What Happened to the News Media in America? Part 2 – The Golden Age of News – Destroyers of the Truth

Finally, I get to Part 2, the “Destroyers of the Truth.”  Turn your clock back to the 1970’s, the twilight of the Golden Age of news.  Events starting in the early 1960’s like the Cold War between the USA and Soviet Union, the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassination, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy assassinations, then Watergate shook the news business to the bone.

Instead of a fifteen-minute national news broadcast, they expanded to 30 minutes with additional “news” shows like 20/20 or Sixty minutes among others added to the line-up.  This and a demand for real time coverage of events like the Kennedy assassination in 1963, where network coverage pre-empted regular programming, changed the face of media forever.

Suddenly national and local news became a big deal which led to an explosion of media innovations including the live broadcast of events, field reporting, live inter-active reporting between news anchors and field reporters, and a digital revolution in the collection, processing and distribution of news.

The second major shift taking place simultaneously was the wild and wacky decade of the 1960’s, as the post-World War II baby boomers became the dominant force.  Suddenly the youth of our nation faced crisis after crisis as they filled secondary and college educational institutions with their thirst for a new world.

The Baby Boomers, born in the shadow and deadly radioactive fallout of the only two atomic explosions ever used in war, which were dropped on Japan and ended World War II.  It would take a book to describe the impact the 1960’s had on this new generation and so far, none have done it justice.

“Within the span of a single decade the greatest revolution in world history took place…”

Within the span of a single decade the greatest revolution in world history took place as the Boomers faced civil rights bloodshed, demands for academic freedom, the threat of a Cold War, the added threat of biologic or chemical warfare, death in Viet Nam, death on college campus’s protesting the war, political assassinations, bloody peace protests, and so much more.

The entertainment industry also reached their Golden Age as Broadway, movies, and television all exploded before they would settle into bitter rivals in the battle for the hearts, souls and pocketbooks of the people.  How appropriate the end of the decade would result in Woodstock, a rock festival and anti-war protest drawing over 400,000 concert-goers to a muddy field in the other New York, meaning upstate from NYC.

“I call it the Second American Revolution.”

This amazing decade is what I call the Second American Revolution.  What emerged at the end of the decade showed little, if any, resemblance to what began the decade.  There was not an institution, idea, principle, or political policy that was not tested, tried and trampled over.

At this point I will offer you multiple choices of what caused such a venerable and respected institution like the news media to pretty much self-destruct in the ensuing decades until today.  Decide for yourself which were most responsible as the “Destroyers of the Truth” here in the American. News media.

Causes of the Collapse of the News Media

Cable News? Competition

Internet Technology

Changes in news media valuation from viewers to profits

Profit-driven companies bought news interests as investment

Astonishing increase in political spending for media

Courts rejecting campaign finance laws

Failure of government to regulate Internet

Proliferation of media advertising revenue

Blurring of the distinction between news and editorials

Apathy of a disenfranchised population

Reporters becoming advocates of causes and politics

A general public seemingly disinterested in the truth

Conflicts of interest between media and politics

No enforcement of News Media Code of Ethics

Lack of media accountability for sources and stories

Government abuse of classifying information

To sum it all up, greed, a lust for power, and exorbitant advertising revenue from politics and the private sector fueled the demise of the news media.  Once again, the pendulum has reversed itself and the credibility and believability of the news media by the public has gone off the cliff.

What was once intense competition between news groups has morphed into an insidious and ruthless effort to not only dismember and destroy those of opposing views, but to trample on the free rights of everyone but yourself.  Respect for our Constitutional rights to individual freedom, opportunity and free speech are spit upon by ego-centered, celebrity-driven news media.

“A new, more powerful special interest has cast a long dark shadow over our world.”

A new, more powerful special interest has cast a long dark shadow over our world, the digital answer to control.  Dominated by greed and the lust for power and fueled by an explosion of ad revenues from even more special interests, the news media of today, have no code of ethics.

When it comes to the Internet news providers and news aggregators, stories being pursued are no longer of broad interest but serve their own agenda.  Fake news is highly successful because, quite frankly, the reader is lost in the abyss of power and control.  People have willingly become pawns, because they have no backbone for the truth.

The news media embraces polarization, character assassination, and political agendas which are a violation of the Journalism Code of Ethics.  They are caught up in a tangle of special interests whose interest may be the enslavement of the general public to technology.  We are data-driven fools whose every thought, action, purchase, interest, and personal health and wealth are already under the microscope of Big Brother.

