|
NEWS |
||
|
____________________________________________________________________
Everything is quiet here. There is no trouble here. There will be no war. I will return. Fredrick Remington Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war. William R. Hearst ____________________________________________________________________ |
||
|
"The media want to maintain their intimate relation to state power. They want to get leaks, they want to get invited to the press conferences. They want to rub shoulders with the Secretary of State, all that kind of business. To do that, you've got to play the game, and playing the game means telling their lies, serving as their disinformation apparatus." --Noam Chomsky
some of the above sites are @
___________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________ Bill Moyers @ Democracy Now: "Big Media is Ravenous... These Conglomerates are an Empire, and they are Imperial." Bill Moyers @ You Tube: NCMR 2007 -- PART 2 ___________________________________________________________________
Is a free press a sign or reflection of freedom itself?
New countries have moved ahead of some Western democracies in the fifth annual Reporters Without Borders Worldwide Press Freedom Index... The US is tied at #53 in the world in 2006...
___________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
Cost of the War in Iraq
(JavaScript Error)
____________________________________________________________________
G.W. BUSH: RANT ARCHIVE 1
Info on War and the Gulf Wars RANT ARCHIVE 3
DONALD RUMSFELD AND SADDAM HUSSEIN Rant Archive 3
___________________________________________________________________
Punk Rock Related News:
____________________________________________________________________
CENSORED NEWS
____________________________________________________________________ excerpts from the book "Manufacturing Consent" by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky ____________________________________________________________________
MEDIA GIANTS AND "WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE NEWS"
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
Radio's big bully-
A complete guide to Salon's reporting on Clear Channel, the most powerful -- and some would say pernicious -- force in the music industry. www.salon.com/ent/clear_channel/
www.salon.com/ent/feature/2001/03/14/payola/index.html
Clear Channel Communications is Evil
Two Hours in the Life of a College Radio DJ
____________________________________________________________________
Radio, Ink, Audio
RADIO 4 ALL:
Broadcast Quality Programming Via the Internet
THIS HELL RADIO:
PACIFICA:
Freespeech Radio:
Freespeech Television:
WORLD LINK TV:
One of several Media Watchdogs:
___________________________________________________________________
The Mediocrity and Superficiality of the Media
Most news organizations, especially the media giants, serve advertising dollars and interests, not the public's. Readership and viewers provide some income to media outlets, but nothing compared to the profits of advertisers in search of consumer dollars. A public that advertisers don't want to offend. Therefore, the media is as liberal as the public is believed to be. Media giants don't want to upset consumerism in the interest of maintaining advertisers (and consumers). The same can be said about our government. The media reports corporate and governmental policies, fleecing, and screw-ups, but in the interest of nationalism and corporations, are as liberal with the facts as is needed to ensure the continuation of corporate, i.e. advertising and political, dollars; because, as we know, our government is now a corporation interested in maximum capital gains for corporations (capitalism). It can also be said that the government is as liberal with the facts it provides the media as it sees fit to protect its interests in the scheme of unrestrained capitalism. In the end, the government is as liberal as the corporations that buy it and the news is there to report and repress information. Billions of dollars are at stake. Thus all the middle-of-the-road centrists politics from the two party system these days...the status quo. No one wants to upset the hearts and minds of consumers so "lets say something by not saying anything at all." The media's job has become the pacification of consumers to maintain the system of corporate dollars to buy our politicians and the advertisements that permeate the media. The media has become as adversely affected by corporate interests and growth as the government (see "media giants" above). It's not that this is a conspiracy, it just happens to work this way because its the best means to win the rat race for more money ("a rational outcome of a system that wishes to grow and maintain itself, but not necessarily a rational system"). All paid for by you and I.
