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Corporate control of mass media and trust busting
If I remember correctly, only Rather came right out and said the control of media by huge conglomerates played a key role in suppressing real reporting and questioning the official lies. Isaacson kind of danced around the issue, but didn't really admit anything and immediately got off the subject. The rest didn't mention it at all.
Diversity is an absolute, non-optional value in all complex systems -- societal, biological and, in this case, opinion and ideological. Much as I detest wingnut radio and the various cable propaganda networks, they have a place in this country because, unfortunately, we're infested with functional illiterates and religious lunatics. And these people, who lack or suppress basic critical thinking skills, represent an appallingly large market and their needs, however ugly, should be served.
But decades of mergers, acquisitions and buyouts have all but eliminated the former diversity of mass media -- particularly radio and TV -- and instead placed democracy's most valuable check and balance in the money grubbing hands of a very few giant holding companies, who value the status quo above all and will simply refuse to allow information that could potentially alter the status quo to be put in front of the public. So the programming geared to functional illiterates is now presented as mainstream political and social consensus, as if the entire country had the collective IQ of a salad fork.
We're well past the point where TV "news" became irrelevant; news networks now actively subvert the democratic process by aligning themselves with the rest of the power elites and drowning their viewers in a bottomless ocean of distortions, omissions and outright lies. As such, they're not just laughable; they're dangerous to the continued functioning of representational government.
Unfortunately, I know exactly nothing about anti-trust law. I know the Sherman Act was an attempt to rein in vertical market monopolies back in the late 19th century. I have no idea if it was effective, whether newer anti-trust legislation has since replaced it, or even whether the Sherman Act is still on the books.
I do know that if this kind of "journalism" is allowed to continue and unorthodox facts are simply buried, we're looking at a nail the size of a railroad spike in the coffin of the great democratic experiment.
That reputable news gatherers and reporters would align themselves with official government propagandists and spend months and years peddling this trash as though it were the truth presents a problem so insidious that I wonder how anyone reads or hears anything whatsoever that counters the official state narrative.
Other than from the internet, I don't know where those 70 percent who oppose the Iraq occupation got the information that caused them to change positions. Same with Bushie's latest 28 percent approval rating. If their sole or primary source of information is TV news, and more than 90 percent of the American people consistently say it is, then how did they find the information that has gradually but steadily lowered his approval rating from more than 90 percent just after 9/11 to today's sorry number?
Maybe they're going with their wallets, as usual, and they see unbelievable deficits and zillions spent on war as a threat to their own financial well being. Maybe they’re not at all anti-war; they're only against this war because it's become too big a disaster for their patriotic little souls to handle.
I don't have a clue, but I'm glad that somehow a few facts managed to sneak in to cast some doubt on the cover story.
Anyway, what can be done? Are there any legal or legislative strategies that would break up the mass media trust and bring local control back? Would legislation targeting media conglomerates be unconstitutional because of some restraint of trade precedent?
Something needs to happen, and quickly, to diversify the spectrum of political opinion presented in this country. Wingnut groups have been buying up papers and radio and TV stations for quite a while now, and that strategy has paid off brilliantly. The spectrum of public discourse has been confined to a small box about half way between moderate right and fascism on the ideological continuum.
This can’t continue. A full spectrum of political ideology must be represented on THE PUBLIC'S airwaves, and that spectrum needs to be highly visible – not as it is now with liberal/left/progressive viewpoints only heard on some 40-watt college FM station or on local access cable at 3:30 in the morning.
I also think this needs to become part of the democratic presidential candidates' narrative. Being reasonably smart people, I'm sure they're all too aware of how the right wing echo chamber works to eliminate their airtime or ridicule what few sound bites that are actually played.
Some or all the candidates need to articulate the problem Democrats face in the current mass media freeze out, and propose a media diversification plan that people can understand and buy into.
I hope we start hearing something like that from some or all of the hopefuls. Or have any of them already discussed this?
Any suggestions? What do you think? Is media diversification an idea that could help differentiate a candidate and gain popular support?
Of course, the problem is that if a candidate announced a plan to break up mass media, would it be reported? So it all comes full circle.
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