The Internet changed the dynamics.  The loss of integrity, absence of fairness, and failure of news groups to take responsibility for their stories or actions has undermined any hope for credibility in the news media.

“Social media news organizations and so-called news aggregators for the Internet services have become the new overlords of the news media…”

Social media news organizations and so-called news aggregators for the Internet services have become the new overlords of the news media, and the new censors for determining news media content.

I suspect somewhere along the line the institutions of higher learning who once defended the freedom and fairness of the news media decided corporate underwriting of the academic endowment funds was more important than telling the truth.  Or, perhaps they were just taking care of their university graduates in the private, “capitalism” sector.

In summary – the truth has been checkmated, the game is over.

What Happened to the News Media in America? Part 2 – The Golden Age of News – Destroyers of the Truth

Finally, I get to Part 2, the “Destroyers of the Truth.”  Turn your clock back to the 1970’s, the twilight of the Golden Age of news.  Events starting in the early 1960’s like the Cold War between the USA and Soviet Union, the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassination, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy assassinations, then Watergate shook the news business to the bone.

Instead of a fifteen-minute national news broadcast, they expanded to 30 minutes with additional “news” shows like 20/20 or Sixty minutes among others added to the line-up.  This and a demand for real time coverage of events like the Kennedy assassination in 1963, where network coverage pre-empted regular programming, changed the face of media forever.

Suddenly national and local news became a big deal which led to an explosion of media innovations including the live broadcast of events, field reporting, live inter-active reporting between news anchors and field reporters, and a digital revolution in the collection, processing and distribution of news.

The second major shift taking place simultaneously was the wild and wacky decade of the 1960’s, as the post-World War II baby boomers became the dominant force.  Suddenly the youth of our nation faced crisis after crisis as they filled secondary and college educational institutions with their thirst for a new world.

The Baby Boomers, born in the shadow and deadly radioactive fallout of the only two atomic explosions ever used in war, which were dropped on Japan and ended World War II.  It would take a book to describe the impact the 1960’s had on this new generation and so far, none have done it justice.

“Within the span of a single decade the greatest revolution in world history took place…”

Within the span of a single decade the greatest revolution in world history took place as the Boomers faced civil rights bloodshed, demands for academic freedom, the threat of a Cold War, the added threat of biologic or chemical warfare, death in Viet Nam, death on college campus’s protesting the war, political assassinations, bloody peace protests, and so much more.

The entertainment industry also reached their Golden Age as Broadway, movies, and television all exploded before they would settle into bitter rivals in the battle for the hearts, souls and pocketbooks of the people.  How appropriate the end of the decade would result in Woodstock, a rock festival and anti-war protest drawing over 400,000 concert-goers to a muddy field in the other New York, meaning upstate from NYC.

“I call it the Second American Revolution.”

This amazing decade is what I call the Second American Revolution.  What emerged at the end of the decade showed little, if any, resemblance to what began the decade.  There was not an institution, idea, principle, or political policy that was not tested, tried and trampled over.

At this point I will offer you multiple choices of what caused such a venerable and respected institution like the news media to pretty much self-destruct in the ensuing decades until today.  Decide for yourself which were most responsible as the “Destroyers of the Truth” here in the American. News media.

Causes of the Collapse of the News Media

Cable News? Competition

Internet Technology

Changes in news media valuation from viewers to profits

Profit-driven companies bought news interests as investment

Astonishing increase in political spending for media

Courts rejecting campaign finance laws

Failure of government to regulate Internet

Proliferation of media advertising revenue

Blurring of the distinction between news and editorials

Apathy of a disenfranchised population

Reporters becoming advocates of causes and politics

A general public seemingly disinterested in the truth

Conflicts of interest between media and politics

No enforcement of News Media Code of Ethics

Lack of media accountability for sources and stories

Government abuse of classifying information

To sum it all up, greed, a lust for power, and exorbitant advertising revenue from politics and the private sector fueled the demise of the news media.  Once again, the pendulum has reversed itself and the credibility and believability of the news media by the public has gone off the cliff.

What was once intense competition between news groups has morphed into an insidious and ruthless effort to not only dismember and destroy those of opposing views, but to trample on the free rights of everyone but yourself.  Respect for our Constitutional rights to individual freedom, opportunity and free speech are spit upon by ego-centered, celebrity-driven news media.

“A new, more powerful special interest has cast a long dark shadow over our world.”

A new, more powerful special interest has cast a long dark shadow over our world, the digital answer to control.  Dominated by greed and the lust for power and fueled by an explosion of ad revenues from even more special interests, the news media of today, have no code of ethics.