Thank goodness for investigative journalism and media operations that tell the truths that hurt. Even the giants do now and then, but the underlying problem is that we are bombarded with so much information and wrongdoing that we don't know how to sort it out, where to begin, or care to begin doing anything but work, buy, and survive. And sometimes when we think we are being told "everything" we are getting superficial 'in-depth' and incomplete information or a white-wash, again, in the interest of the keeping the "corproment" established. Regardless of what ills are exposed we're all going to keep buying shit because we have to. And regardless of how S and L or Enron-f*cked-up things get, the government tends to look the other way and slap masterminded thieves on the hand in favor of sending George Jackson-like criminals in for hard-time. So why even try? We seem powerless, or perhaps we really are powerless against the powerful in this so-called democracy. Because power is about inequality, and in this case money. Someone must lose power for another to win it. Of course power could be shared for a truly equal win-win situation. But how do we get to a win-win situation and true equality in a capitalist democracy? Majority Rules and Money Rules are not equality, they're a power-struggle (another issue in itself). The question is: What the hell do we do? Change the channel? Change the system itself? Vote? Organize? Demand accountability? Change our brand-name loyalties? Nothing?
___________________________________________________________________
How does wealth influence the mass media? www.infoshop.org/faq/secD3.html
___________________________________________________________________
The media and War Propaganda...cumming together
_______________________________________________________________________________
WHAT ABOUT NPR? NPR...Nothing to Provoke Rebellion
NPR Responds to FAIR's NPR Study The American Enterprise- NPR Bias- An Urban Myth
_____________________________________________________________________ |
||
|
THE NATION FEATURE STORY | January 7, 2002 www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020107&s=miller
What's Wrong With This Picture?by Mark Crispin Miller
The rise of the cartel has been a long time coming (and it still has some way to go). It represents the grand convergence of the previously disparate US culture industries--many of them vertically monopolized already--into one global superindustry providing most of our imaginary "content." The movie business had been largely dominated by the major studios in Hollywood; TV, like radio before it, by the triune axis of the networks headquartered in New York; magazines, primarily by Henry Luce (with many independent others on the scene) and music, from the 1960s, mostly by the major record labels. Now all those separate fields are one, the whole terrain divided up among the giants--which, in league with Barnes & Noble, Borders and the big distributors, also control the book business. (Even with its leading houses, book publishing was once a cottage industry at both the editorial and retail levels.) For all the democratic promise of the Internet, moreover, much of cyberspace has now been occupied, its erstwhile wildernesses swiftly paved and lighted over by the same colossi. The only industry not yet absorbed into this new world order is the newsprint sector of the Fourth Estate--a business that was heavily shadowed to begin with by the likes of Hearst and other, regional grandees, flush with the ill-gotten gains of oil, mining and utilities--and such absorption is, as we shall see, about to happen. Thus what we have today is not a problem wholly new in kind but rather the disastrous upshot of an evolutionary process whereby that old problem has become considerably larger--and that great quantitative change, with just a few huge players now co-directing all the nation's media, has brought about enormous qualitative changes. For one thing, the cartel's rise has made extremely rare the sort of marvelous exception that has always popped up, unexpectedly, to startle and revivify the culture--the genuine independents among record labels, radio stations, movie theaters, newspapers, book publishers and so on. Those that don't fail nowadays are so remarkable that they inspire not emulation but amazement. Otherwise, the monoculture, endlessly and noisily triumphant, offers, by and large, a lot of nothing, whether packaged as "the news" or "entertainment." Of all the cartel's dangerous consequences for American society and culture, the worst is its corrosive influence on journalism. Under AOL Time Warner, GE, Viacom et al., the news is, with a few exceptions, yet another version of the entertainment that the cartel also vends nonstop. This is also nothing new--consider the newsreels of yesteryear--but