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Comments? Additions? "War on Iraq " in the Subject Heading, and we will print your comments, rants, raves, etc., with your permission, anonymously or under any name you wish, as long as it is not slander, malicious, hateful racism, nor subject to libel. It's just a another place for your voice to be heard. The views expressed herein may or may not be the views of the moderator, webmistress, The Away Team, or this site Better yet, just write your Congress persons by going to back to Rant and Roll |
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| The Media | ||||||||||||||
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| Are you paying attention?
Nik Green |
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"There is no such thing, at this date of the world’s history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it… The business of the Journalist is to destroy truth; To lie outright; To pervert; To vilify; To fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals for rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and ourlives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes". John Swinton, former Chief of Staff, The New York Times, circa 1880 The immense power of the broadcast media was recognized and admitted even 120 years ago by the above media icon. If anything, the shaping of the people's individual and collective opinions is now more a function of media than it has ever been. The old adage "whoever controls the media, controls the people" is painfully relevant these days, in our post 9-11 world. What exactly *is* the media, who owns it and does this complex mechanism for the dissemination of information work? Only a few years ago, there were thousands of independently owned media outlets, that is newpapers, magazines and periodicals, TV and radio stations, book publishers etc. In the last decade of merger-mania combined with the 1996 hijacking (read theft) of the publicly owned airwaves by the Federal Communications Commission, those formerly independent and competing media outlets are now owned by a small handful of exceptionally large and powerful private corporations, where many of the directors of which sit on each other's boards. In effect, a very powerful few in big business have a stranglehold on the perception and world-view of the vast majority of Americans (similarly in other western "democracies"). To compound this, the majority of people are working such long hours that they only have time to absorb the news and current affairs in brief, specifically tailored "sound-bites", which of course defeats the whole notion of real understanding of political issues. CNN, Fox, CBS, ABC, anyone? There is a definite parallel here, regarding this centralization of the new US media regime and the old Soviet system, where the only two (approved Government run) newspapers (Pravda and Isvestia) were read and absorbed by the majority. In America, there has been this long held opinion that the media is largely "liberal'. There is some truth in this, but this so-called "liberalism" is limited pretty much to the bottom of the pecking order, namely the journalists, reporters and staff writers who do the original copy. The further up you go in the corporate media heirarchy, through editorial staff, to middle, then upper management, and finally to the owners and the parent corporations, the political leaning gets further and further to the right. This is reflected in the reticence of the media to print and publish stories that have particular controversial elements; most specially nefarious, criminal activities, human rights abuses, collaboration with terrorists and the like conducted by big business (from big oil to drug cartels), military institutions, defense contractors and intelligence agencies. The New York Times has long had this motto: "all the news that is fit to print". This begs the multiple question "what exactly is fit to print, and what isn't, and why, and who can read it..etc". One factor that is never far away from the equation must be "commercials" and "advertising". The whole broadcast industry is driven by advertising revenue, and journalists who write copy that offends some big business will either not get published or get fired. Ambitious rookie journalists, (just like newly elected representatives) learn to recognise what is off-limits and the restricted areas very quickly, unless they are content to work for some insignificant "boutique" magazine with a tiny circulation and for less money. The media is a great tool used by government to distract the public from uncomfortable issues, or to put over an ideological point, or even to win political points for an upcoming election. A current case is the Bush Administration's extraordinary preoccupation with Iraq's supposed ":weapons of mass destruction" and the prospect of having a "general war" without providing evidence, while conveniently distracting the public's attention from the biggest crimewave in US history, perpetrated by the likes of organizations (such as Enron) that have intimate links with the White House and unfettered access to Congress. If you're not outraged, then you are not paying attention. |
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