When it comes to the Internet news providers and news aggregators, stories being pursued are no longer of broad interest but serve their own agenda.  Fake news is highly successful because, quite frankly, the reader is lost in the abyss of power and control.  People have willingly become pawns, because they have no backbone for the truth.

The news media embraces polarization, character assassination, and political agendas which are a violation of the Journalism Code of Ethics.  They are caught up in a tangle of special interests whose interest may be the enslavement of the general public to technology.  We are data-driven fools whose every thought, action, purchase, interest, and personal health and wealth are already under the microscope of Big Brother.

The Internet changed the dynamics.  The loss of integrity, absence of fairness, and failure of news groups to take responsibility for their stories or actions has undermined any hope for credibility in the news media.

“Social media news organizations and so-called news aggregators for the Internet services have become the new overlords of the news media…”

Social media news organizations and so-called news aggregators for the Internet services have become the new overlords of the news media, and the new censors for determining news media content.

I suspect somewhere along the line the institutions of higher learning who once defended the freedom and fairness of the news media decided corporate underwriting of the academic endowment funds was more important than telling the truth.  Or, perhaps they were just taking care of their university graduates in the private, “capitalism” sector.

In summary – the truth has been checkmated, the game is over.

Health Care in America - "Corruption at the Core of the Collapse

The Broken American Health Care System - CPT Reprint

What is the driving force behind the failure of the most expensive heath care system in the world to provide a better quality of life?  A lot of us have opinions.  So do the media, politicians and academia, but none seem to be addressing the reason behind every failure of an institution like medical care in society.

There comes a point when the institutions no longer serve the purpose they were created to address.  They evolve to a position where they believe the survival of the institution is more important than the mission of the institution.

When that happens, and inevitably it will when all good causes become their own bureaucracy, we have the seeds of corruption planted.

In America we spend about 9.9% of our disposable income on food.  Thirty years ago we spent 15% of our disposable income, meaning we spend over 5% less today on food than thirty years ago.

Now compare that to our experience with health care costs.

An article  was written June 28, 2009 by George Will titled: "Americans Will Regret Health Care Fix".  It described the cost of health care in America as follows.

The Hudson Institute's Betsy McCaughey, writing in The American Spectator, says that in 1960 the average American household spent 53 percent of its disposable income on food, housing, energy and health care. Today the portion of income consumed by those four has barely changed -- 55 percent. But the health care component has increased while the other three combined have decreased. This is partly because as societies become richer, they spend more on health care -- and symphonies, universities, museums, etc.

It is also because health care is increasingly competent. When the first baby boomers, whose aging is driving health care spending, were born in 1946, many American hospitals' principal expense was clean linen. This was long before MRIs, CAT scans and the rest of the diagnostic and therapeutic arsenal that modern medicine deploys.

In a survey released in April by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard, only 6 percent of Americans said they were willing to spend more than $200 a month on health care, and the price must fall to $100 a month before a majority are willing to pay it. But according to Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, Americans already are paying an average of $400 a month.

Most Americans do not know this because the cost of their care is hidden. Only 9 percent buy health coverage individually, and $84 of every $100 spent on health care is spent by someone (an employer, insurance company or government) other than recipients of the care. Those who get insurance as untaxed compensation from employers have no occasion to compute or confront the size of that benefit. But it is part of the price their employers pay for their work.

During the past thirty years health care as a percentage of our gross domestic product has grown by more than ten times.  That does not include your taxes paid for the government expenditures on health care.  The cost now is over $2.6 trillion a year and rising, both in terms of treatment and insurance.

Make no mistake, health care, long a public service through churches, non-profit organizations, government owned facilities and other resources, has now become BIG BUSINESS.

Pharmaceutical corporations led the way into making health care a profit center, not a public service, and now virtually every aspect of our health care system is privately owned, profit centered, and financed by Wall Street.

Wall Street may be reasonably good at financing new businesses like the Internet companies and health care industry but once Wall Street takes control of the industry through controlling the financing, that company serves a new master, Wall Street profitability.

Before you get out your protest banners and decide to occupy hospitals, I mean it is fashionable to protest against anyone we think is ripping off the public, look in the mirror because you are the one embracing a system now under the control of the financial institutions.

My point is this.  Health care is more about serving Wall Street interests than the people's interest.  Of course this is America and we encourage capitalism and these health care capitalists are operating within the framework of the law.  I guess if you owned stock in enough health care companies you would be profiting from the gouging of the American public with excessive health care costs, but most of us don't own health care stocks.