the gigantic scale and thoroughness of the corporate concentration has made a world of difference, and so has made this world a very different place. Let us start to grasp the situation by comparing this new centerfold with our first outline of the National Entertainment State, published in the spring of 1996. Back then, the national TV news appeared to be a tidy tetrarchy: two network news divisions owned by large appliance makers/weapons manufacturers (CBS by Westinghouse, NBC by General Electric), and the other two bought lately by the nation's top purveyors of Big Fun (ABC by Disney, CNN by Time Warner). Cable was still relatively immature, so that, of its many enterprises, only CNN competed with the broadcast networks' short-staffed newsrooms; and its buccaneering founder, Ted Turner, still seemed to call the shots from his new aerie at Time Warner headquarters. Today the telejournalistic firmament includes the meteoric Fox News Channel, as well as twenty-six television stations owned outright by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation (which holds majority ownership in a further seven). Although ultimately thwarted in his bid to buy DirecTV and thereby dominate the US satellite television market, Murdoch wields a pervasive influence on the news--and not just in New York, where he has two TV stations, a major daily (the faltering New York Post) and the Fox News Channel, whose inexhaustible platoons of shouting heads attracts a fierce plurality of cable-viewers. Meanwhile, Time Warner has now merged with AOL--so as to own the cyberworks through which to market its floodtide of movies, ball games, TV shows, rock videos, cartoons, standup routines and (not least) bits from CNN, CNN Headline News, CNNfn (devised to counter GE's CNBC) and CNN/Sports Illustrated (a would-be rival to Disney's ESPN franchise). While busily cloning CNN, the parent company has also taken quiet steps to make it more like Fox, with Walter Isaacson, the new head honcho, even visiting the Capitol to seek advice from certain rightist pols on how, presumably, to make the network even shallower and more obnoxious. (He also courted Rush Himself.) All this has occurred since the abrupt defenestration of Ted Turner, who now belatedly laments the overconcentration of the cable business: "It's sad we're losing so much diversity of thought," he confesses, sounding vaguely like a writer for this magazine. Whereas five years ago the clueless Westinghouse owned CBS, today the network is a property of the voracious Viacom--matchless cable occupier (UPN, MTV, MTV2, VH1, Nickelodeon, the Movie Channel, TNN, CMT, BET, 50 percent of Comedy Central, etc.), radio colossus (its Infinity Broadcasting--home to Howard Stern and Don Imus--owns 184 stations), movie titan (Paramount Pictures), copious publisher (Simon & Schuster, Free Press, Scribner), a big deal on the web and one of the largest US outdoor advertising firms. Under Viacom, CBS News has been obliged to help sell Viacom's product--in 2000, for example, devoting epic stretches of The Early Show to what lately happened on Survivor (CBS). Of course, such synergistic bilge is commonplace, as is the tendency to dummy up on any topic that the parent company (or any of its advertisers) might want stifled. These journalistic sins have been as frequent under "longtime" owners Disney and GE as under Viacom and Fox [see Janine Jaquet, "The Sins of Synergy," page 20]. They may also abound beneath Vivendi, whose recent purchase of the film and TV units of USA Networks and new stake in the satellite TV giant EchoStar--moves too recent for inclusion in our chart--could soon mean lots of oblique self-promotion on USAM News, in L'Express and L'Expansion, and through whatever other news-machines the parent buys. Such is the telejournalistic landscape at the moment--and soon it will mutate again, if Bush's FCC delivers for its giant clients. On September 13, when the minds of the American people were on something else, the commission's GOP majority voted to "review" the last few rules preventing perfect oligopoly. They thus prepared the ground for allowing a single outfit to own both a daily paper and a TV station in the same market--an advantage that was outlawed in 1975. (Even then, pre-existing cases of such ownership were grandfathered in, and any would-be owner could get that rule waived.) That furtive FCC "review" also portended the elimination of the cap on the percentage of US households that a single owner might reach through its TV stations. Since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the limit had been 35 percent. Although that most indulgent bill was dictated by the media giants themselves, its restrictions are too heavy for this FCC, whose chairman, Michael Powell, has called regulation per se "the oppressor."
