What little coverage there was of the National Defense Authorization Act tended to stress the family-friendly aspect of a bill mainly intended to increase the ability of the United States to make war (USA Today, 12/12/19).
What is more newsworthy—a decision to give the Pentagon three-quarters of a trillion dollars, or an ad for an exercise bike? If you picked the Pentagon spending, you may not have a future in corporate media.
The House of Representatives voted on December 11 to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, which is the spending bill that outlines the annual budget for the US military. The NDAA, which authorizes $738 billion in Pentagon spending, launched Trump’s Space Force as a separate branch of the military, included $1 billion more in funds for the F-35 fighter jet, and failed to halt the Trump administration’s use of military funds to expand the southern border wall. Along with setting the budget, the NDAA also forbids the withdrawal of US troops from South Korea; a progressive provision that would have restricted US military support for Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war on Yemen was removed. The NDAA passed the House with overwhelming support from both parties, with only 48 dissenting voices, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, voting nay.
You would be forgiven for not knowing about any of this, however, because the establishment media showed little interest in covering the NDAA. FAIR searched for coverage of the NDAA in ten of the most influential news outlets: the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, USA Today, NPR, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN and Fox News. During a five-day period (12/8–13/19) in the week that the NDAA vote took place, it received paltry coverage in these outlets, with a total of just 27 articles mentioning it. Only the Washington Post covered the NDAA to a significant degree, publishing 10 different articles about the subject during the five-day period. The other outlets published at most two or three articles about the NDAA.
Corporate media provided a forum for debate about advertising imagery (CBS, 12/4/19)—while failing to host a debate over the $738 billion military spending bill.
To gauge just how newsworthy the media found the military bill, FAIR compared the volume of coverage to another story that broke around the same time: the Peloton exercise bike’s embarrassing ad campaign. The ad’s sexism and elitism were roundly mocked on social media, and corporate media found this worth covering. From December 4–8, the Peloton ad was mentioned 57 times total across the ten outlets studied, more than twice as often as the NDAA was brought up over a comparable period. Fox holds the record for the greatest disparity in coverage: There are 12 different articles or videos discussing Peloton on its website, compared to only a single article (12/11/19) covering the NDAA bill. Only the Washington Post covered the NDAA more than Peloton (10 articles versus 5), while every other outlet gave an ad for an exercise bike more coverage than a multi-billion-dollar grant to the military industrial complex.
Even when media did choose to cover the NDAA, the majority of these outlets chose to focus not on the scale of the military budget approved by the House (a $22 billion increase from last year’s NDAA) or on any of the more problematic aspects of the bill, but on the main victory that was negotiated by Democrats: new provisions for paid family leave for federal workers (NBC, 12/10/19; CNN, 12/11/19; ABC, 12/11/19; Fox, 12/11/19; New York Times, 12/11/19; Washington Post, 12/11/19; USA Today, 12/12/19; NPR, 12/13/19). The pro-family element seemed to be the most newsworthy aspect of funding the largest war machine on the planet—just not as newsworthy as an exercise bike.
Excellent.
Been thinking the same thing the past few days. How they can simultaneously toss Trump hundreds of billions of dollars to go do some wars and then argue he’s unfit for office and a national security risk. Just a total charade.
Yes, in one week, the democrats in the House give Trump:
1) A major campaign ad to shore up his “base” of Trumpsters – “Impeachment” (but NOT removal)
2) A YES vote for a 3rd consecutive BIGELY raise for Trump’s bloated war machine and ANOTHER campaign ad for his “compassion for Federal employees”.
3) NAFTA 2.0 — another stimulus for his Plutocrat/Corporate friends and another poke in the eye of the Working Class in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. that will be billed in the corporate media as the opposite.
a guy roasts peleton ads: https://imgur.com/gallery/gm2CbeJ
This fits quite closely the historical summary provided by Erica West in “Socialists Need to Take Back the Term ‘Emotional Labor'” (Jacobin, 12/14/19), namely, class (and imperialism) issues have taken a back seat to individualist identity politics since the 1960s. But it should surprise no one that big (media) businesses operating in the neoliberal era adhere to neoliberal principles.
Basically this article reaffirms a point made by Erica West in “Socialists Need to Take Back the Term ‘Emotional Labor'” (Jacobin, 12/14/19), namely, that since the 1960s “individualist “identity politics” has supplanted analysis based on class (and imperialism). It should surprise no one that big (media) businesses in the neoliberal era follow this neoliberal approach.
3/4 of a trillion $ one day, impeached a week later.
Love this web site.
Undeniably consider that which you stated. Your
favourite reason seemed to be on the web the simplest thing to understand of.
I say to you, I certainly get irked while people think
about worries that they plainly don’t realize about. You managed to hit the nail upon the highest and also defined out the entire thing with no need side effect , other folks can take a signal.
Will probably be back to get more. Thanks
Bernie The F-35 State Department “Socialist” voted for the F35. Let’s not pretend that he’s any different than the rest of the field.
Finally! A news source that gives us the information necessary to start to connect the dots between the massive push by extremely deep-pocketed right-wing newsgroups, their funders (think Charles Koch’s web of manipulative foundations), the government and the real news. Thank you! I hope as a Master’s degree student to use the information you provide to help prove the deep conspiracies of the Right.