Our health care industry has evolved to the point where moral and financial corruption permeate the entire system, even corrupting those in the industry who really want to help people.

The medical industry is dependent on funneling millions in campaign funds to politicians who have to vote on their funding, in bribing doctors to prescribe drugs, in bribing universities to compete on a cut throat basis for grants from private corporations for survival, and for encouraging doctors to own testing equipment which in turn has to be justified to keep.

Conflicts of interest and ethics issues dominate the health care landscape.  It has become so financially competitive that excessive and unnecessary treatment is the order of the day as a simple and nearly undetectable way to pad the revenue stream.

Why X ray a single tooth if you can X ray the whole mouth?  Why take one or two spinal X rays when you can take multiple X rays of the spine?  Why not set up follow up doctor appointments for reasons of billing for the office visits rather than transmitting test results?

If a drug company pays a doctor to prescribe their drugs, and the more drugs prescribed the more the doctor makes, don't you think more prescriptions will be written?

How can FDA employees fairly evaluate a New Drug Application (NDA) worth potentially billions of dollars in new revenue if the same employees can quit their jobs and go to work for the same drug companies for far more money?

The top five drugs in terms of sales revenue in America all make between $3 and $5 billion a year for the owners, the pharmaceutical company.  If new health research or treatment does not generate profits first and foremost, it is of little value to a profit driven health care system.

If congress or the president eliminated conflicts of interest in the industry, both in terms of the relationship between government workers and the industry and between the industry and practitioners, it would be a great start to cost reduction.

The same conflict of interest exists when doctors are convinced to own expensive equipment like CAT scan and MRI machines, blood laboratories, pharmaceutical offices and others.  If Medicare or a health insurance company allows excessive CAT scans and MRI analysis for the purpose of making sure people are diagnosed and the doctors own the machines, don't you think more screens will be prescribed?

There are a thousand and one ways to get caught in a conflict in an industry that is barely regulated.  Usually there are industry watchdogs like the Securities and Exchange Commission assigned to keep an eye on the system.  However, even they are subject to the same conflicts because the SEC failed to see the housing and banking crisis coming.  More than likely they just turned their back to it.

A comprehensive and fair conflict of interest law could be proposed by the president and approved by congress and a thorough ethics law could be adopted by the medical and health care industries and that would start to unscramble the layers of conflicts and ethics violations we face today.

Unfortunately, such leadership by our politicians and health industries is nonexistent and will be as long as the industry finances the political campaigns in Washington and through the nation.  So we also need campaign financial reform, meaningful reform, to fix that inherent problem.

Fix the conflict of interest, draw up enforceable ethics laws, and clean up the campaign finance mess and it will lead directly to reduced health care costs.  Once again, nothing has been proposed by politicians to correct this mess.

Isn't it about time to REALLY start fixing things?

.

Health Care in America - "Corruption at the Core of the Collapse

The Broken American Health Care System

What is the driving force behind the failure of the most expensive heath care system in the world to provide a better quality of life?  A lot of us have opinions.  So do the media, politicians and academia, but none seem to be addressing the reason behind every failure of an institution like medical care in society.

There comes a point when the institutions no longer serve the purpose they were created to address.  They evolve to a position where they believe the survival of the institution is more important than the mission of the institution.

When that happens, and inevitably it will when all good causes become their own bureaucracy, we have the seeds of corruption planted.

In America we spend about 9.9% of our disposable income on food.  Thirty years ago we spent 15% of our disposable income, meaning we spend over 5% less today on food than thirty years ago.

Now compare that to our experience with health care costs.

An article  was written June 28, 2009 by George Will titled: "Americans Will Regret Health Care Fix".  It described the cost of health care in America as follows.

The Hudson Institute's Betsy McCaughey, writing in The American Spectator, says that in 1960 the average American household spent 53 percent of its disposable income on food, housing, energy and health care. Today the portion of income consumed by those four has barely changed -- 55 percent. But the health care component has increased while the other three combined have decreased. This is partly because as societies become richer, they spend more on health care -- and symphonies, universities, museums, etc.

It is also because health care is increasingly competent. When the first baby boomers, whose aging is driving health care spending, were born in 1946, many American hospitals' principal expense was clean linen. This was long before MRIs, CAT scans and the rest of the diagnostic and therapeutic arsenal that modern medicine deploys.

