The "Mainstream" Media Commits Suicide

The story writes itself; a picture really is worth 1,000 words. This current Newsweek cover says just about everything I've been wanting to say lately about the current state of the former mainstream media. I saw this cover yesterday as I was standing in line to pay for my groceries. That's the only way I ever would have seen this issue, since I quit reading Newsweek at least 20 years ago. I don't even care what the article is about. This is sickening drivel on so many levels.

Last night on one of the Fox shows I heard Bernard Goldberg say that we simply must quit calling the traditional media "mainstream." I couldn't agree more. Goldberg has a post on his website, titled "Mainstream Media Must Go!" I've been struggling throughout this blog to figure out what to call these people. I started out with "so-called mainstream media." Then I tried "former mainstream media." I've also tried "dinosaur media." None of those has worked for me, to express the level of disdain and disgust I feel for these "professionals" who have, in my opinion, flipped from simple leftist bias into fulminating advocacy of the left-wing all-Obama-all-the-time-media in the last couple of weeks. As Goldberg says in his article, "Since there is very little mainstream about the so-called mainstream media, it’s time for all of us to stop using such a misleading term – and come up with something new."

Goldberg asked for suggestions about what to call the traditional media. He got some good ones:

• MSM: Mass Suicidal Miscreants
• Formerly Known as Media (FKAM)
• Ministry of Truth
• Ass-Hat Media
• MSM: Mindless State Mouthpieces
• Dead Stream Media
• Prog-Duh (close to Pravda--good one)
• Move On Media (there's nothing to see here--I like that one)
• SRM, State-Run Media

That last one is the winner for me. The former mainstream media is so in-the-tank for the Obama administration that they simply refuse to cover the most interesting and important stories of the day--the scandal at ACORN being one of the most egregious recent examples.

John Nolte has written in a recent article at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood website: "Our liberal friends may not like hearing Van Jones, the NEA and ACORN are under fire, but they still want to know. What a disappointing revelation it must be to open the New York Times or turn on the network news only to discover after the curtain has already fallen that one of Obama’s Czars was forced to resign or that the U.S. Census Bureau let ACORN go. . . . The liberal media is failing for the exact same reason a dozen-plus anti-war films flopped: propaganda is dull. No matter your politics, people want stimulation and information, not affirmation. Obviously, that’s not true for everyone, but it’s true enough that those media outlets who haven’t figured it out are either dancing on the edge of financial ruin or, like MSNBC, continuing to double down on stupid thinking it will increase their abysmal performance metrics."

So from now on, on this blog, instead of the MSM, Mainstream Media, it's now the SRM: the State-Run Media.

Update: On his radio show today, Glenn Beck said this: "The mainstream media is about to collapse of its own weight. . . . it is so far beyond just an agenda, just bias, it is so far beyond that. The paradigm is changing. . . . Let the chips fall where they may. This is about corruption. The media is putting the last nails in their own coffin. They don't even see it coming."

Update #2: We have a new winner for the name-the-media contest: Yellow Stream Media, because we are pissed about what's going on with what passes for "journalism" these days. The term works on another level because it's an ironic paean (pun intended--heh) to what cowards these people are, kowtowing to the administration and refusing to cover major news stories because they are bad news for Barry O. YSM: Yellow Stream Media--that's the best one yet!