That imperative demands reaffirmation at this risky moment, when much of what the media cartel purveys to us is propaganda, commercial or political, while no one in authority makes mention of "the public interest"--except to laugh it off. "I have no idea," Powell cheerily replied at his first press conference as chairman, when asked for his own definition of that crucial concept. "It's an empty vessel in which people pour in whatever their preconceived views or biases are." Such blithe obtuseness has marked all his public musings on the subject. In a speech before the American Bar Association in April 1998, Powell offered an ironic little riff about how thoroughly he doesn't get it: "The night after I was sworn in [as a commissioner], I waited for a visit from the angel of the public interest. I waited all night, but she did not come." On the other hand, Powell has never sounded glib about his sacred obligation to the corporate interest. Of his decision to move forward with the FCC vote just two days after 9/11, Powell spoke as if that sneaky move had been a gesture in the spirit of Patrick Henry: "The flame of the American ideal may flicker, but it will never be extinguished. We will do our small part and press on with our business, solemnly, but resolutely." Certainly the FCC has never been a democratic force, whichever party has been dominant. Bill Clinton championed the disastrous Telecom Act of 1996 and otherwise did almost nothing to impede the drift toward oligopoly. (As Newsweek reported in 2000, Al Gore was Rupert Murdoch's personal choice for President. The mogul apparently sensed that Gore would happily play ball with him, and also thought--correctly--that the Democrat would win.) What is unique to Michael Powell, however, is the showy superciliousness with which he treats his civic obligation to address the needs of people other than the very rich. That spirit has shone forth many times--as when the chairman genially compared the "digital divide" between the information haves and have-nots to a "Mercedes divide" between the lucky few who can afford great cars and those (like him) who can't. In the intensity of his pro-business bias, Powell recalls Mark Fowler, head of Reagan's FCC, who famously denied his social obligations by asserting that TV is merely "an appliance," "a toaster with pictures." And yet such Reaganite bons mots, fraught with the anti-Communist fanaticism of the late cold war, evinced a deadly earnestness that's less apparent in General Powell's son. He is a blithe, postmodern sort of ideologue, attuned to the complacent smirk of Bush the Younger--and, of course, just perfect for the cool and snickering culture of TV. Although such flippancies are hard to take, they're also easy to refute, for there is no rationale for such an attitude. Take "the public interest"--an ideal that really isn't hard to understand. A media system that enlightens us, that tells us everything we need to know pertaining to our lives and liberty and happiness, would be a system dedicated to the public interest. Such a system would not be controlled by a cartel of giant corporations, because those entities are ultimately hostile to the welfare of the people. Whereas we need to know the truth about such corporations, they often have an interest in suppressing it (as do their advertisers). And while it takes much time and money to find out the truth, the parent companies prefer to cut the necessary costs of journalism, much preferring the sort of lurid fare that can drive endless hours of agitated jabbering. (Prior to 9/11, it was Monica, then Survivor and Chandra Levy, whereas, since the fatal day, we have had mostly anthrax, plus much heroic footage from the Pentagon.) The cartel's favored audience, moreover, is that stratum of the population most desirable to advertisers--which has meant the media's complete abandonment of working people and the poor. And while the press must help protect us against those who would abuse the powers of government, the oligopoly is far too cozy with the White House and the Pentagon, whose faults, and crimes, it is unwilling to expose. The media's big bosses want big favors from the state, while the reporters are afraid to risk annoying their best sources. Because of such politeness (and, of course, the current panic in the air), the US coverage of this government is just a bit more edifying than the local newscasts in Riyadh. Against the daily combination of those corporate tendencies--conflict of interest, endless cutbacks, endless trivial pursuits, class bias, deference to the king and all his men--the public interest doesn't stand a chance. Despite the stubborn fiction of their "liberal" prejudice, the corporate media have helped deliver a stupendous one-two punch to this democracy. (That double whammy followed their uncritical participation in the long, irrelevant jihad against those moderate Republicans, the Clintons.) Last year, they helped subvert the presidential race, first by prematurely calling it for Bush, regardless of the vote--a move begun by Fox, then seconded by NBC, at the personal insistence of Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric. Since the coup, the corporate media have hidden or misrepresented the true story of the theft of that election. And having justified Bush/Cheney's coup, the media continue to betray American democracy. Media devoted to the public interest would investigate the poor performance by the CIA, the FBI, the FAA and the CDC, so that those agencies might be improved for our protection--but the news teams (just like Congress) haven't bothered to look into it. So, too, in the public interest, should the media report on all the current threats to our security--including those far-rightists targeting abortion clinics and, apparently, conducting bioterrorism; but the telejournalists are unconcerned (just like John Ashcroft). So should the