In a survey released in April by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard, only 6 percent of Americans said they were willing to spend more than $200 a month on health care, and the price must fall to $100 a month before a majority are willing to pay it. But according to Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, Americans already are paying an average of $400 a month.

Most Americans do not know this because the cost of their care is hidden. Only 9 percent buy health coverage individually, and $84 of every $100 spent on health care is spent by someone (an employer, insurance company or government) other than recipients of the care. Those who get insurance as untaxed compensation from employers have no occasion to compute or confront the size of that benefit. But it is part of the price their employers pay for their work.

During the past thirty years health care as a percentage of our gross domestic product has grown by more than ten times.  That does not include your taxes paid for the government expenditures on health care.  The cost now is over $2.6 trillion a year and rising, both in terms of treatment and insurance.

Make no mistake, health care, long a public service through churches, non-profit organizations, government owned facilities and other resources, has now become BIG BUSINESS.

Pharmaceutical corporations led the way into making health care a profit center, not a public service, and now virtually every aspect of our health care system is privately owned, profit centered, and financed by Wall Street.

Wall Street may be reasonably good at financing new businesses like the Internet companies and health care industry but once Wall Street takes control of the industry through controlling the financing, that company serves a new master, Wall Street profitability.

Before you get out your protest banners and decide to occupy hospitals, I mean it is fashionable to protest against anyone we think is ripping off the public, look in the mirror because you are the one embracing a system now under the control of the financial institutions.

My point is this.  Health care is more about serving Wall Street interests than the people's interest.  Of course this is America and we encourage capitalism and these health care capitalists are operating within the framework of the law.  I guess if you owned stock in enough health care companies you would be profiting from the gouging of the American public with excessive health care costs, but most of us don't own health care stocks.

Our health care industry has evolved to the point where moral and financial corruption permeate the entire system, even corrupting those in the industry who really want to help people.

The medical industry is dependent on funneling millions in campaign funds to politicians who have to vote on their funding, in bribing doctors to prescribe drugs, in bribing universities to compete on a cut throat basis for grants from private corporations for survival, and for encouraging doctors to own testing equipment which in turn has to be justified to keep.

Conflicts of interest and ethics issues dominate the health care landscape.  It has become so financially competitive that excessive and unnecessary treatment is the order of the day as a simple and nearly undetectable way to pad the revenue stream.

Why X ray a single tooth if you can X ray the whole mouth?  Why take one or two spinal X rays when you can take multiple X rays of the spine?  Why not set up follow up doctor appointments for reasons of billing for the office visits rather than transmitting test results?

If a drug company pays a doctor to prescribe their drugs, and the more drugs prescribed the more the doctor makes, don't you think more prescriptions will be written?

How can FDA employees fairly evaluate a New Drug Application (NDA) worth potentially billions of dollars in new revenue if the same employees can quit their jobs and go to work for the same drug companies for far more money?

The top five drugs in terms of sales revenue in America all make between $3 and $5 billion a year for the owners, the pharmaceutical company.  If new health research or treatment does not generate profits first and foremost, it is of little value to a profit driven health care system.

If congress or the president eliminated conflicts of interest in the industry, both in terms of the relationship between government workers and the industry and between the industry and practitioners, it would be a great start to cost reduction.

The same conflict of interest exists when doctors are convinced to own expensive equipment like CAT scan and MRI machines, blood laboratories, pharmaceutical offices and others.  If Medicare or a health insurance company allows excessive CAT scans and MRI analysis for the purpose of making sure people are diagnosed and the doctors own the machines, don't you think more screens will be prescribed?

There are a thousand and one ways to get caught in a conflict in an industry that is barely regulated.  Usually there are industry watchdogs like the Securities and Exchange Commission assigned to keep an eye on the system.  However, even they are subject to the same conflicts because the SEC failed to see the housing and banking crisis coming.  More than likely they just turned their back to it.

A comprehensive and fair conflict of interest law could be proposed by the president and approved by congress and a thorough ethics law could be adopted by the medical and health care industries and that would start to unscramble the layers of conflicts and ethics violations we face today.

Unfortunately, such leadership by our politicians and health industries is nonexistent and will be as long as the industry finances the political campaigns in Washington and through the nation.  So we also need campaign financial reform, meaningful reform, to fix that inherent problem.

Fix the conflict of interest, draw up enforceable ethics laws, and clean up the campaign finance mess and it will lead directly to reduced health care costs.  Once again, nothing has been proposed by politicians to correct this mess.

Isn't it about time to REALLY start fixing things?

.