Germany is experiencing the second "flood of the century" within a few years.
I didn't see this much in mainstream U.S. media so far.
A lengthy article on a conservative website, which I've not seen before, but apparently is causing ripples. Hat tip to the Lowy Institute's newsletter (again).
Link:http://www.theamericanconservative.c...erican-pravda/
It cites many examples, this is from the national security realm so is cited (including corrections, DHS not DNI) and the final sentences are pithy - so my highlight:Or take the strange case of Bernard Kerik, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s police commissioner during 9/11, later nominated by President Bush to be America’s first director of DHS. His appointment seemed likely to sail through the Republican-controlled Senate until derailed by accusations he had employed an undocumented nanny. With his political rise having been blocked, the national media suddenly revealed his long history of association with organized-crime figures, an indictment quickly followed, and he is currently still serving his federal prison sentence for conspiracy and fraud. So America came within a hairbreadth of placing the DHS under the authority of a high-school dropout connected with organized crime, and today almost no Americans seem aware of that fact.
davidbfpo
David,
I will have to find the book and the history show I just saw recently. The greatest Intelligence Operation ever conducted in the USA was done by British Intelligence during WW2 in order to convince America to enter the War and it was done with FDR's consent and against FBI director Hoover's vehement objections. And it still has ramifications to this very day. The operation was massive and the total extent of operation was never truly known. It has been in the papers fairly recently and there was a lot of UK help in the production of the TV show so you may have seen what I am talking about.
Here is a link to the book called The Secret History of British Intelligence In the Americas 1940-1945...........truly fascinating
http://www.amazon.com/British-Securi.../dp/088064236X
Slap,
I read the book 'A Man called Intrepid' many, many years ago. It was a good yarn, but I thought it overplayed the role of the mission's head, the book's author. IIRC there remains an element of doubt over his claims.
davidbfpo
Americans have a most peculiar relationship with their media. Among politically active Americans, particularly those leaning left or right, it's often taken for granted that the media serve some agenda opposite from their own, which explains why their pet stories aren't covered. Conservatives speak of "the liberal media", liberals speak of "the corporate media".
What people forget is that media are first and foremost business, and like every other business the bottom line is the bottom line. The point is not to advance an agenda, the point is to make money, and that means pushing the stories that bring in the viewers. That's particularly true of television, where the merciless dictatorship of the ratings decides where the advertising money flows and which executives keep their jobs.
So a quick answer to "what news stories do media ignore" would be "anything that they think will not grab and keep the attention of their outlet's target audience".
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”
H.L. Mencken
...and more.
"The media" is a large bunch of actual people, and these people have biases.
The powerful amongst these people (the ones who choose the stories) are usually the better-paid ones. The celebrities amongst them are often millionaires.
Millionaires tend to have a millionaire point of view, so the U.S. media's distribution of attention between the topics of poor people's problems and the top marginal income tax rate should not surprise.
The media is "too left" if you sit far right and it's "too right" if you sit far left. It's mostly relative. Nevertheless, some of its biases are well-researched and founded in human nature. And those go well beyond revenue maximization.
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