Media Censorship Exposed…Again

I have known for a long time that the popular media in America and around the world is biased to a fault. The journalists of universities are often shocked to be controlled in what they write when they get into the real world. Lately I have been reading the book You Are Being Lied To*, which touches on the Media, who controls it, and how unreliable it is. The deeply embedded truth of this has been sinking in for a couple of days, and then I got this link in an email:

http://www.wecansolveit.org/page/s/ABC

We Can Solve It is not some ho-dunk agency trying to campaign for change, they were founded by Al Gore!

In order to figure out why this ad can’t be run by ABC, I think it is important to look into who owns ABC. Take a wild guess…I bet you won’t come up with it. WALT DISNEY owns ABC. For those of you who don’t keep up on who owns what (and not many people do) this is an important fact to know.

I am now going to quote directly from You Are Being Lied To because I feel the experts in the book know far more than I do about this subject. I think Norman Solomon is pretty reliable…

Here’s what he has to say:

“Published in spring 2000, the sixth edition of The Media Monopoly
documents that just a half-dozen corporations are now supplying
most of the nation’s media fare. And Bagdikian, a long-time journal -
ist, continues to sound the alarm. “It is the overwhelming collective
power of these firms, with their corporate interlocks and unified cultural
and political values, that raises troubling questions about the
individual’s role in the American democracy.”

I wonder what the chances are that Bagdikian—or anyone else—will
be invited onto major TV broadcast networks to discuss the need for
vigorous antitrust enforcement against the biggest media conglomerates.
Let’s see:

CBS. Not a good bet, especially since its merger with Viacom (one
of the Big Six) was announced in the fall of 1999.

NBC. Quite unlikely. General Electric, a Big Six firm, has
owned NBC since 1986.

ABC. Forget it. This network became the property of the
Disney Company five years ago. Disney is now the country’s
second-largest media outfit.

Fox. The Fox network is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News
Corp., currently number four in the media oligarchy.

And then there’s always cable television, with several networks
devoted to news:

CNN. The world’s biggest media conglomerate, Time Warner, owns
CNN—where antitrust talk about undue concentration of media
power is about as welcome as the Internationale sung at a baseball
game in Miami.

CNBC. Sixth-ranked General Electric owns this cable channel.

MSNBC. Spawned as a joint venture of GE and Microsoft, the
MSNBC network would see activism against media monopoly as
double trouble.

Fox News Channel. The Fox cable programming rarely wanders far
from the self-interest of News Corp. tycoon Murdoch.


Since all of those major TV news sources are owned by one of the
Big Six, the chances are mighty slim that you’ll be able to catch a
discussion of media antitrust issues on national television.”


As you can see, judging by the fact that all major news outlets are owned by what he refers to as the “Big Six” chances are that none of them will run anything that is degrading to big oil, or how the economy in America is run.

Although I think everyone should email ABC about this, it is important to remember that the people that make the decisions about what to air on television are not the people that read the emails. Those employed at ABC are either trying to ensure their jobs by not letting this ad air, or are so brainwashed by the system and the people they work for (not questioning crooked tactics becomes engrained eventually) that they think the ad is wrong in its very essence.

Let us again return to Solomon:

‘“It is not necessary to construct a theory of intentional cultural control,”
media critic Herbert Schiller commented in 1989. “In truth, the
strength of the control process rests in its apparent absence. The
desired systemic result is achieved ordinarily by a loose though
effective institutional process.” In his book Culture, Inc.: The
Corporate Takeover of Public Expression, Schiller went on to cite
“the education of journalists and other media professionals, built-in
penalties and rewards for doing what is expected, norms presented
as objective rules, and the occasional but telling direct intrusion from
above. The main lever is the internalization of values.”

Self-censorship has long been one of journalism’s most ineffable
hazards. The current wave of mergers rocking the media industry is
likely to heighten the dangers. To an unprecedented extent, large
numbers of American reporters and editors now work for just a few
huge corporate employers, a situation that hardly encourages
unconstrained scrutiny of media conglomerates as they assume
unparalleled importance in public life.”


So, long story short—Good luck Al Gore.

*If you'd like to read more from the book You Are Being Lied To, go to: http://www.scribd.com/doc/5991212/You-Are-Being-Lied-to-Full-Book