Meanwhile, many froth at the mouth everyday, sometimes about the same things,
no matter what Pres. Obama accomplishes.
Why isn't the media pursued more?
Why aren't there a ton of letters and phone calls and ops here about them?
Why are we not worried that the media is part of what's wrong with America?
Why are there no boycotts of their advertised products.
Why do we lay down and react as though the media lying to us day in, day out is ok?
Why are we mostly silent and act helpless in reference to their fucking bullshit that
they serve us everyday?
Why?
Why The Media Lies
http://www.mediamonitors.net/mosaddeq32.htmlIt was Walter Lippman who coined the phrase
“the manufacture of consent”,
enjoining it as
a means of population control.
Lippman’s concept may indeed be in effect today.
The mass media is clearly one of the most powerful institutions in society; it is,
for most of the public, the ultimate source of all their information.
All scholars generally agree that
the media do have the capacity to set the agenda of public discourse about political affairs....Nevertheless, the vast extent of the manipulation of the media under the sway of business interests has been harshly revealed in the statement of John Swainton, (former) Chief of Staff of the New York Times. “There is not one of you who would dare to write his honest opinion,”
He Said....
“The business of a journalist now is to destroy the truth, to lie outright,
to pervert, to vilify, fall at the feet of Mammon and sell himself for his daily bread.
We are tools, vessels of rich men behind the scenes, we are jumping jacks.
They pull the strings; we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives
are the properties of these men.
We are intellectual prostitutes.”
Herman of Wharton and Chomsky of MIT lucidly document their argument that America’s government and its corporate giants exercise control over what we read, see and hear.
The authors identify the forces that they contend make the national media propagandistic -
the major three being the motivation for profit through ad revenue, the media’s close links to and often ownership by corporations, and their acceptance of information from biased sources. In five case studies, the writers show how TV, newspapers and radio distort world events… Extensive evidence is calmly presented, and in the end an indictment against the guardians of our freedom is substantiated. A disturbing picture emerges of a news system that panders to the interest of America’s privileged and neglects its duties when the concerns of minority groups and the underclass are at stake.”
Former Dean at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, and a winner of almost every top prize in American journalism - including the Pulitzer - Ben Bagdikian, acknowledges the massive control over public life entailed by the increasing concentration in corporate ownership:
“In an authoritarian society there is a ministry, or a commissar,
or a directorate that controls what everybody will see and hear.
We call that a dictatorship.
Here we have a handful of very powerful corporations led by a handful
of very powerful men and women who control everything we see and hear
beyond the natural environment and our own families.
That’s something which surrounds us every day and night.
If it were one person we’d call that a dictatorship,
a ministry of information.”Lee Bollinger, dean of the University of Michigan Law School, comments that:
“The press can exclude important points of view,
operating as a bottleneck in the marketplace of ideas.
It can distort knowledge of public issues not just by omission
but also through active misrepresentations...
It can also exert an adverse influence over the tone and character
of public debate in subtle ways, by playing to personal biases...
or by making people fearful...
It can fuel ignorance and pettiness by avoiding serious issues altogether,
favoring simple-minded fare or cheap entertainment over serious discussion...
Of course, all these concerns become more serious as the number of those who control the press become fewer.”"Deception by an omission of the truth is as bad as a lie."
Jennifer Chiaverini
NYP op-ed disappears Bush's politicization of the Justice Departmenthttp://mediamatters.org/research/201007120036Right-wing media manufacture outrage over Michelle Obama's noncontroversial NAACP remarkshttp://mediamatters.org/research/201007130025BTW, Obama's approval rating is unchanged since Dec., but WashPost doesn't want to say sohttp://mediamatters.org/blog/201007130022The Washington Post's rigged stimulus pollinghttp://mediamatters.org/blog/201007130014Right-wing media smear "African-American Attorney General"
as racially biased in trumped-up New Black Panthers casehttp://mediamatters.org/research/201007070034Hyping possible Dem midterm losses, WashPost forgets about a recent winhttp://mediamatters.org/blog/201007060014Has Obama's approval rating been "falling steadily" since the BP spill?http://mediamatters.org/blog/201006230023USA Today leaves out important midterm election contexthttp://mediamatters.org/blog/201006170040FLASHBACK: During Exxon Valdez disaster, President Bush got a free pass from the presshttp://mediamatters.org/blog/201006170007