THE MEDIA EDITION: ISSUE 65, VOLUME 95
CORPORATE MEDIA: THE REAL TOXIC ASSETS
by Malik Isasis
The deregulation of the media has resulted in the same results as energy deregulation, and banking deregulation, which is to say, corporate media has become an industry that is totally out of control. There are a total of about six corporations (Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS), and General Electric) that filters EVERYTHING we read, hear, and see—that’s six CEOs.
The corporate media has laid down every yellow brick along this path of delusion and perpetual war that begun with Bush and the neocons. The collapse of the fourth estate is a symptom of a much greater sickness in American democracy, Corporatism of government.
False Choices
In Americans’ lifetime they will have watched 3 years worth of commercials. While Americans have a plethora of choices, those choices are consumer choices rather than political choices. We have for example, 26 choices of cereal brand but only two political choices, Democrat and Republican—one party if you’re cynical, but consumer choice and political choice are not the same.
While we are distracted with all of the consumer choices, corporate raiders are treating the federal government like a buffet. No-bid contracts and cronyism has fueled the prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex, and the healthcare industrial complex. These industries have created and worsen the very problems they claim to correct. The United States has the highest incarceration rate out of the Western world; the United States has been in a perpetual war for 57 years beginning with the Korean War; and the United States’ healthcare system exacerbates sickness and indebtedness. Who besides corporations, benefits when the federal government is privatized?
The corporate media reports facts as being fluid. If Republicans say that the world is flat and the Democrats say it is round, the media will report both sides and say, “You decide.” Media consolidation has all but done away with advocacy media and because there is the corporatization of the media, the media no longer acts in the interests of the people, but in the interest of corporations.
North Korea, China and other communists, despotic, and theocratic governments keep their populace in the dark by controlling the media. In America, there is a blackout of information through distraction of weather, traffic, sports, and entertainment. The things the Israeli government does to the Palestinian people are blacked out in America media.
Corporate Media At Work
Corporate media is a blunt tool to destroy democracy with misinformation.
Building Consent
Corporations manufacture need and exploit the American people with constant fear of death, disease, Arabs, Mexicans and black people. Fear is how the corporate raiders build consent. Most Americans don’t know better because they are bombarded with misinformation. For instance the corporate media giant NBC according to Corporate Watch was rewarded with 2.2 billion dollars in defense contracts in 2005. Before the Iraq war and subsequent occupation, NBC and MSNBC all but saluted Bush and his build up to war and promoting it without question. Now we know the silence was worth 2.2 billion dollars.
As media critic Ben Bagdikian noted in his book The Media Monopoly, "At issue is the possession of power to surround almost every man, woman and child in the country with controlled images and words, to socialize each new generation of Americans, to alter the political agenda of the country" (Bagdikian, IX).
Under this new imperial paradigm, corporate expansionism, and acquisition and ownership of mass media by industrial corporations such as newspapers, book publishing, magazines, broadcast and cable news has allowed these corporations to exercise unprecedented influence over national legislation and government agencies. Uninformed Americans are clay to be molded as the corporate raiders see fit.
CORPORATE MEDIA: THE REAL TOXIC ASSETS
by Malik Isasis
The deregulation of the media has resulted in the same results as energy deregulation, and banking deregulation, which is to say, corporate media has become an industry that is totally out of control. There are a total of about six corporations (Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS), and General Electric) that filters EVERYTHING we read, hear, and see—that’s six CEOs.
The corporate media has laid down every yellow brick along this path of delusion and perpetual war that begun with Bush and the neocons. The collapse of the fourth estate is a symptom of a much greater sickness in American democracy, Corporatism of government.
False Choices
In Americans’ lifetime they will have watched 3 years worth of commercials. While Americans have a plethora of choices, those choices are consumer choices rather than political choices. We have for example, 26 choices of cereal brand but only two political choices, Democrat and Republican—one party if you’re cynical, but consumer choice and political choice are not the same.
While we are distracted with all of the consumer choices, corporate raiders are treating the federal government like a buffet. No-bid contracts and cronyism has fueled the prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex, and the healthcare industrial complex. These industries have created and worsen the very problems they claim to correct. The United States has the highest incarceration rate out of the Western world; the United States has been in a perpetual war for 57 years beginning with the Korean War; and the United States’ healthcare system exacerbates sickness and indebtedness. Who besides corporations, benefits when the federal government is privatized?
The corporate media reports facts as being fluid. If Republicans say that the world is flat and the Democrats say it is round, the media will report both sides and say, “You decide.” Media consolidation has all but done away with advocacy media and because there is the corporatization of the media, the media no longer acts in the interests of the people, but in the interest of corporations.
North Korea, China and other communists, despotic, and theocratic governments keep their populace in the dark by controlling the media. In America, there is a blackout of information through distraction of weather, traffic, sports, and entertainment. The things the Israeli government does to the Palestinian people are blacked out in America media.
Corporate Media At Work
Corporate media is a blunt tool to destroy democracy with misinformation.
Building Consent
Corporations manufacture need and exploit the American people with constant fear of death, disease, Arabs, Mexicans and black people. Fear is how the corporate raiders build consent. Most Americans don’t know better because they are bombarded with misinformation. For instance the corporate media giant NBC according to Corporate Watch was rewarded with 2.2 billion dollars in defense contracts in 2005. Before the Iraq war and subsequent occupation, NBC and MSNBC all but saluted Bush and his build up to war and promoting it without question. Now we know the silence was worth 2.2 billion dollars.
As media critic Ben Bagdikian noted in his book The Media Monopoly, "At issue is the possession of power to surround almost every man, woman and child in the country with controlled images and words, to socialize each new generation of Americans, to alter the political agenda of the country" (Bagdikian, IX).
Under this new imperial paradigm, corporate expansionism, and acquisition and ownership of mass media by industrial corporations such as newspapers, book publishing, magazines, broadcast and cable news has allowed these corporations to exercise unprecedented influence over national legislation and government agencies. Uninformed Americans are clay to be molded as the corporate raiders see fit.
posted by Malik Isasis at
11:33 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home