest interest in anything that Holder wished to produce. As a brash young man I once asked Holder how did he plan to overcome negative public response to what he produced, when members of the listening public turned off their radios/tv sets as soon as they heard the GIS signature tune.

The masthead logo of the New York Times newspaper proclaims “All the News that’s fit to print”. Maybe, the theme of the media in Barbados should be all the news that is fit to read, or hear, or listen to. But who decides what’s fit, fat, or fiddlesticks? Isn’t that the real question?