Corporate Control of Media - Trash Your Television
The media, all those channels that are supposed to give us the information we need to understand what's happening, have been taken over and bent to a corporate agenda. In a certain sense that means they have betrayed the trust of their readers, listeners, viewers. This will either have to drastically change, or people are going to turn to other sources for obtaining their information.
Yes, this is a pretty sweeping statement, but if you start to look, it is exactly what is already happening. Take Whatreallyhappened.com as an example. According to this eccellent interview
on Bankindex.com, Michael Rivero's site had become something of a substitute for media information for millions, simply because he refused to concede that his government should be allowed to lie to its citizens. Millions of his readers seem to think the same. They have to turn to alternative sources, because the media does not offer information.
John Pilger, Australian broadcaster and film-maker, according to this article, says " ... as seen in the Iraq coverage and elsewhere, journalists very often assume the culture of the media institution and all its unwritten restrictions.”
But even the term self-censorship is not quite right, Pilger says, ”because many journalists are unaware that they are censoring themselves.”
Media organizations are now under tight control, Pilger says. Just five corporations rule the broadcasters in the United States. In Australia Rupert Murdoch controls 70 percent of the media. ”We live in an age of information,” he says. ”Yet the media is not attacking the ruling system. The media has never before been so controlled, and propaganda is all around. Most of us don't even see it.”
In an excellent article titled "Information Control for Social Manipulation", David Deserano of Portland State University analyzes the implications of corporate and military control of the media for journalism and for constutionally guaranteed "freedom of speech". For now, you find the article in Nexus Magazine which you can pick up at a newsstand or get from their site. I do recommend you add this to your "must reads". Here is a link to the full article of Deserano.
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posted by Sepp Hasslberger on Sunday February 22 2004
updated on Friday June 26 2009URL of this article:
http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/sepp/2004/02/22/corporate_control_of_media_trash_your_television.htm
