Dirty News: Whose $$$ Pays for the News You Trust

Forty-year journalist Penny Fletcher describes how drastic changes in US news stem from Supreme Court decisions favoring corporations, and from the elimination of the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine. But she doesn’t leave readers trying to sort the truth from propaganda pushed by the six corporate owners who have bought out almost all the national media in the United States. Remember, this does not apply to the local newspapers and television stations covering only a small radius around the town where you live. Local reporters usually know they are responsible to their readers and viewers because they interact with them in places of business and on the street. It’s the changes made by Congress, the Federal Communications Commission, and the Supreme Court that now allow large corporations to own all the media in sizable geographic areas. This has made it so that only one view is often given to hundreds of millions of people. That’s why Fletcher wants to show readers how to dig for the truth like a pro. The Fairness Doctrine had requirements that stated, “all sides of issues must be printed or aired,” and “nothing that would deliberately harm any person or group may be presented without giving that person or group a chance at rebuttal for the same cost and amount of time on the same platform.” Elimination of this Doctrine has enabled radio, television, and print publications to present one-sided arguments favoring the positions of their owners and financiers. This translated quickly to politics, accounting for opinions, and even advertising to be presented as news. This means readers and viewers in large areas of the country know only what their media's corporate owners want them to know about candidates and political party platforms. Furthermore, because of a clause in one Supreme Court decision claiming the FCC’s governing Doctrine had “chilled free speech,” it became easier for reports to favor or disfavor businesses and even specific persons. Now, because of the ability to say just about anything legally, disinformation is widely spread in every corner of the country. No one knows or understands the injustices this has caused more than the reporters who must follow the directions of their superiors or get out of the newsroom. In this book, Fletcher teaches readers how to recognize editorial opinion by marking all of her own Editorial Opinion in bold. She calls attention to the words that make certain statements commentary, and shows how sometimes it takes just one word to make a news story into an opinion piece. In recent years, a new breed of advertising, called native ads, has made this even more difficult to recognize because native advertising is a paid-for ad made to read or look just like a news story. How readers can spot propaganda, which is almost always something slanted to put a specific person, product, or issue in a "good" or "bad" light, is also explained in detail. This book doesn’t pull any punches. It reveals not only whose $$$ pays for the news you watch, hear, or read, it also tells how these news sources subsidize or harm political parties and persons by deliberately slanting their news reports. Internet memes and false quotes are sometimes even placed under someone’s photograph making it look like that person said, or did, something they knew nothing about. Yet despite this constant and deliberate maze, every individual can learn to dig for the truth of any issue, and the real position behind every media source, political party, or corporate PAC.