media highlight, not play down, this government's attack on civil liberties--the mass detentions, secret evidence, increased surveillance, suspension of attorney-client privilege, the encouragements to spy, the warnings not to disagree, the censored images, sequestered public papers, unexpected visits from the Secret Service and so on. And so should the media not parrot what the Pentagon says about the current war, because such prettified accounts make us complacent and preserve us in our fatal ignorance of what people really think of us--and why--beyond our borders. And there's much more--about the stunning exploitation of the tragedy, especially by the Republicans; about the links between the Bush and the bin Laden families; about the ongoing shenanigans in Florida--that the media would let the people know, if they were not (like Michael Powell) indifferent to the public interest. In short, the news divisions of the media cartel appear to work against the public interest--and for their parent companies, their advertisers and the Bush Administration. The situation is completely un-American. It is the purpose of the press to help us run the state, and not the other way around. As citizens of a democracy, we have the right and obligation to be well aware of what is happening, both in "the homeland" and the wider world. Without such knowledge we cannot be both secure and free. We therefore must take steps to liberate the media from oligopoly, so as to make the government our own. |
||
|
|
||
|
_______________________________________________________________________________ Attention! All mainstream media and Government Officials! www.gulfwarvets.com/attention.htm For nearly five years, the American Gulf War Veterans Association (AGWVA) has offered reliable, verifiable documentation and evidence to all Veterans, media, health and government officials with an open hand not a clenched fist. With the exception of the Veterans and Talk Radio, our efforts have been met with disdain, ridicule and character assassination. For over eight years the Pentagon has continued to change their story about Gulf War Illness, spent hundreds of millions of dollars of the taxpayers money on government sponsored "independent studies" while tens of thousands of Veterans and their families die and spread a communicable disease into the general population. The recent revelations from the Pentagon with regard to the pyridostigmine bromide pills administered to the troops in the Gulf War, coupled with the ongoing "debate" about the safety of the Anthrax vaccine, is nothing more than another rabbit trail to send the compliant mainstream media and alphabet news agencies into yet another feeding frenzy of Pentagon droppings. The AGWVA website is filled with documentation and evidence that shows that the Pentagon AND the mainstream media have continually LIED to the American people about these most important issues. Yet in the October 19, 1999, issue of the USA Today, the Pentagon had the audacity to say that web pages such as ours were "essentially a hoax". John Hamre, Deputy Secretary of Defense stated, "There's an awful lot of just absolute nothing but rumor mongering." How dare you call yourselves "public servants" when your actions speak volumes of the treason you are perpetrating on not just the military, but all of America! Where is the "evidence" of the safety and efficacy of the Anthrax vaccines? Why has the information revealed in Senate Report 103-97 been ignored? Why has the information in Senate Report 103-900 been ignored? Why were the discrepancies and contradictions of Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf ignored when he testified before the Senate in Jan. 1997? Why was the footage taken from INSIDE the Kahmasiyah bunkers showing CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL weapons never shown to the American people? Why has Joyce Riley vonKleist or the AGWVA not been allowed to present their evidence to Congress or the Senate? Why did Senator Arlen Spector state in a letter that Joyce Riley vonKleist did testify to the Senate Investigating Panel in Harrisburg, PA, when SHE HAS NEVER BEEN THERE? All of the above information and documentation can be found on our website. WHERE IS YOUR EVIDENCE? Dr. Bernard Rostker (posing as a medical doctor on PBS's Frontline) has been reported as saying that, "People that listen to Joyce Riley are the same people that believe in black helicopters". Bernard Rostker is a Rand Corporation economist not a physician! Is it any wonder that today's release of propaganda about the PB pills was the result of a Rand Corporation study? Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and all other "newsmen": How do you sleep at night knowing that you are participating in the demise of the greatest country that ever existed in the history of the world? Your actions and participation in this and countless other cover-ups (Waco, OK City, TWA 800, etc.) indicate clearly that your intentions are to perpetuate the lies. Could it be that you intend to secure your positions in organizations like the Council of Foreign Relations, rather than to tell the truth? Your guilt will follow you beyond your graves. In recent years, the American people have been groomed and conditioned to expect a biological domestic terrorist attack in the very near future, "Not if, but when". Given the actions taken by the Government and the blatant push towards "Global Governance", what group of individuals would benefit from such an attack? Surely, it would not be some "Patriot Group" trying to defend the Constitution. However, might it be a more powerful group of individuals with access to such weapons and a design to replace our Constitution with a "Charter" or a "New World Order"? Would those same people have the ability to manipulate the media to demonize and blame the innocent to cover their deeds? Check the track record!
