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Page 2 of 2 CORPORATE CONTROL OF MEDIA  The probem is that there is a single special interest group that have control of the media. That interest group is the billionaires that not only own the media, but they also control weapons maunuafacturing, oil, and most states on the national level. The most significant being the American State apparatus.
Here, Chomsky explains who sets the content and the agenda for mainstream media:
"...The New York Times and CBS, for example. Well, first of all, they are major, very profitable, corporations. Furthermore, most of them are either linked to, or outright owned by, much bigger corporations, like General Electric, Westinghouse, and so on. They are way up at the top of the power structure of the private economy which is a very tyrannical structure. Corporations are basically tyrannies, hierarchic, controled from above. If you don't like what they are doing you get out. The major media are just part of that system."
Chomsky also makes the point that the media has a specific motive and that motive is the audience itself. That is why news stories are very short and their patterns are quite simplistic. Short attention grabbing sound bites or pleasing optics are important. The main thrust of the business is not to inform, the business is about grabbing an audience and people are the product. Chomsky continues:
"Take the New York Times. It's a corporation and sells a product. The product is audiences. They don't make money when you buy the newspaper. They are happy to put it on the worldwide web for free. They actually lose money when you buy the newspaper. But the audience is the product. The product is privileged people, just like the people who are writing the newspapers, you know, top-level decision-making people in society. You have to sell a product to a market, and the market is, of course, advertisers (that is, other businesses). Whether it is television or newspapers, or whatever, they are selling audiences. Corporations sell audiences to other corporations. In the case of the elite media, it's big businesses." (Lifted from: http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9710-mainstream-media.html)
According to Peter Phillips, "The eleven largest or most influential media corporations in the United States are General Electric Company (NBC), Viacom Inc. (cable), The Walt Disney Company (ABC), Time Warner Inc.(CNN), Westinghouse Electric Corporation (CBS), The News Corporation Ltd. (Fox), Gannett Co. Inc., Knight-Ridder Inc., New York Times Co., Washington Post Co., and the Times Mirror Co. These eleven major broadcast and print media corporations now represent a major portion of the news information systems in the United states. For many people their entire source of news and information comes from these eleven corporations."
(Source:http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Media%20Censor_ProjCensor.html)
General Electric is in the business of making battlefield computer systems. Their director, former senator Sam Nunn (who also directs Chevron/Texaco) isn't likely to promote journalists that research his connections or to report any stories that work against the interests of NBC. He is not likely to be happy about his reporters making anti war statements either. Steve Mizrach points out, "Opinion in our society must be carefully shaped and molded within certain careful boundaries: those who transgress those boundaries are libel to wind up "extremists," "ideologues," "fanatics," or "agitators. Now that dissidents in the U.S. can no longer be labelled 'fellow travellers' of the Moscow-run Commie conspiracy, the task has become more urgent. And how is it that consent, that most valuable of social products, is manufactured?"
(Source: http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Media/Consent_AmerStyle.html)
The following tactics are employed by what we may regard, realistically, as the enemy (mainstream media) They shape opinion and employ sycophant mouthpieces that have been schooled within the hallowed halls of the university of corporate indoctrination.
These are bolstered by spin doctors, or, PR devils. "PR managers, known as "spin doctors" when working in government, are able to carefully craft speeches and advertisements which evoke powerful images in the American psyche, frequently using "power words" such as freedom, fairness, liberty, justice, and peacekeeping for policies which dominate, discriminate, imprison, exploit, and terrorize much of the rest of the world." (Mizrach)
Mizrach also points out the real purpose of public opinion polls is not so much to measure public opinion as it is to shape it. They also use scholars and think tanks to tell us what and how to think.
Together, these tools are used against us. They are more threatening an enemy to the citizens of Western nations than an army of bin Ladens. They are used not only to shape public opinion. They are used to lie to us and to indoctrinate the impressionable and the young. They are being used to send young people to go overseas and kill and they are being used to strip away the freedoms and rights so many have died for. The importance of alternative news outlets and the provision of real news and opinion that has not been programmed can't be overestimated. There is a lot happening in the world at the moment and there will be a lot happen over the coming years and decades. We are in a fight and this media ground is a battle we cannot afford to lose as common citizens. Fortunately, we have the technology to wage this war and we have the smarts, the soldiers, and the energy to defeat Fox News along with the rest of that bourgoise rabble. Here in the world of alternative media, we are free and their isn't a damn thing Ted Turner, Rupert Murdoch or George W. Bush can do about it. But we can't underestimate their power either. If they are stupid, they are stupid like a fox. Recommend this article...
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