All military personnel took an oath to support and defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign AND DOMESTIC! Did you know that the elected officials that decide Foreign Policy (YOUR FATE) have refused to take the same oath? Try to get a certified copy of their Oath of Office. It doesn't exist! We are NOT conspiracy theorists or anti-government. Theories are not backed up with documentation and we are willing to die defending this Constitutional Republic… OUR GOVERNMENT! The time has now come to take a good long look at those that claim to be looking out for America's best interests. The same ones that have gone to great lengths to discredit those who are drawing attention to the corruption that has permeated our great Country. After a brief glance, you just might find that the blame should be focused in the opposite direction. In the old days, when someone was found to be cheating at the poker game, he was shot and the game went on. The rules were not changed to accommodate the corrupt. Our Constitution is the rule book and there are those that have not only cheated, but they have attempted to change the rules to accommodate their perverse lust for money and power. Will a wag of the finger or a slap on the wrist remedy the situation? You decide.
Our founding fathers pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to secure our freedom. Have the actions of our elected officials, military leaders and media manipulators demonstrated that they would do the same? The answer is clear. The line is drawn, the gloves are off and the sleeping giant is awakening. America, your children's, children are watching you. Where do you stand? …"If not us, who? If not now, when?" For God & Country The AGWVA "Posterity, you will never know what it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you make good use of it. " - John Quincy Adams
|
||
|
|
![[Blue Ribbon Campaign icon]](http://br.eff.org/br.gif)
or
all their economic clout and cultural sway, the ten great multinationals
profiled in our latest chart--AOL Time Warner, Disney, General Electric, News
Corporation, Viacom, Vivendi, Sony, Bertelsmann, AT&T and Liberty
Media--rule the cosmos only at the moment. The media cartel that keeps us fully
entertained and permanently half-informed is always growing here and shriveling
there, with certain of its members bulking up while others slowly fall apart or
get digested whole. But while the players tend to come and go--always with a few
exceptions--the overall Leviathan itself keeps getting bigger, louder, brighter,
forever taking up more time and space, in every street, in countless homes, in
every other head.
nd
so, unless there's some effective opposition, the several-headed vendor that now
sells us nearly all our movies, TV, radio, magazines, books, music and web
services will soon be selling us our daily papers, too--for the major dailies
have, collectively, been lobbying energetically for that big waiver, which
stands to make their owners even richer (an expectation that has no doubt had a
sweetening effect on coverage of the Bush Administration). Thus the largest US
newspaper conglomerates--the New York Times, the Washington Post, Gannett,
Knight-Ridder and the Tribune Co.--will soon be formal partners with, say, GE,
Murdoch, Disney and/or AT&T; and then the lesser nationwide chains (and the
last few independents) will be ingested, too, going the way of most US radio
stations. America's cities could turn into informational "company
towns," with one behemoth owning all the local print organs--daily paper(s),
alternative weekly, city magazine--as well as the TV and radio stations, the
multiplexes and the cable system. (Recently a federal appeals court told the FCC
to drop its rule preventing any one company from serving more than 30 percent of
US cable subscribers; and in December, the Supreme Court refused to hear the
case.) While such a setup may make economic sense, as anticompetitive
arrangements tend to do, it has no place in a democracy, where the people have
to know more than their masters want to tell them.